Salt and Civilization

427 Pages·1992·50.718 MB·English

by  S. A. M. Adshead (auth.)

SALTANDCIVILIZATION
AlsobyS. A.M. Adshead
THEMODERNIZATIONOFTHECHINESE SALTADMINISTRATION
PROVINCE AND POLITICSINLATEIMPERIALCHINA
"CHINAINWORLDHISTORY
"AlsopublishedbyMacmillan
Salt and Civilization
s.
A. M. Adshead
Reader inHistory
University ofCanterbury, Christchurch, NewZealand
* 0 S.A. M.Adshead 1992
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 978-0-333-53759-6
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For Mouse
The salt has not lost its savour
Contents
List ofTables viii
Preface ix
PartI Salt and Society
1 Primitivity 3
2 Antiquity 27
3 The Dark and Light Ages 47
4 The Middle Ages 71
5 Late Tradition, Early Modernity 99
6 Modernity 136
Part II Salt and the State
7 The Venetian Salt Administration 177
8 The French Salt Administration 204
9 The Habsburg Salt Administration 230
10 The Ottoman Salt Administration 259
11 The Indian Salt Administration under the Raj 284
12 The Chinese Salt Administration under the Late
Empire and Early Republic 321
Notes 359
Select Bibliography 382
Index 393
vii
List of Tables
4.1 Salt Production in Szechwan in the EarlyMing 81
5.1 Production ofSalt in Europe around 1800 114
5.2 Ch'ang-lu Salt Division, 1500-1848 125
5.3 Liang-huai Salt Division, 1600-1850 129
5.4 Production ofSalt in China, 1500and 1800 (cwt) 133
6.1 World Production ofSalt, 1800, 1950, 1985(tons) 136
6.2 Salt Production in the Habsburg Empire, 1800
and 1912 (tons) 149
6.3 Salt Production in Italy, 1910, 1939, 1955(tons) 150
6.4 Tzu-Iiu-ching Salt Distributions, 1882-1948 (cwt) 165
6.5 Regional Percentages ofSalt Production in China,
1900-1957 166
6.6 Huai-pei Shipments to Huai-nan (cwt) 169
7.1 Venetian Saltand Total Revenues, 1400-1500(ducats) 198
8.1 The Gabe/le in 1789 207
8.2 French Saltand Total Revenues, 1515-1789 (livres) 225
9.1 The Habsburg Salt Administration, 1912 232
9.2 Production in the Salzkammergut, 127S-1912 234
10.1 Salt Sales and Revenues in Egypt, 1891-1906 262
10.2 SaltTaxed in the Ottoman Empire, 1882-1923 (tons) 269
10.3 Sales ofSalt in the Ottoman Empire, 1904-23 (tons) 273
10.4 Income of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration,
1882-1914 (£) 274
10.5 Exports ofSalt from the Ottoman Empire,
1882-1923 (tons) 277
11.1 Imports into Bengal, 1924-5 (tons) 292
12.1 Salt Revenue in China, 1910(taels) 343
12.2 Total and Salt Revenues in China, 1850-1950
(million taels) 353
12.3 Salt Revenue in Szechwan, 1850-1910 (taels) 354
viii
Preface
Thisbook hopes toprovide acommodityhistory ofsaltfrom prehistory
tothe present.InPartI,thedevelopmentofthe production,distribution
and consumption ofsalt is traced chronologically:acommodity history
of salt in society. In Part II, sixexamples of government salt adminis
trations are examined: a commodity history ofsalt in the state. In both
parts, the scope, asfaraspossible,iscomparativeand global.Inthe first
part, salt works in Africa, America and Australasia figure as well as
those in Europeand Asia. Inthe second part, three examples are taken
fromEurope, three from Asia.Theaimisacommodityhistoryofsaltas
a theme in world history.
But, it may be asked, what is commodity history? As with 'what is'
questions generally, instant definitions, such as, say, in this case 'the
human history of immediate things', are unsatisfactory as oracular,
lexicographic, or an invitation to logomachy. More helpful than such
direct confrontation is an indirect approach through encirclement:de
limitation ofan unknownbyreference toaknown, either byadditionor
subtraction, inthiscase, byrelating commodityhistory tootherkindsof
history. Forjust as has been said, a personwho islost should not ask,
'where am I'? but rather, 'where are the other places?', so an enquirer
about significance should not ask, 'what is meant?' but 'where are the
other meanings?'
Commodity history is not arcane. It is simply the application to a
relatively new fieldofconceptslongenunciatedand utilized bythe best
