In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the Americas discovered a large amount of silver, which crossed the ocean, affected Europe, and completely changed China. Today we will feel through three small stories.
Prosperity and war at the end of the Ming Dynasty
What was the first thing the Spaniards did when they dug into a silver mine and had the money? Buy luxury goods, of course. So what was the most fashionable luxury in the world at that time? Of course, it is The silk and porcelain of Daming. Therefore, the massive amount of silver pouring into the purchase of Silk and Porcelain specialties of China is a bit like the central bank releasing water now, creating an unprecedented industrial and commercial boom on the southern coast of China. The flames of war followed. Why fight?
It's not complicated, for example, if you are poor to death, and suddenly find that there are many rich people around you, carrying cash in the bag to buy jewelry, and then stuffing the jewelry in the bag and wandering around on the road, what is your first reaction? Envious of the happy life of the rich want to do licking dogs? Yes, it shows that you are good by nature and poor and happy. However, the second dog next door to you may not think so, he thinks he can fuck his mother's vote, lose a slut, and win it.
In this way, wealth caused war, and soon there was a fight, trade has always been accompanied by pirates, protection fees, underworld, etc., and after the success of the robbery, Wang Er Dog took out a part of the wealth on the ship to modify the cannons, recruit sailors, and prepare to continue the robbery, and the pirate group came out. And if Wang Er Dog's brain is alive enough, he will react since others can do business, why can't he? If you follow this line of thought, you will quickly evolve into an armed caravan.
As long as the plundered caravans gained more than they lost, the trade would continue, and the Dutch, the sea coachman at that time, had a navy and were ready to beat the pirates. Because the technical generation difference at that time was not obvious, the navy did not have an absolute advantage over pirates, so it has always maintained a homogeneous state.
And there will also be a series of divisions of power and wars within the pirates, similar to each other.
What happened to the pirates at this time in the Ming Dynasty? There are two kinds of Ming pirates, one is the early "Wokou", the Ming Dynasty is not forbidden by the sea, but what about the porcelain silk tea fennel beans that the whole world likes? Some of the hard-working Chinese went to Japan and used it as a base to recruit all the outlaws in the whole of East Asia to do business with the big families in Jiangnan of the Ming Dynasty, all of whom were retired members of the DPRK and China, with their hands and eyes in the sky, daring and having the means to break through the blockade and do business with the so-called Wokou. Why did you choose Japan as your base? Japan is poor, can't manage it, and there are triads everywhere. We often say that power hates a vacuum, and where the hand of the government cannot reach, there will naturally be the hand of the underworld.
However, the ming court officials were often unkind, such as arrears of payment or something, but also threatened that pirates can go to court, resulting in pirates often go to the door to cut people, that is, armed to ask for wages, by the way, casual robbery, the imperial court heard that the retired home of the old minister's family was killed, ordered to quickly suppress, did not expect that the two big men responsible for the suppression of zhu Feng and Hu Zongxian in the process of suppressing pirates hurt the interests of the court members, they were both found a reason by the officials to be imprisoned and executed, only then did we know Qi Jiguang. By the way, Qi Jiguang was far more than a simple military general, his brain was very flexible, and he had a very good relationship with Zhang Juzheng, a big man in the DPRK, so as to avoid the bandits from killing themselves.
Our history books say that Qi Jiguang destroyed the pirates, but in fact, it is not, but it only says that the pirates fought by Qi Jiguang have not come ashore since then. Before him, going ashore to rob was a zero-cost thing, and the pirates naturally did not enjoy it, after him, the risk of going ashore increased sharply, so they generally did not go ashore.
The huge demand for silk made Daming once plant mulberry trees and raise silkworms in the land where grain was grown, and grain production has always been near the red line, and then grain production has been reduced, and a bunch of people have starved to death, and North China was immediately chaotic, and Li Zicheng also came out.
(ii) The rise of houjin
In the past, it was said that Nurhachi was bullish, accumulated strength in his early years, found the opportunity to start an army, and finally entered the Central Plains through hehe martial arts. In fact, a core question was ignored, where did he get the money? The Jurchens were more powerful than the Ming Dynasty border troops, everyone could understand, but in any case, they could not understand how the Jurchens were equipped to be more powerful than the Ming Dynasty border troops?
