著者

渡辺 紘良

出版者

東洋文庫

雑誌

東洋学報 = The Toyo Gakuho (ISSN:03869067)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.102, no.2, pp.1-31, 2020-09-17

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The annual amount of freight transported on China's inland waterways during the early years of the Song Dynasty has been estimated at about 6 million dan 石, an achievement made possible by the Dynasty's human resource policies. Inheriting the national unification projects of Emperor Shizong 世宗 of the Later Zhou Dynasty, Taizu 太祖, the founder of the Song Dynasty, concentrated efforts on reducing the number of regional military governors (fanzhen 藩鎭) and rebuilding the domestic political regime, thus emphasizing the improvement of regional strongholds rather than fiscal strength; moreover, considering the relocation of the capital to Luoyang 洛陽 or Chang'an 長安, improvements in inland waterway transportation were not prioritized, and the national unification efforts were also left incomplete when he suddenly died. In contrast, in the second year of his reign (977), in order to expand waterway transportation projects, second emperor Taizong 太宗 relaxed restrictions on members of the militias commanded by former Five Dynasties military governors (jiangli yaqian 將吏衙前) illegitimized and reduced by Taizu, an action which provided human resources for private salt traders defying government monopoly and the expansion of candidates for the civil service examination system. On the other hand, after taking over management of waterway transportation and warehousing, this same jiangli yaqian promoted illegal practices among shipping crews and brought about the bankruptcy of local elites (lizheng yaqian 里正衙前) under their jurisdiction who were also involved in waterway transportation. Consequently, the Dynasty was forced to give jiangli yaqian the authority to muster ship crews in the capacity of administrators (zhugangli 主綱吏) over the waterway fleets of the Huainan-Jiangnan region. Moreover, in 983 their authority was extended to the waterway fleets of Hunan, and officially recognized by the Dynasty as managing the waterway transportation in their own right. That same year marked the occurrence of incidents throughout China, in which jiangli yaqian attempted to recover their formerly usurped judiciary authority in the provinces. Fearing that such incidents could extend to waterway transportation administration, the central government, in the wake of the exposure of corruption in the Treasury Bureau, set up departments of inland waterways and overland routes in Kaifeng, thus recognizing an even larger bestowal of authority on jiangli yaqian and ending the stagnation in waterway transportation development. In the background to this newly bestowed authority lay the actions of a group of close advisors to Emperor Taizong, some of whom were well-informed about the operations of the Treasury and Kaifeng agencies, and would be later promoted to Treasury Minister. It was largely due to this group that Taizong had been able to directly control jiangli yaqian. Moreover, the policy of entrusting the management of waterway transp01tation to jiangli yaqian paralleled the free appointment of petty officials, whose effects cannot be ignored.