This fully shows that monetary economy and foreign trade have promoted the development of marketization and specialized division of labor, but in the year of famine, the disadvantages of marketization and monetary economy, especially a whipping method, will be obvious: because the vast "developed areas" have expanded the cultivation of cotton and mulberry in order to increase the demand of domestic and foreign markets, these areas that used to be self-sufficient in food suddenly found that their food supply must rely on cross-regional trade.
1640, even in a bumper harvest year, people in South Zhili (Anhui and Jiangsu, including the emperor's hometown) and Zhejiang had to sell raw silk, raw cotton, cotton yarn and cotton cloth in exchange for money to buy food. After the implementation of a flogging law, silver should be used to pay off state taxes and land rent and repay loans. If there is a famine, the price of silver and food fluctuates greatly, and the country is unable to help, then the catastrophe of expensive food and cheap money will be inevitable.
In fact, the "one-whip method" of paying rent and paying tribute to silver in the Ming Dynasty is a continuation of the policy of trying to control and mobilize all resources with money since France opened its port. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, money was only identified as silver.
But for the Ming Dynasty, silver was a commodity imported by exporting resources and commodities. Because silver as a currency itself is also a kind of "commodity", the mining and production of silver will naturally fluctuate under the influence of supply and demand. Generally speaking, in the early stage of silver import, in the case of silver shortage, silver exceeded its own value many times. Not only can you make huge profits by importing and transporting silver, but silver is expensive and cheap, and businessmen who own silver are of course very prestigious; However, with the massive mining, import and transshipment of silver, the shortage of silver gradually disappears, and the value of silver itself is getting closer and closer to itself. At this time, the mining, export and transshipment of silver are becoming more and more unprofitable. Moreover, if there is more silver, there will be a phenomenon that things are expensive and silver is cheap, and the price of things will naturally be artificially raised by the silver market. At this time, even the merchants who own and transfer silver feel cheated.
In addition to the above two aspects, the worst may be: first, the massive mining and export of silver led to the decline in the price of silver, so the mining and supply of silver gradually decreased driven by the market price, and then the decrease in the supply of silver led to the lack of silver and poor market transactions-this is the fact that "inflation" and "deflation" followed one after another, and this is the actual situation faced in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.
On the one hand, from the international point of view, silver mining has become unprofitable, because the amount of silver mining has decreased, while the export volume has decreased significantly, resulting in the lack of silver. On the other hand, from the perspective of domestic economy, the price of silver has increased, and the price of materials has increased, so the era of crisis and turmoil has come.
In the late Ming Dynasty, Wang Fuzhi (Chuanshan) and others actually saw this problem very painstakingly. He believes that the monetization and marketization of grain production will lead to the bad result of "trade moving south, land staying north, and people's hearts moving against the trend", which will eventually lead to a food crisis, resulting in both lack of money and food, which is not good for farmers and enterprises. And this is the disadvantage of "open France":
The middle of salt policy has a nice name. It's good to do it in an all-round way, or you can go far. This is not a big way to manage money. Commerce cannot become agriculture, and agriculture cannot become commerce. If you are engaged in agriculture, your business will be very poor. If you run a farm, you will only be trapped in your business, or you can't become a farmer. Will pioneers let businesses cultivate themselves? Restrain people from raising money for agriculture? Businessmen can't cultivate themselves, but they must cultivate others to cultivate themselves. It's because everyone who can farm in the world has got pregnant and moved. If businessmen cling to profits in order to buy it, greedy people will give up their first field to seek more far-reaching benefits, and the middle-earth will be destroyed. Otherwise, it will make businesses turn around lazy farmers and can't get in. If there are more farmers who raise evil in the world, then Hu will not be officially raised. Will it be a fake business? Farmers suffer from millet, and the disadvantages of Tang and Song Dynasties are also reduced. Commercial gold is lost, and the disadvantages of the law are also. It is inevitable that Ye Qi can scratch it in less than a hundred years. Shang Naining has to lose several times of gold to avoid the pain of remote farming. Farming is better than eating, and self-improvement is better than self-improvement. Strong men plow, strong men eat. What's the difference between a strong man and a choking man? This kind of opening will not last long.
In Hongzhi era, the method of opening China was changed from "transporting grain to opening China" to "receiving silver to opening China", and merchants no longer undertook the task of grain transshipment. In this way, the original system of relying on merchants to transport grain collapsed.
In this sense, the grain crisis that led to the demise of the Ming Empire in the1640s was a natural disaster on the one hand, and merchants were willing to "take silver from China" in exchange for salt on the other hand, which was the evil result of giving grain to merchants. This is an important theory put forward by Amartya Sen, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics: the crisis is caused by excessive marketization of grain.
That is to say, under the latter condition, a large number of people starve to death not because of simple famine, but because the food price in the market is too high, people can't afford food, which leads to famine, so there will be a "current disadvantage" of selling luxury houses and buying rice in rich areas.
