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Salt and Civilization PDF

427 Pages·1992·50.718 MB·English
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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 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, london Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York. N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin's Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 978-1-349-21843-1 ISBN 978-1-349-21841-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21841-7 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Transferred to digital printing 2001 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

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