The characteristics of the era of money in the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties refer specifically to the unique or particularly prominent characteristics embodied in its currency, and are relative to the monetary development of the previous historical period. If we can accurately grasp the characteristics of the era of the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it is not only conducive to highlighting the personality of this historical period, but also more clearly distinguishing it from the previous and subsequent historical periods. When the wheel of history entered the late Eastern Han Dynasty, especially after the Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties, the above situation underwent tremendous changes, and the characteristics of the Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties currency gradually emerged.
First, the characteristics of the monetary process
1. Diversification of numismatic writing
During the Three Kingdoms period, in order to enhance military strength, the leaders of the Shu Han regime did not hesitate to issue fictitious currency as a means to deprive the people of property in disguise, at this time the face value of the coin increased by a hundredfold, while the weight of the money remained basically unchanged. So in this context, the writing pattern of the coin began to change, and the text that originally marked the weight was either forced to add the face value or directly changed to a value, such as "straight one hundred and five baht", "straight one" and so on.
The minting of the Northern Zhou regime completely abandoned the weight unit. The same situation occurred in the numismatic writing of the Southern Dynasty. In the early days of the Liu Song regime minted coins, the text of which appeared in the Southern Dynasty together with weight and year numbers, the Chen Dynasty also minted a kind of "Tai Goods Six Baht" money, in ancient times, the words "too" and "big" were common, the issuer probably wanted to advertise that the new money belonged to the high quality, the weight of the coin, but the fact happened to be the opposite, because the people did not want to use this kind of inflated value, they accused it of having an unlucky symbol, in order to expect the early collapse of the Chen Dynasty's rule.
The continuous weight loss of metal copper coins was the root cause of the obvious change in the numismatic writing of the Wei and Jin dynasties. With the widespread phenomenon of coin weight reduction, most of the coins issued by the entire Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties could not stabilize the weight on the standard of the previously fixed five baht, and since the newly issued coins could not follow the original principle of weight stability, they simply no longer used weight inscriptions, and successively became numbers, national names, year numbers, etc. The change in the money text is a tentative change made under the background of the increasing weight loss of copper coins. For more than a thousand years, regardless of weight loss or not, the text on the coin was recorded in the year number, and this major turn and change in the money officially appeared in the historical stage of the Wei and Jin Dynasties.
2. The emergence of the sand casting process
The minting history of ancient coins on the mainland can be roughly divided into three stages, namely the era of flat plate vertical casting, the era of stacked casting and the era of mother money turning sand minting, and the most important minting method of which is the sand casting method, which was produced in the historical period of the Northern Dynasty. Qin to the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the main use of flat plate model vertical casting method, this method of minting money is more primitive, the number of coins minted each time is very limited, according to the current excavation of money model physical objects, under normal circumstances, a maximum of 60 coins can be minted at a time.
In addition, before directly minting money, craftsmen also need to spend effort to make money fans first, and most of the money fans in the early Han Dynasty are stone materials, so the production cost is higher and the service life is not too long. It can be seen that the low efficiency of coinage and the high cost of casting have become the biggest difficulties faced by the flat plate model vertical casting method.
Around the time when the Western Han Dynasty elm pods were popular, the folk began to appear superimposed casting methods. This method of minting money has improved the efficiency of coinage compared with the former, especially during the reign of Wang Mang, the stacking method has rapidly matured, at this time, 184 copper coins can be minted at one time, which is unimaginable during the period of flat plate fan casting. Moreover, the stacking method only needs a piece of copper mother fan to be pressed out of the pottery fan for use many times, which greatly saves the cost of manufacturing the money model, and it can be said that the stacking method has achieved the first jump in the coin casting process.
Of course, ancient craftsmen did not stop exploring more advanced casting methods, and finally in the Northern Wei Dynasty, the sand casting method appeared. This method is to use the mother money instead of the mother fan, in the fixed sand pattern to embose the money cavity, because the production process of the mother fan is omitted, and the sand type used for minting money can be reused indefinitely, which not only saves manpower, material resources, reduces the cost, but also greatly improves the production efficiency, it can be said that the traditional casting technology is a huge leap, and then for more than a thousand years, the sand turning method has become the main method of minting coins on the mainland.
There are also historical reasons why the sand turning method appeared in the Northern Wei Dynasty. The rulers of the Northern Wei Dynasty formulated a monetary policy that allowed the private sector to participate in the minting of money, which made the people have an urgent need to reduce costs in the process of minting money. And the most crucial thing is that because the people do not have mature smelting and casting conditions and cannot produce models with high technical requirements, it is likely to use the method of replacing the money model with real money in kind. In this process, in order to meet the needs of the mother money to turn the model, constantly adjust the ratio of sediment, and gradually explore the mother money sand casting method. The superimposed casting and sand casting methods are both derived from the invention of the people, and are in the historical period of monetary policy easing, which contains the above truths.
