Source public number: Curious group leader
The great chaos in the world at the end of the Yuan Dynasty can be said to be unprecedented in Chinese history. From the beginning of "one eye of the stone people, provoking the yellow river world to rebel", the Yuan Dynasty fell into a nationwide riot. In the Central Plains, East China, and South China, large-scale resistance struggles took place, and large-scale uprisings pressed down the gourd and scooped up, suppressed this, and came that, and never stopped. The Yuan Dynasty, which created the largest territory in China's history, was founded only more than a century ago, and fell into a fiery disaster, and finally perished in the 97th year of its rule over China and withdrew from the Central Plains.
The reasons for the demise of the Yuan Dynasty, the summary of modern people, mainly have the following points.
First, national oppression, the division system of the four-class people, has intensified ethnic contradictions and triggered a large number of rebellions.
From 1344 AD, natural disasters occurred frequently in the Yuan Dynasty, with floods, droughts and plagues.
The third is the emperor fainting, the last emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, Emperor Yuanshun, who is a well-known fool in Chinese history, who indulged in pleasure and ignored the government, and then there were concubines who interfered in politics and eunuchs monopolized power. Although the Yuan Dynasty has been hesitant on the issue of "Han Law" and refuses to thoroughly implement the "Han Law", the Yuan Dynasty did not take a few years to learn all kinds of problems of the Han Dynasty.
However, on the issue of the demise of the Yuan Dynasty, there is a fact that has not been paid much attention to, that is, economic bankruptcy.
After Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty, he adopted enlightened measures to develop production, encouraging nongsang and no longer arbitrarily turning farmland into pastures. However, out of the consideration of war, the Yuan Dynasty has always implemented a high tax policy, and the taxation is so strict that the people of the Central Plains who cannot afford to pay taxes have to borrow usurious loans to pay taxes, so the oppression is getting heavier and heavier.
After the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty, around the question of what kind of economic system should be established, the "Hanfa faction" and the "economic faction" within the Yuan Dynasty were very fiercely fighting. The former advocates lightening of the thin endowment and adopting the traditional feudal dynasty tax method, while the latter advocates increasing tax revenue and refining the tax content. Ahma's struggle with prince Zhenjin also focused mainly on this issue.
After Ahma's death, the Yuan Dynasty's fiscal tax revenue increased and fell from time to time, but the main tax thinking did not change, that is, to maximize the tax source and increase the tax rate. Moreover, from the perspective of tax sources, the wars and chaos at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty left a large number of unowned wastelands in the Central Plains and Jiangnan regions, most of which were occupied by Mongolian princes and Han heroes. They enjoyed a tax exemption policy, so that high taxes could only be borne by self-employed farmers and industrialists.
Beginning with Ahma, the Yuan dynasty increased national income mainly by expropriating it from craftsmen in the southeast, the commoners of animal husbandry of all ethnic groups in the northwest, and a large number of peasants in the central plains. The more land was annexed, the more taxes were apportioned to the common people of all ethnic groups. At the same time, usury was prevalent in the Yuan Dynasty, and a large number of peasants had to borrow in order to pay taxes, and as a result, they suffered new exploitation. In this way, a vicious circle was formed, so much so that the peasant revolt rebounded from 1344 AD.
Ahma in the film and television drama
In the early Yuan Dynasty, the Yuan Government did a lot of work to restore the economy. For example, in the Central Plains, water conservancy was built, wasteland was reclaimed, and displaced people were recruited. During Kublai Khan's reign, he reclaimed pastures in northern China and merged pastures and tuntian fields into one, implementing a reward policy for northern reclamation.
The economy of the early Yuan Dynasty once developed rapidly, but the agricultural taxes of the Yuan Dynasty rose and rose. The agricultural tax collection of the Yuan Dynasty was taken from the content of the two tax laws, and the discriminatory collection method was implemented, and the taxes in the north and south were different. The agricultural tax in the south is relatively heavy, and different ethnic groups are divided according to rank, and the severity of taxation is also different. The agricultural land tax of the Yuan Dynasty had a Ding tax and a land tax, the Ding tax was the Ding tax, and the land tax was the land tax.
The payment of agricultural taxes in the Yuan Dynasty, along with the issuance of paper money, began to be paid in paper money. However, the yuan dynasty paper money issuance became more and more extensive, and the currency has been depreciating, so that the water has risen and the burden on the peasants has become heavier and heavier.
Another fact is that in just 70 years, from kublai Khan of the Yuan Dynasty to the Zhizheng period of the Yuan Shun Emperor, the salt tax of the Yuan Dynasty increased by 20 times, the tea tax increased by 240 times, and the commercial tax increased by 10 times. At the same time, the Yuan Dynasty implemented a "tax package" policy, which the Yuan Dynasty people called "punching", that is, the merchants paid taxes on behalf of the tenant farmers, and then the tenant farmers repaid them with high interest, which is actually a usury in disguise. Ahma of Kublai Khan's time was a veteran of this kind of thing.
