水戸藩天保検地の歴史的位置
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概要
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What was the impact of the rural decline in Mito han after the mideighteenth century on Tempo kenchi? What is the explanation for the way the upper class of peasants including village officials submitted to the kenchi even though it was disadvantageous to them? This article attempts to throw light on the first question by grasping characteristics of land holdings of various classes of peasants. As to the second question it attempts to seek the answer in the relationships of the village officials and the upper class peasants with the han government and with the average peasants. One of the characteristics of class differentiation in peasantry in the period of the rural decline could be seen in the fall of the lower class peasants, but their fall, in turn, resulted in difficulties of owner-farming by the upper class peasants. As time went by, however, some of the wealthy upper class peasants gradually accumulated lands even in the rural decline, though there appeared neither very large farmers nor appreciable development of landlord-tenant peasant relationship. In many cases the upper class people of villages became village officials, and they accumulated lands bearing less feudal rents, while the lower class peasants were left with infertile lands bearing more feudal rents, which led them into econonlically critical plight all the more. In accumulating lands village officials and the upper class peasants preferred dry fields to rice paddies because they could get surplus products more easily from fields on account both of the system of exploitation of feudal rents and of the development of commercial farming. As a result there arose serious conflicts between the upper and the lower class peasants. Those conflicts took the form of village disputes: disputes of average peasants against village officials about communal administration. Confronted with those disputes, the han government tried to avoid the rural crisis on the principle of excluding village officials' arbitrariness from communal administration. The policy on kenchi was basically in line with that principle of the han government, and it was carried out to the disadvantage of the village officials and the upper class peasants. But finding themselves in discord with the han government and the average peasants, the village officials and the upper class peasants saw that there had emerged, stances which would not allow them to object to the policy of the han government on kenchi. This ought not to be overlooked in analyzing historical roles of the upper class peasants as they came to be involved with the political strife in the end of the Tokugawa period.
- 1976-09-30