3. The weight of metal currencies continues to decrease
During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the weight of copper coins was always in a state of continuous weight reduction, from the original full value of five baht to the imaginary value of five baht, and then to three baht, two baht, and even less than one baht, which can be said to be a continuous weight reduction process. This kind of weight loss did not start from the Wei and Jin dynasties, but as early as the Eastern Han Dynasty.
In the more than one hundred years of history from the founding of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the late period, long-term and sustained inflation occurred, and the shrinkage and weight reduction of the money body is a more common way of expression of inflation. In the sixteenth year of Jianwu, the Eastern Han Dynasty issued five baht coins for the first time, and at this time, the actual weight of the coin was lower than the nominal weight. During the period from Emperor Shun to Emperor Huan, the market began to gradually appear cut and chiseled money, which was known for its inferior currency.
The Shanghai Museum has a collection of three eastern Han bronze coins, which belong to the nature of official casting, and its coin cavity model is exactly the same as the type of cut-chiseled money, and there is also a four-character inscription of "Dajizi" on the back of one of them. This shows that when the phenomenon of civil shearing is becoming more and more intense, the government is also involved, because of the higher smelting and casting skills, the government can directly mint inferior coins similar to the characteristics of cutting and chiseling money, rather than using primitive tools to transform like the people, so that it will greatly increase the speed and thus be better in the struggle with the people. Of course, the absurd behavior of the Eastern Han government directly led to soaring prices, forming serious inflation, and eventually pushing the national economy to the brink of collapse.
In the nineteenth year of Taihe, Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei minted money for the first time, and judging from the actual coins unearthed, the early Taihe five-baht coins were sufficient in weight relative to their face value of five baht, and even exceeded to a certain extent. Compared with the secret methods used by the rulers of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the Southern Liu Song regime was much more straightforward.
When Yuan Jia first minted money in the seventh year, Emperor Wen lowered the legal weight of five baht to four baht, after which Liu Ziye again reduced the weight to two baht. Such an overt currency weight reduction by the Liu Song regime triggered a large-scale phenomenon of piracy, and even the royal nobles and ministers participated in this procession in an attempt to profit from it. Around the time of the first year of Jinghe, due to the increasing inferiority of coins and the rapid rise in prices, there was finally a situation of stagnation in the circulation of commodities.
From the above point of view, almost throughout the Wei and Jin Dynasties, coins were in a continuous process of weight loss. The main purpose of the government's issuance of weight-reduction money is to earn the difference in price and make a profit. It is true that the issuance of weight-reducing money can be profited in a short period of time, but this is at the expense of people's wealth and market order.
Similarly, it is precisely because of the temptation of interests that rulers often lose their senses, especially when the state finances are in a moment of crisis, disregarding the interests of the people, resolutely issuing heavy money, trying to quickly achieve prosperity and turn around, countless times historical experience tells us that this is a road to failure.
Second, the impact of real economy and policy changes
1. The prosperity of physical money.
There are countless examples of the use of physical currency in the history books of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and even some scholars believe that physical money occupied a dominant position in the circulation field during this period. The decline of the commodity economy and the destruction of the metal currency use system were the main reasons for the prosperity of physical money in the Wei and Jin dynasties.
First of all, during the two Han Dynasties, the political environment was stable, the social productive forces increased rapidly, and the supply of commodities in the market also increased significantly, so that the commodity economy prospered. In this context, people are willing to take out more surplus products to participate in the exchange in the market, so as to harvest a certain amount of money, and even a large number of merchants have emerged in the commodity market, who have achieved the purpose of obtaining more money by specializing in various types of commodities.
This phenomenon is determined by the characteristics of money itself, "money is a portable means of store of value", the timely exchange of surplus products for money not only avoids the direct exchange between labor and commodities thereafter, but also stores the value of surplus products in a more convenient way.
Of course, the guarantee of monetary credit is a prerequisite for people to be willing to exchange products for money in a timely manner, and the Western Han Dynasty, which was highly unified in feudal centralization, met such requirements. It can be seen that at this time, the goal of the trader (merchant) in selling the surplus product is whether it is possible to obtain the currency containing profits, not in the goods themselves, and the purchase of goods is only a means for people to obtain money.
Secondly, as discussed earlier, the continuous debasement of metal currencies in the Wei and Jin dynasties not only directly led to the rampant private minting and theft of minting, but also further stimulated the occupation of the market by evil money. As the system of using metal money is destroyed and the credibility of government-issued money is eventually lost, people are reluctant to use those inferior and unworthy of the name of the inflated value, which is not only unproductive to exchange, but also causes users to suffer economic losses.
Therefore, the decline of the commodity economy and the destruction of the metal currency use system were the main reasons for the prosperity of physical money in the Wei and Jin dynasties. In the past, the various families regarded factors such as war and french copper as the reason for the prosperity of physical currency, but in fact this was only an external condition affecting the prosperity of physical currency, and the real cause must be influenced and governed by the law of commodity exchange and the monetary system.
