Study On Opium-poppy Cultivation Land Taxation In Gansu Province In The Late Qing Dynasty

Many scolars has focused their observation on the native-opium revenues in the late Qing in resent years.The tax items,the change of tax rate,the usage and alternation measures of domestic opium tax are all become new topics for research.These questions are also essencial elements for modern drug history investigation,which are important academic intersection and involved in modern financial history, political history, society history and so on.As one of main opium production provinces in north China,the drug problems in Gansu were concerned early by history scholars.Though the research on the shortage of food caused by poppy planting,the moral and physical degeneration of opium smokers has yielded fruitful results,the native opium tax has not yet been a systematic,comprehensive discussion.The article devotes to demonstrating the opium-poppy cultivation land tax in Gansu province in the late Qing,explaining the time and reason of tax collection,the change process of tax rate,the main usage and alternation measures of the tax and so on.The paper would first argue the characteristic of opium-poppy cultivation in Gansu province. In the second part,it would discuss the time and reason of poppy-cultivation land tax collection,the change of tax rate,illustrate the different income between garin-planting and poppy-planting,it also demonstrate the local authorities collected an additional taxation payment from peasants through the exchange rate between silver and cash,point out the main reason of higher grain-prices in modern Gansu province. In the third part of the paper,it would analyse the native opium revenues have paid great role in Coastal Construction, Boxer Indemnity,troop training,opium-prohibiting and so on.The fourth part of the article would point out the province's finance got in greater trouble because of the rapid decreaseing of native opium revenues which caused by the Opium-banning Policy since 1906.In order to definitely illustrate the topic,the paper provides a large amount of data and tables by using quantitative analysis method.Throuth the case research of Gansu province,We can approch a guidance fuction to the real situation of central government of Qing.The opium policy advoted by the Qing Court in order to reduce the silver outflow because of imported-opium and to increase revenues by native-opium production was "a remedy is worse than the evil",because the negative impact caused by the policy are incalculable and non-quantifiable.But the later results proper to fit Qing's original purpose of lifting the ban on native-opium. First, the price advantage of domestic opium to make the addicts at a lower cost to meet their own needs and family members'requirments.Second, the farmers got a larger economic benefits by planting opium poppy. Third, the huge domestic opium revenues used for Coastal Construction, Boxer Indemnity, troop training, opium-prohibition and so on and played an active role. Fourth, the rapid development of native opium maximum resisted to the imported-opium and gradually occupied the absolute advantage in the domestic market, so that eventually mastered the opium-ban initiative Qing.