In terms of commercial taxes, the commercial taxes of the Yuan Dynasty have always been considered very low, which seems to be the case on the surface, but in fact, the commercial taxes of the Yuan Dynasty were low, and they were only taxed under different names. In addition to the commercial tax, another content of the Commercial Tax of the Yuan Dynasty is miscellaneous, such as tea sales in the tea industry, wine in the wine industry, gold, silver, lakes, jade, copper, iron, mercury, wood, all levy additional taxes, in addition to the "extra tax" 32 kinds, it can be said that there are many tricks, clever names, really bitter Yuan Dynasty civil servants named.
Taxes are constantly being imposed, so what about the economic revenue and expenditure of the Yuan Dynasty government? Looking at the economic revenue and expenditure of the Yuan Dynasty government, it can be said that it is even more shocking.
For example, in 1292 AD, the revenue of the Yuan Dynasty was 2978305 ingots, but the expenditure was 3638543 ingots, which was a serious deficit finance. Subsequently, there is a shortage of tax payments. For example, in 1309 AD, the revenue receivable was 4 million ingots, but only 2.8 million ingots were actually received. The planned money could not be collected, but the tax increase was increasing day by day. For example, compared with 1309 AD and 1292 AD, all kinds of miscellaneous classes in the Yuan Dynasty increased by 20 times, but the revenue collected did not increase accordingly. The shortage of taxes, the lack of tax sources, was a problem that the Yuan Dynasty had always faced.
At the same time, the Yuan Dynasty also had to face huge costs. The yuan dynasty spent the most on several projects, one was the year gift, and the other was the establishment of Yamen. The princesses, princesses, princes and concubines of the Yuan Dynasty all enjoyed the "year gift" of the state. And as the multiplication of members continues to increase, the state's investment in this area is increasing. At the same time, the Yuan Dynasty's Yamen were also "redundant officials at the top, and officials from below". The nobility also enjoyed privileges, with 72 mongols and 30 semu people, and these expenditures alone were enough to hollow out the yuan dynasty's family foundation.
In fact, from the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty, it has faced an increasingly severe economic situation, but the Yuan Dynasty has always adopted the simplest and most brutal method to increase income - paper money.
The paper money of the Yuan Dynasty, which began in 1260 AD during the reign of Kublai Khan, was based on silk and silver as a unit, and was stable at first, but in the early days of the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty, it played a role in stabilizing and restoring the economy. But then, as the financial crisis of the Yuan Dynasty intensified, the Yuan Dynasty almost regarded paper money as the only magic weapon. Every time there was no money, paper money was issued in a big way. The result was severe inflation and a growing depreciation of paper money.
Another problem with the economy of the Yuan Dynasty is that from the beginning of its establishment, the Yuan Dynasty retained many barbaric and backward systems, such as the sharecropping system. The sharecroppers of the Yuan Dynasty were like serfs. In the Yuan Dynasty, landlords had the right to execute tenants at will, and they could buy and sell tenants whole families, and the personal and family relations of tenants were completely subordinate to the master, which was almost a major regression from feudalism to slavery. At the same time, the land annexation of the Yuan Dynasty was also the most drastic in Chinese history. The royal nobles of the Yuan Dynasty often plundered the mintian and could declare the expropriation of the mintian without any formalities. If a homeowner is unlucky, his land will be favored by which nobleman, and he may have nothing overnight.
Related to the economy of the Yuan Dynasty, there was also developed overseas trade. For most of the Yuan Dynasty, the development of overseas trade was an important feature of the Yuan Dynasty. However, after the middle of the Yuan Dynasty, a large number of Japanese Wokou invaded the southeast coast, and the coastal sea route was blocked. In order to resist the Wokou, the Yuan Dynasty issued a ban on the sea, but the result of the ban on the sea was that the income of the municipal shipping department fell sharply, and the municipal shipping department, which was once the government's revenue, gradually fell into a slump.
The economy of the Yuan Dynasty, in fact, could not make ends meet from the beginning, and then the fiscal deficit became more and more serious, and the peasant uprising at the end of the Yuan Dynasty was not so much a peasant riot as a complete collapse of the national economy.
The end of the Yuan dynasty's rule began with the Great Red Turban Rebellion that broke out in 1355 AD. The uprising was led by the exploitation of the river workers who governed the Yellow River, and the anger was quickly ignited. In fact, the project to control the Yellow River presided over by Jia Lu this time is a project that affects the national fortunes of the Yuan Dynasty. The end of the Yuan Dynasty was characterized by successive floods, especially in the 11 years from 1344 to 1355 AD, the Yellow River flooded as many as 9 times, and more importantly, the state was even stretched out of money for disaster relief. For example, when heavy water was sent on both sides of the Huai River and a large number of peasants fled the wilderness, the Yuan Dynasty could not come up with disaster relief grain at all, and could only take paper money to count, and the paper money was just a piece of waste paper! The fate of the demise of the Yuan Dynasty is inevitable.
As a nomadic people who transitioned to a feudal society, the biggest mistake of the Yuan Dynasty was that it did not completely complete the transition from slave society to feudalization. In agriculture and handicrafts, the backward slave system was retained, but in industry and commerce, it was too advanced, and the result of the long-term intertwining of the two contradictions was the situation in which the country could not control it.
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