The reason for the outbreak of peasant uprisings in ancient China is, in the final analysis, the reason is that "officials forced the Ming to rebel", and the peasant uprisings that broke out in the last years of the Qin Dynasty were also the reasons. After the death of Qin Shi Huang, Qin II Hu Hai became emperor, but Qin II was a faint and brutal emperor, and the common people not only did not usher in a new dawn in the environment of Qin's unification, but under the rule of Qin II, the burden of servitude and taxes was heavier, and the punishment of the Qin Dynasty was more severe, and the people at the bottom were struggling with hunger and death.
In this environment, the people's lives can be described as miserable, and finally under an opportunity - the Dazexiang Uprising, the people living at the bottom began to rise up and resist. Wherever the peasant rebels led by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang went, the poor peasants who were exploited and oppressed responded one after another. As the trend of uprisings continued to expand, various localities responded one after another, and a great peasant uprising at the end of Qin dynasty that swept the whole country began completely. The peasant revolt at the end of the Qin Dynasty was unprecedented in scale, and for this reason, the peasant revolt at the end of the Qin Dynasty also became the first nationwide peasant uprising in Chinese history.
So was there a peasant uprising before the Qin Dynasty? There may be, but it is not a peasant uprising. We also know that before the Qin Dynasty, there were kingdoms, such as: Xia, Shang, and The Three Slave Dynasties, and the three dynasties were about 2,000 years old, and in such a long period of time, it was inevitable that there would be contradictions between different classes, and the emergence of contradictions meant that there might be struggles (conflicts), and the struggles were more or less, large or small, but these contradictions and conflicts were not as large as this one at the end of the Qin Dynasty. Because of the different social forms, the different definitions of the uprising, and the lack of clear records in the historical documents, the uprising before the Qin Dynasty can only be counted as a slave uprising.
Why did the Qin Dynasty break out into a peasant uprising?
The outbreak of the peasant revolt is a reflection of the contradictions that have arisen in ancient society, which means that the peasant class and the classes above them (e.g., the landlord class, and then rise to the ruling class) have irreconcilable contradictions, thus breaking out of the peasant war. Under the landlord economy (feudal lords) of the ancient feudal society, the feudal lords, the large landowners and other landlord classes owned most of the land, in this case, the vast peasants had very little land, not even any land, while the landlords adopted the methods of exploitation of hired workers or land rent exploitation, so that the vast number of peasants needed to be attached to them in order to survive.
The large landlords owned a large amount of land, and their families did not cultivate it, so they hired peasants to cultivate or lend the land to the peasants to collect rent, and the vast number of peasants could only be brutally exploited and enslaved by the landlord class in order to survive. If the exploitation and oppression of the peasants by the landlord class for the sake of profit become more and more serious, in this situation where the productive forces and production relations are unbalanced, it will provoke the peasants' resistance, so that the peasants will start a war with weapons, and the larger peasant war will seriously hit the position of the ruling class and even subvert the ruling power of the state.
The peasant wars at the end of the Qin Dynasty also stemmed from the brutal exploitation of the vast number of peasants by the ruling class. After Qin Shi Huang took the throne and took the throne, he began to implement the unification strategy, and then spent ten years annexing the Six Kingdoms, establishing a unified Qin Dynasty, laying the foundation for the rule of China's great unification dynasty. During his reign, there were great achievements such as books and texts, cars on the same track, and unified weights and measures, which had a profound impact on Chinese history. It is undeniable that Qin Shi Huang made contributions to history, but during his reign, the large-scale construction of large-scale fortifications such as mausoleums and palaces consumed a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources, and increased the people's servitude and tax burden.
