Don't miss the "Big Mac of the World" in 1820

I see a chart today, which is the global economic data introduced in 1820 AD, that is, the twenty-fifth year of the Great Qing Dynasty, and there is a very bright line of the target, China, that is, the GDP of the Great Qing at that time accounted for more than 32% of the world.

The title of this picture is very appealing - "The Big Mac of the World", and then many people are saying that 1820 was a huge watershed, and since then the Qing Dynasty has begun to decline. Under the infection of this title and content, many people began to proud, look forward to, and miss the era of "economic three-point world" in the comment area.

As we all know, my main business is to read the history of the Song Dynasty, I am not familiar with the history of the Qing Dynasty, and I have almost forgotten the history of the world, and I have also blackened my eyes on the economic data at that time, so I really can't judge whether this data is real, and whether the Great Qing at that time was really a giant on the earth.

But I want to say, whether this data is true or not, please don't miss that era.

A few days ago, I once asked a question in my circle of friends: In those prosperous times in the history books, are the lives of ordinary people really good?

I don't have enough convincing data and evidence, I can only look for it from the records in the historical records.

The twenty-fifth year of Jiaqing is the year that Jiaqing died. Most of the records in the "Qing History Manuscript, Renzong Benji" and "Qing History Manuscript, Xuanzong Benji" are a series of imperial throne changes and personnel arrangements such as Jiaqing's death and Daoguang's accession to the throne, and basically do not mention the lives of ordinary people.

But fortunately, the "Qing History Manuscript, Five Elements" will record many things that "are not enough for the emperor's book" in that year. I flipped through it curiously, and I can only describe it as shocking.

This year, in July, the Tongxiang epidemic, the Taiping epidemic, and the Qingpu epidemic; In August, the Yueqing epidemic, the Yongjia plague epidemic; Winter, Jiaxing epidemic.

This year, Xuanhua, Ningjin, Ninghe, Baodi, Wen'an, Dong'an, Zhuozhou, Gaoyang, Anzhou, Jinghai, Cangzhou, Bushan, Daming, Nanle, Changyuan, Baoan, Wanquan, Huai'an, Xining, Huailai, Xinhe, Fengrun, Lishui Dashui.

This year, the new town does not rain from February to July. In May, Huangmei suffered a severe drought. In August, Jinyun, Lishui, Shengxian, Nanchang, Jianchang, Linjiang, Ganzhou, Yuanzhou, Wuchang, Xianning, Chongyang, Jinhua, Changshan drought.

This is only the record of Jiaqing's twenty-five years and one year, if you are interested in flipping through the "Qing History Manuscript", you will find that such records run through the entire "Kang Qian prosperous era", and of course, including the "world giant" era during the Jiaqing period.

This is only to use very simple words such as "great epidemic", "great water" and "great drought" to describe these tragedies, but those who have read history know that behind these simple words, there are countless tragedies of broken families and deaths.

What was the standard of living of ordinary people at that time? More than twenty years earlier, that is, 1793, the fifty-eighth year of Qianlong, the reign of Kang Qian. An Englishman named Macartney came to China with a mission, and he once wrote a very detailed account of the life of ordinary people, poverty, hunger, numbness, and lack of dignity, which contrasted very sharply with the wealth, profligacy, extravagance, and arrogance of the emperors, princes, and bureaucrats.

Of course, we can't guarantee that Macartney's account is 100% accurate, but the next question I want to say is that a person who likes history, or has read history, should have this judgment: in the ancient imperial society, in whose hands resources were concentrated and whose hands were the distribution rights.

It's not just the Great Qing that gave birth to the "Big Mac of the World".

Those prosperous times in history are more prosperous times when emperors open up their territory, prosperous times when the treasury is rich and rich, prosperous times when battlefields destroy cities and fortifications, and prosperous times when officials indulge in pleasure.

For ordinary people, that is, relatively stable and affluent, the place where they live will not become a battlefield, they can get disaster relief and tax cuts in the event of natural disasters, and they can spread out a local official who is not so greedy and has the spirit of basic rule of law, and that's it. Their lives are far more glamorous and tragic than those we see in the history books.

The emperor feasted the ministers, the civil officials brewed wine and wrote poems, the military generals wore wine and meat through the intestines, and the gentlemen were merry, these actually had nothing to do with ordinary people.

Young friends here can go home and ask their elders, and older friends can recall well, if your family is an ordinary family, when did your family start to eat meat every day? Since when did you not have to wear clothes with patches?

Looking at the history of the Song Dynasty over the years, people often ask me, in the 319 years of the Two Song Dynasty, when did the people live the best life?

I have actually thought about this very seriously, maybe a little unexpected, and may be scolded, but I still want to say my thoughts: I think it was the twenty years after the eleventh year of the Southern Song Dynasty Shaoxing and the Song Jin Peace Conference, and the thirty-first year before the southern invasion of King Hailing in Shaoxing.

In these twenty years, the biggest advantage of the Southern Song Dynasty was that there was no place to spend a lot of money, it did not go around fighting like Taizu and Taizong, it did not fight first and then cultivate the Taoist Temple like Zhenzong, it did not always fight with Western Xia like Emperor Renzong, it did not use changes to obtain wealth from the people like Shenzong, Zhezong, and Huizong, and it did not either fight in Jinmeng or actively prepare for war like Emperor Xiaozong, Ningzong, and Lizong later.

In the past twenty years during the Shaoxing period, the measures of the new law of Xining were canceled, and you can often see records of tax cuts and exemptions, and a lot of welfare measures have been added, although Emperor Gaozong is afraid of the Jin Kingdom, but he has not prepared for war on a large scale (a large reason is that he does not dare, afraid of falling into reality), although the life of the people is not rich, but I think it should be the easiest period of burden.

And this period happened to be the most criticized era by history buffs who like grand narratives.

History, what a joke.