On the other hand, the foreign war record of the Song Dynasty is not flattering, and it has long been suppressed by a few regimes in the north, such as Liao, Jin and Mongolia. During the Northern Song Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty, Jurchen and Mongolia invaded the south and perished. The shame of Jingkang at the time of the demise of the Northern Song Dynasty was a rare disgrace in the history of China.
Based on this, "Song Fen" and "Song Hei" are at odds over what kind of dynasty the Song Dynasty was. This kind of controversy is doomed to be unable to merge into one, because the historical materials they give are correct. The conclusion of "Song Powder" based on the economic achievements of the Song Dynasty is naturally the greatness of the Song Dynasty, and the conclusion of "Song Black" based on the military failure of the Song Dynasty is naturally the shame of the Song Dynasty.
However, there is a question worthy of discussion by all those who are interested in the history of Song Dynasty and even China: What was the life of ordinary people in Song Dynasty?
China was a country based on agriculture in ancient times, and farmers constituted the majority of this country. When their life is unsustainable, farmers will resist in the most violent way, which is the peasant uprising that runs through the history of China.
Peasant uprising is an unavoidable topic in China's ancient feudal dynasty. Compared with other countries, there are more peasant uprisings in China. Some large-scale peasant uprisings can even destroy the feudal dynasty or greatly shake its ruling foundation, such as Guangwu Uprising in Chen Sheng in the late Qin Dynasty, Yellow Scarf Uprising in the late Han Dynasty, National Peasant Uprising led by Wagangzhai and Dou Jiande in the late Sui Dynasty, Huang Chao Uprising in the late Tang Dynasty, Red Scarf Uprising in the late Yuan Dynasty, Li Zicheng Uprising in the late Ming Dynasty and Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement in the late Qing Dynasty.
Among these feudal dynasties, the Song Dynasty was a special case. During the Song Dynasty, there were many peasant uprisings, but the scale was small. An uprising that swept across the country and directly shook the foundation of feudal rule never happened.
Song Dynasty is also a rare dynasty in the history of China, and its demise has little to do with the peasant uprising.
There are many reasons for the large number and small scale of peasant uprising in Song Dynasty, but if we want to find a main line among these reasons, then this main line is the compromise culture in Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty not only compromised external forces, but also coordinated internal forces through mutual compromise. This coordination made all social strata in China live in harmony in the Song Dynasty. Even if there are contradictions, they can often be solved by internal means.
There is no need to elaborate whether the wealthy Great Song Dynasty was a paradise or a hell for farmers. Lin 'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, has a population of more than one million, and its total economic output is about a quarter of that of the world. Song Dynasty was the first country in the world to use paper money. The tax composition of the Song Dynasty (especially the Southern Song Dynasty) has exceeded the agricultural tax.
However, whether this kind of prosperity is just the obsession of the upper class, or whether the bottom people can get a slice of it, let's find out from the peasant uprising in the Song Dynasty.
There were many peasant uprisings in the Song Dynasty. There are 433 recorded uprisings, with an average of 1.4 peasant uprisings per year. However, these peasant uprisings were small in scale. Among them, Wang Xiaobo and Li Shun Uprising in the early Northern Song Dynasty only carried out uprising activities in Sichuan and Sichuan areas, while Zhongxiang and Yangmao Uprising in the early Southern Song Dynasty gathered more than 65,438+10,000 people, but their activities were still concentrated in Dongting Lake area. Although the Fang La Uprising at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty spread to several provinces, it was destroyed in just two years, especially the Sung River Uprising.
The peasant uprising in the Song Dynasty was obviously local, that is, the insurgents often only moved in a certain area; In the peasant uprisings in the Song Dynasty, the slogan "both rich and poor" often appeared, and this slogan has appeared in many uprisings.
Wang Xiaobo's Li Shun Uprising, which happened in Sichuan and Guizhou in the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, clearly stated that "my illness is uneven between the rich and the poor, and now it is your illness." Slogan, the location of Wang Li uprising, won great support from local people in the early stage, which is not unrelated to this slogan.
