Cecilia Lee-fang Chien - Salt and State

SALT AND STATE

AN ANNOTATED TRANSLATION OF THE SONGSHI SALT MONOPOLY TREATISE

Cecilia Lee-fang Chien

Center for Chinese Studies

The University of Michigan

Ann Arbor

Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.

MICHIGAN MONOGRAPHS IN CHINESE STUDIES

ISSN 1081-9053

SERIES ESTABLISHED 1968

VOLUME 99

Published by

Center for Chinese Studies

The University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104-1608

2004 The Regents of the University of Michigan

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chien, Cecilia Lee-fang

Salt and state : an annotated translation of the Songshi salt monopoly treatise / Cecilia Lee-fang Chien.

p. cm. - (Michigan monographs in Chinese studies, ISSN 1081-9053 ; v. 99)

Includes bibliographic references and index.

ISBN 0-89264-163-0 (alk. paper)

1. Salt industry and tradeChinaHistory. 2. Song shi. Shi huo zhi. Yan. 3. Government monopoliesChina. 4. ChinaHistorySong dynasty, 960-1279. I. Song shi. Shi huo zhi. Yan. English. II. Title. III. Michigan monographs in Chinese studies no. 99.

HD9213.C42C517 2004

338.476644095109021dc22

2003055689

ISBN 978-0-89264-163-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-472-03806-0 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-472-12750-4 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-472-90145-6 (open access)

The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

To my mother, Florence Chien, and to the memory of my father,
Gabriel Y. T Chien, 19222002

CONTENTS

MAPS

TABLES

The rich and unprecedented developments in virtually every aspect of Chinese culture dunng the Song dynasty (960-1279) have inspired scholars to delve into its many and diverse areas. In recent years in China, Japan, and the West the study of the state salt monopoly in the larger context of Chinas bureaucracy and political economy has generated rising interest. My annotated translation and Introduction to the complete text of the salt monopoly treatise in the Songshi, the Song dynastic history, may be seen as part of this effort.

Through much of the imperial period, the monopoly stood second only to the land tax in generating revenues, particularly during the Song, when it provided over 50 percent of the states cash income. Although the Song was arguably Chinas greatest age, its imperial administration felt fiscal pressures from the start. The governments central dilemma was how to maximize state revenues while improving its peoples welfare. In response to ongoing military pressures, Song emperors assumed near complete control over the fisc in general and the lucrative salt monopoly in particular, their efforts arguably achieving the apex of court activism in the imperial era. They prohibited private individuals from trespassing on the states monopoly revenues and established penalties for those who broke the law; they increased their personal control over financial decision-making by creating offices directly answerable to the throne; they presided over meetings on fiscal affairs and frequently inquired into the states financial condition; and they had accounting records compiled to keep them informed of the overall fiscal process.

The state controlled the military, political, and economic resources necessary to maximize income, but even so it faced constraints. Each actor in the multi-layered and many-faceted salt trade, from the emperor, local officials, monopoly administrators, producers, and merchants, on down to consumers, had his own interests, interests often at odds with those of other actors. The state itself did not necessarily speak with one voice. The salt monopoly, which was key to the stability and prosperity of the dynasty, provides an excellent window onto the relationship between the government and the economy in the Song. The problems of the Songs bureaucratically managed economy are not unique, but rather resonate with problems generated by command economies elsewhere, both historical and in our own day.

The Songshi treatise, unlike any other source contemporary to the period, organizes the subject of the salt monopoly into an intelligible narrative that is unsurpassed in detail. As far as I know, no special study has been devoted to this work, nor does a complete English translation exist. Written in the language of memorials and policy pronouncements of a millennium ago, a language characterized by filler and convention, the salt treatise is replete with technical terms that relate to fmance, politics, and the industry itself. The complexities of bureaucracy, political process, and factional debates are especially confounding for the latter-day reader. Song rulers perpetuated many institutions of the Tang and Five Dynasties, and they also introduced new institutions, creating the most complex administrative nomenclature in imperial Chinese history. I have tried to sort out these issues, inserting clarifying interpolations into the text and adding commentary where it seemed necessary.

I have used the punctuated Zhonghua Press edition of the Songshi for my translation, which averages about four parts annotation for every one part translation. I have corroborated, corrected, and supplemented lacunae of topic and time by referring to other major historical records. The running commentary offers my brief explication of how the Songshi editors presented policies and activities related to the salt monopoly. To paraphrase Denis Twitchett (1992), the writing of history was for historians not only a political act, but also an evaluative and interpretive one. I believe the Songshi editors, like Song officials, believed in maintaining a stable market and ensuring revenues, but these historians viewed the extreme controls of some officials (the Wang Anshi camp, especially) quite critically, and this is reflected in their treatment. But while the historians and bureaucrats may have differed on the means of generating state revenue, they did not greatly disagree on ends.

It is my hope that the introduction will enable readers to better understand the annotated translation by giving an overview of the dynamics of the monopoly against a backdrop of governmental centralization and foreign relations. This book will be useful to those interested in Chinese institutional history, economic history, fiscal administration, law, and historiography, as well as comparative bureaucracy and monopoly. Although some problems have necessarily been left unresolved, I trust that this endeavor will ease the task of future students in the field.

* * * *

The passage to completion of this book has been an odyssey for me in time, space, motion, and emotion. I thank Peter K. Bol of Harvard University for the inception of this work as a doctoral dissertation. I deeply appreciate his unfailingly open door, his candid reading of my drafts, and his confidence throughout the long haul, which helped me bring this work to fruition. His devotion to the field and to the facts continues to be an inspiration. I am further grateful to my graduate advisors Tu Wei-ming, who tried to keep me from losing sight of the forest, and Philip Kuhn, whose methodological questions and affection for documents are compelling.

Paul Smith of Haverford College went over the early draft with a fine-toothed comb; his queries could launch another tome. Peter Golas of the University of Denver gave essential advice at a late stage. I am indebted to a number of scholars for their generosity in sharing their manuscripts and visions: Bao Weimin and Liang Taiji of Zhejiang University; Lin Yimin of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Liu Jiahe of Beijing Normal University; Seo Tatsuhiko of Chuo University; Hans Ulrich Vogel of the University of Teubingen; and Yang Weisheng of then Hangzhou University. I also express my thanks for the travel and research grants from the International Rotary Foundation, the History Department of Harvard University, and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.