The concept of peasant war originated from Engels' German Peasant War. In China, the history of peasant war became the most important topic in history after the founding of the People's Republic of China. In ancient China, agriculture has always been the foundation of the country's long-term stability. In history, whenever a dynasty caused a social crisis because of the chaotic government at the end of the period, there would be a people's uprising with farmers as the main body. However, after the overthrow of the last dynasty, history seems to have started a new round of reshuffle, and the world is just a new person to be emperor.

1, what is a farmer?

The peasants in ancient China were bound by the small-scale peasant economy, so their living conditions were relatively stable. However, it doesn't mean that they won't make progress. Lifestyle is the social characteristics and cultural types of China people, moving towards corresponding vectors from farmers to landlords, from people to bureaucrats, from mountain villages to cities, from local to central, from poor to rich, from fools to scholars. Therefore, most of the uprising peasants in China fought for the "world" for the people. Being a farmer is not the purpose of life. Even if the vast majority of people are engaged in agriculture, their goal is to become landlords, big businessmen and bureaucrats, to be promoted and made rich, and to be rich and expensive. Therefore, ancient China, which was dominated by agriculture, was not a backwater. On the contrary, people also want to jump up and live beyond their own conditions.

2. The main body of China ancient peasant war.

It was Taidou Miyazaki of the Department of Oriental History of Kyoto University who first opposed that most large-scale uprisings in China's history were peasant wars or peasant uprisings. In his view, the main body of these uprisings is not purely farmers ploughing fields in Gansu. On the contrary, there will be some other classes, such as businessmen, former officials and criminals. It can be said that there are many qualities, and even the leaders of the uprising are by no means farmers. It is inappropriate to call it a peasant war. Bian Xiao himself actually disagrees with this statement.

So far, the basic viewpoint on the study of peasant war mainly stays on the question of whether the subject is a peasant. However, the question is what kind of existence the farmers in China are. From the Qin Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, for a long time, the identity of farmers was never established in the political system. Almost all social management tools are also used by the government to ensure the governance of the country and the people. Farmers have not been established and fixed as a social stratum and political identity.

For example, the leaders of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were intellectuals, and Hong Xiuquan himself was the representative of the failure of the imperial examination, as well as poor peasants, landlords, businessmen, opium merchants, shop assistants, artists, pawnbrokers and carpenters. It can be said that people have various identities, but this does not mean that they are not farmers. Before the uprising, these people only made a living by these occupations occasionally. If many people think that this is because there are too many occupations in modern times to be sure, then we might as well look at some classic peasant uprising leaders in history.

In the peasant uprisings from Qin and Han Dynasties to the end of Ming Dynasty, Chen Sheng was the commander in the end of Qin Dynasty, Liu Bang was the pavilion director, Xu Xuan, who was red-browed at the end of the former Han Dynasty, was the jailer, the opening angle at the end of the later Han Dynasty was the Taoist priest, Shi Mi was a feudal aristocrat at the end of Sui Dynasty, Dou Jiande was a junior officer, Huang Chao and Wang Xianzhi were salt smugglers at the end of Tang Dynasty, Guo Zixing was a businessman at the end of Yuan Dynasty, Xu Shouhui was a peddler, Zhu Yuanzhang was a monk in a hurry, and Li Zicheng was a monk at the end of Ming Dynasty. The uprising they led Although they have another occupation different from agriculture, they still belong to the peasant class because they have not stepped into the queue at a higher level. Moreover, in the queue dominated by farmers, it is of course unreasonable to deny the nature of the peasant war because of the leader's problems.

3. The imperial power thought in the peasant war.

A basic feature of ancient China society is that the relationship between the government and the people is very distinct. Officials are officials of the people and lead the people. The atmosphere of bureaucratic society has always occupied a major position in the long dynasty politics. Almost all people, from the emperor to the grass-roots bureaucrats, live on the people. People need to pay taxes, including not only farmers, but also businessmen and craftsmen mentioned above. It can be said that before the government, the identity of the people is the people. Therefore, we can often see that some business people often buy officials, perhaps because they want to change their attributes and strive for the upper class. It seems that the thought of powerful people was very popular in ancient China.

If you know something about the peasant wars in ancient history, at the beginning of the uprising, almost all the leaders of the uprising would call themselves "the only thrill, the rebirth of the emperor, the descendants of the emperor, the natural emperor, Zhu Sheng in Huangtian, Maitreya Buddha, the kings of the land, the kings of the heavenly kings, the kings of the world, the five hundred arhats, the Buddha's mother, the purple star, the grand marshal and the viceroy", not to mention Qin.

At that time, after Qin unified the whole country, the basic structure of the state and society was formed, and the emperor-aristocrat, bureaucracy-people dominated. This system was practiced in China ancient society for a long time. If it is only a local skirmish, there is no need for an uprising at all. Therefore, once the uprising broke out, it would be impossible to stop taking the throne of the emperor without hitting the imperial capital. With the development of history, some people may become big landlords, big businessmen, generals or bureaucrats through the imperial examination, but after all, this is only a minority, but the idea of changing their identity has not faded in their hearts. If given the chance, they will choose to change their status as much as possible.

