Managing Public Finance through Palace Memorials: The Controversy over Taxation Transfer, 1860–1900

Abstract

Lacking a centralized fiscal administration to manage taxation collection and transfer before 1904, the Qing court relied solely on the palace memorial system to enforce overland silver shipment when transferring provincial revenues. However, after 1860 provincial officials gradually discarded the conventional procedure for overland silver shipment and employed third-party private financiers to deliver provincial revenues. After four failed campaigns against private financial firms’ interference in imperial fiscal affairs, the palace memorial system became inefficient for the implementation of public financial policies at the local level. The Qing dynasty’s prolonged and uneasy financial transformation from a minimalist Confucian agrarian empire to an expanding modern fiscal state from 1860 to 1904 was the underlying reason for the declining effectiveness of the palace memorial system in supervising public finance and the ultimate reason for the empire’s increasing financial vulnerability during that period.

Keywords

Palace Memorial System / Shanxi piaohao / public finance / Qing dynasty / central-local relations

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2014 Higher Education Press and Brill