Vol. 68, No. 4

Michio HAMADA
Poaching and seigneurial justice in eighteenth century Beaujolais: the jurisdiction of Saint-Lager and its environs

In the France of the Old Regime, the monarchy gave the nobility the exclusive privilege of hunting and bearing arms; the commoners, especially the peasants, opposed this monopoly by poaching. The object of this paper is to examine the nature of seigneurial authority through investigating the repression of poaching in several jurisdictions.

The poachers who appear in the criminal records tend to be fairly rich peasants (or their sons and young servants) using guns, which circulated among peasants in the countryside through both purchase and loans. This shows that hunting was rather commonplace as a leisure pursuit, although only a few records of proceedings against poaching can be found (only twenty-five in five jurisdictions throughout the eighteenth century).

But why are there so few records of proceedings? First, it was because le garde de chasse (the rural police) were recruited from among the peasants and often chose not to pursue poachers; and second, because the seigneurial prosecutor proceeded principally against habitual poachers. There was certainly a threshold of tolerance in the seigneurial justice system. Thus the system served to mediate between the monarch, who needed to maintain order, and the peasants, who had been accustomed to hunting since the middle ages.

Takeshi NAGASHIMA
Public health administration in late-nineteenth century England, with special reference to the activities of Brighton Sanitary Authority

It is well-known that, in the mid-nineteenth century, such distinguished central officials as Edwin CHADWICK and John SIMON struggled for public health reform. Then, what happened from the 1870s, after these heroic reformers had disappeared from the forefront of central health administration?

The late-nineteenth century was the period when the locus of public health reform shifted from central to local government. By the provisions of the Public Health Acts of the 1870s, local councils were designated as 'sanitary authorities' and assigned to deal with public health problems, by employing Medical Officers of Health.

This article examines the case of Brighton. Particular attention is paid to the way in which the scope of public health administration was decided through interactions between Brighton Town Council and Arthur NEWSHOLME, its Medical Officer. Under NEWSHOLME's guidance, Brighton Town Council developed systems for dealing with several varieties of patients, not only those with acute infections but also unhealthy children and sufferers from pulmonary tuberculosis. Thus, the scope of public health administration in Brighton was no longer confined, as it had been, to improvement of the town's general sanitary environment, but extended into the sphere of personal service provision.

Makoto KISHIDA
The city of Tokyo foreign loan negotiations and the external financial policy of the Kenseikai government, 1924~1927

This article explores the foreign loan negotiations of the city of Tokyo in both Britain and America and reconsiders Japan's external financial policy in the mid-1920s in this context. After World War I, controls on the issuing of foreign loans in Britain, and the consequent convergence on America as a source of finance, made it difficult for foreign countries to raise loans abroad. The municipalities of Tokyo and Yokohama sought loans to fund reconstruction works after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. But the high interest rate on new issues charged by both the British and U.S. markets, together with fear of the domestic public censure which this might produce, prevented the government from proceeding with the negotiations.

The prolonging of the negotiations had an effect on Japan's financial policy. In September 1925, the Kenseikai government decided to raise the fallen exchange rate toward par and to reinforce overseas specie holdings, both in preparation for the return to the gold standard. The Tokyo loan negotiations were re-opened as an important potential source of specie. But the postponement of the negotiations in February 1926 interrupted the plans for a return to gold. This article therefore concludes that Japanese financial policy was affected not only by the internal political and economic situation, but also by conditions in international capital markets.

<Conference report>
Etsuo ABE
The great depression and the transformation of financial systems: the beginning of regulation in the interwar period

Over the last decade, it has been said that deregulation and the transformation of the financial system are key issues for the revitalization of the Japanese economy. But when, how, and why, did the regulations which are in operation today begin? The answers to these questions should help us to understand the meaning and potential results of deregulation now.

This was the topic selected as the common theme of the sixty-ninth annual conference of the Socio-economic History Society. We examined the beginning of regulation in five countries (the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan) during the interwar period, with special reference to the relationship with what is known as the great depression.

The following conclusions were drawn about the U.S., Germany and Japan, which all experienced severe economic and financial difficulties: In the U.S., regulation was uniform and transparent. In Germany and Japan, however, administrative control of financial affairs was strengthened, and the role of the government in the economy grew. In France and the U.K., however, the financial crisis was less severe, with the collapse of some banks in the former, but none in the latter. This was not so much the result of a skillful response from the central banks and governments of the two countries, but because of historical differences in their financial structure.