Introduction
First formally instituted by the Ming court in 1617, the salt monopoly system was adopted by the Qing court as a core mechanism for salt tax collection. Under this framework, revenue-farming salt merchants acquired hereditary privileges by purchasing salt permits. In exchange for advancing the state’s annual salt tax quotas to the Board of Revenue, these merchants held exclusive rights to purchase salt directly from producers, transport it along designated routes, and sell it within their state-assigned marketing territories at government-mandated prices. To reinforce this structure, the board imposed strict regulations: combating interregional smuggling and prohibiting unlicensed merchants from retail trade.Footnote 1 While this arrangement effectively secured targeted salt tax revenues across the empire’s vast territory without burdening the state with an extensive fiscal bureaucracy, it faced inherent and grave challenges in cross-district peripheral regions.Footnote 2
Ji’an Prefecture, a strategically located border prefecture in south-western Jiangxi, emerged as arguably the most critical flashpoint of salt smuggling threats to the Qing salt monopoly. Its cross-district peripherality facilitated rampant salt smuggling, leaving local salt tax collection chronically in arrears.Footnote 3 Coupled with a dense population, this peripheral location made Ji’an an ideal target for neighbouring regions with weak fiscal capacity to ‘borrow’ its salt sales territories to fulfil their own quotas.Footnote 4 Following the Qing’s establishment of rule in 1644, the confluence of these geographical attributes and historical legacies rendered Ji’an’s fulfilment of assigned salt tax liabilities exceptionally arduous.Footnote 5 In response, the court first attempted to address Ji’an’s unpaid tax crisis by reassigning its jurisdictional affiliation from Liangguang to Lianghuai in 1666, while designating wealthy merchants to contract its salt tax obligations. By 1726 at the latest, however, an unintended shift in the ownership of Ji’an’s salt permits—from influential official-merchant lineages to the Imperial Household Department (Neiwufu 内務府)—provided a new solution: under the department’s stewardship, Ji’an’s salt permits were operated through a leasehold system, effectively transforming them into coercive tax liabilities imposed on designated merchants who rotated responsibilities every three years.Footnote 6
This study reveals the Imperial Household Department’s holding of salt monopoly permits and examines how this practice reshaped both the operational mechanisms of the salt monopoly in regions chronically plagued by tax arrears and the department’s own revenue framework. Focusing on Ji’an Prefecture, this study identifies a critical divergence between the department and the Board of Revenue in their approaches to salt permit administration: while the board was limited to reselling unmarketable permits to merchants, the department—by retaining ownership—leased permits to wealthy merchants and collected annual rents calculated based on the permits’ assessed nominal value. Together with other cost-sharing or cost-reduction measures—notably a triennial rotation of merchant responsibility for meeting Ji’an’s salt tax quotas—these innovations substantially mitigated risks and operational costs for participating merchants, thereby establishing a new operational framework for regions that had previously struggled to meet the board’s tax requirements. Meanwhile, the department centralised the management of these annual rents, formalised procedures for remitting them to its treasuries, and thus converted such rental income into a regular source of funding for its own operations.
Framing the Qing court’s special arrangements for Ji’an over a century following its jurisdictional transfer in 1666 not simply as an ad hoc response to unfulfilled salt quotas in Ji’an alone but as a pivotal experiment in enforcing the salt monopoly in peripheral regions beset by shared intractable smuggling and transportation challenges, this study contributes to the literature in two interconnected ways.Footnote 7 First, this study illuminates the divided structure of Qing central fiscal authority by uncovering two critical yet understudied dimensions of the salt system: the Imperial Household Department’s ownership of salt monopoly permits—a facet long overshadowed by the scholarly focus on the Board of Revenue as the paramount administrative authorityFootnote 8—and, more importantly, the paradoxical fiscal implications of this arrangement. On the one hand, by providing more cost-effective leasehold options to merchants, the department facilitated the fulfilment of state salt quotas in regions grappling with acute smuggling crises, thereby upholding centralised control over the monopoly. On the other hand, by formalising protocols for remitting the revenues generated through this leasehold system, the department converted them into a regular, independent fiscal source for its own operations. This effectively bifurcated revenue streams that, in principle, should have been centralised under the Board of Revenue. Thus, this study advances recent scholarship on the Qing state’s dual patrimonial–bureaucratic governance structureFootnote 9 by demonstrating a core paradox in the state’s administering of the salt monopoly: the very institutional framework designed to centralise control over local salt administration resulted, in practice, in the de facto fiscal decentralisation of salt revenue management.
Second, this study identifies rent extraction from salt permit holdings as a specific fiscal mechanism that underpinned the development of the Imperial Household Department’s regular income—an understudied phenomenon in prior scholarshipFootnote 10—and, crucially, exposes the coercive foundations of this mechanism. Focusing solely on resources under the Board of Revenue’s purview, scholars have long presumed that Qing rulers enshrined light agricultural taxation as the cornerstone of their fiscal system and were inherently disinclined to tax commerce.Footnote 11 In contrast, by examining the department’s specific fiscal operations within the salt system, this study reveals that salt merchants not only bore statutory taxes imposed by the Board of Revenue and funded extraordinary state expenses (including wars, disaster relief, and water conservancy projects) but also endured multiple layers of additional surcharges. Specifically, through tracing the transformation of Ji’an’s salt permits—from compulsory rent-paying obligations to fixed-quota assessments implemented through arbitrary tax hikes on all Huainan-region salt permits—this study demonstrates that the Qing court’s salt quotas in smuggling-prone peripheral regions were not fulfilled through profitable market operations but via coercive fiscal burdens initially imposed on designated individual merchants and ultimately extended to all salt permit holders across the Huainan region. This specific finding concerning the dual administrative structure of the salt monopoly in High Qing China thus underscores the significant disparity between the rhetoric of ‘light taxation’ and its practical implementation. Consequently, this revelation sheds critical light on the adverse impact of discretionary commercial taxation on business interests, as well as the corresponding implications for investment incentives.Footnote 12
Building primarily on unpublished palace memorials, unpublished Imperial Household Department archives, local gazetteers, and other published materials—including collections of Qing archives, official regulations and precedents, and miscellaneous notes—the rest of the article is organised as follows. The first section examines the special arrangements implemented for Ji’an following its 1666 transfer to the Lianghuai salt district and their broader implications for the administration of salt monopolies in regions confronting analogous smuggling challenges. The second reconstructs the Imperial Household Department’s assertion of ownership over Ji’an’s salt permits during the Yongzheng reign. The third explores how, after securing ownership, the department formalised protocols for remitting rents from merchant leaseholders to its treasuries between 1726 and the end of the Qianlong reign (1795). The fourth corroborates the findings from the Ji’an case by investigating other Imperial Household Department-administered salt monopolies in the Changlu 長蘆 and Hedong 河東 salt districts, and the final section concludes.
