The government monopoly of salt in the Song dynasty (960-1279): An annotated translation of the monograph on salt in the 'Shihuozhi' of the 'Songshi' with introduction

Salt was a key segment of the Chinese government monopoly system since its inception in the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.). As a daily necessity and a large-scale industry with localized production, it was an ideal target for bureaucratic management. Through the Tang (618-907) and by the Song (960-1279), fiscal needs accelerated and so, too, bureaucratization. The Song's nomadic neighbors posed a constant threat and forced payment of heavy annual tribute. In addition was the cost of maintenance of an army which quintupled in size to over one million men. When not much more could be levied from agricultural taxes to provide for rising internal and external expenditures, the lucrative monopoly of salt was a logical resort.;The monograph on salt in the Songshi is a storehouse of information for understanding the salt monopoly. I have translated into English this text written in the "bureaucratese" of 1,000 years ago and which is full of specialized terms and complicated debates relating to finance, politics, and the salt trade itself. I have also annotated the text using primary sources of the period, including the Song huiyao, Xuzizhi tongjian changbian, Wenxian tongkao, Jianyan yilai chaoye zaji, Jianyan yilai xinian yaolu, and Aobo tu. My annotations corroborate, correct, supplement, and fill in lacunae of topic and time, thus qualitatively and quantitatively making for a comprehensive study. The annotated translation is introduced by an essay on the subject in a broad context.;The main types of salt produced in the Song--pond, sea, earth, and well--came to provide as much as one half of the government's revenues. Yet from a modern economic perspective, the records show the salt monopoly at every stage to be seemingly irrational in practice and burdensome to the people. In the context of fiscal imperatives of this pre-modern bureaucratic state, however, salt administrators sought not economic but, rather, fiscal and bureaucratic solutions. The monopoly was above all a fiscal bureaucracy with a goal not of maximal profit but, rather, reliable revenue procurement for the state.