十九世紀淡水廳、臺北府的糧食市場整合研究

By ”the Tamsui area” people lived during Qing Dynasty meant Tamsui River region and old Hsinchu region. The Tamsui area was known to produce rice and shipped large quantities of surplus rice abroad via Baliben, Tamsui and other ports since the beginning of land development in Qing Dynasty. Some people consider indirectly that there is low/no market integration in Tamsui area because the route of grain transportation mostly depends on westward waterway in this area. Also many scholars claim that the market system was equivalent to port/town system in Tamsui area. But these views are little convincing. I use four different rice price series to analyze the level of market integration in northern Taiwan area. Two rice price series are Taiwan prefecture (before Taiwan being divided to two prefectures) and Taipei prefecture (after Taiwan being divided to two prefectures) in nineteenth-century from the Grain Price Database of Qing Dynasty, and another two are account books from Tamsui River region and old Hsinchu region. In my study the northern Taiwan can be considered as an area of high market integration.