Hello, when it comes to Ming Dynasty ministers, we can always think of one person very quickly--Zhang Juzheng. We can casually say some of his exploits: what taught the emperor, reformed the land, cleaned the government, and so on, but the most familiar thing is the "one whip law".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the background to the creation of a whipping method</h1>
Zhang Juzheng, a 5-year-old literate, 12-year-old Zhongxiucai, and 23-year-old zhongjinshi, is definitely the brightest star in the galaxy of the Ming Dynasty for more than 300 years. After Xiao Wanli ascended the throne at the age of 10, Zhang Juzheng ascended the cabinet as the tutor of the little emperor. The emperor was still young, and Zhang Juzheng was instructed by Empress Li to actually preside over the adjudication of military and political affairs in the dprk. In the face of the Ming Dynasty, where the cabinet was inverted, the eunuchs were monopolized, and the officials were corrupt, Zhang Juzheng carried out a series of drastic reforms, the most famous of which was the "One Whip Law".
Zhang Juzheng in film and television dramas
The full implementation of the "One Whip Law" had its urgency, and the Ming Dynasty at that time faced a serious financial deficit: because the Ming Tax Rate was very low, only 3%; and since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, land annexation was rampant, and the poor people had lost their land and could not pay taxes, so they abandoned the land and fled. Bureaucratic landlords actually owned large amounts of annexed land, but concealed the size of the land from the government and evaded taxes. The Ming Dynasty paid taxes in a variety of forms, and they could be deducted by paying grain, doing hard labor, and so on. All this led to a gradual decline in the revenue of the Ming Dynasty, and the country needed money for emergency projects such as maritime aggression, and opened the national treasury to find that there was no penny.
Against this backdrop, a whiplash came out. It was a very exciting social change, and this change pulled a sharp empire that was heading into the dark abyss. It gave the crumbling dynasty a temporary respite, and even regained some of the radiance of the Ming Taizu after the founding of the country. Zhang Juzheng also took this opportunity to become the top of the change in history, and together with Shang Martin and Wang Anshi, he was listed as a giant of the law change, which went down in the annals of history.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the appearance of a whipping method</h1>
In fact, a whip method is not Zhang Juzheng's first initiative. As early as 50 years before he implemented the law, a whip law had already been proposed and partially implemented by one person. This person is Gui Calyx. Compared with the resounding name of "there is no longer Zhang Juzheng in the world", Gui Calyx can be regarded as a small transparent, and even his birth date is not recorded in detail in the history books. Gui Cao, a jinshi during the Zhengde years. The first to do it was Zhi County, which has been going to various grass-roots levels across the country for many years.
In the days when he worked at the grassroots level, Gui Cao intuitively felt the drawbacks of the Daming servitude system. There were two main types of general servitude practiced during the Jiajing period, one was called the "Equalization Method", that is, the household rules were set according to the number of people and taxes and grains, and all of them lost their servitude. Households are divided into upper households, middle households, lower households and so on. The household division standard of the equalization method is rough, and the actual property may be far from the upper household, but the household and so on have to bear the same bad service. For example, the annual income of 10 million and 1 billion belong to the upper household, but the burden of the two is the same, which is obviously not reasonable enough.
Cinnamon Calyx
The other is called the "Ten Duan Jin book method", which is actually the "Uniform Method" version 2.0. After a thorough inventory of the grain of each household, the original upper, middle and lower households were re-subdivided into ten sections, which is equivalent to having ten households, etc., and thus correspondingly undertaking the corresponding errands. There is still a problem with this method: it is still difficult to match the ten sections of the ding estate here and the ten sections of the other place, and the burden of conscription in the end is still uneven.
Gui Cao's personality is clean and upright, and he has seen more inequalities in the current conscription, and he strongly advocates equal enlistment. Every time Gui Calyx took office, he began to measure the actual land area, forcing the large landowners to hand over the hidden taxes. In the end, he was angry and strong, and was forced to resign.
After being hidden by the snow for a few years, Gui Calyx reappeared in the jianghu under the recommendation of Wang Yangming.
