Preface
The issue of agriculture is an important topic in ancient Chinese history, and there have been many research results on land issues, taxation issues, and agricultural development measures in the Mongol and Yuan dynasties.
Despite the fruitful results, an important question arises when discussing agriculture in the Mongol and Yuan periods:
The Mongols are nomadic as their main way of life, and after the land is given to them, how should they manage it?
Could it be that no one planted the land in the Mengyuan period?
Agricultural areas and agriculture-related systems during the Great Mongolian period
From the establishment of the Great Mongolian State by Genghis Khan in 1206 to the succession of Kublai Khan in 1260, the ruling area and political center of gravity of the Great Mongolian State were on the Mobei Plateau. Due to the frequent wars, the rulers did not pay enough attention to agriculture with relatively high requirements for a peaceful environment and climatic conditions, and the agricultural system was not obvious. However, it does not mean that there was no agriculture during this period, and no agriculture-related systems were introduced.
Distribution of farming areas
Although agricultural production is underdeveloped, the grain processing tools, stone slabs and other agricultural tools found in the Tula River Basin, Sukhbaatar, Kusugul, South Gobi and other places, as well as the pottery collected for storing grain, show that from the north to the south of Mongolia in the Bronze Age (from Kusugul to South Gobi), from east to west (Sukhbaatar to Kobdo) have left the remains of primitive agriculture.
In the first year of Taizu (1206), Genghis Khan unified Mobei and established the Great Mongolian State. In the first year of Taizong (1229), Wogetai Khan ascended the throne, and in the sixth year of Taizong, the Mongol and Song Dynasty jointly destroyed Jin.
After the fall of the Jin Dynasty, at the beginning of the seventh year of Taizong, the troops of Wogetai Khan attacked the Southern Song Dynasty in three ways to Sichuan, Jianghuai, Hanshui Valley and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and the war lasted until the thirteenth year of Taizong, and was temporarily suspended due to the death of Ogedei.
Ten years later, in the first year of Xianzong (1251), Möngke Khan began a tug-of-war with the Southern Song Dynasty again, and at the end of the ninth year of Xianzong (1259), Möngke Khan died of serious injuries. So far, the territory of the Great Mongolian State has expanded southward to the Central Plains originally owned by the Jin Dynasty, and the Yangtze River valley has become the battlefield of Song and Mongolia.
This also meant that the area of suitable areas for agriculture in Mongolia's territory had greatly expanded to the south.
The land system and taxation system during the Great Mongolian period
The land system of the Great Mongolian period was mainly the tuntian system, which was located in a relatively cold area and had less land suitable for agricultural growth. Ogedai Khan also once gave land to the Han Jiao Deyu "well through the north barrier city field".
But agriculture is not its main mode of production. As the war progressed, the main form of agriculture was tuntian, which was an important system for the development of agricultural economy in the Mengyuan and Yuan dynasties.
"Yuan History: Soldiers III" recorded: "At the beginning of the country, the army was used to conscript, and when the enemy of the fortified city was encountered, it was necessary to defend it. Fourth, 25% Obviously, the role of Tuntian in the Mengyuan period was military reserves and city defense.
During the period of the Great Mongolian Kingdom, the location of the tuntian in various places is not completely determined by the academic circles at present, and the tuntian with traffic arteries was mostly set up in the early stage; There are tuntians that combine military operations and agricultural production; There are also tuntians for the resettlement of displaced people and descendants, the most famous is Zhenhai tuntian. Zhenhai was a general that Genghis Khan relied on deeply, and in the seventh year of Taizu (1212), he was ordered to "Tuntian in Aluhuan and set up Zhenhai City to defend it".
There is also a more famous place is Bazhou Tuntian.
Whether it is Zhenhai Tuntian, Bazhou Tuntian, Fengxiang Road, Jingzhao Road and other tuntian, whether it is a military tun, a civilian tuntian, a prisoner tuntian, or an immigrant tuntian, from the distribution area, they are all set up in accordance with the military offensive objectives at that time: there was already a relatively large-scale tuntian during the period of Xianzong Mengke Khan, and even a tuntian management organization.
At that time, the tuntian was determined by the time and the people and the place, and the agricultural system was still in the embryonic state, with phases and regions. However, the tuntian system during the Great Mongolian period provided the foundation for large-scale tuntian in the future.
