Ming Dynasty Commercial Research

According as the legal historical materials abounding in content, such as the codes, the famous subjects memorials to throne, the literatures of the law- studying, the judicatoiy archives, the deciding documents, the covenants, the treasured private copys of rare books of the masters familiar with law. and so on, adopting the studying method of combining macrocosmic and microcosmic, dynamic and static state each other, the paper carrys through a in - depth comprehensive study of the whole commercial law system of Ming Dynasty in order to open out its inherent structure, basic function and running mechanism. Looking the Ming' commercial law as a representative example, the paper explores the particularity and the orderliness of development of Chinese feudalism legal system.The system of the paper rests with the studying object -the commercial law of Ming Dynasty. Except for the introductory remark and the conclusion, the paper contains seven sections,mainly involving the following contents and viewpoints: the establishment of the relative offical position, the enactment and restriction of commercial right, the regulation of the relative marketing administration, the issuance of the currency, the revenue law, the salt and tea law, the foreign trade law and the comerical custom law etc. The paper analyses the matters that how the government of Ming exerted appropriately the national functions and taked full advantage of legal instruments to regulate the commercial activities. the paper values precisely that the statute and the folk custom law functioned each other and points out the various malpractices of the commercial law of Ming Dynasty.Baswed on the clear and definite concept of the commercial law, the introductory remark expounds the merits, the states, the objects and the methods of studies in order to make clear the purpose from the very beginning and have a definite view.Section one: the administrative systems of marketw. The market is the main carrier of commercial activities . the development of the market economy provided a abundant material foundation for the perfection of the commercial law of Ming Dynasty. At the same time, the market is the important object for the law of Ming Dynasty to protect, and the law about which is very particular, such as the establishment of the marketing administrative organization, the confirmation of limits of its functions and powers, the establishment of the metrology and the system of estimate.Section two; the management and control of merchants. The systems of Luyin and Dianli and Zhanji and Baozhuang and Qingshen are the important content of the commercial law of Ming Dynasty. These systems had a active function for merchandise economy of Ming Dynasty.Section three: the system of the administration and imposition of the commercial tax. For the sake of the national financial income, the government of Ming set down a series of specific commercial taxation systems, thus made the commercial tax law systematism and standardization further. The goveiment of Ming establisted the concrete revenue departments , prescribed the main category of tax, administered and supervised the revenue activities, etc.Section four: the law of salt business. As a living commodity, the demand quantum of salt was mortal, and the gabelle became the main source of the governmental financial income of the past dynasties. The past dynasties set down very detailed law of the salt business, especially Ming Dynasty, the gabelle had a greater chanage and a more perfect system. Conforming the development of the economic situation, the Ming gover-ment relaxed the monopolization policy of salt, for example, the merchant management instead of the governmental monopolization. In Ming Dynasty, the system of the Kaizhong of salt was spoke highly of, " Kaizhong is the best system of the Ming gabelle".Section five: the law of tea business. The tea is the absolutely necessarily commody, alike the salt. The Ming goverment constituted similar legal systems of the tea business to the gabel...