Ji’an’s transfer to Lianghuai: background and special arrangements
Strategically located at the interprovincial boundary between the Lianghuai and Liangguang salt districts, Ji’an arguably posed the most significant challenge to the Qing Dynasty’s state salt monopoly. On the one hand, Ji’an’s remoteness from all major salt-producing regions led to prohibitively high transportation costs.Footnote 13 On the other hand, its position straddling the Lianghuai and Liangguang salt zones made it particularly susceptible to salt smuggling.Footnote 14 Compounding these problems was Ji’an’s large population, which—under the Qing’s salt quota system, in which salt distribution permits were allocated according to registered adult males—subjected the prefecture to an exceptionally heavy tax burden.Footnote 15 From the late Ming onwards, Ji’an was twice ‘loaned’ to neighbouring Guangdong and Guangxi for salt retailing (jiedi xingyan 借地行鹽) to help fund military expenses. Even after the Qing conquest, Ji’an remained liable for salt taxes owed to Liangguang.Footnote 16 In 1660, the Taipingchang 太平厰 Customs Office under Liangguang issued only 3,700 salt permits jointly to Nan’an 南安 and Ganzhou 贛州, while assigning 14,300 permits to Ji’an alone—a stark illustration of Ji’an disproportionately heavy salt tax obligations.Footnote 17
Persistent salt smuggling, prohibitive transport costs, and excessively heavy salt quotas left the region chronically behind in tax payments. In 1658, the Qing government imposed strict annual performance evaluations on Ji’an’s local officials, holding them accountable for meeting local salt tax quotas.Footnote 18 Officials who failed to fulfil the quotas faced salary deductions, demotion, or even dismissal.Footnote 19 This policy triggered fierce protests from Ji’an’s local elite and officials.Footnote 20 In 1662, Emperor Kangxi ordered the inland relocation of coastal residents in eastern Guangdong to sever supply lines for the Zheng maritime regime, drastically reducing salt supplies reaching Ji’an. Between 1662 and 1665, Ji’an consistently failed to meet its salt tax quotas, ultimately forcing the Qing court to approve its transfer to the Lianghuai salt district in 1666.Footnote 21
After the jurisdictional transfer, the Qing court formulated a comprehensive set of regulatory arrangements for Ji’an Prefecture. Far from being an ad hoc policy adjustment in response to the 1662 relocation order, these measures constituted an innovative experiment by the Qing court in governing the salt monopoly in peripheral regions. Their impact on the later development of the Qing salt monopoly was so profound that imperial officials later cited them as the ‘Ji’an model’ (Ji’an li 吉安例) when administering comparable salt distribution zones marked by pronounced peripherality.Footnote 22
These special arrangements comprised three key components. First, post-transfer, the overall salt tax quota for Ji’an remained unchanged. The court’s objective in approving this jurisdictional transfer was not to extract higher salt tax revenues from Ji’an but to more reliably secure collection of the existing quota by transferring the burdens from local residents to designated merchants.Footnote 23 Prior to Ji’an Prefecture’s transfer to the Lianghuai salt district in 1666, the total number of salt permits allocated to it stood at 14,301.5.Footnote 24 To corroborate this point, I create Table 1, which details the breakdown of Ji’an’s salt tax obligations between 1660 and 1665.Footnote 25 It shows that for this period, Ji’an’s nominal salt tax liability amounted to 34,654.5109673 taels—a figure that aligns precisely with the fixed salt tax quota of 34,654.5 taels assigned to Ji’an after its 1666 transfer.Footnote 26
The inventory of the salt tax of Ji’an, 1660–1665
Table 1 Long description
Salt-tax inventory lists six tax items with their rates per permit and amounts in taels, plus an overall total of about 34,654.51 taels. The largest single amount is the contracted military-provision levy at Taipingqiao checkpoint in Nanxiong prefecture, 14,873.56 taels, with the highest rate per permit at 1.04. The next largest amount is the quota-assessed surplus salt silver tax on merchant brokers, 8,570.89 taels, followed by the quota-assessed salt permit tax on merchants for military provisions, 4,333.35 taels. Waterborne-merchant levies are smaller: 4,154.30 taels for the fixed quota military-provision levy and 1,521.08 taels for the surplus crude-salt lump-sum tax. The smallest amount is the Qingyuan checkpoint contracted tax in Guangzhou prefecture, 1,201.33 taels. One surplus-salt amount is noted as partly derived from a permit-assessed levy on salt exceeding the official quota, so it may not be directly comparable to strictly quota-based items.
Source: YFK, juan 16, vol. l, pp. 18–66.
Notes: aThis figure is calculated as follows: 14,301.5 (permits) × 0.3645 (taels/permit) + 3,357.9922 taels = 8,570.88895 taels. The 3,357.9922 taels, under the category of duoge yin 多割銀, represents a permit-assessed levy on surplus salt exceeding the official quota imposed on merchants who procured salt from waterborne traders responsible for transporting salt from production fields to the provincial capital. See YFK, juan 16, vol. l, p. 25.
Second, Ji’an’s incorporation into the Lianghuai salt region was realised through the ‘issuance of additional permits’ (zengxing gangyin 增行綱引) rather than the reallocation of existing ones.Footnote 27 As such, the 51,302 new permits allocated to Ji’an were not included in Huainan’s annual salt tax quota but instead added to the overall quota of the Lianghuai salt region.Footnote 28 The uniqueness of Ji’an’s integration model into Lianghuai becomes particularly evident when contrasted with the reassignment of three southern Hunan prefectures just one year later. Hengzhou 衡州, Yongzhou 永州, and Baoqing 寶慶—located on the border of southern Hunan and Guangdong—confronted similar issues of tax arrears stemming from rampant salt smuggling. In 1571, like Ji’an, these three prefectures were ‘loaned’ to the Liangguang salt region to sell its salt, a measure adopted to raise funds for suppressing the Miao uprisings.Footnote 29 However, when the three prefectures were first transferred to Liangguang in the late Ming, for reasons that remain unclear, their original quota under the Lianghuai salt administration remained unadjusted—with no corresponding deductions made.Footnote 30 This unresolved institutional legacy fundamentally reshaped the fiscal arrangements sanctioned by the Board of Revenue when the three prefectures were returned to Lianghuai jurisdiction in 1667.Footnote 31
In 1668, the Board of Revenue formalized a dual-tax obligation for the repatriated southern Hunan prefectures.Footnote 32 While continuing to pay two estalished levies—an annual salt tax of 55,186 taels to Liangguang and a fixed miscellaneous tax of 15,000 taels to Guangxi—the prefectures’ outstanding tax liability to Lianghuai—unreimbursed when they were transferred to Liangguang in the late Ming—was governed by the principle of daike bu xingyan 帶課不行鹽, which stipulated that salt taxes were levied based on registered permit quotas without correponding salt distribution entitlements.Footnote 33 Under this rule, Lianghuai merchants were collectively required to settle the three prefectures’ outstanding Lianghuai tax quota, with individual liabilities prorated according to each merchant’s share of valid Huainan salt permits.Footnote 34 This arrangement substantially reduced the fiscal burden on local merchants operating in Hengzhou, Yongzhou, and Baoqing but inevitably raised the overall tax rate across the entire Huainan region.Footnote 35
