一八‐二〇世紀の江西省農村における社倉・義倉についての一檢討

Abstract

Mao Zedong 毛澤東, in his 1930 investigation of Xing-guo County 興國縣 in Jiang-xi 江西, found that in every village there had been established a system of lending foodgrain to the poor peasants during the annual preharvest periods. The author of this article inquires into the nature of the institutions involved in this system, which were known as community granaries 社倉 and charitable granaries 義倉, in the context of eighteenth to twentieth century Jiang-xi. In the author's view, through a study of these institutions it is possible to clarify certain features of the structure of reproduction in pre-modern Chinese villages and of closely connected ways in which the ruling class dominated the peasants who were the direct producers. The Qing 清 state, especially from the eighteenth century, adopted a policy of actively promoting the establishment of institutions of this sort. On the other hand, within village society during the same period, there are examples of the same kind of institutions being set up independently by the villages quite apart from the granaries created by government policy. In Xing-guo County just after the suppression of the revolutionary movement of the Tai-ping tian-guo 太平天國, over 400 charitable granaries were set up in the most fundamental groups and units of rural society. It is probable that the charitable granaries operating as foodgrain-lending institutions in the villages of the same county in 193Q were the descendents of the charitable granaries set up at this time. In the 1830's the Qing government was constructing these granaries rather for the purpose of creating stockpiles in case of a poor harvest than in order to lend grain in the preharvest period, but on account of inequalities in land distribution and the prevalence of private grain-lending at high interest rates, and of the continuing regime of the rural ruling class, the role of the granaries as lenders of grain in the preharvest period was inevitable.