Wang Yangming
Gui Cao's talent soon attracted the attention of the Jiajing Emperor, who quickly entered the cabinet. With the help of the emperor, Gui Calyx was promoted at the speed of light after entering the cabinet, and the speed of speed is rare in history. In the end, Gui Cao was appointed Crown Prince Taifu and a scholar of Wuyingdian University, that is, Zheng Yipin official. Gui Cai has never forgotten his original intention, the Seven Pin Sesame Officials will speak lightly, and now the words spoken by the Tangtang Yi Pin Officials will be used. He decided to use his influence to realize the ideal of equalization empowerment.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > what a whipping method is</h1>
In 1530, based on his own experience, Gui Calyx proposed the latest reform of conscription to the imperial court, which became the most original basis for a whip law.
The content of a whip law is expanded to include:
1. Clear the land
In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, there were a large number of lands that were actually occupied but not reported. Therefore, the government obtained information on the real land area of the country through preliminary field research, which is very necessary for the later implementation of the "one whip law".
2. Unified enlistment
A whip law was preceded by the Ming Dynasty's implementation of the separation of enlistment. Fields and acres were given to compensate, and enlistment was collected by households, and a wide variety of assignments were set up in addition to the conscription. A whip law simplifies all these miscellaneous miscellaneous things into one: they are assigned to the land and expropriated according to the mu; Forced labor became employment, and the unified government hired people. After the unification of conscription, the channels through which officials oppressed the people through clever names were greatly reduced.
3. Count the acres of silver, and the official ends the official solution
Before the Ming Dynasty, the main body of land expropriation in China was basically physical, and there were sporadic folded silver. After a whipping law of the Ming Dynasty, a large-scale promotion of silver service began: not only was the service completely changed to a silver difference, but the Liantian Endowment was also converted into silver in two, except for the physical goods provided by the imperial family in Suzhou and Hangzhou and other regions.
The collection of conscription is not handled by grass-roots officials such as the chief of the village, but is directly levied by local officials. At this point, the physical object is no longer levied, saving a large amount of transportation costs from the local to the national treasury; Expropriation is no longer ordered at all levels, and is directly solicited by local officials, simplifying the process and improving efficiency.
But the so-called "ideal is very full, reality is very bone" Although Gui Calyx's whipping method was greatly supported by the big boss Jiajing, it greatly infringed on the vital interests of officials and landlords, and once it was introduced, it was strongly opposed by these classes, and even the land was cleared. The reform process as a whole has been slow and has been piloted only in a small number of areas. The following year, Gui Calyx returned to his hometown due to illness and stopped changing the law.
Nearly 30 years later, the once-mighty Ming Dynasty showed an atmosphere of decline. In 1578, Zhang Juzheng, the first assistant of the cabinet, with the support of Empress Li, vigorously promoted the progress of the qingzhang land throughout the country. Finally, in 1581, a whip law was again widely promoted throughout the country.
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the status of a whip</h1>
The implementation of the whip law shifted the people's fiscal and tax burdens, allowed the bureaucratic landlord class, the actual owners of wealth, to bear the tax pressure, and alleviated class contradictions to a certain extent; it streamlined the collection procedures and greatly accelerated administrative efficiency; it integrated all kinds of assignments, making it impossible for officials to set up another name to tax the people and reduce the peasants' burdens; more importantly, a whip law was promoted for the first time by folding taxes into silver, which adapted to the development of the commodity economy in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and played a promoting role, which contributed to commercial prosperity to a certain extent. Finally, a whip law is a major progress in the history of feudal enlistment in China, which is greatly promoted as a process of transformation from the poll tax to the land tax, and at the same time lays the foundation for the reform of "spreading the land into acres" in the early Qing Dynasty.
Seeing here, everyone should be clear, a whip method was created in Gui calyx, carried forward in Zhang Juzheng, it can be said that it was raised by mother and father, although it was suppressed halfway, but in the end it played a great role for the Ming Dynasty.