絶対主義期プロイセンの農村税制 : クールマルクのコントリブチオン制にそくして

抄録

The aim of this paper is to consider the justice peculiar to the Kontribution-tax of Kurmark in the absolutism era. Although in almost all studies they have emphasized only unequality between lords and peasants, I'd like to assert that the unequality doesn't necessarily mean unjustice in this case, because equal tax treatment could be justified only on condition that tax payers are modern independent citizens. To clear features of the tax payers, I will deal with the way of evaluating their taxable capacity, and then consider the relationship between lords and peasants in distribution of tax. (1) The military governor, who obtained the power to control the tax policy from the estates, reformed the Kontribution-tax in every district of Kurmark from 1680's to 1730's. Before this reform, the estates used a "Hufe" as a tax base, which indicated the scale of a farm and household in its community. Since "Hufe"s varied from community to community, the governor had to adopt another tax base. The very base was quantity of seed and crop. With this new base, the taxable capacity seemed to be determined not by the ability to run household but by the productivity. But at that time, peasants produced crop just to sustain their families and servants, so that this reform didn't change the old concept of taxable capacity essentially. (2) The governor regarded that a peasant's household was a foundation of taxable capacity, and thought that it tended to decline through various disasters, such as a bad crop, death of domestic animals, and a fire. Therefore, they demanded lords should exempt peasants from the charge, whenever the state itself released the peasants from tax. In spite of these exemptions, many peasants couldn't pay their tax, and it made the lords take over the burden. In the end, the advantages in taxation the lords had was counterbalanced by their exemption and take-over. Thus, the unequal taxation can be justified by this counterbalance.