Beginning in 1859, China ’s modern customs gradually established a set of trade statistics and reporting systems. The customs data compiled over the years is vast and “is one of the most complete and systematic statistical data and written materials in the study of social economic history in the past 100 years” ( Wu Songdi language), which includes customs publications, as well as customs internal archives. Since the 1980s, some important customs reports have been translated and issued. Since this century, various customs publications have been published in photocopy. Customs historical materials have attracted the attention of academic circles at home and abroad and become academic hot spots. In recent years, local customs historical materials have attracted attention. Modern Guangdong Customs and Jianghan customs archives have successively received funding from major projects of the National Social Science Fund and major projects of philosophy and social science research of the Ministry of Education. The historical data of local customs have their own characteristics, and the collection path, sorting method and academic use are still in their infancy and need to be further explored.
Diversification and internationalization of historical data collection
The historical materials of Jianghan Customs are roughly divided into two parts: modern customs publications and customs archives, and other historical materials. Customs publications have a complete system, including statistical series, special series, miscellaneous series, official series, office series, inspection series, postal series and series of foreign books. Each series has more or less historical data related to Jianghan Customs. Among them, the Jianghanguan monthly report, quarterly report, annual report and ten-year report in the statistical series are the most systematic. The General Service Tax Order and the Customs Staff Directory in the official series 》 There is also more information about Jianghan Pass. The internal archives formed during the daily operation of Jianghan Customs include the Taxation Department and the supervision archives of Jianghan Customs. The Collection of Jianghanguan Archives (LS25) from the Hubei Provincial Archives is the archives of the Jianghanguan Taxation Department from December 26, 1901 to May 1949. The content is divided into correspondence and comprehensive correspondence between the Jianghanguan Taxation Department and the General Taxation Department. Customs regulations, organization settings and personnel changes, taxation and inspection, anti-smuggling, cargo supervision, port affairs, waterway, quarantine, reception and handling of enemy and fake materials, Jianghan customs staff organization and employee struggle, war losses, finance and customs, China Communist Party activities and struggles. In addition, China's Second Historical Archives and Wuhan Municipal Archives also have some Jianghan customs archives.
Judging from the existing known archives, Jianghanguan's supervision archives have not formed an independent whole. Among other late Qing archives in the archives or libraries of mainland China and Taiwan, there are some Jianghan customs supervision archives in the late Qing Dynasty. Among them, the Jianghan Customs revenue and expenditure archives and the Jianghan Customs supervision and selection archives are mainly stored in the "Historical Records of the Military Aircraft Department" and "The Palace of the Zhu Dynasty Records", and the "Military Department Documents" in the Taipei National Palace Museum. "Pavilions in the Palace", "Zhang Zhidong Archives" in the Archives of the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and "Copy Files" in the Economics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In addition to its taxation work, Jianghan Customs Supervision is also responsible for handling trade and diplomacy matters, including negotiations on teaching cases, Sino-foreign business disputes, and Hankou concession negotiations. This part of the archives is mainly stored in the Archives of the Prime Minister's Office of National Affairs and the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Archives Collection of the Institute of Modern History of the "Central Research Institute".
In the daily operation of Jianghanguan, it often conducts business transactions with other institutions at the central and local levels, and has produced many archives of historical data. Negotiation file. These are also important historical data of local customs, which have not received much attention in the past.
Modern newspapers and periodicals are an important source of historical data of local customs. They contain many documents such as the Jianghan customs supervision agency ’s notices, tax collection regulations, and other documents issued by superiors and other government agencies to the Jianghan customs supervision and Jianghan customs tax department, as well as reports on Jianghan customs business. .
The collection of Jianghanguan historical materials requires an international perspective. The modern Jianghanguan Taxation Department is an "international government office", and all taxation departments before 1946 were foreigners. Therefore, modern Chinese customs archives or other archives kept in foreign libraries and archives also contain some Jianghan customs historical materials, such as the archives of Ange Lian and Mei Lehe, who used to be the taxation department of Jiang Hanguan, in the library of the Asian and African College of the University of London, and Hurd ’s letters to Anglian, etc., the collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the British National Archives also has some archives related to Jianghanguan.
Bottom-up study of customs history
The research on the history of modern Chinese customs, from macro to micro, from the overall situation to the region, has more research results, resulting in Chen Shiqi's "History of Modern Chinese Customs" and [British] Fang Dewan's "The Tide: The Customs and Modernity of China Important books on global research such as Global Origin. However, the existing results rarely use local customs archives, so how did the local customs operate at that time? How to implement various regulations and business regulations of the General Taxation Department according to local conditions? What is its discretion? What local business charters have been established? How to communicate with local governments? These problems are still unclear.
Jianghan Customs was one of the four major customs offices in the country at that time, leaving a lot of first-hand historical data on internal management and business operations, such as monthly personnel change statistics, account revenue and expenditure statistics, salary schedules, salary and subsidy payment adjustments, and staff selection And deployment records, job postings, confiscated goods statistics, reports and charters of various businesses, the operation of Jianghanguan Club, and reports and records of infrastructure, repair and purchase of land, equipment and various items, etc., basically including All aspects of Jianghan customs business. By systematically sorting and studying these historical materials, you can study the operation of Jianghan Pass from the bottom up, and then answer these questions step by step, so as to have a more comprehensive understanding of the modern customs operation and economic and social changes.