The armor and weapons are more advanced than Daming's, not to mention, and then he actually dragged the cannon around, which is unbelievable, that feeling is that one day you found that the Wang Er Dog in your next village was still extremely poor yesterday, and today suddenly drove a Rolls Royce, your first reaction is definitely not that the Wang Er Dog will actually build this thing, but he got it from others, stole it, anyway, there is no reason not to pay attention.
So how did they get these things? Yes, buy.
Where did you buy it? Shanxi.
Where does the money come from? Make money by doing business with North Korea.
Where does North Korea get the money? American silver flows in.
To say more, at that time, the Manchus often went to catch Hai Dongqing and stupid roe deer to exchange silver with North Korea, and Hai Dongqing was this thing, very beautiful:
This brings us to what we talked about before, the Spaniards pulled half of the silver to the Philippines, and then the money was divided into two ways, one way from the southeast coast of China into the Ming Dynasty, the other way from Korea into the northeast, the northeast people, that is, the Jurchens took this silver and shanxi caravans to do business, trading salt, iron, and materials, until later into the Central Plains.
The Opium Wars of the Qing Dynasty
As we all know, before the First Opium War, the British sold opium to China, which made China exchange its own porcelain silk tea for a bunch of drugs, and there was a situation of silver appreciation, and the local officials in charge soon realized that there was a shortage of silver in China, and Lin Zexu came online.
Lin Zexu, as one of the many capable feudal officials in the late Qing Dynasty, represented a faction in the Qing Dynasty at that time, he was the "anti-smoking faction" big man, he gave the Daoguang Emperor a seal fold, the content of the fold is more, but the key point is two points: First, the country has no money, because the people take silver to buy opium. Secondly, the people are also empty, big smokers, the people of the whole country are big smokers, what can they do?
Is he right?
Right or wrong.
The fact that the state has no money does have this problem, but considering that after the Second Opium War, britain legally sold more opium into China, much more than before smuggling, is China's money less? No, on the contrary, there are more, and even spawned a "Tongzhi ZTE", which is very strange.
Lin Zexu and a bunch of Manchu Qing officials at that time noticed that there was less silver in China, and they witnessed opium smuggling, so they directly linked it, thinking that it was Chinese buy opium and get rid of the silver.
In fact, Lin Zexu misunderstood, this is not to blame him, because until recent years to understand what the reason, these years in Europe and the United States emerged a school of history carefully studied the flow of silver, found that the Qing Dynasty was unlucky in those years, France broke out the Revolution, Spain was hit, the impact on the Americas is very large, many oppressed peoples in the Americas rose up to rebel, independence, the Supply of Silver in the Americas, had a huge impact on Europe and China, equivalent to the current central bank tightening monetary roots, raising interest rates and increasing reserves and so on. Anyway, the currency tightened, and the Qing Dynasty suddenly ran out of money.
To add a knowledge point, this is also a big problem in China's history, China itself has no right to issue money, China almost does not produce silver, silver depends on overseas, equivalent to the ancient Chinese central bank overseas, the number of currencies is not controlled by the national government, this is not noisy, every time the rise and fall of the currency affects the rise and fall of the dynasty. The last time the Spaniards took silver to fight the Thirty Years' War, Daming was finished. This time Spain lost its American colony, and the Qing Dynasty was almost finished. The important currency of the late Qing Dynasty was the Mexican Eagle Ocean, that is, the ocean with an eagle painted on it, that is to say, the currency used in the Great Qing Dynasty was made in Mexico. Can you imagine that now our country uses Mexico's currency as a national fiat currency? Daqing is such a living treasure.
Of course, the shortage of silver hit the Qing Dynasty hard, and it did not spare Europe, which also broke out a fierce economic crisis in the years of the Opium War.
Later, the discovery of silver mines in California and Australia, coupled with the gold standard in Europe and the United States, the silver shortage problem was alleviated, a large amount of silver poured into China, and the silver in the Great Qing was enough, so later opium smuggling doubled several times, but after the Great Qing destroyed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, it jumped around alive for decades.
The imperial court eventually accepted Lin Zexu's faction and asked him to go to Humen to ban smoking, which, combined with a series of troubles that followed, led to the Opium War.