When a country is on the verge of destruction, some contradictions will be reflected in the peasant masses, such as peasant uprisings one after another, the people of Li people living in poverty, the extreme luxury of the upper echelons of society, in stark contrast to the bottom of society, and the state can not solve these phenomena continue to deteriorate, then can only face the fate of dynastic changes.
The economy is the material base on which people depend for their survival, and the superstructure needs the economy as a support, and if the people of the country are not safe, the country will fall apart. The mortgage system during the Qing Dynasty was the last respite of the feudal system.
In the period of China's ancient feudal society, the people at the bottom of the Li people were the most difficult life, facing the most serious groups of oppression, they mainly based on the cultivation of crops in the field for a living, in the Ming Dynasty, in addition to growing tobacco can earn a few times more income than other crops, the main crops of life is their own use, pay taxes, if there is more than enough, sell a few dollars in the market to supplement the needs.
But after all, tobacco was later banned by the state, from planting to buying, eating will be severely punished, so farmers still rely on domestic crops as part of their survival, but in the early Qing Dynasty, there was a serious problem in the field, there was a rent system. The "fighting landlords" that we now appear in the form of games are the most realistic critics of the persecution of the rent system, which is seriously exploited and endangered by this system to ordinary people.
The formation of the mortgage system has its own historical and economic practical reasons, when the landlord's demand for economic interests increased, in addition, at that time, the land rights were unusually concentrated, the deposit rent also began to develop, the population also gradually increased, the demand for land increased, and the landlord began to gradually appear in order to control the tenants.
The mortgage system began in the early Qing Dynasty, the last dynasty under the feudal system, but the earliest phenomenon of rent was in the Ming Dynasty, but at that time it was only a very isolated phenomenon, and there was no universalization and no related system. The mortgage system refers to the system in which landlords rent out their land to peasants and collect a mortgage. Records of detention rent appeared during the Kangxi and Yongzheng dynasties of the Qing Dynasty, when they appeared mainly in Jiangsu Province, Anhui Province, Hunan Province, and Guangdong Province.
During the Qianlong and Jiaqing years, rents were stolen in most of China's provinces, including Hebei, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guangxi provinces. By the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, the rent had spread to twenty provinces across the country, and in various forms of rent, the proportion of tenants occupied by the rent increased year by year, which shows the helplessness and hardship of people's lives.
Due to the different names of currencies in different places, the names of the mortgage are also different, such as the mortgage money, the pledge money, the top hand money, the top cultivation silver, the top seed silver, the top batch silver, the batch silver, the sending bank silver, the rent guarantee silver, the tenant silver and so on.
The basic content of the mortgage rent system mainly includes several points, first, to rent the land, you must first collect the mortgage rent, and there is no interest on the mortgage rent. Second, when levying positive rents, there are cases of heavy rents and light rents and low rents. Third, on the day of the tenant, the rent will be returned to the tenant in its entirety. However, landlords often embezzle rent on the grounds that tenants owe rent. Fourth, the landlord does not refund the mortgage rent and cannot change the tenant at will.
However, there is a difference between "lowercase" and "uppercase" in Hunan Province, and the rent will be less than that of "uppercase" when "lowercase", and "capitalization" is no different from other regions. It can be said that these points do not mention anything about the protection of the rights of tenants, so for the landlords at any time it will harm the interests of tenants, in fact, this situation is not uncommon, and the peasants are often persecuted by the landlords in terms of economic interests, which makes the tenants who already have a hard life worse.
1. The rent system is watched from the game between landlords and tenants
Due to the outbreak of the peasant revolt and the dissatisfaction of the peasants with the old system, a new system must be used to change this situation, and the mortgage system came into being, evolving from the traditional tenant to a completely new system, but it did not fundamentally solve the contradiction between the landlord and the tenant.
From the above we analyzed the basic content of the mortgage system, found that there are some problems of landlords and tenants, and now we make a more specific assumption about the problems that will arise in the mortgage system, first, assuming that tenants do not pay tenant rent, but refuse to pay land rent within a certain period of time specified in advance and in the future rent payment period. Second, suppose that if the tenant does not pay the tenant, the landlord does not rent the land to the tenant.
Third, it is assumed that the tenant does not distinguish between the economic benefits he receives whether he pays rent or not, and at this time the tenant chooses to pay rent, that is, under the premise that this interest is unchanged, the tenant will pay rent in order to establish a peaceful and long-term relationship with the landlord. Fourth, if there is no difference in the landlord's benefits whether the landlord rents or does not rent, then the landlord chooses not to rent out in order to preserve the land for his own use.
It is clear that the local owner chooses to lease the land, and when the tenant now pays the rent, the landlord's tenant rent income and the tenant profit at this time. Landlords do not lease land, and their land rental income is as zero as the tenant's economic income. If the local owner leases the land and the tenant does not pay the rent now, the landlord will lose and the tenant will profit. Obviously, the income obtained by tenants from not paying rent is greater than the income from rent payment, and it is comprehensive that tenants do not pay rent, while landlords do not rent, which is the most conservative combination of income.
