The Study On The Handicraft Of The Yuan Dynasty

The dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter discusses governmental handicraft consisting of three sections. It analyses the whole situations of the governmental handicraft, the management to governmental handicraft and the status of the labors in the governmental handicraft. The first section divides 3 types of governmental handicraft. That is the handicraft in capital, Dadu and in locality, which were both managed by the central government, and the handicraft managed by the local government. These 3 types of handicraft differed from each other in management content and function. The second section analyses the management situation in governmental handicraft. In order to guarantee the production of governmental handicraft, the Yuan government drew up a series of policy, including setting up management institutions, such as Gongbu, Neifu, WuBei-si, and formulating a series of management measure dealing with the labors in the governmental handicraft and the production in each segment. The third section inquires into the status of the labors in the governmental handicraft.The second chapter focuses on folk handicraft. The first section of this chapter further divides this kind of industry into family handicraft and private handicraft. The former was subordinate to the agriculture, while the latter was featured by the profit-based production, and with a high level of commercialization. Furthermore, the labors were more skilled, and technology was quite advanced. The second section inquires into the commodity production in the folk industry. Because of its nature, this kind of industry had various connections with commodity economy. According to the degree of division of labor, it also showed three different patterns. In addition, with the development of division of labor in different regions, some handicrafts began to circulate striding across different regions. The third section discusses the policy in the textile industry and mining industry of the Yuan government. The former included two aspects. One was encouraging agriculture and textile industry, especially the silk fiber and cotton textile industry. The other one was drawing up a series of measure whose content included the management in style, specification and quality for spinning and weaving, in accordance of private handicraft. The policy in mining industry embodied in a larger scope encouraging people to expound mining and smelting in the frontier areas and permitting private exploiting and smelting on the basis of paying for the minerals tax.The third chapter is about the handicraft managed by Temple, Taoism and Tou Xia-zhu noble. The first section looks into the general production condition of Temple and Taoism handicraft industry. This kind of handicraft was collective ownership, judging from its nature, and it was very special. The categories of the handicraft managed by Temple and Taoism had close connections with daily life, such as grain processing industry, tea-processing industry, and oil press industry. It was a distinctive characteristic for the Temple and Taoism handicraft economy that some important trades which required much capital, such as mining industry, wine processing industry, were managed with the strengthening of Temple and Taoism economic power. The second section introduces the handicraft managed by the distinctive political group, Tou Xia-zhu noble. This kind of handicraft was in a larger scale. Some production, for example munitions, was of special permission. In addition, this kind of handicraft possessed not only special institutions butalso private craftsmen. It belongs to public and private two sides. This was also very special.