In our history textbooks, when we talk about the demise of a dynasty, most of the time is always focused on its dark side, such as: the emperor is faint and brutal, the eunuchs interfere in the government, the later relatives interfere in the government, the traitors are in charge, the peasants are miserable, and they revolt in anger.
So, is the same true of the demise of the Ming Dynasty?
In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty people produced vigorous vitality, and the economy showed a thriving prosperity, but what does this have to do with the imperial court and the emperor? So why did the Enlightened, Liberal, and even the Ming Dynasty, which already had the rudiments of modern democracy, perish in such a heroic form?
Images of Emperor Ming dynasty
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" > the credibility of the Ming History:</h1>
In the "History of Ming" revised by the Qing Dynasty, in the indoctrination of various media, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty fainted and perverted, officials were corrupt, the people's livelihood was poor, and the people were overwhelmed by harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, and the ordinary people were slaves.
The Ming Emperor recorded in the "History of Ming" is strange, dark and despotic! The emperor is useless. Ming Taizu started a bowl, but he was murderous, Chengzu killed his nephew and usurped the throne, Emperor Wuzong was absurd, Sejong sought the tao and slackened the government, Emperor Xizong was the carpenter emperor, and Sizong ended with a rope, so he was very happy. All of this is a negative, dark image.
A question: How credible is the History of ming? Are they really all the pots of the Ming emperors?
Answer: The "History of Ming" was written nearly a hundred years ago, and began to be revised during the Shunzhi period, and the three emperors of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong personally examined it, attached great importance to it, did not spare any small mistakes, and let the historian revise it until the Manchu Emperor agreed.
Historical history books are generally written in two, three to four or five years. The "History of Ming" took ninety-five years to complete until the four years of Qianlong, and went through the hands of four generations of emperors and three generations of historians.
The time for revision of history is small, the natural influence of people is less, after several generations of emperors, the degree of authenticity can be imagined, and the generation of historians who finally wrote the book have experienced the wars and chaos of the late Ming Dynasty?
The Ming Emperor entered the city
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="58" > Ming Dynasty officials</h1>
Many people say that since the beginning of the Wanli period after Zhang Juzheng's death, the entire Ming Dynasty has been dark and dark, and it has been deteriorating, and the common people have revolted under the rule of extreme corruption.
However, many articles in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties record that during the years of the Apocalypse and Chongzhen, life was still relatively comfortable.
Excerpt from the Late Qing and Ming Dynasties
Excerpt from "Chaos and Observations"
In the last year of the Apocalypse, the northwest has begun to be affected by the Xiaoice River period, and after natural disasters such as droughts and earthquakes, life has taken a sharp turn as follows. But life in other provinces is still very comfortable. As recorded in the above two documents, at that time, the servitude and taxes were extremely low, and the burden on the common people was very light.
Second question: During the Qing Dynasty, the living burden of ordinary people was lighter than that of the Ming Dynasty? More lucid rulers?
In the sixth year of Shunzhi, li yongjian in the military department reflected the increase in jining's field endowment, "Subject township, during the Wanli calendar year, each mu of starting from the branch is only three minutes and two percent, and the first year of Shunzhi is especially the same." In the second, third and fourth years, it has increased year after year, and the number per mu has increased to more than four or five points. In addition, groceries are several times larger than this. ”
A: Although the Qing Dynasty claimed to follow the Ming Dynasty's tax rate, in fact, the "Liao Salary", "Suppression Salary" and "Lian Salary" that had been abolished in the last years of Chongzhen continued to be levied.
In the second year of Shunzhi (1645), Li Yunchang, who was in charge of the military section, pointed out: "In the Ming quarter, there are many branches, and in addition to the positive supply, there are all kinds of additional dispatches such as Liao, training, and suppression. ...... My Emperor's son Hui Li will be spared. ...... Now that Nazawa has not been investigated, the drawbacks have gradually returned. Eavesdropping on the tax of Yi Suppression and Practice in Zhizhou County, Zhizhou Province, is famous for grass beans and other famous colors, and the levy is as it was. Consulting all the foreigners and people, most of them are the same, not just one place" (Note: Li Yuanchang: "Respecting Chen Baobang And Rich Country To Tu Shu", see "Imperial Qing Song Discussion", vol. 2)
Zhang Huangyan (Cangshui) resisted the Qing army
In fact, the real tyranny is the Rulers of the Qing Dynasty, as well as the bureaucrats who have descended to the Qing Dynasty, but the pot still has to be carried by the Ming Dynasty, but I don't know how to understand "three years of Qing Prefect, 100,000 snowflakes of silver".