historians, in particularthe concept ofadichotomybetweennatureand
culture. Thus Croce in his history of Naples contrasted the inert,
reluctantmass with the activeintellectual minority, whileTrevor-Roper,
in the introduction to the first collection of his essays wrote of 'the
interplay between heavy social forces or intractable geographical facts
and the creative or disruptive forces which wrestle with them'. One
form ofthis dichotomy isthe polarity ofthingsand people.Within the
category of things with which people interact, commodities may be
regarded as a subcategory. Economists distinguishbetween goods pro
duced for intermediate demand, i.e. for further processing, and goods
produced for finaldemand, i.e. forconsumption.Commodities belong
tothe secondgroup: they areimmediate ratherthanmediate things. For
most of its history, salt was a commodity in this sense. Most ofit was
used directly in food and its role in preservation and industry was
secondary.Salt first becomes significant as an industrial mineral in the
patio process for the recovery of silver used in the Spanish mines of
Mexicoand Peru, as has been shown by Ursula Ewald in her book The
ix
x Preface
Mexican SaltIndustry1560-1980.Itwas not, however, untilthe Industrial
Revolution, thatsaltbecame primarilyan industrialmineral rather than
acommodity.Tillthen, asacommodityclosetoits consumers, salt was
subject to their changing preferences, choices and priorities. For the
same reason, salt was widely used as an alimentary coding for thought
structures, as has been shown for the [udaeo-Christian thought world
byJames E. Latham in his book TheReligious Symbolism ofSalt.Indeed,
by unitingnatureand culture, commodityhistorysimplyexpressesthat
fundamental feature ofthe humanepistemologicalconditionwhichKarl
Rahner termed Geist imWelt.
Moreover, commodity history is not new. Historians have never
neglected the opportunities provided by commodities. In the interwar
period, Marjorie and C. H. B. Quennell's History of Everyday Things
emphasized the then neglected truth that history was more than kings
and battles. At the same time, Pirenne's association of the end of the
Ancient World with the disappearance from Western Europe of gold,
silk, spices and papyrus, focused attention on the history of these
commodities.In1949thereappearedRedcliffeN. Salaman'sTheHistory
andSocial Influence of thePotato, which to many people opened a new
perspective on the possibilities of history. The same year saw the
publication of Fernand Braudel's La Mediterranee et LeMonde Mediter
raneenal'epoquedePhilippe II,whose middlesectionon preciousmetals,
spices and grain was a powerful stimulus to commodity history in the
fullsense. Post-1949only majorlandmarks can be mentioned. In 1964,
Louis Dermigny published LaChine etL'Occident:LeCommerce aCanton
au XVIlIesiecle 1719-1833, which was in effect a commodity history of
Chinese tea in Europe. In 1978, Robert Delort brought out his Le
a
CommercedesFourrures enOccident laFinduMoyenAgeand his subse
quent Les Animaux ont une Histoire in 1984 heightened awareness of
commodities such as honey - important both as food and as symbol
which arose from human/fauna relations. In1987,under the editorship
ofMichelMollat, thereappearedthe collectionofessaysentitledHistoire
des Piches Maritimes en Franceof which those by Jean-Claude Hocquet
andLaurierTurgeonwereparticularlynotablefrom the pointofview of
commodity history.
Although commodity history is not new, it has developed and is
developing. This development may be described by saying that, while
commodity history has always involved both subjective and objective
poles, the human user and the natural thing, there is today greater
appreciation of the subjective factor. Commodities have ceased to be
mere subjects ofeconomic laws and now take citizenship in the realms
of sociology, psychology and values. Thus Dermigny, to explain the
Canton conjuncture, introduces the social context of tea drinking in
eighteenth-century England: the feminization of time and space in