Thus, the adoption of additional independent salt permits, which defined Ji’an’s special incorporation into the Lianghuai system, also served as the institutional foundation for its third distinctive salt governance arrangement: the Qing court commissioned affluent merchants as exclusive contractors to oversee Ji’an’s regional salt monopoly, a practice that enabled Ji’an’s salt operations to function independently from the rest of the Huainan salt region. Gao Heng, the Lianghuai salt censor (yanzheng 鹽政), explicitly described Ji’an’s long-standing institutional feature as xianglai zhuanqian yinshang banyun 向來專僉殷商辦運—meaning that wealthy merchant contractors were exclusively appointed to manage all local salt transportation and sales.Footnote 36 Unlike other counties in Jiangxi Province, where salt was uniformly shipped from Yizhen 儀真 and redistributed to licensed dealers in Liaozhou 蓼州 for grassroots retail, post-reform Ji’an established a fully localised and autonomous salt operational chain. As Yang Jeou-yi observes, standard Huainan salt permits generally entitled holders to universal sales rights across the entire Huainan region without fixed territorial jurisdictions, whereas Ji’an’s newly added permits were territorially bounded and exclusively franchised.Footnote 37 This structural distinction underpinned Ji’an’s independent salt governance model. Specifically, privileged Ji’an merchants took charge of the entire local salt supply chain: transporting salt from the provincial capital Nanchang, distributing salt through designated local retail shops (zuoyi xingxiao 坐邑行銷), policing cross-border smuggling, and remitting full salt tax revenues to the central government.Footnote 38 This merchant contracting system, centred on tax quota underwriting, fulfilled two critical administrative functions. It insulated local magistrates from disciplinary penalties for unmet tax quotas and spared local residents from arbitrary tax apportionment and bureaucratic harassment.Footnote 39 This dual institutional advantage sustained stable salt tax collection in Ji’an for more than six decades, until 1729, when official records documented a substantial backlog of 1.65 million unsold salt bundles (bao 包).Footnote 40
Between 1666 and 1725, merchants entrusted with managing the salt monopoly in Ji’an were required to remit specified quota-based salt taxes to the Board of Revenue, with such remittances increasing over time. This growth was primarily driven by population expansion and general tax rate hikes across the entire Huainan region. Despite operating independently in terms of transportation and distribution, Ji’an-based merchants were also obligated to pay other levies applicable to the broader Huainan region, including charges related to imperial textile manufactures and copper procurement, brine charges, and ‘mast-seal silver’—a tax imposed on boats passing through checkpoints, calculated based on their number of masts (see Table 2 for breakdowns).Footnote 41
Ji’an Prefecture’s salt tax remittances to the Board of Revenue of Ji’an Prefecture, 1665–1793 (taels/year)
Table 2 Long description
Ji’an Prefecture salt-tax remittances are listed by tax category, implementation year, number of permits, per-permit rate, total taels remitted, and archival sources. The main permit-based levy records 51,302 permits in 1665 with about 34,654.501 taels, then higher totals in 1748 at about 43,550.52431 taels and in 1763 at about 60,164.93352 taels as the rate per permit rises over time. A supplementary permit-based tax tied to population growth is much smaller, with 202 permits in 1679 yielding 136.4 taels, increasing to about 171.47881 taels in 1748 and about 236.89752 taels in 1763 alongside higher rates. A statutory quota tax silver line dated broadly to 1666 through 1678 lists 51,504 permits at a rate of 0.19 taels per permit and a total of 10,065 taels. A mast-sealing permit fee introduced in 1687 applies to 51,302 permits at 0.006 taels per permit, totaling 307.812 taels. Amounts may not match perfectly to the last digits because some regulatory figures omit very small decimal portions.
Note: aSince the parts after the thousandth decimal place in the salt tax regulations are sometimes omitted, there may be a difference in the salt tax amount.
The establishment of the Imperial Household Department’s ownership of Ji’an’s salt franchise
Ample evidence indicates that the An merchant family held and managed the hereditary salt shipment permits (gangyin 綱引) of Ji’an for several decades from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth centuries. The An family first rose to prominence with An Shangyi 安尚義 (courtesy name Yizhi 易之; also known by the alternative names An Shangren 安尚仁 and An San 安三). It is generally accepted among historians that An Shangyi was of Korean ethnicity. During the late Ming and early Qing periods, he was captured and incorporated into the Eight Banners, serving as a hereditary bondservant in the household of the prominent Manchu official Mingju 明珠 (1635–1708)—the preeminent political figure in the Qing imperial court between 1677 and 1688,Footnote 42 and affiliated with the Manchu Plain Yellow Banner.Footnote 43 Scholars generally concur that the prosperity of the Mingju household’s estate was owed to the An family’s meticulous management. A critical channel through which Mingju amassed his fortune involved providing capital to trusted agents: these agents acquired salt at wholesale rates and then resold it at retail prices. Concurrently, Mingju wielded his political authority to furnish protective cover for these commercial ventures, shielding them from potential governmental interference.Footnote 44
Records of the An merchant family engaging in salt-related activities in Ji’an are scattered across miscellaneous notes produced during the Qing Dynasty. A famous guidebook penned by Li Dou 李斗 (1749–1817) in 1795, which documented Yangzhou in its heyday, states, ‘The salt merchant An conducted salt trade in Yangzhou’ 鹺商安氏,業鹽揚州.Footnote 45 Another anecdote from the late Qing period records: ‘Lucun [referring to An Qi 安岐 (1683–?),Footnote 46 who was one of the three sons of An Shangyi] had already engaged in salt trading in Huainan and had a great reputation. His influence was so prominent that even provincial governors and surveillance commissioners treated him as an equal in social etiquette.’Footnote 47 These two pieces of evidence serve as direct proof that the An clan conducted salt business in the Huainan region. Another anecdote further sheds light on the process by which the An family obtained the hereditary salt monopoly permits, known as ‘basic nest’ (genwo 根窩), in Ji’an:
An Tu’s father, An San (viz. An Shangyi), wielded considerable influence when Mingju served as grand secretary. Shengzu 聖祖 (viz. Kangxi) saw through this, so Mingju ordered [An San] to reside secretly in Yangzhou, where he managed the trade of 300,000 permits across four prefectures including Ji’an in Jiangxi Province with substantial capital.Footnote 48
The exact timing of when the An family acquired the salt permits for Ji’an remains unascertained. However, it is definitively established that the Mingju family held the genwo—hereditary permits granting exclusive regional salt-selling rights—for Ji’an Prefecture over an extended period. An imperial edict issued in 1749 records:
The salt permits in Ji’an Prefecture, originally owned by the former vice-minister Yongshou 永壽, were initially bestowed upon Prince Yi, Yunxiang 怡親王允祥 (1686–1730). Later, in response to lawsuits lodged by salt merchants, it was transferred to the salt censor for administration, with the profits derived therefrom allocated to the prince.Footnote 49
Epitaphs related to the Mingju family indicate that the aforementioned ‘former vice-minister Yongshou’ was the second son of Kuifang 揆方, who himself was the youngest son of Mingju.Footnote 50 This lineage further confirms that the substantial capital An Shangyi used to purchase salt permits in Ji’an—consistent with the context noted above—did indeed originate from the Mingju family. It also verifies that the Mingju clan retained de facto ownership of the Ji’an franchised salt permits until the end of the Kangxi reign (1722).
