During the Northern Song Dynasty, Wang Anshi was the number one person, and as the leader of the New Party, his reforms were mixed and praised.
Being able to offend the entire elite group in a conservative autocratic dynasty, his advanced thinking and boldness are admirable, and Wang Anshi has left many literary works behind him, including Linchuan Collection, Wang Linchuan Collection, etc. Nowadays people often hear, "Spring wind and the south bank of the Green River, when will the bright moon shine on me." ", from this public berthing boat Guazhou.
In the second year of the celebration calendar, Wang Anshi entered the priesthood and the first to enter the career path. Because he was born in a family of officials and eunuchs, he developed a good political insight from an early age, and when he came to Renzong, the government was becoming increasingly unbearable and needed to change.
So in 1058, Wang Anshi wrote to the emperor to request the reform of the imperial government, which had a far-reaching impact, but it was not immediately implemented. Until Wang Anshi served as the governor of Song Shenzong after he ascended the throne, he introduced the conscription law, the farmland water conservancy law, and the green shoot law in one go. This was an absolutely groundbreaking move at the time, moving many people's cheese, and the following year, the imperial court appointed Wang Anshi as prime minister.
The reforms that followed were full of twists and turns, perhaps too advanced in their thinking to take into account the relations of production at that time, and were resisted in sharp opposition to the entire bureaucratic clique when it came to agrarian reform. However, the general public also does not like Wang Anshi's change of law, so from the top to the bottom of the undercurrent, Wang Anshi's reputation has always been very bad.
Because of his full efforts to promote reform, he was dismissed twice in the next 6 years, and Wang Anshi was immediately politically liquidated after the death of Song Shenzong, who supported the reform.
Sima Guang was ostracized because of his political disagreements with him, and after Wang Anshi's failure to change the law, Sima Guang immediately took over the position and removed all the previous New Deals, while Wang Anshi himself had to be relegated to Jiang Ning. He had a high IQ and emotional intelligence, and was serious and focused, but due to the large number of opponents, few people said good things about Wang Anshi at that time.
The great literary scholar Su Dongpo was very unaccustomed to him, and there were often sour and rotten words between the two, for example, Su Dongpo once wrote in an article, "The husband does not forget to wash his face, and the dirt on his clothes does not forget to be raccoon, and this person's love is also." Not today, the clothes of the courtiers, the food of the dogs, the prisoners who lose their faces and talk about poetry. These words are used to allude to political enemies.
In the eyes of traditional scholars, Wang Anshi's new party does things differently and does not conform to the rules, and in the autocratic dynasty, anyone who does such subversive things will always make people look at it coldly, but Wang Anshi's view of the economy is far beyond that era. Today's Western countries believe that the government should not interfere too much in the governance of economic issues, which coincides with Wang Anshi's thinking.
Wang Anshi's actions are too big to make it difficult for the conservative society to accept it completely, and his reforms from society to the city to the countryside, from commerce to handicrafts and agriculture, almost all aspects of society must be changed, and in the conservative and entangled court, Wang Anshi's every move has made those people like needles in the back.
Improving the imperial examination system offended the readers, improving the land system offended the big landlords, military reform offended a cadre of generals, and finally even the relatives of the emperor and the state, the two palace empresses, had to stand up against the reform together.
Because the conservative forces were almost overwhelming, Song Zhezong did not have the boldness of Emperor Shenzong, so he had to allow the conservatives to abolish Wang Anshi's new law, and after 10 years of resignation, he himself died in Jiangning Province. Whether the change of law is good or bad, the views in different dynasties are different, if you use the eyes of today's people, Wang Anshi is the tide of the times, and has a profound insight into the contradiction between the productive forces and production relations of the Northern Song Dynasty at that time.
However, at that time, the characterization of the change of law was surprisingly consistent, for example, during the Southern Song Dynasty, the history books said that it was precisely because of Wang Anshi's change that the northern Song Dynasty fell.
In addition to the political ambitions that make people argue endlessly, Wang Anshi is also a great writer, he has as many as 1500 poems in the world, of course, with the unsuccessful career, the poetry has also changed from the arrogance and dry cloud in the early stage to the lonely and lonely in the later period, but from beginning to end can reflect Wang Anshi's humanistic spirit, although he was the prime minister in the past, he sympathized with the working people at the bottom and had a fairly upright heart.
This intermittent 15-year change of law and efforts to strengthen the law, in fact, to some extent to achieve the Northern Song Dynasty's rich country and strong army. Although conservatives eventually repealed the new law, during that 15-year period, finances were replenished, land annexation was curbed, and bureaucratic privileges were limited.
Especially after the reform of the education system, schools at all levels also sent a lot of scarce talents to the bureaucratic group, although the interest groups were never willing to affirm these achievements, but without Wang Anshi, the Northern Song Dynasty may have decayed faster.
References: "Berthing Guazhou", "History of Song"