唐代の酒の専売

There were two kinds of the liquor monopoly in T’ang Dynasty, namely, (A) the government monopolizes brewage and sale of liquor; (B) the government has certain non-official civilians do them and imposes taxes on liquor and the income out of it. During the reign of Tai-tsung 代宗 the monopoly was executed by the latter method, of which the former took the place in the third year of Chien-chung 建中 in the reign of Tê-tsung 德宗. Tê-tsung fixed the price of liquors and had the prefectural offices take charge of the liquor enterprise. From the second year of Chên-yüan 貞元, both methods were put to practice at the same time until the sixth year of Hui-ch’ang 會昌 in the reign of Wu-tsung 武宗, when Wu-tsung adopted the former, that is, he put the enterprise, brewage and sale of liquor and malt, under the management exclusively of the government. This method of the liquor monopoly continued till the end of T’ang Dynasty.Why, then, did they have to enforce liquor monopoly, and the changes in the method thereof? It will probably be the reason for it that the government finance was in the needy circumstances on account of such great events as the revolts of military officials (Fan-chen 藩鎭) around the second year of Chien-chung, the Tibetan invasion in the second year of Chên-yüan, the rampancy of eunuchs and the degradation of official discipline in the reign of Wu-tsung and so on. That is to say, the enforcement of the liquor monopoly was closely related with those great events in history