伝統市場の重層性と制度的枠組 : 中国・インド・西欧の比較
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概要
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Traditional markets can be classified into four groups, according to how they preserve local liquidity. The first group maintains liquidity through creating a local currency. Traditional China is a typical case. In market towns in rural districts, cash notes issued by local merchants circulated without any official permission. The second group maintains liquidity through the frequent use of credit transactions. In medieval Western Europe, local market towns formed legal communities to make debtors settle their obligations. In the case of Colchester, some burgers used credit even in transactions of less than one shilling. Credit transactions made it possible to detach local liquidity from the movement of silver coins among feudal lords and cities. While the second group created what is called inside money within their communities, the first group developed a local supply of outside money. The ample supply of local currency gave peasants of the first group easy access to local markets. Traditional India belongs to the third group, which is a mixture of groups one and two. In Mughal India, the movement of silver coins among landlords and financiers coexisted with the circulation of small denomination currencies such as cowries or iron coins in local markets. The fourth group is a combination of convertible money and barter transactions, as is found in early modern Poland, or in modern Bolivia. Nobles, landowners and big merchants accumulate silver and gold coins that are valid for foreign trade, while peasants barter for daily necessities without any need to use money. As a rule, if peasants use the local market frequently, the market is more likely to develop an autonomous system of liquidity of its own accord. This was the case in China. However, the case of China also shows that a free market economy does not always lead to industrialization. In fact, it seems clear that in both Western Europe and Japan, limitations on the use of money, combined with the availability of loans within the local community, laid the basis for the accumulation of funds for local industrialization.
- 社会経済史学会の論文
- 1998-05-25