Charity Granary and Local Society in Northern Taiwan during The Late Qing Period─A Case Study of “Ming Shan Tang”
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Li, Bo-Xian
Abstract
In 1867, Tongzhi (the vice governor) of Danshui Ting (similar to Canton, a special administrative region with the same authority level of the County), invited the gentry and traders from different places within the jurisdiction to set up the Charity Granary in various regions, called Ming Shan Tang, which in certain localities also established and operated charity schools and social welfare enterprices. In process of founding Ming Shan Tang, we can see that the Danbei Ming Shan Tang is an institution centered on Xuehai Academy. Through Danbei Ming Shan Tang, Xuehai Academy obtained fund and chances. Besides, Zhuqian Ming Shan Tang were associated with Mingzhi Academy to certain extent. Moreover, the directors of Ming Shan Tang often involved with traders who operated rice business, and there was possibility that they might gain additional profit by taking advantage of the Charity Granary. As a result, when the local officials set up the Charity Granary or got engaged in charity work, they often took the existing resources into considerations in the first place. In other words, they would choose the local gentry with relative background and qualification to hold an official post. Because of the profit, those who were qualified with such conditions in turn actively and positively strived for power to operate the Charity Granary from the local authority. In gathering inventory grains, it was called ""persuaded donation"", but actually, it was ""assigned donation"" with enforcement property, which responsibility and authority was taken by the directors in Ming Shan Tang. However, the directors had no power to enforce assigned donation. Without the government''s intervention, perhaps it would be difficult to avoid the donators'' delay and resistance. In the subsequent operation, the local gentry were finally assigned to manage the distribution of the grains. As such, the gentry not merely donated grains, but also took charge of distributing the proportion of rice and assigning who and how much to donate, leading to much more difficulty for the officals to intervene the Charity Granary. When the local governor handed over, the files of the Charity Granary were not included, resulting in that each new local governor had to re-search for the documents when he intended to supervise the Charity Granary. As such, this had become the barrier to the local governor''s supervision over the Charity Granary as well as the root cause why the directors were able to make profit by playing tricks. In addition, facing the strict and inflexible system, people frequently operated the Charity Granary with another method that could evade not only disobedience to the system but also numerous restrictions. For example, in 1887, Dajia Ming Shan Tang exerted ""to remove the old to introduce the new"" to evade the limit of ""PingTiao"" (the government sold the grains in the granary with fair price when the rice price is too high), successfully achieving the regular renewal of the grains in the granary. In operation of the Charity Granary, the directors could make profit by impropriating the grains of rice, padding the expense, lending at heavy usury, and making false financial figures. The most importantly, the grains of rice stored by the directors often included those donated by other donators, and the directors often used those grains as capital for financing, lending loans, and gaining interest. In other words, they made use of other people''s donated rice to run their own ""business without any cost"". Although some of the directors were accused of embezzlement, usually, they were not severely punished. Rather, the case would be simply closed as long as they returned the rice. Meanwhile, ""investigation"" could bring interest to the investigator as well, so that some traders purposely substituted the original directors by ""accusation"" in order to obtain the power of investigation. However, since most of the directors came from the prestigious family that played a critical role in locality and possessed solid social network, it was not easy to succeed in making replacement. To go to the attached charity school of Ming Shan Tang could have the opportunity of getting a job and salary. Those who served as the teachers in the charity school usually had good social network. As for the directors, when they recommended the intellectuals with good relationship to be the charity school teachers, constructing or strengthening social network could also be built up. We can see from this paper that the local governments in Late Qing period established social enterprices by cooperation with folk people to stabilize local order together. On the other hand, the nature that the social enterprises was managed by the gentry and traders had made the government control the local social enterprices with much more difficulty, which formed the unsolvable paradox in the Late Qing Empire.
Subjects
the Charity Granary
Ming Shan Tang
Yan Jinqing
Danshui Ting
Xuehai Academy
Xinzhu
PingTiao
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-103-R99123010-1.pdf
Size
23.54 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):b088146dd2f2270243079532528adc18