In other words, the final collapse of the Ming dynasty was not because the economy of the Ming dynasty did not complete the market-oriented reform, or was too closed and self-sufficient. The grain crisis in developed areas in the late Ming Dynasty was precisely caused by excessive marketization, and it was caused by the dislocation of the country and the complete delivery of grain production to the market.
Zhang's reform just promoted the marketization of this kind of grain, which increased the national tax revenue on the surface, but actually aggravated the agricultural crisis. If a farmer can get more cash than growing grain through mulberry planting, weaving and other channels, and pay taxes in cash, then why should he choose farming? This is a profound problem exposed by the reform of the Ming Dynasty.
The third problem is actually related to the above two problems: that is, the catastrophe in the late Ming Dynasty was directly caused by the first sharp decline in silver production in the New World and was based on the "butterfly effect" caused by the turmoil in the world currency market. This sharp decline in the supply of silver in the Americas occurred in the1630s, which undoubtedly caused a shortage of silver supply in China, which led to severe deflation in the country. Silver in the Ming Dynasty was mainly imported, which was "in line with the world" in currency and totally depended on the world money market. After 1630, with the sharp decline in the supply of silver in America, the supply of silver was in short supply and deflation expanded to an unbearable level.
In addition, the border crisis, foreign trade disputes, agricultural famine and the negative effects brought by the reform during this period were not corrected in time, which eventually led to the economic crisis of the collapse of the Ming Empire.
Its prosperity is also silver, and its death is also silver
The "17th century general crisis" that triggered the downfall of the Ming Dynasty occurred in the 1930s and 1940s (when the Ming Dynasty collapsed rapidly). This worldwide economic crisis is closely related to the silver-centered trade system established in the Ming Dynasty.
The continuous inflow of global silver into China, on the one hand, promoted the great changes in China society in the late Ming Dynasty-forced the national policy to shift from emphasizing agriculture to emphasizing commerce, and from the domestic market to the international market; On the other hand, it also accelerated the social unrest in the transition period.
The market is an "invisible hand", and the price determines everything. With the development of the market, the price of silver as a foreign trade commodity naturally cannot remain unchanged. As the absorption rate of silver in China slows down, the price of silver itself will slowly fall back to its production cost. Under the law of diminishing marginal effect, the economic crisis, that is, the "currency crisis", will come sooner or later. When this moment finally came in 1630, Braudel said: "The moderns of American silver undoubtedly ended in the middle of 17 century."
Deflation originated from the overproduction of money in the United States. The output of silver peaked around 1570, and then reached a low point due to overproduction at 1630. Adam Smith summed up the crisis like this: "From 1630 to 1640, or 1636, it seems that the role of the discovery of American silver mines in reducing the value of silver has ended. The decline in the value of silver relative to the price of grain has never reached this level. " When this crisis came, due to the linkage of the unified world market, a "price revolution" broke out violently in Europe, and inflation in Spain intensified. Britain, France, Italy and other countries have been hit to varying degrees, resulting in inflation problems.
In China, due to the sharp drop in the price of silver, the price of gold and silver was the same as that of Europe in Chongzhen period in late Ming Dynasty, reaching 1: 13. There is a currency crisis in society, where silver is cheap and things are expensive. As a result, on the one hand, the country is short of silver, on the other hand, there is a considerable shortage of physical objects such as rice grains, and the market is in a depression.
However, the unit value of silver has fallen. Compared with the past, the same amount of wheat and services can only be obtained by paying more silver, which makes both the government and the people urgently need more silver. But at the same time, the amount of silver mining in the United States and Japan is decreasing, and the inflow is also decreasing. In fact, both at home and around the world, the production and circulation of silver are decreasing. As a result, under the influence of the interactive world economic crisis between China and foreign countries, the social unrest in the Ming Dynasty intensified and various crises broke out collectively. This is the so-called "internal troubles and foreign invasion", and at this time, the Ming Empire tried to be "promising", but it was completely powerless.
In fact, some people of insight in the Ming Dynasty, such as Huang Zongxi, Gu and Wang Fuzhi, have deeply noticed the serious social problems brought about by the monetization of silver. Their keen exposition linked the social changes in the late Ming Dynasty with the changes in the world, pointing out that the total outbreak of social crisis in China in the late Ming Dynasty was inevitably related to the world currency crisis, and the decline and fall of the Ming Dynasty had the greatest relationship with the import of money entrusted to silver. Unfortunately, these discourses have not been paid enough attention.
In fact, the occurrence of the world currency crisis will inevitably trigger a worldwide market chain reaction, but the degree of blow to countries is different. China is the largest importer of silver, and it will certainly be the hardest hit. The huge domestic demand for silver in the Ming Dynasty depended on the supply from overseas markets. On the one hand, it can temporarily alleviate the domestic "silver shortage", but on the other hand, the rulers ignore the potential crisis caused by silver dependence on national finance. Once the currency crisis breaks out, it is impossible to try to "waste silver" to get rid of silver imports and rebuild the state-led credit system. At that time, it was already impossible for any sage and wise master to turn the tide.
