On The Formulation Of The Song Dynasty Tea Act

In Song Dynasty, the laws of Tea for the sake of interests in various legal forms cover the adjustment, intervention and management by Song court on the economic relations arisen in tea production, business operation and other operations, which were made or modified following certain procedure. The official memorials as the important legislative proposals had a major impact on the development process of the laws of tea. The tea laws of Song Dynasty hadn't an uniform code, which could should be referred to in various form of laws and collected and classified according to modern standard on specific legal department by contemporary scholars. In addition, there are many official memorials discussing about the tea operation in many historical records on the laws of tea. This article use the official memorials as the starting point, through collecting the official memorials concerning about the development and modification of the laws of tea existed in the record, emphasizes the form which the laws of tea belong to and the effect of the tea law within such form partly based on discussion on officials distinguished background and outlines the procedure of the tea laws made through the discussion by officials. Then the paper will learn the social, political, economic background and the actual operating effect of the procedure, conclude the features and balance the pros and cons of the procedure in the end.The introduction sets forth the origin of the subject on the laws of tea in Song Dynasty, presents the commodity economic prosperity in Song Dynasty leading to the serious attention on the tea economic development by Song government and puts the starting point forward with the general characters of Law-making of Song Dynasty. Body part is divided into four chapters. The first chapter reviews previous studies, describes the related academic achievement in learning of general history and dynastic history and summarizes the academic achievement on the tea economic and the system and contents of the tea laws. Based on that, the part presents the resource and basis of this study for the new view on the procedure of tea-law-making. Part two is divided into three parts, firstly brings the specific tea law forms and collects the contents of the official memorials according to timeline. Within the contents of the official memorials, the part presents the tea law existed in official memorials to some concrete categories and then discuss the procedure for such legal form. The third part is also divided into two parts. According to the emphasis of the second part, this part portrays the law-making and modifying procedure on tea region, and studies the different effects by the memorials from the distinction of officials in respect of official position. The forth part is the part of summary and conclusion, which describes the characteristics of the procedures in the three aspects of tea act development, which are the guiding ideology, the development process and effect of law. The conclusion part end the whole study with some more thinking.