清末における城鎭郷自治と自治區設定問題 : 江蘇蘇屬地方自治籌[ハン]處の管轄地域を中心に

Abstract

This article focuses on local level of society, i.e. the levels of city 城 town 鎭 and district 郷, and analyzes it in terms of the reality of emergent local conflicts brought about by the designation of local jurisdictional boundaries caused by the implementation and advance of local self-government and the regional consciousness that was produced by demarcation of regional jurisdictions. First, I examine the special characteristics contained in the statutes that were the basis of the system of local self-government from the point of view of the relationship between self-governing jurisdictions of cities and districts. I indicate that the principle in the Law for Local Autonomy 城鎭郷地方自治章程 for how boundaries were to be drawn between local self-governing jurisdictions was only stipulated in a rudimentary fashion and point out how the "traditional boundaries" that were to serve as the basis of the their establishment were extremely vague, and that one cause that gave rise to later disputes was the question of which customs would be called upon to support varying interpretations. Second, I chiefly examine the case of Wuyang 武陽 in regard to the conflict between city and district over the establishment of city boundaries. At the time of the establishment self-governing urban areas, disputes arose over how the surrounding towns or outskirts (廂) should be treated between the city who wished to incorporate them and the district that desperately hoped to keep them within its own jurisdiction. At that time, the two sides remained far apart because each side presented its own "traditional boundaries, " and what surfaced was a conflict whose form pitted the urban citizenry who attempted to employ the superiority of the city in the provincial government on one side against the local gentry who expressed local regional interests on the other. The third object of examination is the problem of the establishment of district jurisdictions and the regional consciousness that lay behind the problem. The great majority of self-governing districts were regarded as having "traditional boundaries" by the populace, and they coincided with the boundaries of regional public affairs that had been conducted prior to the establishment of self-governing local jurisdictions. However, one can see that there were also efforts to go beyond these "traditional boundaries" and consolidate jurisdictions; the intention being to secure human and material resources to support the development of self-governance through the establishing of appropriate boundaries. From this point of view, one can also see the danger was not being able to harness the latent power inherent in regional society due to the inability to correctly locate it within the administrative system. The most prominent conflicts and contradictions between urban and district jurisdictions that had been born out of the process of the demarcation of local jurisdictions in regional society were a keynote of regional government policy in the first year of the republic, and how these contradictions were to be overcome remained as a task during the Republican period as the government sought to promote regional integration.