The tax system of the Great Mongolian period
At that time, the area where the Khan was located was the Gosai region, and his measures to promote agricultural development have not yet been seen in the historical records. The "Historical Collection" records that Ögedai Khan once rewarded the successful people who planted radishes and incense trees, which shows that Ögedai Khan attached great importance to planting, and also meant that nomadic life demanded agriculture.
However, Wokotai still implements the sub-feudal system for the land north of the Jianghuai River that it occupies, which is an extension of the Mobei grassland sub-feudal system in the Han land.
During the period of the Great Mongolian Kingdom, agriculture could not develop in areas that were not suitable for agriculture. Agricultural areas acquired in the war, such as the Han region, began to restore their original agriculture.
Obviously, the development of agriculture in the ruling area was extremely uneven and had regional characteristics: the tuntian and management measures during the period of Möngke Khan were the continuation and expansion of the tuntian system during the period of the Great Mongol State: the combination of the two reflected the inheritance of the agricultural system.
Agricultural regions and agriculture-related systems during the Yuan Dynasty
Distribution of farming areas
In the first year of Zhongtong (1260), Kublai Khan ascended to the throne of Khan. During this period, Kublai Khan had been in Monan for nearly ten years. As early as the first year of Xianzong (1251), Kublai Khan opened the Jinlian River and was appointed to lead the "military affairs of the Han land in Monan".
In the fourth year of Xianzong (1254), Kublai Khan captured Dali City, and Yunnan was incorporated into the territory of Great Mongolia. In the eighth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1271), Kublai Khan changed the name of the country to "Da Yuan" by taking the meaning of "Da Intercept Qianyuan" in the Book of Changes, and moved the capital to Yanjing the following year, called Dadu.
In the sixteenth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1279), the Southern Song Dynasty was destroyed and the Yuan Dynasty was unified. At this point, the territory of the Yuan Dynasty has "surpassed Yin Mountain in the north, quicksand in the west, Liaozuo in the east, and the sea surface in the south." ”
The establishment of the Yuan Dynasty meant that the territory of the Great Mongolian State advanced from north to south, and also showed that the main ruling area of the Mongol and Yuan Dynasty advanced from the original Mobei Plateau to the Central Plains suitable for agricultural growth and the south of the Yangtze River. The expansion of the ruling area from the north to the south, especially in the face of the vast areas suitable for farming, the ruling policy will inevitably be adjusted accordingly.
Agricultural development and related institutions during the Yuan Dynasty
A pluralistic land system during the Yuan Dynasty
As the Mongol-Yuan War progressed, its land distribution was different. As far as the ownership system is concerned, it is divided into two major systems: official land and private land. Private land is privately owned, and the cultivator pays a tax to the state for grain, and the land can be bought and sold.
There are many ways to use official fields, such as drinking fields, job fields, tuntians, etc. At the same time, the state of agricultural development in the country is extremely uneven. It can be basically divided into several major regions such as the Central Plains, the northern borderlands, the southeast region, and the southwest region.
Even within the same region, for example, in the northern border provinces of Gansu, Liaoyang, and Lingbei, agricultural development is not consistent. Taking only the most representative tuntian controlled by the state, during the Kublai Khan period, the tuntian was extremely extensive. "Yuan History: Soldier Zhi III" records that "the sea is one, so the inside and each guard, and the outside and the province, all set up tuntian, in order to pay the army."
Or because of the ancient system, or because of the appropriateness of the place, it is very detailed and dense. About Shaoling, Hongze, Gan, Su, melon, sand, because of the system of the people of the past, its geographical advantages are not reduced from the old: and Lin, Shaanxi, Sichuan and other places, according to the suitability of the place and caused it, but also did not taste its benefits.
As for Yunnan Bafan, Hainan, and Haibei, although they are not the places of Tuntian, they are considered to be the hearts of barbarians, and they are controlled by the Tun clan because of the control of troops. Because of this, there are no soldiers in the world that cannot be tuned, and there is no land that cannot be cultivated. ”
According to the chronology presented in the 100th volume of the "History of the Yuan Dynasty", the number of Tuntian in the period of Kublai Khan far exceeded that of the previous generations, and even far exceeded that of the later generations. Why did Tuntian reach its peak during this period?
