Golden State
Author Lantai
As we all know, when the Jin kingdom established by the Jurchens was destroyed by the Mongols and the Southern Song Dynasty, a large number of Han ministers martyred for the Jin kingdom, such as Hubu Shangshu Ren Tianpet, Zhi daxingfu GaoLin, Guanzhou Assassin Shi Gao Shou, and Wang Weihan, who participated in the government and Dinghai Jiedushi.
Even after Zhang Tiangang, a Han minister in the Jin Dynasty, was captured by the Southern Song Dynasty, he ridiculed the Southern Song Dynasty for "the rise and fall of the country, and there is no generation." My death of Jin, how is it better than the Second Emperor of Ru? ”
Why did the Jin Dynasty really rule the vast area north of the Yangtze River for only 94 years (1140, when the Jin and Song Dynasties agreed to peace), and the Han people north of the Yangtze River were completely "conquered" by the Jin State?
Of course, there is a reason for this, and the reason is also very simple, the tax revenue of the Jin Dynasty is only 1/10 of that of the Southern Song Dynasty, and the people under the Rule of the Jin Dynasty have to live much easier than the people of the Southern Song Dynasty.
Of course, the Golden State tax is not so light at the beginning.
The Shaoxing Peace Conference of 1140 can be seen as a watershed.
Before 1140, the Jin dynasty did not really regard the area south of Hebei as its real territory, so when the Jin army entered Henan, Shandong, and Shaanxi, it was randomly requisitioning people and robbing them.
Therefore, during this period, a large number of northern Han Chinese fled to the Southern Song Dynasty.
However, after the signing of the Shaoxing Peace Agreement, the dominance of the Jin State over the North was formally established, so the Jin State began to rule the North in an all-round way.
Compared with the Northern Song Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty, the Jin Dynasty was much more relaxed in its rule than the Southern Song Dynasty.
Take the "two taxes" that are closely related to the people as an example (summer tax and autumn tax).
Compared with the Northern Song Dynasty, the amount of the two taxes levied in the Jin Dynasty was eight liters in the Northern Song Dynasty, seven liters in the Lower Field, and five liters and three in the Summer and Autumn taxes in the Jin Dynasty, which was two liters and one liter less than the loss of the Northern Song Autumn Tax. The two taxes of the Jin Dynasty were lighter than those of the Liao and Song Dynasties, which was a very important reason for the economic recovery and the substantial population growth in the north. --Bai Shouyi, General History of China
What is more critical is that the two taxes of the Jin Dynasty are not only lower than those of the Northern Song Dynasty, only 1/10 of the Southern Song Dynasty, but also the two taxes of the Jin Dynasty are completely returned to the level of the Tang Dynasty, and the taxes in kind are levied.
That is to say, the people of the Jin Dynasty paid taxes and paid grain, while the people of the Southern Song Dynasty also had to pay copper money in addition to grain.
Although the tax in kind has always been regarded by scholars as a symbol of the underdevelopment of the commodity economy, please think about it, until the 1980s, the rural people did not have much cash in their hands, let alone a thousand years ago.
The Golden Army in the TV series
In the 12th century AD in which the Song and Jin Dynasties were located, whether it was the Jin Dynasty or the Southern Song Dynasty, there was no unified grain price, and the grain was on the market, which meant that when the grain harvest was harvested in the autumn, if it was collected money or silk, then the people would have to sell the grain for money or silk to pay taxes, but a region suddenly sold grain on a large scale, which was bound to cause a decline in the price of grain purchases.
So, in this sense, paying a monetary tax, for the ancient peasants, in itself increased their burden. It is much better to expropriate grain.
Moreover, the Jin Dynasty stipulated that the amount of corn transported could be reduced according to the distance of the road, which to some extent reduced the burden of the people on the way of transportation, which was not only different from the Song Dynasty's method of levying foot fees on the people under the pretext of "branch transfer", but also a great improvement.
The method of reducing taxes by the Jin Dynasty and the two taxes is also different from the Song Dynasty's "consumption of the rats" in addition to the field tax, which is called "sparrow consumption" for each liter, or the "provincial consumption" of forcing the people to lose two buckets.
In addition, compared with the Southern Song Dynasty, the salt of the Jin Dynasty was only monopolized for a short period of time, and then it became that ordinary people could also boil salt and sell salt.
After the "Shaoxing Peace Conference", the Southern Song Dynasty court did not reduce taxes because of the peace talks, but intensified the exploitation of the common people, taking salt as an example, the salt of the Southern Song Dynasty was sold by the government, and a pound of official salt was sold for 150-200 copper coins in the Southern Song Dynasty.
Later, in the twenty-ninth year of Dading (1189 AD), jinguo simply priced official salt according to the pricing of private salt, 20 yuan a catty. Because the price of official salt is the same as that of private salt, but the quality of official salt is better than that of private salt, there are no people in the Jin Dynasty who sell private salt, which is in stark contrast to the repeated prohibition of smuggled salt in the Southern Song Dynasty.
Not long after, Jin Guo even dismissed the salt patrol soldiers (anti-smuggling) because the official salt was too cheap and no one sold smuggled salt.
Even because the Southern Song Dynasty was so exploitative, in just 25 years from 1145 to 1170 AD, about a million ordinary people of the Southern Song Dynasty fled to the Jin Dynasty in various ways.
Xin abandons the disease
Of course, the Golden State is not a paradise, although the tax rate of the Golden State is very low, but the Golden State still maintains a strong characteristic of a semi-civilized barbarian nation: it is rarely levied in peacetime, but when fighting, it is necessary to dig three feet into the ground.
This is actually a manifestation of the crude means of rule, even the Yuan Dynasty people laughed at the Jin Dynasty, usually did not know the accumulation, only knew to blindly dispense with thin endowments, and as a result, when fighting wars, they dug three feet into the ground and destroyed countless homes.
For example, when king Hailing of the Jin Dynasty marched south, in order to collect materials, all local officials dug three feet into the ground, directly forcing the Shandong big household Xin to abandon the disease.
Because the Southern Expedition of the Hailing King stipulated that all the people's horses were forcibly conscripted and did not pay any money except for officials of seven pins or more who could keep one horse in the whole country.
Xin abandoned the disease family but a big family in Shandong, naturally suffered heavy losses, then of course, it is natural to use force to get justice for themselves.
However, in general, the Jin State is indeed much lighter than the Southern Song Dynasty in exploiting the common people, and because of this, the Jin State will win the hearts and minds of the people in the north in just 94 years of rule.
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