Later, in 210 BC, Qin Shi Huang died of illness in the sand dunes during a parade, and Hu Hai, the younger son of Qin Shi Huang, took the throne, becoming the second emperor of the Qin Dynasty, known as "Qin II". After Qin II ascended the throne, he not only did not reduce the exploitation of the people, but continued to requisition a large number of people to build fortifications such as Afang Palace, or that kind of free labor, and the people were free labor for many years. This is not the end of it, even if you work in vain, you don't care about food, you have to bring your own grain to work, and don't let the people who are serving in labor eat grain near Xianyang City. In our opinion, it is already too much, but in addition to bringing their own grain for free labor, we must also let all localities provide food for Xianyang.
This is really something that the uncle can endure, and the aunt can't tolerate. Even in this case, the tax on the peasant population not only did not decrease, but tended to increase day by day. Let's imagine that in such an environment, can the people live happily and happily? Not only is it impossible to talk about happiness, but it is even difficult to survive, and farmers can be said to be living in the depths of the water, surviving on the line of life and death. And in the case of not completing the task, the light is punished, and the heavy is dead, because Qin respects the Fa, and it is common for misdemeanors to use heavy punishments and sit together. At this time, the peasants' hearts were already full of rebellious emotions.
The "History of Chen Shijia" records: "In July of the first year of the second century, Fa Lu zuo Shi Shu Yuyang, 900 people Tun Daze Township. Chen Sheng and Wu Guang were both subordinates and were the chiefs of the tun. It will rain heavily, the road will not pass, and the degree has been lost. Lost time, the law is cut. Chen Sheng and Wu Guangnai plotted: "If you die now, you will die, and if you want to die, you will die in a country? ... By the first decree there is no beheading, and the dead are fixed in sixteen or seventeen. And the strong man is not dead, and when he dies, he raises a big name, and the prince will have a kind of Xiangning! All disciples know: Honor. ”
The long-term oppression and exploitation of the peasants' resistance finally broke out at an opportunity. In the autumn of 209 BC, the Qin court ordered the requisition of Chen Sheng, Wu Guang and more than 900 other poor people to Yuyang Shubian, Chen Sheng, and his party were blocked by heavy rain when they traveled to Daze Township (present-day Suzhou), even if they finally reached Yuyang, they also missed the deadline, according to the Qin law, those who missed the deadline may be sentenced to be beheaded, even if they are exempted from beheading, the punishment is not light. In the end, Chen Sheng said, "The prince will have a kind of Xiang Ning!" "Historical famous saying, more than 900 people, under the leadership of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, revolted in Dazexiang.
The rebel army successively attacked Daze Township, PuXian County, Kuzhu and other places, wherever the rebels went, the peasants participated in the uprising, and within a few months of the uprising, this peasant rebel army expanded from more than 900 people at the beginning to tens of thousands of people, which shows that the world has indeed suffered for a long time. The dazexiang uprising was unprecedented in its length and scale, and the Dazexiang uprising also became "the first large-scale civilian uprising in Chinese history", and the rebel army led by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang also opened the prelude to the great peasant uprising at the end of Qin. During the uprising, all parts of the country responded, and the Qin Dynasty also perished in the wave of peasant uprisings at the end of Qin.
The fundamental cause of peasant revolts in ancient China was that officials forced the people to rebel. There are only the following reasons: the ruling class abuses the people's strength, levies a lot of taxes, and the people bear a heavy burden; the government implements a strict economic monopoly, and the projects that are easier to obtain benefits are monopolized by the state; the strict household registration control, which does not allow the peasants to migrate, and those who do not want to relocate are forcibly relocated to open up the land; the ruling class is corrupt, in addition to taxes, it is forcibly plundered and extorted outside the law; and natural disasters and external troubles are non-social factors. Eventually, when the people could not survive, they had to fight back, and eventually let the peasants take up arms and start a war to resist.
So did there have been peasant uprisings before the Qin Dynasty?