First of all, Kublai Khan's great cause of unification has not yet been completed, and the military use of troops has not yet stopped, and the tuntian, which is used to support military salaries and garrisons, must be supplemented:
Secondly, the land suitable for farming in the ruling area during the Yuan Dynasty was much larger than that in any previous period, such as Wuzong, Yingzong, and Wenzong.
However, the scale of Tuntian is far less than that of Kublai Khan. On the basis of Tuntian, the management of Tuntian during the period of Kublai Khan was formed in several ways: the left, right, center, front, and rear guards under the jurisdiction of the Privy Council, and the pro-army Tuntian; the military and civilian tuntian under the jurisdiction of the Xuanhui Yuan of Dasi Nong; In various provinces, such as Liaoyang, Henan, Gansu, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Yunnan, Huguang and other places of the military tun. 240 types of tuntian are divided into military tun, people's tun, prison tun, and descending pawn tun.
With the military tun as the main one, the military tun is gradually divided into two kinds, one is the integrity of the army tuntian: the other is the tuntian army, which is responsible for the tun and the supply of military salaries. In terms of Mintun, in addition to some of the recruited Mintun households, a large number of Mintun households come from the migration of foreign population. The imperial court turned the landless people in the interior who volunteered to live on the border, together with their families, into agricultural laborers in Mintun.
Tuntian activities accompanied the Yuan Dynasty and were directly related to the Yuan Dynasty's continuous conquests.
However, from the perspective of the establishment area and time, it can be divided into three time periods: the Mongolian period, the Kublai Khan period of the Yuan Dynasty, and the period after Kublai Khan: the changes in its management organization also started from scratch and gradually weakened, and there were adjustments after Kublai Khan.
In the first year of the Emperor Xianzong (1251), Kublai Khan began to pass through the Central Plains.
The Central Plains, which has been the battlefield of Mengjin many times, is "open and poor." "43 Guanzhong region, eight states and twelve counties, less than 10,000 households. 43 Sichuan, Lianghuai, and Xiangfan also lost most of their population due to the fierce war between Mongolia and Song.
In the Sichuan area, the residents of the war competition "seven or eight out of ten". In the early years of the Yuan Dynasty, the Lianghuai River Basin "was in the front north and south of the border, and the middle was idle for a long time, and there was more than enough paste and fertilizer, although there were residents, cultivation was very scarce." ”
epilogue
By combing the land system in the Mengyuan and Yuan dynasties, especially the tuntian system, the agricultural persuasion system, the agricultural village community system and the agricultural taxation system, it can be seen that the agricultural development and measures in the Mengyuan and Yuan dynasties showed obvious regional, phased and inheritance characteristics.
In the early days of the Great Mongolian State, the steppe-based policy was implemented, and the center of gravity was on the Mongolian Plateau, and it was almost impossible to talk about agricultural development and institutional regulations.
As the territory gradually extended southward to areas suitable for agricultural development, tax collection and agricultural development related systems were gradually established.
At the same time, different regions attach different importance to agriculture, and the promotion of system formation is also different. For example, in the Bohai region, Shanxi region, Hainan and other regions, the implementation of the system reflects regional characteristics.
Secondly, on the basis of inheritance, the agricultural development and agricultural system in the Mongol and Yuan dynasties showed a phased and regional nature, which precisely shows that the biggest feature of the agricultural development and agricultural system in the Mongol and Yuan dynasties was to rule according to customs and adapt measures to local conditions.
With the expansion of the war, the territory was extended from north to south, and in the face of areas that were gradually suitable for agricultural development, although there were discussions about whether to continue to develop animal husbandry, he finally accepted Yelu Chucai's proposal to develop agriculture and collect taxes.
During the period of Kublai Khan, in the face of a devastated social environment, a series of measures to persuade agriculture were adopted and agriculture began to develop in an all-round way. Whether it is the tuntian system, the agricultural persuasion system, the village community system, or the agricultural tax system, they all have the characteristics of governing according to customs and adapting measures to local conditions.
The northern nomadic regimes would face such a choice when they conquered the southern regions, and the Liao Dynasty established by the Khitan and the Jin Dynasty established by the Jurchens also made corresponding choices from the perspective of typical agricultural development and institutions in the Mongol and Yuan dynasties.