淸代華北における差徭と靑苗會 : 嘉慶年間以降の順天府寶坻縣の事例

Abstract

It was the common practice that local governments collected taxes from the peasants in rural society under the name of the duty of long distance relay in case of budget shortage in the northern China. The expenses, levied from rural society due to budget shortage were called chaiyao. Chaiyao was an important source for local budget which was unflexible, but from the peasant's standpoint, it was a serious pressure on them as it was levied irregularly as the local government's pleases. To cope with the heavy payment of chaiyao, the peasants joined the rural organizations like che hui 車會 and qing-miao hui. Before the years of Jiaqing and Daoguang 道光, leading members in the village paid the expenses assigned by local governments. Under this way of levying chaiyao, they formed che hui in order to collect the chaiyao money. In the years of Tonzhi 同治, the way of levying chaiyao on a land basis became common in rural society. The chaiyao money was collected as part of the qing-miao money, and became of the activities of qing-miao hui. The increase of chaiyao which had been started clearly from the Jiaqing years brought this change of the levying way. The peasants got over the rapidly increasing expenses by participating in rural organizations, particularly qing-miao hul. Qing-miao hui was an organization guarding harvest originally. But we can conjecture that it was gradually transformed into a cooperate association providing public services such as repairing village roads and temples in rural society while it was going to perform the task of levying chaiyao. In fact, this expanding function can also be found in the qing-miao hui of the 20th century. Based on rural surveys in the 20th century, qing-miao hui not only guarded harvest but also filled the budget shortage and labor of local governments.