Limited by source availability, the profitability of operating Ji’an’s salt monopoly permits remains unclear. What is certain, however, is that by 1738 Ji’an had accumulated more than 90,000 unsold salt permits—nearly twice its annual quota.Footnote 51 By the late Yongzheng period, Ji’an’s salt permits had thus likely faced a liquidity crisis. Even so, despite such large backlogs of unsold permits, Ji’an continued to remit its salt quotas to the Board of Revenue on time and in full. This was most likely achieved through advance payments made by wealthy merchant operators, funded by profits from their other businesses. Such privileges may have included gains from illicit commercial activities and ready access to capital from the imperial court.Footnote 52 Generally speaking, however, apart from the early to mid Kangxi era, when strong salt demand brought a short period of high profitability to the salt trade, operating Ji’an’s salt permits for most of the period represented not a lucrative asset that merchants eagerly sought but rather a fiscal obligation imposed on privileged monopoly merchants who had already secured substantial profits through their politically granted privileges.Footnote 53
In 1726, Emperor Yongzheng bestowed the Ji’an salt franchise permits upon Prince Yi, Yunxiang. Starting in 1723, Yunxiang had overseen the Imperial Workshops (zaobanchu 造辦処), a cluster of handicraft workshops affiliated with the Imperial Household Department, charged with large-scale manufacture of imperial artefacts, to defray the institution’s operational expenses.Footnote 54 This suggests that, by 1726 at the latest, ownership of the Ji’an salt permits had already passed out of the Mingju clan and into Imperial Household hands, a transfer most likely effected via property donations submitted by Mingju’s lineal descendants. To contextualize this shift in asset ownership, the analysis draws on events dating back to 1717: that year, Kuixu 揆敘 (1674?–1717), Mingju’s second son, died without a male heir. Consequently, his properties valued at eight million taels were donated to the imperial palace. The Kangxi Emperor specifically allocated one million taels of this sum to An Shangyi, designating it as funds for supporting Kuixu’s mother and wife; the remaining amount was placed under the management of Yin Tang 胤禟 (1683–1726), the Kangxi Emperor’s ninth son.Footnote 55 One plausible explanation holds that the Ji’an salt franchise permits were part of these endowed assets. Alternatively, after the Yongzheng Emperor ascended the throne, Yin Tang was targeted in political purges. Amid this crackdown, the Ji’an salt permits were likely transferred to Yongshou—the second son of Kuifang 揆方—who maintained possession of the franchise rights up until his death.Footnote 56
Even after the Imperial Household assumed control of Ji’an’s salt permits, sources confirm that the An family remained their de facto operators for an extended period. In 1730, Huang Guangde 黃光德 was appointed to succeed An Ruicheng 安瑞成 in managing these permits.Footnote 57 While no direct evidence explicitly identifies An Ruicheng as a member of the An family, his kinship with the clan can be inferred from other records. For instance, in 1740, Zhuntai 准泰, the Lianghuai salt censor, obtained imperial approval to allocate 200,000 taels from Ji’an’s salt revenues to Buleheng 布勒亨—whom scholars have confirmed was the nephew of An Qi—for business operations.Footnote 58 This record strongly indicates that, by 1740, the An family was still directly involved in managing Ji’an’s salt permits. Additional support comes from a 1747 record noting that An Cong 安聰 served as one of Prince Yi’s personal agents handling commercial affairs. Though An Cong’s specific kinship with the An family remains unconfirmed, this entry further reinforces the probability that the clan continued to operate Ji’an’s salt permits long after the permits were formally transferred to the Imperial Household.Footnote 59
Profiting from leasing the salt permits of Ji’an by the Imperial Household Department, 1726–1795
Since the Imperial Household secured ownership of Ji’an’s salt franchise permits until the end of Qianlong’s reign, strategies over managing these permits underwent a series of changes. After Ji’an’s salt permits were bestowed to Prince Yi, Yunxiang, in 1726 for covering Imperial Workshops expenses, merchant An Ruicheng continued to manage the permits until 1730, when merchant Huang Guangde succeeded him.Footnote 60 By that time, Ji’an Prefecture had accumulated 1.65 million bundles of unsold official salt—an amount equivalent to the salt quota assigned to over 100,000 salt shipment permits. Upon assuming this role, Huang secured imperial approval to suspend sales of salt from the new salt shipment cycle, allowing only the salt allocated under existing salt shipment permits to be sold.Footnote 61 However, Ji’an’s unsold salt remained unliquidated until 1734 when Lianghuai salt censor Gao Bin 高斌 obtained imperial sanction to annually allocate equivalent to 15,000 salt shipment permits from Ji’an’s unsold salt to Raozhou Prefecture 饒州府.Footnote 62 This arrangement ultimately enabled the clearance of Ji’an’s backlog of unsold official salt by 1739 when the court formally increased Raozhou’s salt shipment permit allocation by 15,000.Footnote 63
Between 1730 and 1737, merchant Huang Guangde managed the hereditary salt shipment permits as their lessee for Ji’an Prefecture and consistently remitted the full quota of ‘nest-interest silver’ (woliyin 窩利銀)—the annual rental payment salt operators owed to the proprietors holding hereditary salt permit entitlements in exchange for the right to operate their salt franchises—to Prince Yi on time.Footnote 64 However, Huang’s ability to fully and punctually fulfil this financial obligation to Prince Yi likely stemmed not from the profitability of managing Ji’an’s permits but rather from diverting profits he earned from other business ventures. This assertion is corroborated by the findings of an investigation in 1738, which revealed Huang had accumulated unsold salt equivalent to over 90,000 salt shipment permits—an inventory valued at more than 400,000 taels of silver.Footnote 65 Notably, although Huang managed these permits on Prince Yi’s behalf, he never had any in-person interaction with the prince. Each year, Huang remitted the specified nest-interest silver quota to the Lianghuai salt censor’s office; this office then forwarded the funds to the Board of Revenue, which ultimately disbursed the money to Prince Yi. This routing of remittances through official institutions—rather than direct private transactions—also contributed to ensuring the timeliness of payments during this period.Footnote 66
Between 1738 and 1739, Ji’an’s hereditary salt shipment permits were temporarily managed by merchant Ma Hongru 馬鴻儒, a merchant appointed by Prince Yi, who directly appropriated the permits’ principal for operation.Footnote 67 Mismanagement by Ma and embezzlement by Prince Zhuang, Yunlu 莊親王允祿 (1695–1767), and Prince Ning, Hongjiao 寧郡王弘晈 (1713–1764), led to arrears in nest-interest silver payments and even the loss of principal.Footnote 68 In 1739, the principal associated with Ji’an’s permits was returned to Prince Yi. Meanwhile, the remittance protocols previously overseen by Huang Guangde were largely reinstated—with one minor adjustment: the exclusion of the Board of Revenue from the remittance chain.Footnote 69 Under this restored system, the annual quota was split into two instalments, remitted in spring and autumn respectively, often coinciding with or merged with ‘metropolitan payments’ (jingxiang 京餉)—funds remitted to the imperial capital—to minimise remittance costs.Footnote 70