In the Yang Yao Uprising of Zhong Xiang in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhong Xiang also mentioned that "it is not good to divide the rich and the poor." I will do what I have to do, and I will wait for the rich and the poor. "
During the Fang La Uprising, he also put forward the idea of "sparing taxes to help the people".
The Image of Fang La in Water Margin
From these, we can generally see that the polarization between the rich and the poor is inevitable in the Song Dynasty, and it has always been a difficult problem to solve. However, the polarization between the rich and the poor in the Song Dynasty was different from other dynasties to some extent, because in most parts of ancient China, agriculture was almost equal to the whole economy, and the main form of social wealth was land, and there was only one form of polarization between the rich and the poor: land was gradually concentrated in the hands of a few people.
The concentration of land to a few people will cause a large number of peasants to become landless refugees, and these landless peasants constitute the unstable factors of the country. Once there are too many refugees and famine occurs again, these refugees will rise up and form a large-scale peasant uprising that shakes the foundation of feudal rule.
Based on this, almost every dynasty will introduce various policies to curb land merger. But strangely, the Song Dynasty is one of the few dynasties that did not stop land annexation.
In the Song Dynasty, it was rare for farmers to "refrain from merger" and freely buy and sell land.
There is no doubt that without government intervention, land will soon be concentrated in the hands of a few landlords. Undoubtedly, generally speaking, after land concentration, ordinary farmers who have lost their land will lead a precarious life, and farmers will also lose the motivation to farm because of losing their land, thus affecting food production.
But the fact is that the grain output in Song Dynasty has more than doubled compared with that in Tang Dynasty. Combined with the characteristics of the peasant uprising in the Song Dynasty, it is not difficult to find that in the Song Dynasty, there was almost no situation in which farmers in the whole country had no way to go.
This happened because the Song Dynasty had a set of solutions to the problem of landless peasants. These solutions are not brilliant, but on the whole they are effective.
The contract tenancy system, which was widely implemented in the Song Dynasty, urged landlords to improve the relationship between host and guest more consciously. Yuan Cai's "Yuan" has a cloud, saying that "if I love my tenant, I can rely on my own strength" and "when it comes to childbirth, marriage, construction and death, I should be considerate"
Under the leadership of the government, a special contractual relationship has been formed between landlords and farmers. Although landlords can exploit the surplus value of tenants by occupying land, they also have certain obligations to tenants. These obligations include providing financial support to the lessee in major events in life, such as marriage and childbirth.
When a disaster happens, the landlord has no unwritten obligation to give money and food to help the victims. When disasters come, government officials at all levels will generally lobby the landlord class to pay for food to help the victims. During the Ming Dow period, there was a famine in Huainan, and Zhang Zhi was ordered by Anfeng County to "raise money to enrich the people and lose millet to hunger" and praise or even reward outstanding landlords. In the first year of Emperor Gaozong's Jianyan (18), "the rich households were advised to give food to help the hungry, and the rewards were different."
This government-led interdependent contractual relationship between landlords and tenants has greatly improved the contradiction between farmers and landlords.
It is precisely for this reason that many small-scale civil uprisings in the Song Dynasty only called on landlords to "reduce rents" and did not completely sever the relationship between landlords and farmers.
In Song Dynasty, the tax system was also based on land. The big landlords with land paid more taxes, while the tenants without land did not pay taxes, which made the tenants less directly exploited by the government.
In the famine years, in addition to the government's call for landlords and rich households to donate grain, the military system in the Song Dynasty also played an important role in curbing peasant uprisings. In order to deal with the rebellion of landless refugees, the rulers of the Song Dynasty had a tradition of recruiting hungry people to join the army in disaster years. Hungry people were recruited into the army, the problem of survival was temporarily solved, and rebellion was out of the question. However, it is not surprising that this form of recruitment has led to a decline in Song Jun's combat effectiveness.