When you think of salt, what comes to mind? It seems that this is the most common spice in people's lives, although it does not feel very important in normal times, but if the food is not supplemented by salt, it will become dull and tasteless. It is not only a seasoning, as a strict control of the state, although people can now buy in various stores, but in fact, the mainland modern for salt is still the government unified management, and this phenomenon in ancient times is more stringent, today to take you to see the ancient government for salt control.
The salt we come into contact with today is roughly divided into two types, one is the salt mined in the salt mine, and the other is the well-known seawater salt. In fact, most of the salt people eat comes from minerals. After the processing of modern technology, the current salt is high in purity, good-looking and safe, unlike the crude salt in ancient times, which is a lump one by one. But even if the appearance is not good, salt has a very important position in ancient times. Salt is an important source of tax revenue for the country, in addition to the salt is related to the people's livelihood of the country, successive governments rely on salt to bring a lot of wealth to the country, whether from the Spring and Autumn Warring States period or to the Han Dynasty, or in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Because salt is a government monopoly, so the price profit margin is large, and it is a necessity, the people must buy, so each government relies on salt can bring a lot of wealth to the country, and this wealth is used in all fields of the country. Sometimes salt can even be used instead of wages for soldiers and workers, and you can imagine how much wealth salt is. As an army that protects the rule of the state, soldiers need strength to be able to fight foreign enemies. If people do not consume salt for a long time, it will lead to fatigue, so controlling salt can control the combat effectiveness of the army to a certain extent. And if civil organizations want to rebel, the government can make these organizations lose their combat effectiveness through the control of salt, and to a certain extent, controlling salt can also maintain the rule of the feudal dynasty.
The status of salt in ancient times: The status of salt in ancient times should be very high. In modern times, due to the development of chemical technology, there are more and more types of spices, so in people's ordinary salt is only one of the most common spices, and can be bought all over the country. But in ancient times, it was different, and table salt could only be purchased in government-mandated areas. It can be said that table salt is a strategic material of the country, and its importance has exceeded a lot.
The importance of salt in ancient times: In ancient times, salt was a daily necessity for people, and for people, it was very important to consume table salt. If humans do not eat salt for a period of time, the body will have symptoms of nausea and vomiting, and the limbs will be weak and unable to put in labor, and it will threaten human life for a long time. It should be known that there was no substitute for salt in ancient times, so salt is related to the survival and safety of the entire country. If the government does not control it and is controlled by some unscrupulous businessmen, the security of the entire country will be threatened.
Salt sales channels: In ancient times, there were roughly two channels for salt sales, one was to allow the people to make salt, but the government collected taxes from it. However, this method has great drawbacks, first of all, the country does not know how much salt the people make, and it is difficult to collect the corresponding tax without knowing the quantity. Many profiteers seek huge profits through loopholes in them, which is undoubtedly stealing the country's taxes. At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the state was open to the salt industry, and local princes and merchants accumulated a large amount of wealth, threatening the central government. Therefore, after Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the state did not allow the people to make salt privately.
The second is that the state unifies the production and trade of table salt. Let's take a look at the system of the ming and qing dynasties' government supervision of merchant sales. In the early years of the Qing Dynasty, the salt-producing land was openly tendered, allowing major salt merchants to compete with each other, and those with high prices could get the production and sales rights of the salt-producing land, also known as salt introduction. Merchants who spend money to buy this are equivalent to paying taxes to the state in advance, and with the right to produce and sell, they can go to the salt producing area to get salt, and then go to the designated area of the state to sell it. This method made the government easy, and it seemed that the salt merchants had a great deal of freedom, but in fact, it was under the control of the government, and the salt completely fell into the hands of the government.
Unified management of the national government: After the Western Han Dynasty, in fact, the government's control of salt was intermittent, for example, in the 128 years of the Sui Dynasty and the early Tang Dynasty, the government did not control salt and exempted salt from taxation. Although the tax revenue of the state has been reduced to a certain extent, it has increased the wealth of the people. This phenomenon ended after the Anshi Rebellion, because the tax revenue from table salt as a proportion of the country's total assets is unimaginable. In the Middle and Tang Dynasties, half of the state's fiscal revenue came from salt; by the Time of the Song Dynasty, 2/3 of the state's income came from salt; in the Yuan Dynasty, it was even more terrifying, and eight-tenths of the country's income came from the salt industry; even in the Ming and Qing dynasties, half of the country's wealth came from salt; successive dynasties and dynasties were strengthening the control of the salt industry.