Between 1740 and 1745, Ji’an’s franchised salt shipment permits likely continued to face issues with unsold salt allocations. In 1740, unsold salt stockpiles had to be monetised by other Huainan merchants, yielding 198,368 taels. This sum, combined with the autumn instalment of nest-interest silver payments and housing rents totalling 29,238.7 taels, was then forwarded to merchant Buleheng for business operations.Footnote 71 By 1741, the backlogged unsold salt (62,856 permits) and the principal plus accrued nest-interest silver payments (totalling 213,610 taels)—both accumulated during 1738–1739—had also been apportioned among other Huainan salt merchants.Footnote 72 The 1745 quota cycle was divided into ten instalments, and the annual quota for subsequent years was increased by 10 per cent—a measure retained until the 1745 arrears were fully settled.Footnote 73
Between 1747 and 1749, the Imperial Household Department established direct oversight of the nest-interest silver and formalised its remittance procedures. During his tenure as salt censor of Lianghuai, Jiqing 吉慶 systematically restructured the poorly managed funds in the Lianghuai Salt Transport Treasury (yunku 運庫) into standardised tax revenues for the Imperial Household. The nest-interest silver associated with Ji’an’s salt permits underwent a similar restructuring between 1747 and 1749. Specifically, in 1747 at Jiqing’s request, 30,000 taels annually were designated as ‘unspent reserves’ (jiesheng xiang 節省項) and retained in the Lianghuai Salt Transport Treasury, while the remaining 28,000 taels continued to be remitted to Prince Yi.Footnote 74 Notably, since Ji’an’s salt permits were operated exclusively by designated merchants—with independent transport and accounting systems separate from other Huainan regions—remittance of their associated nest-interest silver required a distinct annual memorial to the throne. This stood in contrast to other funds, which were integrated into the unified accounting process under the ‘unspent reserves’ category.Footnote 75 Then, in 1749, the full annual quota of nest-interest silver was reclassified as ‘retained public silver’ (jiaoguan yin 交官銀), and Prince Yi’s right to collect these funds was revoked. Henceforth, remittance of this silver required an annual memorial specifying its designated recipient or purpose.Footnote 76 By 1749, therefore, the Lianghuai salt censor had completed the formalisation of remittances for Ji’an’s nest-interest silver and other associated payments to the Imperial Household—transforming their management from entrusting imperial relatives to act as agents on the Imperial Household’s behalf to centralising full control under the Imperial Household itself.
Once the Ji’an nest-interest silver and related properties became regular revenue for the Imperial Household, their management was entrusted to wealthy merchants who took turns fulfilling Ji’an’s salt tax quotas on a three-year rotational basis.Footnote 77 In addition to remitting the required salt taxes to the Board of Revenue, the responsible merchant was also obligated to submit an annual sum of 52,434 taels to the Imperial Household Department. Between 1751 and 1757, the annual nest-interest silver payment from Ji’an was 52,434 taels.Footnote 78 When the merchant assigned to the 1758 term failed to deliver the full nest-interest silver payment, the resulting deficit was amortised over the following ten years. Consequently, from 1759 to 1768, the annual nest-interest silver quota consisted of the standard 52,434 taels plus 10 per cent of the 1758 shortfall—5,243.4 taels.Footnote 79 A comparable situation occurred in 1787. The unpaid 1787 quota was spread across the subsequent nine years, adding an annual instalment of 5,995.261 taels to the fixed annual quota of 52,434 taels.Footnote 80
During the final three years of the Qianlong reign, fiscal shortfalls across the Huainan salt region forced the delayed collection of nest-interest silver from Ji’an. Specifically, the 1792 revenue apportionment of 500,000 salt permits across the entire Huainan area altered the payment structure of Ji’an’s nest-interest silver. Beginning in 1792, the deferred remittance of 25,405.202 taels from the nest-interest silver payment reduced the annual deferred portion of the unpaid 1787 quota from 5,995.261 taels to 3,090.451 taels.Footnote 81 The nest-interest silver payments for 1793 and 1794 were subject to additional deferments.Footnote 82
Between 1748 and 1765, in addition to the nest-interest silver, merchants holding salt permits for Ji’an were required to remit an annual property rent of 800 taels of silver to the Imperial Household Department. These rental properties, scattered across the counties of Ji’an Prefecture, originated in 1666—shortly after Ji’an was incorporated into the Lianghuai salt district—when the region’s first salt port (yanbu 鹽埠) was established. Initially, local elites provided these properties to salt-trading merchants free of charge, an arrangement that likely served as a gratuity. This gesture was in recognition of the operating merchants’ role in securing a substantial reduction in local salt tax burdens, in exchange for which the merchants supplied local elites with salt for personal consumption at no cost.Footnote 83 In 1745, due to significant arrears in salt tax payments by the responsible merchants, the Imperial Household Department seized the properties.Footnote 84 From 1745 to 1748, these rents, along with the nest-interest silver, were paid to Prince Yi. Between 1748 and 1765, the annual rent remained fixed at 800 taels in all years except 1759, when the remittance totalled 1,600 taels to cover the unpaid 1758 rent. Together with the nest-interest silver, these combined sums were directed to the chamberlain of the Imperial Household Department (nei dachen 内大臣) (see Table 3).Footnote 85
Remittance of Ji’an nest-interest silver, 1750–1794
Table 3 Long description
Remittances of Ji’an nest-interest silver are listed by year from 1750 to 1795, naming the responsible chamberlain when given and the final destination for each payment. Early entries split funds mainly between Cangzhou and the Old Summer Palace, including 30,000 to Cangzhou and 28,477.4 to the Old Summer Palace in 1750, and 20,000 to Cangzhou with 33,234 to the Old Summer Palace in 1752. From 1759 through 1763, transfers shift toward the Hall of Mental Cultivation, paired with additional amounts to the Old Summer Palace in 1759 and 1760. The largest single year shown is 1762 under Aligun, sending 50,000 to the Hall of Mental Cultivation plus 8,477.4 to the Old Summer Palace. A one-time destination appears in 1757, when 33,234 is sent to Longevity Hill. In 1769 under Fulong’an, 30,000 goes to the Hall of Mental Cultivation and 26,964.8 to the Old Summer Palace. For 1770 to 1776 the chamberlain is unknown, and from 1777 to 1795 the chamberlain field is recorded as nil while the destination is given broadly as the Imperial Workshops, so later years are less detailed than the earlier itemized payments.