In ancient China society, the opposition between the government and the people was the most important relationship compared with the opposition between the rich and the poor. The amazing incompetence of bureaucrats, the accumulation of wealth, the bullying of petty officials, officials and soldiers, etc. It is because of the absolutization of state power that it is possible. The contradiction between the government and the people naturally exists, because sometimes the government will naturally overdo it. Farmers' uprisings in past dynasties began with opposing local governments and ended with opposing the upper leaders of these local governments, step by step. But many times, due to the ideological restrictions of some leaders, although they can win the previous war, they have no ability to govern the world.

For the time being, we can think that there was imperial power in the uprisings of the ancient class and the peasant class, because of social thought, this imperial power has always existed. At the beginning of the uprising, the existing political system of imperial power at that time was biased because it needed the support of farmers. If victory is achieved, this kind of imperial blessing can easily make these insurgents who reached the summit overnight lose their ground and lead to the failure of the uprising. On the contrary, if the policy can be properly adjusted, such as Zhu Yuanzhang, the leader of the rebel army in the late Yuan Dynasty, it is a typical case of the success of the peasant uprising. After the success of the uprising, Zhu Yuanzhang adjusted his political strategy as much as possible to adapt to the rule of the new era, and the rule of the new era also tended to be close to the original imperial power. Therefore, we often think that the concept of "imperial power" often existed in the form of peasant uprisings in ancient China, or even could not be shaken off.

In the ancient society of China, farmers lived in scattered, isolated and backward rural areas for generations, and each household was a production unit, with men plowing and women weaving and individual economy. Between each other, "the voices of chickens and dogs are heard, and the old and the dead are not in contact." The lifestyle of small-scale peasant economy limits their political vision and it is difficult to understand the consistency of class. It is difficult to understand that the root of oppression is not individuals but the whole economic system. They can spontaneously oppose the direct oppression of their landlords and bureaucrats and the specific policy of servitude, but they cannot change the feudal relations of production or break the dilapidated political superstructure. This irreparable cognitive defect is manifested in the political superstition of the emperor and imperial power. For thousands of years, from Chen Sheng and Guangwu Uprising to the peasant war in the late Ming Dynasty, countless peasant struggles broke out, but they were all spontaneous struggles. They often only opposed corrupt officials, not emperors, not bad emperors and supported "good emperors". Their uprising leader may be a good emperor in their hearts. It can be seen that the peasants in ancient China society did not exclude the political system despite the opposition between the government and the people. This is the political model they have long been accustomed to, but the existing officials have destroyed this model, and no one has destroyed this model system at all. The concept of natural imperial power will continue all the time, but it will become a repetitive thing, because there are always improper officials, people will be dissatisfied, contradictions will be prominent, and naturally it will be explosive.

4. How should we know and study the uprising in ancient China?

In the past two thousand years in China, large-scale popular uprisings broke out in successive dynasties. This is a historical fact, which only shows that the basic structure of the ancient state and society in China has not changed fundamentally in the past two thousand years.

The people of ancient China experienced numerous natural disasters, great famines, wars, civil strife and turmoil, and mass migration. In order to survive, it is natural to form a social system that transcends good and evil. This social system has always relied on commercial, armed and secret associations such as migration, begging, smuggling, black market, plunder, abduction, kidnapping and litigation, and has formed its own social system and culture by dividing the sphere of influence with land as the boundary. Good and evil are intertwined, forming the people's culture. If it is only defined as unruly people, it is absolutely inconsistent with historical norms and fair to these people.

Uprising, civil strife, civil war and war in ancient China were large in scale, long in duration and extremely destructive. The resulting changes in social structure, population mobility, mental trauma and economic deterioration are unimaginable. However, these uprisings and wars not only led to the stagnation of China society-the decline of Chinese civilization and the decline of Chinese empire, on the other hand, they also led to the renewal of the dynasty, melted the discrimination, opposition and struggle between ethnic groups, and destroyed the isolation, division and struggle between regions, as well as the differential discrimination between the rich and the poor. Objectively promoted the regeneration of civilization and social progress. Under the content of breaking some old systems, the new rulers actively changed, and the conditions for the development of the Manchu era enabled the society to meet these farmers who had just experienced disasters, thus stabilizing the world again.

The study of popular uprising can not only focus on its limitations. Rebellion naturally has its inadequacies, but judging from the whole process of ancient history, after every uprising, society will always experience some changes, so we should be wary of the rulers at that time, and they need to make some changes. If you don't make progress, you will be overthrown like the last generation of those dynasties. Ancient examples have deepened our understanding of popular uprisings.

5. Summary

Farmers have always been the main body of ancient society, and in the long historical process, farmers have left a rich and colorful stroke. Although we often say that the so-called twenty-four histories are all imperial histories, a large number of historical records fully prove that the main body of history is the people, that is, the peasants at that time. Only by correctly understanding the ideological connotation of these people at that time, and studying history with the emperor as the ruler, can we better grasp the characteristics of the times at that time and grasp history more accurately.