When it comes to closing the country, many people think of the Qing Dynasty. Because perhaps it was the Qing Dynasty's seclusion that made China gradually lag behind the West in modern times, and thus signed various unequal treaties with the Western powers that lost the city and land.
So the question is, was the Qing Dynasty really a closed dynasty? In what era did China's policy of closing the country to the outside world begin? Let's take a brief look.
Did the Qing Dynasty close the country? Not really
In most of the period, the Qing Dynasty did not close itself to the country, which is the crux of the matter. Why? Because since the Shunzhi period, the trade between the Qing Dynasty and overseas has not been interrupted.
However, depending on the country, the Qing court adopted different restrictive policies.
When the Qing Dynasty first entered the customs, the Netherlands, Britain, France, Portugal and other countries had established trade relations with the Qing Dynasty to varying degrees.
- In 1656, the Qing court allowed the Netherlands to come once every eight years, which was later changed to once every two years.
- In 1668, the Qing court allowed the British to come to the Qing Dynasty to trade without any restrictions. However, there are strict restrictions on the size, no more than 3 ships, and no more than 100 people on each ship.
During the time when Kangxi planned to recover the treasure island, he did implement a sea ban for a while. However, at that time, not only foreigners were forbidden, but even their own people were also banned, and the residents of the entire coastal areas of Fujian all migrated inland to achieve the effect of clearing the wilderness.
However, since 1684, this kind of sea ban has been abolished, because Kangxi recovered the treasure island and set up a government and three counties here, which are under the jurisdiction of Fujian, so there is no need for this. And Kangxi understands that even if the sea ban is announced, there will still be a lot of private overseas trade. Rather than let this kind of thing become more and more rampant, it is better to switch it directly and trade under the supervision of the imperial court.
To this end, the Qing Dynasty set up a foreign bank in Xiamen in 1684 and thirteen banks in Guangzhou in 1686, all of which were trade points dedicated to trading with overseas merchants, and customs offices were set up specifically for this purpose.
During the Yongzheng period, the Treaty of Kyakhta was signed with Tsarist Russia in 1728, and Kyakhta in Outer Mongolia was designated as a trade point between China and Russia. In this way, in addition to the coastal areas, there are also trade points in the inland areas. In fact, this basically restored the ancient Chinese maritime and land Silk Road.
During the Qianlong period, even though the imperial court pursued trade in Guangzhou, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and other places have become the main areas for overseas foreign merchants. The main reason for engaging in trade is to facilitate management, and only some qualified businessmen can obtain a license to trade here, so they can greatly increase tax revenue.
Therefore, Guangzhou has no two scenery for a time, and because of the soft commercial tax, it is also called the South Library of the Son of Heaven.
However, in order to prevent foreigners from doing things in China, during the Jiaqing and Daoguang years, a series of requirements were specially put forward for these foreigners who came to trade.
For example, it is forbidden for foreigners to spend the winter in Guangzhou, they can only live in specified places when they come, Chinese are forbidden to borrow money from foreigners, foreigners are forbidden to go to Chinese mainland, and so on.
If this can be regarded as a closed country, it can only be regarded as a limited closed country. So the question is, since the foreigners have been allowed to trade, why did the British still fight the Opium War?
In fact, the main reason is that Chinese goods are too fragrant and can earn a lot of money from foreigners, while British goods are too monotonous, or too high-style, to earn any silver at all. Under the trade deficit, the British were unhappy, so they planned to further open the door of the Qing Dynasty and earn more silver in China.
You think, in the past, the Qing Dynasty only stipulated that they would do business with foreign countries in Guangzhou, and only some monopolistic big businessmen were qualified to trade with foreigners, so the price they gave must be relatively high. The purpose of the British's demand for trade was to expand the scope of their business so that small private merchants could also participate, thereby lowering the price of Chinese goods.
It can be seen that except for a brief period of sea ban before Kangxi pacified the treasure island, the Qing Dynasty basically did not close the country.
Zhu Yuanzhang opened the sea ban, and the seclusion of the country kicked off
The hat of closing the country must be buckled on Zhu Yuanzhang's head. Why? Because of his words, it directly affected the history of China for hundreds of years.
Zhu Yuanzhang once said such a sentence: Pieces of board are not allowed to enter the sea.
What does that mean? It is to prohibit any Chinese ships from going to sea, which is tantamount to blocking all avenues for trade overseas. We can't go out, and people naturally can't come in, and after a long time, it naturally causes the phenomenon of closing the country to the country.
In order to implement this policy, Zhu Yuanzhang specially issued an order to withdraw the city shipping departments of Quanzhou Port in Fujian, Ningbo Port in Zhejiang, and Guangzhou Port in Guangdong, which were specially responsible for foreign trade during the Tang and Song dynasties.