Source: Same as the archives cited earlier.
Notes: CZ=Cangzhou 滄州. Cangzhou, a county in today’s Hebei province, was associated with the Changlu Salt Administration. See Wang, Yanfa yilüe, p. 1. However, the specific purpose of disbursing Ji’an’s nest-interest silver to Changlu remains unclear.
YMY=Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan 圓明園)
WSS=Longevity Hill (Wanshoushan 萬壽山)
YXD=Hall of Mental Cultivation (Yangxindian 養心殿)
Although the Qing court granted a reduction of 0.32 taels per salt permit reduction for Ji’an’s permits compared to those in the Huainan region, this concession failed to fundamentally reverse the deficits plaguing Ji’an’s salt trade—primarily due to substantial unsold salt inventories. Exacerbated by chronic tax arrears, remittances for the current period were frequently intertwined with backlogs from previous cycles. Notably, the timely remittance of both the nest-interest silver and property rents was not financed by sales of the salt allocated to Ji’an (based on permit quotas); instead, it relied on operating merchants diverting profits from their other business ventures. Consequently, rather than merchants volunteering for the contracts, imperial authorities were compelled to resort to coercive appointment of contractors during the triennial rotation.Footnote 86
In 1762, at the petition of salt censor Gao Heng 高恆, the Qing court decreed that beginning in 1763 the full salt permit quota for Ji’an would be placed under the administrative jurisdiction of Huguang 湖廣—an area covering modern-day Hubei and Hunan provinces. As the wealthy merchants assigned to manage Ji’an’s salt affairs could no longer bear their tax burdens, the court judged it more reliable to distribute Ji’an’s salt quotas—payable to both the Board of Revenue and the Imperial Household Department—across all Huainan salt merchants. This arrangement was intended to guarantee the collection of Ji’an’s salt tax quota, yet it also led to a general rise in the regional tax rate.Footnote 87 Following the integration, the tax rate for Ji’an’s 51,504 permits was adjusted to match the rate in the Huainan region, representing an increase of 0.32381 taels per permit.Footnote 88 The extra revenue generated by this adjustment exceeded 16,677.51024 taels, which was thereafter audited together with other tax items related to franchised salt shipment permits in Huainan. Notably, the nest-interest silver remained unaffected by this change and continued to be paid directly to the Imperial Household Department.Footnote 89
In 1766, amid chronic shortfalls in rent collection from properties tied to Ji’an’s salt permits, the Lianghuai Salt Administration launched a further restructuring of these holdings. Originally seized by the Imperial Household Department in 1745 to settle unpaid salt tax debts owed by Ji’an’s contractors, the properties were reformed in two phases. First, assets located in Jiangdu 江都, Ganquan 甘泉, and Yizheng 儀徵 counties—originally owned by Ji’an-based salt merchants—were sold for a total of 27,710 taels of silver. Separately, properties and daily utensils in Luling 廬陵, Jishui 吉水, Yongfeng 永豐, and Wan’an 萬安 counties (all under Ji’an Prefecture) were disposed of, yielding 10,046 taels. Second, the silver proceeds from these sales were deposited in the Lianghuai Salt Transport Treasury, then lent to salt merchants at an annual interest rate of 10 per cent on the principal. As salt censor Gao Heng had projected, this arrangement would generate approximately 4,530 taels annually—far more profitable than the prior practice of leasing the properties, which had only yielded 800 taels in annual rental income.Footnote 90 Meanwhile, the Lianghuai salt censor centralised control over rent collection from the Jiangxi provincial governor, citing the need to simplify the management of minor administrative matters.Footnote 91
From 1766 onwards, this new revenue stream—officially designated as ‘interest silver from the monetisation of properties associated with Ji’an’s salt franchise permits’ (suiwo tianfang bianjia liyin 隨窩田房變價利銀)—replaced the annual 800-tael rental income from the previously managed holdings. Together with nest-interest silver, this new source of revenue was remitted annually to the Imperial Household Department. The annual amount of the suiwo tianfang bianjia liyin was set at fixed rates that differed between ordinary years and intercalary lunar years (you runyue zhi nian 有閏月之年, meaning a year containing an intercalary month). This dual categorisation of lunar years was implemented by the Qing court to reconcile the lunar calendar and the solar year, so that seasonal cycles would stay aligned with farming practices and fiscal timetables alike. Specifically, the fixed amount of the suiwo tianfang bianjia liyin stood at 4,530.806 taels for an ordinary year and 4,908.373 taels for an intercalary lunar year.Footnote 92
Over the lengthy period spanning 1748 to 1776, the management of nest-interest silver and rental income from properties associated with Ji’an’s salt franchise permits lacked standardised fiscal procedures. Each year, the incumbent salt censor of Lianghuai would submit a memorial to the throne, requesting ad hoc directives for the allocation of these funds. Initially, the funds were channelled to the chamberlain of the Imperial Household Department, who would subsequently petition for further imperial edicts to specify their disbursement. From 1777 onwards, unless otherwise stipulated by imperial decree, Ji’an’s nest-interest silver and the suiwo tianfang bianjia liyin were uniformly remitted to the Imperial Workshops (see Table 3). This arrangement revived the original purpose of Ji’an’s nest-interest silver, which had been established under the tenure of Prince Yi, Yunxiang—namely, serving as a dedicated fund to cover the imperial court’s manufacturing and artisanal expenses. Archival records indicate that this redirected revenue stream utilised existing salt administration channels. Notably, the salt censor of Changlu, stationed in Tianjin,Footnote 93 assumed the role of logistical intermediary, facilitating the transfer of these funds to the imperial treasury.Footnote 94
In the nineteenth century, records relating to Ji’an’s nest-interest silver were far less systematic than those from the Qianlong period (1736–1795), with only sporadic references preserved in archival records. This paucity of documentation was likely linked to the fact that Ji’an’s nest-interest silver was subsequently remitted to the Imperial Workshops alongside other fiscal items, rather than as a separate fund. By 1811, even Qing court officials could no longer ascertain the complete origin of Ji’an’s nest-interest silver. The Imperial Household Department retained only partial information: Ji’an Prefecture had a quota of 51,504 salt franchise permits, with one tael of nest-interest silver levied per permit; furthermore, this silver had once been allocated to Prince Yi, Yunxiang, in 1726 to cover his official and daily expenses. Regarding the full origins and evolutionary trajectory of Ji’an’s nest-interest silver, other offices—including the Imperial Clan Court (Zongrenfu 宗人府), Prince Yi’s Mansion, the Board of Revenue, and the Bullion Vaults of Old Summer Palace—also lacked relevant archives for verification. Between 1809 and 1845, the composition and remittance protocols of Ji’an’s nest-interest silver continued to adhere to the regulations formalised during the Qianlong reign. For instance, in 1811, Ji’an’s nest-interest silver was remitted alongside ‘accumulated idle funds silver’ (jicun xiankuan yin 積存閑款銀) and ‘accumulated customary fees silver’ (jicun guifei yin 積存規費銀).Footnote 96 In 1836, it was remitted together with ‘unspent reserves of the salt censor’s office and the salt transport commissioner’s office’ (yuansi jiesheng 院司節省) and ‘silver for covering non-budgetary expenditure shortfalls’ (waizhi bufu yin 外支不敷銀) (see Table 4 for records of Ji’an’s nest-interest silver remittances under the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns).Footnote 97
Remittance of nest-interest silver and property rents in Ji’an, 1809–1845 (taels/year)
Table 4 Long description
Annual remittances from Ji’an are listed by year, separating nest-interest silver from interest silver tied to monetised properties, and noting where funds were disbursed. Nest-interest silver rises from 52,434 taels in 1807 to a high of 67,829.173 in 1811. In 1807, property-related interest silver is 4,530.806 taels and is disbursed to the Imperial Workshops. In 1811, the 67,829.173 taels are divided between the Imperial Workshops (40,000) and the YMY Bullion Vaults (27,829.173). After 1811, recorded nest-interest silver falls steeply, reaching 10,638.897 in 1833 and 6,292.08 in 1834. For 1834, property-related interest silver is again listed as 4,530.806 taels, but the disbursement field is not provided. The 1836 entry does not give Ji’an’s nest-interest amount; instead it reports a combined total with other taxes of 146,717.914 taels, so it cannot be compared directly to the earlier single-category figures.
