This paper addresses two issues. (1) It is true that as most recent works on occidental history in Japan have stressed, for understanding the relationship between a society and its army, researching military units from various points of view, especially from the standpoint of the socalled 'military historiography in a broad sense' is significant. However, is it possible to grasp the actual situation of the army without knowing its tactics, table of equipment for each soldier, daily life in battle fields, and so on, as traditionally studied by the 'military historiography in a narrow sense'? (2) Could we regard the characteristics of the 18th-century Russian army, which has often been criticized as backward, as results of the efforts of Russian leaders to actively respond to the nature of resources in their country and geographical and residential conditions in the areas where their army fought and marched through? To answer these questions, this paper mainly focuses on the reasons for expanding Russian dragoon regiments after the defeat in Narva. This expansion seems to be a better solution for both making good use of lighter Russian horses and enhancing the logistic and intelligence abilities of the army in the sparsely populated lands.

抄録全体を表示

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.

抄録全体を表示