The Industrial Revolution brought about two big streams of administration in England, which ran counter each other. One of them was laissezfaire and the othre the centralization, i.e. the so-called state intervention. They were adopted, contrary to a common opinion, not successively but simultaneously, for the industrialization from its beginning did not permit the middle class' to live up to the laissez-faire from top to toe. The public health problem resulting from the industrialization obliged the middle class 'to abandon the laissez-faire or the traditional local self-government and to adopt the centralization. In other words, the local governments, after finishing modernization, came to be recognized as the new self-governing bodies; and at the same time the central government also changed its attitude towards the local governments. The former gave up trying to control the latter as it had previously done but was satisfied with giving directions to them.

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One of the contributing causes of the Opium War was price rise of silver in China, which began to show its sign in the late Chia-ch'ing period(嘉慶年代) and continued to rise through Tao-kuang period(道光年代). That price rise disturbed the Chinese economy, bringing about overall serious problems such as financial difficulties of the state government and impoverishment of peasantry. Confronted with them, the Chinese government officials detected that the reason for the rise of price of silver was the decrease of domestic silver in amount on account of its outflow from China through opium smuggling. They, therefore, turned to the measure to regulate opium trade. As to a concrete step, there was a difference of opinion between those who insisted on putting a stricter ban on the opium trade and those who thought it better to give official approval to it. But in dealing with this problem they were unanimous in their intention of resorting to the Canton Commercial System (広東貿易制度) which was the mainstay of the state control over the foreign trade. After all Lin Tse-hsu (林則徐) used armed forces in implementing the Canton Commercial System. The Loss of the Opium War, however, broke up that system, which gave the Chinese officials a great shock-a shock tremendous enough to make them change their policy. Since they were deprived of the control over the foreign trade, they gave up regulating the opium trade as a measure to check the silver outflow from their country, and began attempting currency reform instead. Obviously it was a drastic or rather a backward change of the measure to counter the silver problem. From then on, the Chinese government officials advocated to limit the use of silver, then to abolish it, and finally they came to look up to the currency system in the ancient China as an ideal. The content of their measure to counter the silver problem thus became conservative; they even sought after the illusion of reviving the acient currency system. So far, many of the studies on the Opium War have approached it mainly by analyzing exterior factors, and the studies of its interior factors have been comparatively few. This article attempts to grasp historical relevance of the Opium War in terms of domestic situation of China, by taking up mental sttitude of the Chinese government officials manifested in their measure to counter the price rise of silver.

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This study intends to make clear the actual condition of the land revolution movement in the years 1931-1934 which was developed in the red base areas and to research the essence; as well a; the formative process, of Mao Tse-tung's thought of the land policy. Before November 1931 when Land Law of the Chinese Soviet Republic was adopted by the First National Soviet Congress, the difference of opinion in land redistribution had already existed between Mao and the Central Committee of CCP controlled by the students returned from Russia. In the above-mentioned land law, although Mao's opinion was taken into consideration to some extent, most of the claims of the students returned from Russia was adopted. Since then; however, Mao as the chief executive and prime minister led the land revolution movement on the basis of this law. From November 1931 till June 1933 the progress of the land revolution in Kiangsi(江西) red area was better than that in other areas. But according to Mao's Rural Survey, in spite that many poor peasants were released from the exploitation of landlords and rich peasants after the collapse of feudal system in villages, their living was not always found stabilized. The causes thereof were (1) general rise of prices of main agricultural products in red areas, (2) ceaseless battle against Kuoming-tang (国民党) troops, and (3) not infrequent insidious obstructions who deceitfully joined the revolutionary camp. In addition, the dread among middle peasants lest their interests should be violated often prevented the land revolution from progressing. To break through these difficulties the Land Investigation Drive was started in June 1933 and seems to have obtained some success by the end of that year. From the point of Mao's view, the aim of this Drive was to strengthen revolutionary power, to secure the living of medium-scale peasants and to isolate the enemy through the reinvestigation of land distribution process and reinspection of the revolutionary organizations. But the students returned from Russia criticized Mao's policy as the rich peasant line and even deprived him of his leadership. Then the land revolution under the direct leadership of those students expanded the targets to attack, which caused many people desert their camp and led to the defeat against the Fifth Campaign of Kuomin-tang troops. To Mao it was the period of disgusting, extreme hardship, but at the same time it gave them valuable lessons. To summerize Mao's way of land revolution, we can see a combination of two standpoints: one is thoroughgoing egalitarianism, the other is attaching great importance to political relations. It seems that since then this combination has been one of his principal thoughts.

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Since the beginning of `the controversy on Japanese capitarism', we have obtained good results in the studies of landlord system. But it does not seem that good progress is recently being made in this field. Up to now, many students have analyzed the landlord system in terms of landlord management. But when we consider that landlord system as a main social structure determined the class struggle in the late Tokugawa and Meiji Restoration periods, we must examine it in terms of tenant farming that supported landlord management. The landlord system in Japan had two characteristics. Namly it was supported by (1) high farm rent and (2) peasant proprietors. In this article specific analysis is made of these characteristics. In those periods a large number of poor peasants (botsurakumudakaso and reisaimochidakaso) produced through the disintegration of peasantry remained in rural villages ad superfluous manpower, and then they were reorganized by landlords into tenant farming. There were two types of tenants in the landlord system. One type was a peasant who rented a small area of land and farmed on the same scale as he had done before the disintegration of peasantry. The other was a peasant who rented a larger area of land than his own and extended his management scale. Landlords took advantage of the latter type. This tendency of the landlords to depend on the latter was related to high rate of the rent, which was caused through the competition among peasants for rented grounds. In fact the rent was so high that it had to be paid out of a tenant's neccssary labour. And that portion of his necessary labour thus exploited as rent had to be made up for by the crop from his own land, which meant that he had to maintain a certain extent of farming scale and continue intensive farming, putting excessive labour into it. Thus the peasants found. it necessary to engage in landed-and-tenant farming instead of sheer tenant farming.

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