Source: FHA, no. 05-08-030-000114-0069, JQ 14/11/16; no. 05-08-030-000115-0059, JQ 14/9/12; no. 05-08-030-000141-0088, JQ 20/9/25; no. 05-08-030-000294-0010, DG 21/2/19; no. 05-08-030-000301-0007, DG 22/2/2; no. 05-08-030-000308-0016, DG 24/5/12; no. 05-08-030-000311-0090, DG 25/7/9.
Other salt franchise permits occupied by the Imperial Household Department
The practice of confiscating unsaleable salt permits, converting them into assets of the Imperial Household Department, and then managing them as rent-producing domains under its authority, was not confined to Ji’an Prefecture. It also extended to the Changlu and Hedong salt districts. In the Changlu salt district, salt permits that came under the department’s ownership—collectively referred to as the Yongqing Merchant House (Yongqing hao 永慶號)—were distributed across 21 locations in Zhili and Henan. These permits were transferred to the department in 1748, when their original holder—Nalan Yulin 納蘭玉麟—surrendered them to settle his outstanding debts, including both principal and accrued interest on funds advanced by the department.Footnote 98 Following its acquisition of the Yongqing Merchant House permits, the Imperial Household Department contracted merchants to oversee their operation. These managing merchants were obligated to remit rental payments to the department, assessed at 10 per cent of the total value of the salt franchise permits and their associated propertiesFootnote 99 Additional salt franchise permits incorporated into the department’s administration in Changlu included those in Mancheng 滿城 County (1772), and Changyuan 長垣 and Yangwu 陽武 counties (1779), permits originally owned by the prominent Fan merchant lineage (1796), and permits spread across 21 counties formerly held by the merchant Wang Pei 王珮 (1809). All of these permits had experienced weak sales, resulting in insurmountable indebtedness.Footnote 100
In the Hedong salt district, the Imperial Household Department’s salt-revenue-producing territories were scattered across four locations: Lu’an 潞安 and Zezhou 澤州 prefectures (in Shanxi Province); Tangxian 唐縣 and Yuzhou 裕州 counties under Nanyang Prefecture in Henan; and Mianchi 澠池 County in Henan. A key shared characteristic of these four sites is that, before annual salt revenues were remitted to the Imperial Household Department, the original salt field owners had all been convicted of illegally running the fields under assumed names or evading taxes.Footnote 101 Following their convictions, their salt fields, personal property, and unsold salt were confiscated by the authorities.Footnote 102
For these four Hedong locations, the Imperial Household Department implemented two distinct revenue-collection schemes. The first entrusted the exclusive operation of local salt fields to a single wealthy merchant, who, in addition to remitting regular salt revenues to the Board of Revenue, was required to pay a fixed annual quota to the department. The salt fields in Luze 潞澤 of Shanxi Province were once controlled by Nian Gengyao 年羹堯 (1679–1726), a leading military general of the early Qing renowned for his role in suppressing rebellions, including the Dzungar Uprising (1720–1724), and supporting the Yongzheng Emperor’s ascension. Following Nian’s conviction in 1725, these fields were transferred to Fan Yupin 范毓馪, a prominent merchant affiliated with the Imperial Household Department. Fan was obligated to remit a fixed annual sum of 20,000 taels of silver directly to the department.Footnote 103 In the case of Yuzhou’s salt fields, the original holder Chen Zhuanglü 陳壯履 was accused of privately transferring operational rights to the merchant Wei Chun 衛純 without investing any capital himself. Nevertheless, because the heavy local salt quotas deterred other merchants from taking over the operation, the court was forced to entrust Wei Chun to continue managing the fields. Beginning in 1742, following the Luze model, Wei was required to remit an annual sum of 1,000 taels of silver to the Imperial Household Department.Footnote 104
The second approach also appointed a single merchant to operate the salt fields exclusively, but differed in the form of revenue submitted to the Imperial Household Department: rather than fixed payments, merchants were required to turn over all ‘surplus profits’ (yuli 餘利) from their operations, amounts that fluctuated annually. Like Ji’an, Tangxian County in Nanyang Prefecture, Henan, lay at the farthest end of the regional salt transportation network. Coupled with its dense population, Tangxian had long been assigned salt quotas far exceeding its actual sales capacity. With no merchant willing to take up its salt permits, most salt circulating in local markets was contraband. As early as the Yongzheng reign, local elites had already petitioned to realign Tangxian’s administrative jurisdiction, citing Ji’an as a precedent.Footnote 105 In 1728, Zhu Yifeng 朱一鳳, Hedong salt transport commissioner, experimented by entrusting all Tangxian salt permits to wealthy Henan merchants for collective management (gongban 公辦), under which the practice of collecting ‘surplus profits’ first emerged.Footnote 106 Defined as revenues in excess of merchants’ statutory obligations and not categorised as ‘the people’s sustenance’ (minzhi mingao 民脂民膏), all ‘surplus profits’ were to be submitted to the Salt Transport Treasury as ‘public funds’.Footnote 107 Though Tangxian’s salt fields were soon placed under a single merchant, the practice of remitting ‘surplus profits’ to the ‘public treasury’ remained standard.Footnote 108 After these funds had accumulated in the Salt Transport Treasury for an extended period, in 1742 Shang Lin 尚琳, Hedong salt censor, proposed that all Tangxian ‘surplus profits’ be remitted annually to the Imperial Household Department to curb tax evasion. He argued that such revenues were flexible and variable and thus, under imperial revenue remittance protocols, unsuitable for remittance to the Board of Revenue.Footnote 109 From 1742 through the end of the Qianlong reign (1795), Tangxian’s ‘surplus profits’ consisted of two components: surplus from Tangxian’s own salt revenues after deducting permit-based fees and surcharges;Footnote 110 and surplus revenues from unsold salt from other districts reallocated to Tangxian for resale.Footnote 111 Like Tangxian’s native surplus, this portion was unfixed and therefore could not be remitted to the Board of Revenue. In 1735, the Tangxian model directly informed reforms to the salt franchise permit system in Mianchi, Henan, which was likewise required to remit ‘surplus profits’ to the Imperial Household Department.Footnote 112
The Imperial Household Department’s administration of salt permits in Changlu offers crucial insights into the core nature of its ownership of such permits in Ji’an. Having acquired salt franchise permits primarily through confiscation, the department treated the permits themselves as the principal to be ‘lent’ to merchants, who were then obligated to remit fixed quotas of interest silver to the department. Scholars have documented that the department extensively adopted the practice of advancing capital to merchants and collecting interest thereon—a system known as fashang shengxi 發商生息.Footnote 113 The interest silver generated through this mechanism was widely used to cover the department’s operational expenditures and fund other imperial court activities. However, a striking contrast emerges between this standard fashang shengxi practice and the department’s handling of salt franchise permits: unlike conventional capital, the salt franchise permits ‘lent’ by the department were not readily convertible into liquid cash. This critical distinction has hitherto received little attention from scholars researching either the Qing salt monopoly or the department’s fashang shengxi system. After seizing the permits, the department neither sold them nor advanced monetised principal—likely due to the permits’ poor marketability. Instead, it assessed their nominal value and used these valuations to calculate the required interest payments. Further differentiating this arrangement from other fashang shengxi initiatives (where merchants borrowing imperial capital could freely engage in any profitable business), the lessees of Ji’an’s salt franchise permits were compelled by the Imperial Household to operate precisely these permits—assets that had already proven barely profitable.