The Research Orientation of Regional Economic and Social History
In 1861, Hankou opened. On January 1, 1862, Jianghan Pass was established. Hankou has become a window connecting the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River with the capitalist world market. It has been transformed from an inland commodity distribution center of the "nine provinces" to an international trading port, and gradually upgraded into a center of trade, shipping, finance, and industry in the central region. Before the Revolution of 1911, Hankou was "a widely recognized Eastern Chicago". This process has also brought about changes in the vast surrounding areas. Modern customs is a symbol of a trading port, and it has a major impact on the modern transformation of the trading port and its hinterland economy and society.
In the historical data of Jianghan Pass, economic and social information is very rich. The detailed monthly, quarterly and annual trade data are the main historical data for studying the import and export trade of Hankou, the increase and decrease of various kinds of local and foreign goods imports, the tariff collection of Jianghan and the characteristics and radiation scope of Hankou trade. There are also various types of special economic data, special analysis and survey reports, involving economic and industry dynamics other than trade. Taking the half-official and secret correspondence between Jianghan Customs Tax Department and the General Tax Department of Customs in 1908 as an example, in addition to daily management and business reports, various business regulations and trade data, there are also records of the political, economic and social conditions of the three towns in Wuhan 5 recent reports, a list of coins issued by the Wuchang Mint and local banks, a detailed report of the Hongkou Machine Flour Mill and its products, a cotton planting trade report in the province, a price list of Hankou medicinal materials, and information about Hankou Hospital. These historical materials are not or incompletely recorded in other archives and documents.
In the Jianghan Customs report and archives, there are a large amount of social historical materials in the trading ports and nearby areas. The annual trade report contains some records of population, concessions, urban construction, social security, health care, education, municipal administration and social changes. After the limited entries in 1889, these contents were mainly in the "Local" (Chinese translation for "Home") at the beginning of the volume and "Miscellaneous" (Chinese translation for "Miscellaneous") at the end of the volume. The Ten-Year Report is a panoramic record of economic and social changes in the trading ports and nearby areas. From the first period (1882-1891) to the fifth period (1922-1931), it covers half a century of history. The style has been adjusted before and after, and social historical materials mainly involve education, medical and health care, urban construction and municipal management, population immigration, missionary activities, and conference halls.
The above-mentioned economic and social historical materials focus on the regional society centered on trading ports, with extensive content, accurate data systems, and supplemented by charts. From a broader socio-economic background, I often introduce the production, sales and consumption of an important or potential import and export commodity, a valuable background information on social and economic phenomena, and sometimes conduct a more in-depth analysis. The excavation and utilization of these historical materials can effectively promote the research on the economic and social history of modern Wuhan and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.
Combination of traffic history and customs history
Hankou is prosperous because of water, and prosperously because of the port. The Yangtze River and Hanshui meet here. It is the center of the water transport network in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. After opening the port, it developed from a “ship terminal” to a shipping center port on the Yangtze River. After the Beijing-Hanzhou Railway opened to traffic, it was further upgraded to an integrated water and land transportation hub in the central region that connects north and south, and east and west. Therefore, the history of transportation based on shipping is an important part of studying the history of modern Wuhan and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.
These changes are inseparable from Jianghan customs. The 1858 "Commercial Regulations Treaty on Aftermath: Customs Tariffs" stipulates that customs duties include "determining the boundary, assigning people to berth vessels and setting up floating ships, ships, towers, and watch towers". According to this, the modern customs also carried out services such as port affairs, navigation administration, water diversion, lighthouses, and navigation marks. After the Jianghan Pass was established, it managed the Hankou Port and the ships entering and leaving Hankou Port, as well as the diversion business, and was responsible for the installation and maintenance of navigation aids such as lighthouses and buoys in the waters. After the promulgation of the Inner Harbor Shipping Regulations in 1898, Chinese and foreign steamships registered in Jianghan Pass can be exclusively used for Inner Harbor trade, and depart from Hankou Port to the unopened Inner Port, and accept Jianghan customs management. In 1922, the patrol office in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River moved to Hankou and merged into the patrol company in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River to oversee the administrative and technical affairs of the safety management of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Responsibility, port shipping is an important category of Jianghanguan historical data. In the annual report and the ten-year report, there are statistical tables of the number, tonnage and nationality of ships entering and leaving the port of Hankou (single row of ships in the inner port), and records of port affairs, navigation administration and navigation aid facilities. In the archives of the Jianghan Customs Department, including the previous year ’s shipping regulations and amendments, annual lighthouse buoy floating pile reports, port and shipping status and accident handling reports, ship registration status, port construction and barge status, port and navigation policy Business expenditures and reports on various special matters are precious historical materials for studying the history of transportation, but so far they have not been systematically organized and their use is very limited.
Mr. Fu Sinian pointed out that "history is the study of historical materials", and emphasized that the study of history should "have one point of material and one point of goods, and ten points of material out of stock." The Jianghanguan historical materials record the process of economic and social transformation in modern Wuhan and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and are a treasure trove of historical materials for the study of modern Chinese history. In addition to the aforementioned areas, Jianghan Customs has also conducted postal, quarantine and meteorological services at different times. Therefore, comprehensively understanding and making full use of Jianghan customs historical materials can promote research in many academic fields, and also open up a new path for the excavation and research of modern local customs historical materials.
(Author: Wucheng Guo, Zhang Ning, respectively Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities Department of Hubei University Professor of History and Culture, Ministry of Education, Department of paper philosophy and social science key projects "at home and abroad Jianghan Guan archives collection and collation and research" [stage] 18JZD026 Sexual results)