Excerpt from "Who Killed the Ming Dynasty"
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="92" > tax system</h1>
According to the estimation of British scholar Angus Maddison, the GDP of the Ming Dynasty in the seventeenth century accounted for 29% of the world at that time, ranking first in the world. However, the financial revenue of the Ming Dynasty was generally two-2 million to 3 million taels of cash registered cash, and after adding rice and grain conversion, the total was about 20 million taels, and the highest peak was in 1602, reaching 22.953 million taels.
During the Ming Dynasty, the ratio of GDP to state revenue was extremely mismatched.
In the same period, before the Industrial Revolution, The population of Britain was about 16.3 million, and the annual fiscal revenue exceeded 100 million silver taels.
In 1602, the population of the Ming Dynasty was about 170 million, and the fiscal revenue was about 23 million taels;
After the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, it experienced wars and several massacres by the Qing army, with a population of about 90 million and a fiscal revenue of about 19.6 million taels;
During the Yongzheng period, it began to be implemented: after "spreading the land into acres, and the officials and gentry pay grain as a whole", the annual fiscal revenue was about 40-60 million taels;
During the Qianlong period, the population was about 200 million, and the annual fiscal revenue was about 55 million taels;
During the Guangxu period (1891), the population was about 300 million, and the fiscal revenue reached 89.68 million taels
After the Opium War, it exceeded 100 million taels per year.
Three questions: Why did the Ming Dynasty, which was in charge of the tyrannical Ming Dynasty, calculate according to the average population, have only half the fiscal revenue of the Qing Dynasty?
Answer: The agricultural taxes of the Ming Dynasty were already extremely low, but the newly reclaimed wasteland and the fields hidden by the officials and gods were too many, and the people were also accustomed to sheltering large households and officials to avoid taxes.
For example, the collected writings of the thinker Wang Tingxiang in the Jiajing period recorded: "Woohoo, the method of grain storage in Shu has been abolished for a long time. The people are often indebted, and the appeasement of official clothes is virtue. ”
Ming Dynasty officials display
That is to say, in many places, the common people and officials and gods conspired to escape less than 10% of the agricultural taxes receivable by the state, and a large number of state taxes have been hidden and escaped in the private sector. There are ten points in the fields under the heavens, seven points to the scholars, two points to the king of the domain, and one point to the imperial court.
If these tax evasions are taken into account, the Ming Dynasty is actually in a very low state in terms of tax revenue.
In the eighteenth year of Shunzhi, Shunzhi Emperor Xue, Jiangsu Wuxian shizi went to the Temple of Literature to "cry temple", because the local officials urged the tax to be too strict, hoping to reduce the burden, during which some of the disciples handed over the unveiling and sued the county officials.
After the inspector took over the unveiling, instead played his behavior as resisting the will and not paying taxes, the Qing court was furious, and he planned to commit the crime of "the most heinous crime", "seventy people who re-opened, eighteen people who were late, and several people who were hanged." ”
One of the literary critics, Jin Shengsi, was made the first offender, and when he was dying, he wrote to his family: "Killing the head is painful, and it is not tragic, and the holy sigh is unintentional, is it not the same?" ”
Later, some parties recalled that the readers were dissatisfied with the officials and went to the Temple of Literature to protest, which was a common practice in the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty may not have understood the customs, which led to this tragedy.
In the early days of the Qing Dynasty, once there was a tax resistance, whether it was a grass-roots bureaucracy or a Manchu Qing ruler, it was mainly based on violent suppression, killing people and rolling, and the tax revenue was collected.
After the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, the sources of tax revenue in the Qing Dynasty began to become more abundant, and the commercial tax that was originally collected in the Ming Dynasty was less than 3.5 million taels per year, and nearly 20 million taels could be collected every year in the Qing Dynasty.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="122" > the relationship between emperors and courtiers during the Ming and Qing dynasties</h1>
Emperor Daming Zhengde: "I want to leave the palace, I want to go down to Jiangnan." ”
The group of courtiers was furious, fu que wept, and died endlessly, and finally beat a group of petty officials who could not leave, and if there was no rebellion of the later King of Ning, his plan for a southern tour would have been in vain. What's even more unfortunate is that his plan did not fail, but he did.
Emperor Qianlong of the Great Qing Dynasty: "I am going down to Jiangnan again." ”
The courtiers were furious, "The emperor is wise! "The group of ministers surged upwards, and the southern tour planned to add a palace to the palace, and where it was necessary to allocate funds.
