銀の流れ --明末遼東(關寧)軍の軍餉によせて--

Abstract

Focusing on military pay for Liaodong (Guanning) soldiers during the late Ming period, this article delves into its structure, the means of payment, and correlation with governmental finances, while also examining the broader economic impact of the state's financial activities during this time. According to the early Ming system, soldiers' pay, in principle given in kind, was divided into two categories, regular and temporary. The former was mainly comprised of monthly grain allowances (月糧) of 1 picul per month, while the latter, featuring travel rations (行糧), was variable. Since the Zhengtong period, the practice of commutating military pay into silver was popularized among garrisons in the northern frontier. In Liaodong, the payment of six months' grain allowances at a rate of 0.45 taels per picul was established by 1484. Confronted with military threats from “Mongolian intruders in the north and Japanese pirates in the south” (北虜南倭) during the mid-16 century, the Ming dynasty started to recognize jiading (家丁), private retainers originally assembled by military commanders, as elite units to bolster its military capacity. Although jiading received significantly higher pay--approximately three times that of ordinary soldiers in Liaodong during the Wanli period--their numbers were limited. With the onset of the war against the Manchus in 1618, the Ming dynasty, suffering a series of defeats, was barely able to maintain its grip over the Guanning corridor in southwestern Liaodong. Although the Guanning garrison was reorganized to a scale comparable to the former Liaodong army, soldiers' pay was generally raised to at least 1.80 taels per month. Consequently, large quantities of funds and supplies were continually transported to Liaodong to support the army, contributing to a local wartime economic boom. During the first Manchurian invasion of China Proper in 1629, known as the Jisi incident, large-scale reinforcements were mobilized from across the country to defend the Beijing area, with the Guanning troops serving as the main force. To appease these Guangning soldiers special treatment called xingyue jianzhi 行月兼支, which provided combined pay of monthly grain allowances and travel rations over 3.00 taels per month, was granted. Initially considered as an ad hoc arrangement, xingyue jianzhi was eventually widely applied due to the persistent demands of reinforcements, and therefore the pay standards across the Ming armies witnessed an overall increase. As the war expanded from frontier to hinterland, soaring military expenditures drove local governments not only to levy more taxes, but also to spend more at a higher frequency on local garrisons, causing an accelerated monetary circulation as well as temporal and spatial imbalances in silver stock. As a result, the pre-war economic structure, characterized by the hinterland-frontier delivery of taxes, collapsed, and inflation thus became unchecked during the last days of the Ming dynasty.