明代鹽場の研究 (上)

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The general tendency of Asiatic history consisted in the dual antagonism between the southern agricultural races and the northern nomadic ones. In these struggles, the former were generally on the defensive, and in the Far East, the line of defense was formed by the famous Great Wall. Most Chinese dynasties had to station a grand army along the Wall to defend themselves from the southward invasion of the Mongolians and other nomadic races. To prepare the enormous war expenditure, most dynasties put in operation the government-monopoly of salt, iron and other daily necessaries. Above all, the monopoly of salt was easy to practise, for salt is indispensable as daily food, and in China, the salt-producing places are geographically limited. Sung 宋 and 明 Ming were the dynasties which did their best to practise the salt monopolizing policy. In China, sea-salt 海塩, pond-salt 池塩, well-salt 井塩, rock-salt 岩塩, and others are produced. In ancient times when the Chinese lived mainly in the Yellow basin, the Salt-pond 塩池 of Shansi 山西 played the most important part in supplying the Chinese with salt. Since the 8th or 9th century when the main dwelling-land of the Chinese moved to the Yangtze basin, the sea-salt of Lianghwai 雨淮 and Liangcheh 雨浙 has displayed its great significance. In the 16th or 17th century under the Ming Dynasty, Lianghwai, the most important salt fields at that time, underwent a great change regarding the salt-laws. The salt monopoly which had been carried out directly by the government till that time, was abolished and some great merchants, the patentees, were allowed to monopolize salt. At the same time, the producing means (Produktionsverhaltnisse) of the salt-fields came to undergo a great change. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the salt-producers delivered all the salt they produced to the government, and as compensation, they were given some paper-money 鈔. To produce salt or sell it privately was strictly prohibited by the laws of the country . But the paper-money which was issued under the Ming Dynasty was inconvertible. With the lapse of time, its value declined and it became at last a mere trash. So the salt-producers found it difficult to make a living and many of them ran away, while some of them sold the salt which they privately produced to merchants in the teeth of prohibition. In the latter half of the 15th century the surplus salt which was produced in addition to the fixed amount which salt-producers had to deliver to the government, was sold by salt-producers to merchants by permission of the government. At the end of the Ming Dynasty the producers came scarcely to deliver any salt to the government, and began to deal with merchants directly. And the government, instead of monopolizing salt, solely began to tax the salt-producers and merchants. At first, almost all the means of salt-production (Produktionsmittel) were government-owned and the salt-producers could merely have the loan of therm. Therefore, private buying and selling of the means of salt-production were not in practice, and the disintegration of the salt-producers' class did scarcely appear. With the direct buying and selling between salt-producers and merchants, the salt-fields and other production-means gradually became practically private-owened. The means of salt-production began to be concentrated and possessed by some merchants. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, a kind of putting-out system appeared in Hwainan 淮南 salt-fields.
北海道大学の論文

明代鹽場の研究 (上)

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