So the question is, why does Lao Zhu have to implement a sea ban? There are many different explanations for this problem, among which the more reliable ones are as follows:
- First, Lao Zhu's old opponent Fang Guozhen once seized Zhejiang, and after he surrendered to Zhu Yuanzhang, many of his subordinates actually went to sea by boat and became pirates. These pirates harassed the southeast coast of the Ming Dynasty when they had nothing to do.
- Second, Japan was in a war-torn era at that time, and the samurai and ronin who had lost the battle would organize themselves into a force and attack the southeast coast of the Ming Dynasty from time to time.
- Third, Lao Zhu thinks that the Celestial Empire is a country with abundant resources and people, and there is no need to rely on overseas trade to make an internal circulation well, so why waste energy on overseas trade?
To this end, Lao Zhu incorporated the people of the Ming Dynasty into different household registrations according to their respective work, and managed them in strict accordance with their respective household registrations. For example, if you are a farmer, then your descendants will be farming, and your children and grandchildren will be soldiers. Of course, there are accidents, but this is generally the case.
Zhu Yuanzhang felt that if the people were arranged in such a different category, and the country had enough farmers, soldiers, handicraftsmen, merchants, etc., the country would not need to rely on external forces and would be able to operate well.
Some people are not convinced, why? Because during the period of Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, didn't Zheng He go to the West? Not only is the scale of the fleet huge, but also the influence is also very large, and it has even gone out 7 times, how can it be explained that the DPRK is closed to the country?
In fact, Zheng He's trip to the West was actually a purely official show of power, and the participants were all within the system or non-staff personnel, so it was necessary for them to think about going overseas to earn money for the country? Therefore, Zheng He's voyage to the West basically did not have any commercial behavior. To put it simply, in order to show the strength of the country, the imperial court sent people out to scatter money. If you are obedient, you will be given some benefits, and if you are disobedient, you will be directly convinced.
Therefore, we can show that the shipbuilding strength of the DPRK was very strong, and the treasure ship of Zheng He's voyage to the West was definitely the world's top class ship at that time. But this has nothing to do with the sincerity of closing the country in the early Ming Dynasty.
After the opening of Longqing, the economy of the Ming Dynasty was greatly enhanced
The phenomenon of the Ming Dynasty's seclusion and seclusion was not slightly alleviated until the Jiajing period. Why? Because the common people in the coastal areas felt that foreign trade could make a lot of money, many people took risks and embarked on this road.
For this reason, they even cooperated with overseas Japanese ronin, which became a major scourge in the coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty. Hu Zongxian, Qi Jiguang, Yu Dayou and others resisted the Japanese, in fact, it was during this period. In fact, a large part of the targets they fought against were Ming Dynasty people.
The more they are forbidden to go to sea, the more they feel that there is a great profit to be gained. Over time, a vicious circle develops.
Why did the coastal areas calm down after the death of Emperor Jiajing? Is it really because Qi Jiguang, Yu Dayou and others have strong combat effectiveness and completely solved these pirates?
Of course not, mainly because after Emperor Jiajing's son Emperor Longqing succeeded to the throne, he adopted the policy of switching, which is known as Longqing switch in history. In the first year of Longqing, Emperor Longqing ordered the lifting of the sea ban and allowed private individuals to trade overseas, and the Ming Dynasty also set up a moon port in Zhangzhou, Fujian, which was specifically responsible for foreign trade.
Although such a small port was opened, the impact on the economy of the Ming Dynasty was too great. According to statistics, from the beginning of the Longqing switch to the death of Emperor Chongzhen, in the past 70 years, about 330 million taels of overseas silver flowed into the territory of the Ming Dynasty, equivalent to one-third of the total silver production in the world at that time.
The attitude of the Celestial Empire is the problem
Since the Qing Dynasty did not close the country in the strict sense, why did the Qing Dynasty still lag behind the West in modern times? I don't think this is due to the isolation of the country, but the unruly attitude of the Celestial Empire.
The Qing Dynasty thought that it had hundreds of millions of people, rich in things, and lacked nothing, so it always boasted that it was the superior country of the Heavenly Empire. The problem lies in treating all the surrounding countries, including overseas, as vassals and barbarians.
Because there has always been such an attitude, it leads to the fact that even if the Qing Dynasty gets the scientific and technological products from overseas, it will still look at these things with an unruly attitude. They often refer to it as "tricks to please women and children", which is useless. It's still something from my heavenly kingdom.
The high-level officials of the Qing Dynasty had access to a large number of foreigners' objects from the very beginning, but they lacked curiosity and did not take these things seriously. They don't take it seriously, and the subordinates will naturally not pay attention to it, after all, everything depends on the leader's mind to do things, this is traditional culture, and it cannot be destroyed. If the whole court has such an attitude, who do you want to keep up with the pace of innovation?