2. The lease system is based on transaction costs
According to the "Chronicle of Baling County", tenants resisted rent and squatted, and the landlords took it back, and there was a situation in which both sides sued the officials. It is also recorded that "when encountering floods and droughts, the tenants, under the pretext of being a squatter, gave a little supervision, and then went to the master of Rujing, who was worried about the pollution of the fields and had to obey the orders of the tenants." This shows that there was a contradiction and unity between tenants and landlords at that time, and in addition, the "Qing Dynasty Criminal Section Inscription" also recorded the struggle between landlords and tenants.
This shows that due to the landlord's treachery, natural disasters and other reasons, the tenants can no longer withstand the oppression of all aspects, so they will vigorously resist and strive for a little meager interest for themselves.
How to regard the landlords and tenants in the mortgage system as the main body of economic occurrence, and establish it for economic interests with the completion of a leasehold contract, then both sides must minimize costs and increase profits in order to obtain good returns in net profits. For the landlord, he must have a lot of land, so how to use the land to get more benefits has become a problem they need to consider, and leasing the land to the tenant can realize the value of the excess idle land, so the landlord will normally rent the land.
Tenants without land would rent tenants in order to survive, and landlords would economically exploit the peasants through tenant rent, which formed great economic pressure on the peasants, but with the outbreak of peasant uprisings in various parts of the Qing Dynasty, tenants also began to resist the exploitation of landlords, rent arrears, hegemony and other phenomena, and the landlords increased their additional expenditures in order to return the rent. Therefore, in the case that the system is not very complete, there is a risk of economic interest loss among economic entities, and this behavior of tenants belongs to opportunism, and the economic risk is relatively small.
So why do tenants rebel and rent arrears and abuse of farming? This should be directly related to the harsh economic requirements of the peasants by the rent system. The mortgage system makes the tenant have to pay the rent every year, and there is also the payment of the rent, although the amount of the deposit is related to the time, place, and other aspects, but it is not a small burden for the tenant.
In the same area, the denser the population, the later the time, the more fertile the land, the less land resources, the easier it is to cultivate cash crops, etc., then the higher the rent. It can be seen that landlords will sit on the land at the starting price and raise the rent by virtue of natural and geographical advantages, so the economic benefits obtained by tenants are naturally restrictive. Moreover, the mortgage rent usually exceeds the positive rent, as little as double, as much as eight times, and even more than dozens of times.
At that time, the stipulation was that if the tenant paid the mortgage rent, then the positive rent paid each year could be paid a little less, and the positive rent grain paid without the mortgage rent should be a little more. However, this does not mean that the landlord will be kind to the tenants who have paid the rent and exploit them less; in fact, the landlord's pursuit of economic interests is a pit of dissatisfaction.
Moreover, according to the relevant literature, the exploitation of tenants who have paid the rent will only be more serious. Combining the mortgage rent and the positive rent, the landlord exploited more than half of the tenant's income property, that is, the landlord could divide the land with the tenant without spending a single cent, so it can be seen that the gap between the life of the landlord and the tenant at that time can be imagined.
During the Qianlong period, Yushi went to the imperial court: the peasants in Youtian were very weekdays, and after renting, they had no grain, and they ate very roughly, ate and dressed hard, and struggled to move. The ones who have fields are still like this, and those who do not have fields are even more difficult to imagine, and it is really too pitiful for them to wander and beg, or to be thieves. It can be seen that the national economy of the Qing Dynasty was in decline at that time, people's lives were difficult, and social turmoil was unstable, which was extremely unfavorable to the rule of the Qing government.
In addition, Wei Li of the Qing Dynasty said: "Tenants cannot afford to pay the rent at first, and the landlord will forgive for a period of time, but the interest must be calculated, and the tenants will pay it all together in the winter, which is called white water." During the Qianlong period, tenants in Shanhua County, Hunan Province, had to pay about thirty-two rents per stone field, and those who did not have enough money to pay the rent would take out a loan to pay it. Tenants in southern Fujian, who farm in Ningdu, Jiangxi Province, are usually penniless, they do not pledge rent, and landlords extort money, making it even more difficult for tenants.
The development of the mortgage system only has economic benefits for the landlord class, and can only accept the fate of the tenants, which makes the tenants whose lives are already hot and hot will accidentally fall into usury, making life more difficult, more helpless, and more painful. This reflects the limitations, contradictions and backwardness of the feudal system.
Although poverty has the cause of poverty and wealth has the cause of wealth, the landlord class ignored the hardships of tenants, acted arbitrarily, and carried out harsh exploitation, which was really an act of seeing money and having no benevolence, which shows that the Qing government at that time was negligent in spreading traditional Chinese culture and the negligence of the low-level officials to educate the people.
It can be seen from the above that the state must strengthen the management of land and must ensure that every peasant household has a field to cultivate, so as to ensure the basic livelihood of the peasant masses, to resolve the contradictions of civil society, and to ensure the stable and healthy development of the country.