A Study On The Production And Sale Of Salt In Shaanxi In The Qing Dynasty

Drawing on the conception of space and time in Historical Geography, this thesis will firstly reconstruct a convincing historical picture as possible as it can, depicting matters such as the distributions of Shaanxi's salt in time and space in Qing Dynasty, salt's sale, and illegal salt problems. This reconstruction is aimed for a comprehensive presentation of the sale of Shaanxi's salt in Qing Dynasty. Then this thesis will, from the perspective of the sale of Shaanxi's salt in Qing Dynasty, inspect into whose profits was given priority when it came to the conflict of National revenue, formal evaluation of the local officials, and the consumption of common people. In short, it will focus on the relationship of the central government, local government and the local residents.During Qing Dynasty, there had been as many as eight kinds of salts on sale in Shaanxi province. Among them, the eastern Guanzhong alkali salt, and the big Huama salt were produced in Shaanxi, while the small Huama salt, Hedong salt, Ordos salt, Jartai salt and Sichuan well salt were from other provinces. The northern Shaanxi's alkali salt, Hedong salt, the big Huama salt and the small Huama salt were designated to be sold within Shaanxi province as the official salt by government. Even though the eastern Guanzhong alkali salt had been regarded as the illegal salt, it did put great influence on salt consumption in Guanzhong area of Shaanxi. Considering these facts, this thesis will mainly focus on the five kinds of salt mentioned above, and will combine the big Huama salt and small Huama salt as the Huama salt since they were managed in the same district. In addition, as the Sichuan's well salt, Jartai salt and Ordos salt had relatively little influence on Shaanxi's salt consumption, there will be no specific chapter to discuss them, except for several concise illustrations on them scattered in related chapters.The alkali salt in the eastern Guanzhong area had always been produced from lake in history. With the consistent changes of historical climate, the salt lake had gradually become dried up. In consequence, a variety of salt marshes emerged, and the alkali salt took the place of lake salt, becoming the major salt product in Guanzhong. Given that the Hedong salt had long been the legal salt commodity in Guanzhong, the exploitation of the eastern Guanzhong's alkali salt had, therefore, been prohibited along the history, in pursuit of guaranteeing a full sale of the Hedong salt. Only when there were dysfunctions in selling the legal Hedong salt, would the eastern Guanzhong salt be exploited for compensation. The several permissions and prohibitions of the eastern Guanzhong Lubotan salt at the end of Qing Dynasty reveal that in the process of distinguishing legal salt from illegal salt, the society's emphasis on this issue can be divided into three aspects. In the first aspect, the central government was concerned with the salt taxation. In the second aspect, the local government concentrated on its internal evaluation of officials, which was the most crucial matter to them, and the efficient employment of local natural resources as well as the livelihood of local residents. In the third aspect, the local residents were concerned with how they could utilize the local natural resources for improving their own lives. In all, this section unveils the fact that in order to acquire more taxation from the salt sale, there was mere competition and little cooperation among the central government, the local government and the local residents.The exploiting history of the northern Shaanxi alkali salt dated back to earlier times. With its remote location from other districts for legal salt and its abundant alkali salt resources, the exploitation of alkali salt in northern Shaanxi became compulsory. Driven by the potential profits, the central government involved it into its management for better taxation, and assigned the sale areas in the following places:all counties of Yulin Fu, and all counties of Suide Zhou except the Qingjian County.At the dawn of Ming Dynasty, the output of the legal Hedong salt was too small to fully satisfy the market's needs, while the excessively-produced Huama lake salt began to look for a larger-scale sale. Consequently, the adjacent area between Hedong and Shangan exclusive sale area, Fengxiang Fu, began to be faced with deficient legal salt and excessive illegal salt. Confrontations arose. On the one hand, Hedong salt merchants and Fengxiang Fu's residents pleaded for their purchase of the Huama lake salt and for the alteration of Fengxiang's belonging from Hedong to Shangan exclusive sale area. On the other hand, however, both the central and local government insisted on Fengxiang's remaining its salt purchase from Hedong, because these two governments determined to maintain high revenue and the traditional rules of salt taxation. As a result, the central government, local government, salt merchants and the local residents worked out their own ways to balance their interests. The central government also created new policy to provide solution to this problem.There were multiple kinds of salts in Shaanxi province in Qing Dynasty, and the salt smuggling was the most universal one. The precondition of the salt smuggling was the existence of the exclusive sale area policy; the fundamental base of it was the unreasonable partition of salt market; and the direct cause of it was the differentiated performance-price ratios in the adjacent areas of salt market. In this context, salt smuggling became inevitable. The salt smuggling of Shaanxi province mainly took place in Guanzhong, southern and northern Shaanxi. However, as both the central and local governments intended to prohibit the salt smuggling, and as the local residents were burdened with risks of being severely punished by smuggling salt, all of the three parties opposed salt smuggling. The essence of salt smuggling was the trade barrier formed by the existence of the exclusive sale area policy. Whether to relinquish the exclusive sale area policy or not was indeed connected with the matter that which party would enjoy the priority to earn profits.By reconstructing the distributions of Shaanxi salt's sale in time and space in Qing Dynasty, conclusions can be drawn that the national profit was given the priority within the salt economy. Yet to be sure, in order to sustain the salt revenue, the central government would also make minor adjustments in salt policy to ensure local residents'interests, as long as the national taxation of salt would not be sacrificed. At the end of Qing Dynasty, the exclusive sale areas for salt in Fu and Counties started to incorporate the market regulations because of the weaker control in politics and economy from the central government. Nonetheless, it does not mean that the central government began to accept the market regulations. On the contrary, the alteration was actually expedient to the trends of local salt sales.