Of course, on the surface, the Ming Dynasty died in the Li Zicheng Uprising in the west and the frontier invasion in the north-this point has been insisted by "historians of the Republic of China" since Qian Mu and Fu, and it is also what ordinary textbooks can tell us so far. We might as well ask the simplest question: Uprising and border invasion, "foreign invaders" and "rogue bandits" existed in almost every dynasty, but why did the Ming Dynasty exist in the three most important places? It can be seen that this superficial explanation is the most powerless-we show that the root cause of death is the same as that of other empires, mainly due to its economic collapse.
On the one hand, the most fundamental reason for this economic collapse is that the Ming Dynasty relied on the import of international currency-silver, and finally restricted its finance and economy with international silver production; On the other hand, its dependence on foreign trade, that is, the excessive export-oriented economy, has caused the specialization and regionalization of domestic agricultural production, which has led to the excessive marketization of grain production. As a result, those most market-oriented areas can't cope with famine and food shortage because of its insufficient food supply.
That is to say, the economic collapse of the Ming Dynasty was precisely the factor that promoted the great economic prosperity of Jiajing, Qin Long and Wanli in the era of "reform and opening up", or rather, it was due to the excessive implementation of these factors.
In today's words, it is because the Ming Dynasty relied too much on the world market and currency imports, and even gave everything to the "market", ignoring the construction of state organizations and social "protection": especially the security of money and finance and the security of grain production.
The reform and opening up in Ming Dynasty is a typical passive reform and opening up. In today's words, the key issue of the Ming Dynasty is not closed to the outside world, nor reform and opening up, nor market economy, but "the continuous decline of national capacity".
The laissez-faire of the market leads to the decline of national capacity.
In this sense, Kenneth kenneth pomeranz even regarded the lessons from the demise of the Ming Dynasty as a typical case of the country's financial and economic vacancy, leaving everything to the "market" and taking it as a main point of view to observe China's politics for hundreds of years. He pointed out:
The main failure of the government always seems to be in its traditional mission-maintaining public order, controlling water sources, famine relief and military defense. These failures may have little impact on the long-term growth rate, but they have a great impact on public welfare and people's lives. Most likely, in the eyes of "ordinary" people, their damage to the legal status of the government far exceeds the limited success of the government in economic and even modern missions. Perhaps no farmer will pay too much attention to industrialization; Even few people think that the increase of government revenue and the penetration into rural areas are good things, and the extent to which farmers care about national defense strength is actually controversial. But for farmers before 1937 (War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression), this can't be a top priority; In fact, farmers in China have been boycotting conscription activities.
In contrast, preventing "natural disasters" may be closer to what most farmers want the government to do. Moreover, in the seemingly insignificant areas of China's new strategy of governing the country with economy as the core, farmers abandoned the government in succession, which eventually led to the rise of the proletarian revolution in China in the 20th century. ①
The laissez-faire policy of the market has caused a food crisis, and the country is not good at disaster relief. This is the so-called "national dislocation". Kenneth Kenneth pomeranz pointed out the continuous decline of China's national capacity in the past 500 years, and suggested that we must investigate the real reason for this continuous decline of national capacity-this is undoubtedly an extremely important insight.
As discussed earlier in this book, the reasons for the decline of national capacity in the past 500 years can be found in several places: First, the feudal forces in China have intensified (the so-called officials have no feudalism, and officials have feudalism); Second, Confucianism degenerated into Taoism, and the elite knew nothing about economy, finance and justice, so they could not undertake the transformation from patriarchal clan system to modern financial country, especially to nation-people country. Third, the rich colluded with emerging foreign trade businessmen, land merger failed to stop, and market monopoly intensified again, leading to the displacement of producers and ordinary small farmers and a sharp decline in productivity; Fourth, small farmers have lost their land, the militia system has no foundation, the country has lost its labor force, taxes have been absent for a long time, and there is no way to raise soldiers. Therefore, military equipment is lax and vulnerable to attack. Fifth, the financial industry entrusts foreign countries.
The above five drawbacks did not change much in the four hundred years of Ming and Qing Dynasties, which eventually led to China being defeated by seven thousand pirates in the Opium War of 1840. Visible at that time, China's national capacity has been weakened to the extreme.
The backbone of the peasant uprising in Li Zicheng is the homeless and small farmers who have lost their land. Of course, they have egalitarian demands. In addition, this requirement also overlaps with the theory of freedom of conscience believed by Yan Li and other believers. However, the "equality" pursued by the peasant uprising is, in the final analysis, a kind of rogue consumption isomorphism, which is the so-called "big bowl of wine and meat, big pieces of gold and silver". The most tragic thing is that after the demise of the Ming Dynasty, China did not get rid of the "high equilibrium trap" of the market economically, nor did it get out of the strange circle of "one rule and one chaos" politically. At least for the Qing dynasty, it was "mourning without warning, and mourning is greater than dying in the heart."