Cracking down on illegal salt: For the governments of successive dynasties, what really bothered them was not the management of official salt, but how to crack down on illegal salt. Private salt, as the name suggests, is salt that has not been made and sold by the government, and does not pay any taxes, completely outside the control of the government. This not only greatly threatens the government's rule, but more importantly reduces the government's fiscal revenue. Therefore, successive dynasties have hated the phenomenon of private salt. Why does private salt appear? The price of official salt is poor in high quality; since ancient table salt was a government-regulated trade, quality issues were not considered when mining and manufacturing. For example, during the reign of Emperor Renzong of the Northern Song Dynasty, officials said that salt was mixed with sediment during transportation, and the taste was bitter and could not be eaten, which shows how poor the quality of salt was at that time. But private salt is different, private salt is generally pure white, not mixed, good quality and low price. Because of the lack of a tax from the government, the price is also much cheaper. There have always been some outlaws in the dynasties and dynasties, and those who are rich do not care about their lives. First of all, the production cost of salt is low, and the price is high, the profit margin in the middle is very large, and the sales are widespread, and the people are willing to pay. Under such circumstances, there are naturally some people who are willing to take risks against the government and make huge profits from it. Moreover, these salt smugglers not only made money, some of them organized their own armed forces in order to oppose the government, and eventually even developed into rebel armies.
Most of the rebels at the end of the Tang Dynasty were salt smugglers, and the famous peasant rebel leaders Huang Chao and Wang Xianzhi all accumulated strength by selling smuggled salt, and Huang Chao even led the rebel army into Chang'an at one time. The founders of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms were mostly salt traders, such as Wang Jian, the founding monarch of the Former Shu Dynasty, and Qian Miao, the King of Wuyue. The leaders of the peasant uprising, such as Zhang Shicheng and Fang Guozhen, who rose up at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, were also from the salt lords. Salt is not allowed to be sold across borders, which was originally a policy proposed by the ancient government to combat illegal salt, but it did not think that it led to the emergence of private salt to a certain extent, and although the mainland has many salt resources, it is extremely unevenly distributed. Since the Tang and Song dynasties, in order to ensure the income of official sales, the circulation of salt has been strictly controlled by the government, and the salt sales areas have been strictly divided, and the policy of marketing boundaries has been implemented, and the salt in different production areas has been restricted to a certain area and cannot be exceeded. For example, Guangnan salt cannot be sold in the neighboring Qianzhou area, because it is from the distant Huai salt sales area. This kind of artificial regulation makes it difficult to buy and sell salt in some areas with backward transportation, and in order to survive, the people selling salt has become the only way.
How did dynasties and generations crack down on smuggling salt? In ancient mainland China, selling illegal salt was a very serious crime, almost equal to today's drug trafficking crime. During the Tang Dynasty, the death penalty was imposed for selling salt across the border, selling more than one stone of salt and two inches of rod ridge, and in the 4th year of Yamato, those who sold more than two stones were sentenced to death. During the 5th Dynasty and Ten Kingdoms period, as long as the smuggling of salt was sold, no matter how much it was, it was all the death penalty. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, no matter how many salt traffickers there were, they were all punished with 100 canes, served in the army for three years, and aggravated the charges according to different scenarios. It can be seen that successive dynasties and dynasties have legal regulations on table salt. In addition to the extremely serious crimes, the sales policy mentioned above is also very effective. Although it is said that it has led to the flood of private salt in some remote areas, this time it still eliminates private salt in some areas. Salt from different production areas has different characteristics, and once it is found in a certain area that is different from the salt sold before, it can basically be judged as private salt, which is particularly easy for the government to catch and control. There is no way for these salt merchants to sell across borders, which to a certain extent prevents officials from making huge profits from them.
Why is the sale of smuggled salt repeatedly prohibited? Some officials made huge profits from it, and some corrupt officials colluded with salt dealers and officials and businessmen, and they sold salt to each other and obtained a lot of wealth from it. It is precisely because of the attraction of wealth that there will always be some people who are desperate to take risks, coupled with the fact that official salt is too expensive, some people cannot buy it, and they have to embark on the road of private salt. The process of making private salt is very simple; the mainland has many salt mines, the government cannot dig every one, the people can always find some salt mines, and the residents living on the sea can even bask in seawater to make salt. In this case it is almost impossible to eliminate illegal salt. In addition, some officials in ancient times only recognized money and did not recognize people, even if they were caught, they could be let go as long as they gave money. In this case, the risk factor of smuggling salt is not very large.
As a money-making machine of the ancient imperial court, it can not only help the government obtain a large amount of wealth and stabilize the rule of the country, but also to a certain extent, it can also help the government manage non-governmental organizations, and control a large number of salt merchants in their own hands, which to a certain extent reduces the emergence of domestic rebellions, which is also an important reason for the monopoly of salt in successive dynasties. It is precisely because of the government monopoly that the price quality is poor, which also leads to countless people who sell salt, and those who accumulate a lot of wealth through the sale of salt often become the demise of a dynasty.