The emperor of the Ming Dynasty is like a caged bird locked in the Forbidden City, and the emperor who can't get out of this cage is still a real emperor? But how many Ming emperors went in "vertically" and then waited until the end to "horizontally" come out?
The emperor of the Qing Dynasty can go wherever he wants, and the slaves can manage it? Those ministers were not like the civil bureaucracy that could stand up to the emperor during the Ming Dynasty, and there was only a slave group during the Qing Dynasty.
Fourth question: When the Ming Dynasty minister Xie Zhi was, would he say, "Thank you Lord Long'en"?
Answer: The eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty called the emperor the emperor: emperor, calling themselves slaves, and it is still a little possible that this sentence of thanks to the lord Long En was said by the eunuchs.
Is it possible that the Ming clique of civil officials would call themselves slaves in this way? Not to mention the common people?
The low-level readers of the Ming Dynasty: students and Xiucai had the habit of supervising and criticizing local officials, and the Ming Dynasty has always adhered to the ancient tradition of "imperial power does not go down to the county, and the county order does not go to the countryside", and it is the gentry who really use it in the countryside.
In the middle and late period of the Ming Dynasty, the civilian official group can actually maintain the operation of the entire state government affairs, and the role of the emperor in it is only a direction of regulation and control, while most of the emperors actually cannot assume this function, and the civilian official group directly handles it. Therefore, in the middle and late period, the emperor even became a tool for the civilian official clique to brush up its prestige.
Emperor of the Ming Dynasty
Unlike the Ming emperors, the entire bureaucracy was a system of enslavement, and all officials had to call themselves slaves when they saw their superiors. It was impossible for the ministers to refute the emperor, and most of the literati who alluded to the emperor and the Manchu qing rule had been cut down by the "prison of words". Therefore, the Qing Dynasty ministers said the most: "The emperor is wise" and "Thank you lord Long'en".
Six of the Ming Dynasty departments gave zhongzhong the right to refute the holy will, and in the middle and late period, if the holy will not drafted by the cabinet became the "middle will", the civil officials could not accept it.
None of this could have happened during the Qing Dynasty.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="21" > technological development</h1>
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, at a node where Chinese and Western cultures intersected, whether it was Mr. Taoism, or The Big Guy of Donglin, or the scholars who believed in Catholicism, they were all learning new knowledge.
For example, The Taoist master Zodiac Zhou is keen on the model of the movement of the earth, and the Eastern Forest tycoon Liu Zongzhou is keen on Western arithmetic, such as Huang Zongxi and Wei Xuelian (Wei Dazhong's son).
For example: Wang Hui compiled the "Far West Strange Instrument Diagram", Bo Yu proofread the "Chongzhen Almanac", and made a telescope;
Song Yingxing analyzed the principle of conservation of matter that appeared in the process of mercury refining silver Zhu (mercury sulfide), and he compiled the "Tiangong Kaiwu" is a comprehensive encyclopedia of agricultural and handicraft production in China.
Five questions: What are the famous scientific and technological works of the middle and early Qing Dynasties?
During the Ming Dynasty, scholars were erudite and talented, and paid great attention to Western studies
Answer: During the Ming Dynasty, China's scientific and technological level was generally on a par with the West, and even some of them surpassed, but it came to an abrupt end because of the demise of the Ming Dynasty. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, China's scientific and technological level was stagnant, and after the Qing Dynasty rule was consolidated, it was even in a state of regression. It was not until after the Opium War at the end of the Qing Dynasty and after entering modern history that the Chinese people rose up to catch up, "Shiyi long skills to control Yi", "middle school as the body, Western learning as the use.".
During the reign of the Qing Dynasty, China's scientific and technological development was stagnant for nearly two hundred years. Although at the end of the Ming Dynasty, firearms and ordnance suffered from cutting corners and causing low quality, there were also some highly handmade products and inventions.
For example, during the Wanli Dynasty, with reference to the musket of the Flang machine, he developed his own flintlock gun. The Hongyi cannon (red-clad cannon) of the late Ming Dynasty had a range of up to ten kilometers.
The Qing Dynasty, worried that the Han Chinese were opposed to the Qing, had been suppressing the development of firearms, and the advanced firearms that westerners had dedicated to Qianlong were all shelved by him and collected and played with by himself. The rulers were convinced of the "bow horse world" and paid little attention to the application of firearms, so that by the time of the Opium War, many soldiers saw muskets and thought it was "magic".
