The Qing Dynasty was the beginning of various treaties of loss of power and humiliation of the country, and after the Eight-Power Alliance's War of Aggression against China in 1900 and the Treaty of Xinugu in 1901, China was completely reduced to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. However, foreigners invaded China on a large scale, not only looking at China's cheap labor, but also looking at China's countless wealth and treasures.
And what made them realize that China had such a rich wealth of gold, silver and jewelry and various resources was the Qing Dynasty's foreign trade, at that time, the ships trading in the trade port were full of silver when they came, but when they left, they were rich in all kinds of materials.
Why did the Americans come to the Qing Dynasty and use silver in exchange?
Why does the influx of silver have such a drastic impact on the price of rice?
To answer these questions, you must first understand two things, the silver and copper double standard monetary system and the close relationship between rice and the monetary system.
There is a saying in the "History of Chinese Currency": "The development of China's currency has a very clear context. Basically unaffected by foreign cultures. "The Course of Civilization" also said: "Chinese civilization has more exchanges within China's region." "It can be seen that the currencies such as copper shells, knife cloth and ring money that appeared in China in the early days were all independently developed by our country and used for trading in the market."
Through a long history, in the Yuan Dynasty, China began to implement a silver and copper double standard monetary system, which skipped the Ming Dynasty ruled by the Han Chinese and was further developed in the Qing Dynasty. "Standard" refers to the "standard currency", that is, the general denominated settlement currency officially stipulated by the state, and the "silver and copper double standard" means that silver and copper can be used as common currencies in major markets.
China's silver mining since ancient times is not very enough, and even for a long time, silver was a rare item. During the Ming Dynasty, there were even cases where European colonists plundered a large number of precious Chinese items and sold them elsewhere through silver that was not valuable to them, so as to make huge profits.
It can be seen from this that silver, as a small quantity, cannot be issued in a large number of Chinese lands with a vast population, and copper can make up for this very well.
During the Qing Dynasty, government taxes, long-distance trade, and wholesale trade (i.e., trade in large quantities of commodities) were made of silver, while retail and wages were paid in copper coins.
Unlike silver, which must be minted by the government, copper coins can be minted by local governments, even merchants and individuals, and for various reasons, the copper coins produced in various places must be different from the copper content of the officially produced copper coins, so the silver and copper exchange ratio on the market will be quite different from the official pricing.
The Book of Jin records that "one person each from Changshi and Sima is ranked Qianshi." "Sengoku here refers both to the amount of rice and to the wages. In ancient times, rice was not only an important grain that could be used as a monthly payment of official salaries, but also a luxury.
"Boxing County Chronicle" has a saying: "The natives are not Yanbin and do not cook." "Cooking" here refers to rice, meaning that rice is only used when entertaining guests. This situation did not improve until the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, when the local economy began to develop rapidly, because of social stability and the increasing perfection of rice cultivation technology, rice was no longer a luxury.
At the same time, official salaries to officials have gradually changed from rice to real money. But even so, the place of rice in all grains is not to be underestimated.
In the Qing Dynasty, because of the relatively stable life and the growing people's economy, the life of a self-sufficient small household gradually transformed into a relatively rich life of exchanging goods through money in various markets. Rice is undoubtedly a very important part of the exchange of goods, and only when food and clothing are satisfied, will we think of other grains that are higher and more pursuing the process of eating.
According to the "Grain Chronicle of Songjiang (now South of Suzhou Creek in Shanghai)", the rice industry is an important pillar of Songjiang's economy. The importance of rice as an economic pillar of a place can be seen.
During the Qing Dynasty, a large number of American capitalists coveted China's abundant materials, so they brought a large amount of silver to China for procurement, and the materials they obtained could only be sold to obtain high returns. Not only that, because at that time, China's money was mainly made by the Fan casting method, that is, the mold was fired by clay, and then the metal was melted at high temperature and poured into the mold.
The common use of foreign countries is the new machine to cast money, although the money minted by the machine is mostly not as good as the domestic, but the style is good and more valuable. Therefore, when trading, many people will disregard the silver content of silver coins, and use foreign silver coins as goods trading currency at a value higher than their silver content, in this trend, foreign countries have used silver coins with the lowest silver content to trade in China, thus earning a large amount of intermediate profits.
