01
In the political history of ancient China, "toast" is a relatively special concept, because "toast" is different from ordinary officials, they are often the leaders of a certain tribe, living in the mountains and mountains, far from the seat of the central government.
Feudal dynasties were often inconvenient to send people to directly administer some remote areas, so they would reward the local tribal leaders and let them accept the imperial seal and govern here on behalf of the central government, so that the central government of the feudal dynasty could simultaneously assert its sovereignty over the region while saving administrative expenses.
The toast system originated from the bondage system in the ancient and medieval periods, and until the Song and Yuan dynasties, there was no systematic and complete set of official positions for the tu officials, but during the Ming Dynasty, the toast system reached its peak and perfection.
02
When it comes to the toast of the Ming Dynasty, most people will first think of the barbarian emperors in the southwest region, such as the rebellious Yang Yinglong, Su Chongming, An Bangyan and so on.
From the common points of these toasts, we can summarize some of the characteristics of toast, toast accepts the imperial seal letter, descendants hereditary, the family town and its land, the world protects its people, guards the territory and obeys the dispatch, needs regular tribute and does not enjoy the treatment of the imperial court, these are probably the common treatment of all toasts, but these situations are not absolute.
Some Tusi Tuguan were exiled officials selected and appointed by the imperial court, and could not be hereditary like Yang Yinglong, such as Li Zhi, inspector of Puchang, Zhao He, the chief bookkeeper of Luoci County, and others.
"The large and small tu officials to which they belong have hereditary ones and those who are selected, such as the prefect of Jingdong Province, Otao, the prefect of Ami Prefecture, and the hereditary of Ningze; Zhao He, the chief bookkeeper of Luoci County, Yunnan Province, and Li Zhi, the inspector of Puchang in Yao'an Province, were selected. Hereditary people live in the homeland, are known for savings, and do not have the resources to raise incorruptible. Most of the people who choose to use it are obedient to the local area, so they use it for a while, and they cannot support the honesty without giving it to the lulu, and the law officials receive wealth, and there are lu and no lu divided into two grades. Now that the local officials have committed crimes, the laws have no basis for them, and they are begged to be agreed upon. ”
Because these people did not have a large tribal population like the Yang clan in Bozhou, they could not be hereditary officials like the Yang family.
03
There are also some toasts they do not necessarily have their own tribes, but because they live in a foreign land, they are respected and convinced by the locals, so they are appointed as toasts by the imperial court, and this type of representative figure is he Suo Nanpu, an old minister of the Yuan Dynasty, He Suo Nanpu is a Mongolian, who was appointed by the Yuan Dynasty government to govern Tubo, and has great prestige among the locals, and after he was very knowledgeable about the current affairs and turned to Daming, he was appointed as the commander of Hezhou Wei and hereditary resignation, this kind of toast is called "guest toast".
At the same time, the biggest difference between hereditary toast and exile officials is that hereditary toast does not enjoy the imperial court, and the natives under their jurisdiction do not pay taxes to the imperial court under normal circumstances, but this is not absolute, and the Ming Shilu also records many special cases of local people paying taxes.
Specifically, if you want to set a standard for Ming Dynasty toast, then these concepts must be clear:
First, toast must be an official appointed by the imperial court, not that you can be a tribal chief as a toastmaster.
Second, the toast of the Ming Dynasty was mainly indigenous toast, that is, hereditary toast, but there were also a considerable number of "guest toast" and "bondage toast".
Third, the hereditary toastmasters lead their land, and the people of the town and the people basically do not have the possibility of being officials in different places, but the selected local officials can be transferred nationwide.
Fourth, The Toastmaster must listen to the imperial court's conscription and defend the frontier for the imperial court to fight rebellion.
Fifth, toastmasters must pay regular tribute to the central government.
Sixth, in the early Ming Dynasty, there was no hereditary toast, and in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, hereditary toast also began to enjoy the imperial court.
The last point is that although the head of toast is generally served by barbarians, there is no shortage of toast headed by Han Chinese, and what we are going to explore today is the northwest toast that is very different from the great southwest region.
04
The toast of the Ming Dynasty was not only divided into hereditary and exiled officials, but also the differences between culture and martial arts, and most of them were set up in the northwest region as wu toast.
The so-called "Taketoshi". They are mixed in the northwest between the Liuguan Weishou and are under the jurisdiction of the Bingbu, and there is another type of toast in the northwest, that is, shazhou, Chijin, Quxian and other "Kansai Seven Guards" located west of Jiayuguan, which belong to the "Guanxi Toast", which is small in number and not representative in the northwest region.
What is very different from the northwest region is that the toast in the southwest region "combines culture and martial arts", not only the wu toast division, but also the wen toast division, not only the tuguan lineage Zhizhou, Zhixian, but also the Xuanwei Division, the Solicitation Division, the Changguan Division, and other Wu Tusi institutions that deter barbarians.
Another place where the northwest and southwest Toast are very different is the proportion of "Tuguan" and "Liuguan", we all know that due to the special human geography environment, the southwest region has formed a ruling basis of "big surnames are good at each other, and the world is strong", independent and powerful. Therefore, The Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang also had to recognize their rule, with hereditary local officials as the main management of local civil affairs, and liu officials as a supplement to play a role in supervision and management, so Zhu Yuanzhang used the method of "combining culture and martial arts" to govern the southwest region.
