清代金門與臺灣契約文書異同之比較研究

本文旨在從金門與臺灣草屯的契約文書自格式到內容加以比較，以期瞭解兩地契約文書間之異與同。經取乾隆朝兩地之杜賣契、成豐朝兩地之典契及光緒朝兩地杜賣園契進行比較，發現兩地相同的百分之七十一，相異的百分之二十二，大同小異者百分之七。其最大不同點在土地面積之書寫方式以及交易之銀員或銅錢之媒介。以錢幣言，臺灣草屯在清代交易百分之百以銀員為交易媒介，金門則銅錢為多，佔到百分之八十六，銀員只有百分之十四。考其致此之原因是金門地小土瘠，物產不豐，沒有出口，致外國銀幣不能流入；臺灣則有鹿皮、糖、米、樟腦、茶葉為外商所需貨品，故外國銀洋得以源源挹注。

關鍵字

清代；金門；臺灣；草屯；契約文書

並列摘要

This study compared formats and contents of legal documents of contracts used in Kinmen, Fujian and Caotun, Taiwan to explore their similarities and differences Based on the comparisons between the legal documents of contracts of land sale in the two explored places in the Qianlong period, and contracts of land mortgage in Xianfeng period, this study found that among these documents 61% were the same, 30% were different, and 9% were roughly the same with only minor differences. The most obvious differences were the different ways the areas of the land were documented in the contracts and the currencies used for trade. In Caotun, Taiwan, silver dollars were used as the trading currency for all transactions. On the contrary, they only accounted for 14% of transactions in Kinmen, while the other 86% of the transactions used copper coins as trading currency. The less use of silver dollars in Kinmen may be due to the fact that Kinmen, a small island with poor soil, did not yield much to be exported for foreign currencies to flow in. On the other hand, deerskin, sugar, rice, camphor, and tea produced in Taiwan were all preferred merchandise by foreign merchants, and consequently the foreign silver dollars kept flowing in and were used as trading currency in Taiwan.