质疑“皇权不下县”：基于宏观的长时段的动态历史考证

自秦汉至明清之际的1800余年,中国历代王朝的“编户齐民”一直在2000万人至6000万人之间徘徊,全国的耕地面积基本维持在8亿亩左右,县的数量大体保持在1500个上下,总体上并没有达到“地方百里、人口万户”的标准建制,因而属于一种“小县制”。同时,县以下还有乡里制度和以什伍编制为基本组织原则的保甲体系,皇权专制集权统治以“县政”为依托,其政治影响可谓无所不在、无事不管。因此,由当代西方学者提出的所谓“国权不下县,县下惟宗族,宗族皆自治,自治靠伦理,伦理造乡绅”纯属于一种毫无历史根据和主观臆断的无稽之谈。

On the Traditional Chinese "Imperial Authority not Under County"——Based on Macroeconomic Research over the Long Dynamic History

From the Qin and Han Dynasty to Ming and Qing Dynasty, over 1800 years, Chinese dynastic "plait door and unit the household" has been fluctuating from 20 million to 60 million people, and the arable area is about 8 million acres. The number of "county" is about 1500, so all this has not achieved the organic scale basically: "the place hundreds of miles, the population ten thousand households". During the metaphase and later period of Qing Dynasty,the national population is roughly 20 million to 40 million people, the cultivated area 1 to 1.3 billion acres. There are about 1,700 administrative units of county level, and each county governs 50000 to 250000 people on the average, still a kind of small county. Meanwhile, there are still Bao Jia system of "township officials systems" and "the assorted army workout" under the county. Thus, taking "the county government" as the basis, the centralization of state power is omnipresent. Therefore, so-called "imperial authority not under county, under the county all autonomous" is purely nonsense.