"Taste the Hongwu Chu, the southwest Yilai returnee, that is, with the original official conferred, its local official title is known as Xuanwei Division, Xuanfu Division, Yue Solicitation Division, Yue Pacification Division, and Chief Officer's Division. According to the number of labor achievements, the difference between honor and inferiority, and the names of prefectures and counties are often there. ..... In the ninth year of Jiajing, the old system was restored, and officials such as Fuzhou County were subordinate to the seal, and officials such as Xuanwei and Zhao were subordinate to the military election. Those who are subordinate to the seal, and the chief of the administrative department; Those who are selected by the military are in command. Therefore, the culture and martial arts are in harmony with each other, and they are better than those in Middle-earth. ”
However, in the northwest, it is another situation, the northwest region does not have the complex ethnic composition and geographical environment of the southwest, so it was directly subject to the system of rogue officials from the beginning, and the local officials became auxiliaries.
05
The first category is the officials stationed in the northwest region during the Yuan Dynasty, some of these people surrendered to the city, some led the troops to surrender, in view of their prestige in the northwest, so the Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang gave the tuguan descendants hereditary lineage, the specific example is the above Mentioned He Suo Nanpu.
The second category was that he was not serving in the northwest, and after coming to the northwest for various reasons in the early Ming Dynasty, he was attached to the Ming Dynasty, and was later given the title of Tuguan, such as Chen Ziming, the Wei Tuguan of Xining, who was the right hand man of Huainan in the Yuan Dynasty, and after surrendering to the Ming Dynasty, he followed Geng Bingwen the Marquis of Changxing to conquer Daning, and then was ordered to stay in Xining, and his descendants were hereditary tuguans.
The third category is the chiefs of the various tribes in the northwest, and the Ming government, out of the consideration of appeasing the tribes in the northwest, placed the tribal chiefs in various health posts as hereditary officials. The composition of the local officials in the southwest region is much single, basically the tribal chiefs in various places, not as complex as in the northwest.
At the same time, the selection of local officials in the northwest region is also different from that in the southwest, because the local tribes have great roots, so as long as they come to the annexation, "that is, the original official is granted."
06
However, because there were no deep-rooted tribes in the northwest, both the surrendered Mongol officials and tribal leaders were placed in the guardhouse, and the grade of his official position was also determined by his merits, and the distribution of official status was "based on the amount of labor performance" of the official position.
The tribes attached to the Northwest Region, the Yi people, were all nomadic people and did not have fixed jurisdiction, so it was necessary for the Ming Dynasty government to divide the land for them to settle them, sandwiched between Fuzhou County and weishou, and because the Tuguan in the northwest needed to often listen to the imperial court to go out to fight, so the Tuguan and the Tumin often appeared to be separated.
Therefore, we can see that another difference between the northwest toast and the southwest toast is that the toast in the southwest region basically has a fixed jurisdiction and people, but the toast in the northwest region has no jurisdiction, and the implementation of the "tribal system" management, the local officials do not have fixed jurisdiction, only the tribal people who need to be managed.
07
The southwest region is not only a large number but also generally larger than the northwest tusi, the northwest region of the tuguan generally governs only one tribe, there is no actual jurisdiction, the people are not more than a hundred households, the southwest region of the toast is less than the rule of several counties, more than the leadership of several prefectures, the management of the people as few as hundreds of households, more than a few thousand households, comparable to a small political power divided into one side.
The Zhuanglang Lu Tuguan family was the leading Tuguan family in the northwest region, and when it was first surrendered to Huan, there were only more than 2,000 people in its command, and only 260 tuguan soldiers were left with the northern expedition when Lu Xian (Lu Fujia) attacked his post. During the Longqing period, the number of natives under the command of Lu Tuguan was expanded to 10,000 people, but the Ming Dynasty immediately "changed the number of temple officials" and strengthened the supervision of its subordinates.
08
Another example is the Taozhou Zhuoniyang Tuguan family, "ruling five hundred and twenty tribes, 11,569 households, 55,838 mouths." "Yang Tuguan ruled the northwest region, but he had only two thousand native soldiers. Except for a few tuguans who belong to more than 10,000 people, most of the tuguans in the northwest region have fewer natives and native soldiers.
For example, the Xining Ye Tuguan family, by the end of the Qing Dynasty, only had "more than a hundred households, more than three hundred men and women." ”
Another example is the Tuguan family of minzhou, which managed "forty-one villages and four hundred and forty households" during the Qing Dynasty, and even reduced to 290 tumin by the end of the Qing Dynasty.
09
After comprehensive comparison, the comparison data of toast in the northwest region of the Ming Dynasty and the toast in the southwest region have been completely exploded, but whether it is the northwest toast or the southwest toast system, it is a product of a special historical period, and the emergence of the toast system is not only to ensure the effective rule of the barbarian gathering areas, but also to narrow the distance between the barbarians and the Central Plains Dynasty, maintain the political subordination between these regions and the central government, and is more conducive to strengthening the centralization of power.
Therefore, under the circumstances at that time, toast was not only not a backward and decadent system, but a wise move made by the Ming government after taking into account the actual situation.