Before the Qin Dynasty, peasant uprisings rarely occurred in ancient China, and based on the different social formations at that time, they were not clearly recorded in the historical documents, but they did not mean that they did not occur. The Dazexiang Uprising is considered to be the first large-scale peasant uprising in Chinese history, so it means that there was no large-scale peasant uprising before, and since there was no large-scale peasant uprising, there may still be a small-scale peasant uprising. After the Qin Dynasty, it belonged to the feudal society, before it was a slave society, the social form is different, even if there is an uprising, it is difficult to identify it as a peasant uprising.
In ancient China, with the emergence of private property, primitive society began to disintegrate and die, and two classes also appeared in society: the exploiting class and the exploited class, and the slave society began to emerge. Slaves become the private property of slave owners, slaves become exploited classes, and slave owners become exploiting classes, and slaves have to work for slave owners without compensation, not only without personal freedom, slave owners can also buy and sell them freely. In the period of slave society, there were only slaves and no peasants in society, so before feudal society, even if there was an uprising, it could not be called a peasant uprising.
In the later stages of slave society, with the emergence of iron farming tools and the promotion of cattle farming, the social productive forces were greatly improved, and slaves were driven by slave owners to reclaim wasteland when they completed public land, so the newly reclaimed fields became the private fields of slave owners, and some slaves were liberated from slave owners, and slave owners leased private land to this part of the people, thus forming the earliest landlords and peasants. The peasant's status was greatly improved compared with that of slaves, and he also had personal freedom, and with the development, the social form changed, the slave society began to die, and the feudal society was born.
Under the feudal society, the peasants are freer than the slaves in the period of slave society, and when they cannot bear the exploitation and oppression, they will rebel, and the slaves have no personal freedom, even if they want to resist, and small-scale resistance can not set off any storms, in exchange for the disaster of killing, large-scale resistance can not be realized because of the lack of personal freedom. Coupled with the ideological shackles and ideological indoctrination of the society at that time, the slaves could not have any rebellious thoughts, such as the patriarchal system and the liturgical system implemented by the Zhou Dynasty in order to strengthen its rule.
People of different classes must conform to their own identities in terms of clothing, food, shelter, and transportation, and there are obvious differences between nobles and lows, and the idea of people's resistance has been extinguished ideologically. Even after the collapse of the liturgy, the princes began to show acts of trespassing, but the princes are all masters of cultural ideas, and there are very few slaves at the bottom and the literate people at the bottom, and the shackles and indoctrination of ideas for a long time cannot be changed overnight, and the slaves living at the bottom of the society can only obtain very few means of subsistence in the hands of slave owners to maintain their lives.
Slave owners deceive and paralyze slaves ideologically, creating all kinds of fallacies to make slaves satisfied with the status quo and not to resist. In order to maintain their own rule, slave owners also constantly strengthened their armies, prisons, etc., to rule slaves and suppress slaves' rebellion. Under the long-term tangible and invisible shackles, the vast number of slaves can only be brutally exploited and oppressed by the slave owners, and they cannot afford to resist, and even if they resist, they cannot be suppressed by the slave owners' force, and they live the darkest and most miserable life at the lowest level of society.
epilogue:
After the Warring States period, feudal society sprouted, peasants have appeared in society, after the establishment of the Qin Dynasty, officially entered the period of feudal society, the social form changed, free peasants increased, but also laid the foundation for the outbreak of peasant uprisings later. After the peasants have freedom, they are also easy to connect with each other, and in the case of serious disparities between the rich and the poor in society and uneven distribution, when they cannot survive, the peasants will have the heart to resist, connect together, and eventually launch an uprising and break out a peasant war to resist.
Although the Dazexiang Uprising at the end of the Qin Dynasty failed, the revolutionary initiative spirit expressed by the chen sheng and Wu Guang uprisings inspired the broad masses of working people in later generations to fight against the brutal rule. The success of the peasant uprising at the end of Qin set up an image for future generations and laid a good tone for future generations of uprisings. Therefore, after the Qin Dynasty, when the people were oppressed and exploited and could not bear it, peasant revolts would often break out.
References: "History", "General History of China"
Text/History Zi Mo Ge
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