In the same way, in the middle and early Qing Dynasty, because of the ravages of the "literal prison", all scholarship had no room for growth.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23" > military force</h1>
Many people saw that the Ming Dynasty was destroyed by Li Zicheng's forces, Li Zicheng and Nanming were defeated by the Later Jin regime, and the whole territory of China was once again ruled by foreign tribes, so they thought that the Qing Dynasty was completely victorious over the Ming Dynasty. The logic inside may be that the Ming Dynasty could not even defeat the Qing Dynasty, and even if it continued for another two hundred years, it would be weaker than the Qing Dynasty.
The military power at the end of the Ming Dynasty was indeed lagging behind that of the Qing Dynasty, and the core reason for this was mentioned above: the emperor could be arbitrary, that is, centralized power.
The Qing Dynasty was a truly centralized dynasty, while the Ming Dynasty was not. Those Ming emperors who were hacked to death by television, where can they be as arbitrary as the emperors of the Qing Dynasty.
The proof that was abandoned a few years ago: proving that "my father is my father" and "my mother is my mother", this has already happened in the Ming Dynasty, and the Jiajing Emperor wanted to prove that my father was my father, and it took three years before the dust settled.
Sixth question: If the Chongzhen Emperor could have made a decision, filled the army of Shanxi smuggling merchants who had smuggled and sold, and returned the merchant taxes smuggled by Jiangnan Shipping, would it be possible for the Ming Dynasty to come back to life?
Self-answer: History has no if, the Ming Dynasty has been defeated, and the Chongzhen Emperor could not do it at that time.
If it is said which emperor has brought calamity to the Ming Dynasty, and who created the evil in the chaotic world at the end of the Ming Dynasty, I think it should not be borne by the emperor alone.
In this process, the Civil Officials Group of the Ming Dynasty, the local gentry, and the rural gentry were responsible for a large part of it. The Ming Dynasty was corroded by the confrontation between the imperial power group and the civilian official group, as well as the short-sighted inner volume of the civil official group and the official gentry, and finally collapsed.
Ming Dynasty wax figures
The demise of the Ming Dynasty is not the sorrow of the Ming Emperor and Chongzhen, but the sorrow of the Chinese nation.
The Liao's salary sent to Liaodong has been reduced by 20% or 30% out of the capital, 20% or 30% less to the inspectors and inspectors, and 40% or 50% to the general soldiers and generals, and then sent to the soldiers, at most one or two percent.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Shangshu Bi Ziyan once said: "Even if the Eastern Slave Loves the Long Nest, do not leave a single arrow to the west, and my world is already sitting on us." This probably means: "Even if the Houjin army shrinks in its old nest and does not shoot an arrow at us, we are already sitting and waiting for death." ”
The three salaries levied by the Ming Dynasty itself were apportioned to about nine cents of silver per mu of land (equivalent to 0.05625 two pieces of silver), which was equivalent to about ten catties of grain per mu. At that time, the yield per mu was about 1.2-2 stones, calculated in the median of 1.5 stones (ten buckets per stone was equivalent to about 120 catties), and the additional levy was about 10 ÷ (1.5×120) = 5.56%.
If there had been no unscrupulous landlords and squires, corrupt officials and corrupt officials for the high rent and exploitation of the common people, the imperial court could have achieved fair, just, open, and legal and compliant levies in tax policy, and perhaps the foundation of the Ming Dynasty would not have collapsed so quickly. Without the intervention of foreign forces, perhaps the Ming Dynasty could withstand the test of the Xiaoice River period.
Unfortunately, history has not started from scratch, and we can only say that we should look at history fairly and not blindly blame a single person.
After all: when an avalanche occurs, not a single snowflake is innocent!
Taking history as a mirror, the inner volume can only cause pain to the relatives, and the enemy is fast!
The development of our new China in the past few decades is obvious to all, but today's development has been more and more resisted and suppressed by US imperialism, and I hope that more Chinese can enhance their cultural self-confidence in the nation and cheer for the development of science and technology in our country!
We have lost two hundred years of development, and now we have caught up, not the moon abroad is round, not the foreign products are fragrant.
I really can't help but want to like Huawei! They have realized the design of autonomous chips and completed the development of autonomous systems, which is not something we should be proud of? Sincerely hope that more enterprises can continue to catch up on the road of scientific and technological development, and become the pride of the Chinese nation!
(The case of Tik Tok being ordered to be forced to acquire in the United States is also something to be proud of!) [Teeth] [Teeth] [Teeth])