Together with the salt permits in Ji’an, those held by the Imperial Household Department in Changlu and Hedong exhibit three distinctive characteristics. First, the majority of these permits were located in interprovincial or cross-district peripheral areas—regions boasting dense populations and correspondingly higher-than-average salt quotas. The Qing court initially intended to meet these quotas by appointing wealthy merchant contractors; however, this coercive approach, which imposed heavy tax liabilities on the responsible merchants, was inherently unsustainable. Plagued by chronic deficits, the operating merchants were ultimately forced to withdraw. Second, and closely intertwined with the first characteristic, in most cases, the department’s holding of these permits originated from confiscations: authorities seized them as compensation for unpaid debts owed by the responsible merchants. Third, most of the Imperial Household Department’s salt permit holdings took shape between the early Yongzheng and mid Qianlong reigns, rather than in earlier periods. This timing stemmed from the significant population growth during the mid-to-late Kangxi era, which spurred a surge in salt demand—temporarily masking the sluggish sales of official salt in these regions.Footnote 114
Conclusion
After Ji’an Prefecture was transferred from the Liangguang salt district to the Lianghuai salt district in 1666, the obligation for meeting its salt tax quotas shifted from local residents to designated wealthy merchants. Concurrently, by expanding the issuance of new salt franchise permits for Ji’an under the Lianghuai system, the state delineated distinct transportation and retail territories for the prefecture, distinguishing it from other areas under Lianghuai’s jurisdiction. Nevertheless, these measures failed to fundamentally mitigate Ji’an’s inherent susceptibility to salt smuggling, rooted in its status as an interprovincial border region. Consequently and largely by accident, these salt permits came under the stewardship of the Imperial Household Department in the 1720s, entering its treasuries either through confiscation or voluntary surrender by their original holders. Upon acquiring ownership of these permits, the department was compelled to lease them out and collected annual rental income based on the permits’ assessed nominal value, rather than reselling them to merchants—a standard practice employed by the Board of Revenue. When combined with other cost-sharing or cost-reduction mechanisms, most notably the three-year rotation of operational responsibilities among merchants, the Imperial Household Department’s retention and management of these permits emerged as a critical alternative for administering the salt monopoly in remote peripheral regions that would otherwise have failed to meet their assigned tax obligations.
This story carries twofold significance. First, the Imperial Household Department’s direct holding of salt permits shaped the salt monopoly in a paradoxical manner. On the one hand, the department’s control over these permits provided a crucial alternative for sustaining the salt monopoly in smuggling-prone regions such as Ji’an, thereby reinforcing the Qing court’s centralised oversight of the salt regime. On the other hand, this arrangement was only feasible through a redistribution of salt permits between the Board of Revenue and the Imperial Household Department. By formalising bookkeeping and remittance procedures, the department had, by the mid Qianlong period, converted rents and other revenues from properties tied to Ji’an’s salt permits into a regular, dedicated income stream to fund its own operations. In this regard, this finding aligns broadly with recent scholarly conclusions regarding the interplay between patrimonial interests and bureaucratic norms within Qing political institutions. Specifically, by centring on the redistribution of salt revenues, this study further reveals that fragmented authority within the Qing central fiscal system undermined reforms aimed at centralising revenue collection: by splitting revenue streams that would otherwise have fallen under the Board of Revenue’s unified supervision, this arrangement effectively engendered a de facto fiscal decentralisation in revenue management.
Second, this study demonstrates that, save for a brief interval of exceptionally high salt demand, merchants designated to operate Ji’an’s salt permits were not acting of their own volition but were instead coerced into assuming this role. Confined to managing inherently unprofitable assets, these merchants were further precluded from pursuing independent business ventures of their choice, as the permits could not be converted into liquid capital. Consequently, operating these permits constituted a compulsory fiscal obligation rather than a lucrative commercial entitlement. Unsurprisingly, when broader market conditions in the Huainan region deteriorated in the mid eighteenth century, both the remittance of salt taxes to the Board of Revenue and the payment of nest-interest silver to the Imperial Household Department for Ji’an fell into severe arrears. To address this impasse, full remittance was ultimately achieved by uniformly apportioning both the salt tax quotas owed to the board and the nest-interest silver due to the department across the entire Huainan region—amounting to a de facto tax rate increase imposed on all Huainan merchants. Thus, the rental income the department garnered from its ownership of Ji’an’s salt permits underscores the proliferation and diversification of commercial surcharges levied on privileged salt merchants as the Imperial Household became increasingly involved in revenue resource redistribution from the mid to late Qianlong period. These new and additional levies, in turn, would facilitate the emergence of an autonomous revenue system dedicated exclusively to financing the department’s operations.
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks go to the two anonymous reviewers of this article. Their thoughtful and constructive comments substantially improved the coherence and accuracy of the present manuscript. Financial support for this work was provided by the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 20CZS036).
Acknowledgement of AI-assisted editing
The author acknowledges the use of AI tool Doubao for assisting with the editing of this manuscript. The tool was used solely for tasks related to language polishing, particularly grammar correction. No part of the core content, including research design, data analysis, results interpretation, or argument construction, was generated or modified by the AI tool.
Conflicts of interest
None.
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