摘要
本文以近代早期中西皇室与商人关系的表面相似为切入点,探讨近代早期中国与西欧在政治和税收结构上若干重要差异。清代的皇室与商人关系与英国相比,是一种截然不同的政治和税收结构。这些不同主要体现在:首先,与17世纪早期伦敦特许商人愤慨于王室未经议会批准的税收而与王室走向公开对抗的事实相反,18世纪中叶分享了相似崛起轨迹并一度享有更多财富的清代皇商,却在皇室的无度需索下渐渐走到了破产的边缘。专制主义中央集权政治统治的格局下,商业的发展无从遵循市场和经济的规律,而是极大程度上受到政治的左右。其次,与长期深陷债务的西欧王室不同,帝制时期的中国君主早在秦代便集中掌控了对于土地税的征收。与西欧君主从自己的收入中支付军费相对,帝制时期的中国军费主要由户部奏销。清代君主对征税权的控制使得皇商在皇室财政上的作用只处于补充地位。尽管与近代早期的西欧在皇室与商人的关系上分享了诸多近似的特征,支撑并影响清代中国皇室与商人关系的制度结构却与西方存在着本质的不同。本文挑战了通过在中国近代早期历史中寻找与西欧的相近性以界定中国"早期现代性"的研究方法。
This paper examines certain important differences in sociopolitical and taxation structures between early modern China and England through the lens of apparent similarities of the crown-merchant relationship in the two regions.The differences are twofold.First,while in early seventeenth century,over the issue of unparliamentary impositions London City’s merchants,who initially rose to the leadership of merchant communities through royal privileges,took steps toward open opposition to the crown,by mid-eighteenth century imperial merchants in China who shared similar trajectories of early successes and once amassed even more wealth than their English counterparts struggled to survive enormous economic extortions from the imperial household and already came to the brink of bankruptcy.Under the despotic political system,imperial merchants of Qing China were vulnerable to political persecution and the orientation of merchants to serve for political needs strictly restricted the scopes of their mercantile activities.Second,unlike European crowns who were chronologically indebted,Chinese monarchs had established centralized control of landed taxes as early as 221 BCE.Instead of financing wars out of the monarch’s own coffer,war expenditures were paid by the state’s purse,making merchants’role in royal finances only supplementary,rather than indispensable.In short,despite remarkable similarities with in roughly contemporaneous England,the crown-merchant relationship of the Qing was rooted in a fundamentally different political and taxation system.This paper thus challenges the prevailing research method of searching"early modernities"in Chinese history simply because they resembled those in western Europe.
出处
《全球史评论》
2019年第2期23-41,257-258,共21页
Global History Review
基金
山东大学基本科研业务费专项资金资助(项目号:2018TB027)
山东省社科规划项目—优势学科项目“清代皇室财政于政府财政分开的制度史研究”(项目号:19BYSJ56)阶段性成果
关键词
近代早期
中国
英国
皇室
商人
Early Modern
China
England
Imperial Household
Merchant