2. The transformation of the monetary policy of the feudal government.
Since the issuance of the five-baht coin, the Western Han government has implemented a relatively stable monetary policy, from the archaeological excavation of coins, the entire Western Han Dynasty basically did not occur in the phenomenon of coin weight loss, which also shows that the original intention of the Western Han rulers to formulate monetary policy has always been to promote social and economic development as the center. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the weight reduction of coins began to appear, and at the same time, the excessive supply accelerated the speed of coin depreciation, and phenomena such as "all things are expensive" and "money is cheap" occurred during the Zhang Emperor; during the Huan Emperor, there was a state of "light goods and thin money, so it led to poverty".
As a result, some people in the imperial court suggested promulgating and implementing monetary policies of "no money minting" and "recasting big money". Although these two proposals were not fully approved after discussion by the courtiers, they inadvertently influenced the centuries that followed, becoming the "standard rule" for the imperial court to solve the currency problem during the hundreds of years of the Wei and Jin dynasties.
The ruler minted large sums of money for nothing more than to obtain more differences in the interests of the minted money by greatly increasing the nominal value of the currency, and to use this as a fund for the normal operation of the feudal government. Although the big money policy can quickly increase the state's revenue in a short period of time, it comes at the expense of the people's interests and will also bring hyperinflation.
Affected by this, the new regime that will be established can only adopt a policy of no minting money to slowly deplete the excessively deflated financial environment. The Government of the Western Jin Dynasty carried out a monetary policy without minting money, and this was the original intention of the rulers. The government's long-term failure to mint money will also have serious consequences, the most direct of which is the intensification of deflation, which leads to deflation.
At this time, it is still ordinary people who suffer losses, because of the small amount of money, they have to bear the pressure of currency appreciation, and eventually the gap between the rich and the poor in society is widened, and the class contradictions are more acute. Since then, the Southern and Northern Dynasties have also implemented the monetary policies of "not minting money" and "minting big money" to varying degrees.
In particular, in the Southern Dynasty, there has been a situation in which evil money and non-mint money have alternated one after another, which has also made the financial environment of the Southern Dynasty always under the double wreaking of expansion and austerity. The government mints bad money, that is, the policy of currency derogation, which produces a profit difference by reducing the actual weight of the coin and separating it from the nominal weight, although in a different way than minting large money, but achieving the same result.
It is worth noting that the big money policy formulated by the Northern Zhou regime was a great success because it was a foreign trade currency and the object of exchange was a higher value gold and silver coins, which was the only successful example of the minting policy. Whether it is a monetary policy of minting large money or not minting money, in fact, the feudal government began to use the minting of money as a means of profit, and the skillful use of these two monetary policies to exploit the people became the usual political means used by the rulers during the Wei and Jin Dynasties, which was also different from the monetary policy of the two Han Dynasties.
3. The circulation of money is extremely chaotic.
During the Qin and Han dynasties, the monetary system was unified, and the five-baht coin subsequently became the only legal circulating coin in the country, whether it was a settlement at the national level or a transaction in the private market, the figure of the five-baht coin could be seen everywhere, which can be said to be unimpeded.
This phenomenon underwent obvious changes during the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, which were embodied in three aspects: First, the coins circulating in the market were no longer only a single five-baht coin, but a state of mixed circulation of new and old money; second, because the physical object once had a certain function of money, it entered the circulation field and used it together; third, compared with the circulation range of the two Han and five baht coins, the circulation range of the Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties coins was much narrower, mainly reflected in the obvious regional differences in the field of currency circulation. In other words, the types of money circulating between different regions and the way money is used are not the same.
The direct cause of regional differences in the circulation of money is the division of political power, in addition to the imbalance of economic development between regions and the inconsistency of monetary systems, which also affect the course of this phenomenon to varying degrees. In short, the unified and orderly currency circulation order of the two Han Dynasties took a significant turn when it came to the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and the currency circulation began to gradually chaotic, which is also one of the most obvious characteristics of the times highlighted by the currency in this period.
conclusion
In short, we can see from the monetary characteristics of the Wei and Jin dynasties that a stage that conforms to the characteristics of China's feudal social and economic development, and a transitional period between the two major monetary economic climaxes. This period has the role of carrying on from the top to the bottom, without the various preparations and foundations for the development of the currency of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, after the brief unification of the Sui Dynasty, the circulation of the whole country may not be five baht coins, nor may it bring peaks to the monetary economy of the Sui and Tang dynasties.
Of course, to this day we should correctly look at the mistakes in the monetary system in the historical period, especially the failure of weight-loss coins to become a special tool for exploiting the people. Under the background of such an era, the negative impact and tragic lessons brought by the chaos of the monetary system itself to the country's economic construction and all aspects of the people's daily livelihood are still vividly remembered, and at the same time, they have also given the most distinctive historical enlightenment to later generations. To this day, we can still learn from the tortuous development of the currency of the Wei and Jin dynasties, making us more aware that money should serve economic development and not be used as a tool for the interests of the ruling class.