The "History of Chinese Currency" records: "The inflow of foreign silver dollars caused a great revolution in China's monetary culture. "Because of the large amount of silver brought by the profit-seeking American capitalists, the silver in the market was greatly devalued, and when the silver was no longer valuable, the price of rice, as a necessity of life, was instantly soared.
According to records, from 1737 to 1911, when the American silver was imported, the price of rice in the Matsue province rose from 110 taels of silver per stone to 460 taels of silver per stone, a rise of up to 350 taels, which fully explained the impact of the invasion of American silver on the price of rice.
Due to the increasingly closed-door policy, the Qing rulers and their central management knew little about monetary theory in economics. The "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" records that Yang Xifu once said in the Qianlong Decade (1745 AD), "More hukou requires more grain, and the price gradually increases." ”
This statement is a very immature statement that lacks a lot of consideration, when the number of households increases, and the population increases, although the rice grain needs to be increased, the minted currency should also be increased accordingly, otherwise, when the grain increases and the currency does not keep up, there will inevitably be a rapid increase in the value of the currency and a rapid decline in prices.
The influx of silver during the Qing Dynasty was the opposite of the above situation, when silver increased in large quantities, but rice did not increase significantly, and there was more money than goods, which inevitably led to the depreciation of silver and the rise in the price of rice.
The Book of Jin records that "the fate will be in the upper, middle, and lower grades of the land, and the land shall be levied within the list of silver rice per acre." "Here, rice is said to be in the same position as silver, and since ancient times, one of the taxes paid by the people to the officials is rice.
Beginning with the Tang Dynasty, there were some changes in the way taxes were collected, and a scheme called "folding color" was implemented. "Folding" refers to the substitution of silver or cloth for taxes that should have been paid, in other words, from this time on, silver can be used instead of rice as a field tax to the government.
But whether it was before this, the use of rice as the decentralization of officials' salaries, or the subsequent handing in of silver as a substitute for rice, both ways can clearly see the importance of a high degree of consistency between silver and rice.
In such a close connection between the two, silver as a "standard currency" has depreciated significantly, and the corresponding amount of rice has not increased significantly, and naturally the price of rice will rise rapidly.
Now watching costume TV dramas can often hear a word - color, placed on silver, he refers to the silver as a standard, other silver silver content.
What is silver tattoo? Tattooed silver is actually a hypothetical standard silver that does not exist in reality, and its fixed color, that is, the amount of silver, is different in different places, and the Shanghai regulation is 935.374 per thousand. So in the case of silver as the standard silver, how should other silver two be judged to be colored?
For example, the silver two that was circulating on the market at that time were called treasure silver, that is, yuanbao, and the yuanbao was divided into many kinds, if it was two or four treasures, that is to say, the fifty-two two-four treasure contained pure silver equivalent to the pure silver contained in fifty-two-two-four silver.
If you trade with various yuan treasures in Shanghai, you need to first exchange it for the corresponding silver, and then convert it into two units of silver in its accounting, and finally you can get the value of the items that this ingot yuan treasure can exchange.
But if you go to Tianjin, the color of the silver has become 992 per thousand, and the two units of silver in the account have also become xinghua accordingly. Therefore, although local governments ostensibly stipulate the value of silver and silver, in fact, there is no unified monetary standard in the country.
The influx of American silver dealt a huge blow to the Qing Dynasty silver, which had not been unified in the first place, because of its good-looking appearance, people were more willing to accept American silver of lower actual value than the yuanbao of this dynasty.
In other words, Americans can get very high returns at a very low cost. Stimulated by huge interests, it is natural that more and more profitable capitalists will pour into the Chinese market, thus forming a vicious circle, which eventually leads to a sharp depreciation of silver in the Qing Dynasty and a rapid rise in the price of rice.
The impact of American silver on the rise in rice prices in the Qing Dynasty is very direct and obvious, whether from the records of rice price data throughout the Qing Dynasty, or from the close relationship between silver and rice in history, the import of American silver is the main reason for the sharp rise in rice prices in the Qing Dynasty.
During the Qing Dynasty, due to the rulers themselves tending to a closed-door policy, the rapid development of economics around the world failed to affect China, which made the Qing Dynasty's understanding of monetary theory very insufficient, so it did not respond in a timely and effective manner when the influx of silver in the Americas, resulting in the price of rice in the subsequent market began to soar.
bibliography:
1. "Chinese Monetary History"
2. The Process of Civilization
3. The Book of Jin
4. "Boxing County Chronicle"
5. Draft History of the Qing Dynasty