Chapter 22 Chapter 22 "Production Revolution" in the Warring States Period

What is the difference between the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period?I'm afraid there are many to list.The political structure of the country is different, the formation of the military organization is different, the distribution of official positions is different, and even the rulers of the vassal states are different, the scale of the war is different, the purpose of the war is different, and the cultural trend of the society is different, but all the "differences" come down to one point , but only one thing: the economic base is different. We say that the Warring States Period was a period of transition for Chinese society. In the final analysis, it was actually a period of transition for the entire Chinese economic structure and economic foundation.According to political science, it is also a period of transition in social production relations, and the far-reaching impact brought about by various major changes will eventually be implemented in changes in the living conditions of ordinary people.Looking at all the changes from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period, fundamentally speaking, the Warring States Period changed the lives of Chinese people.

Let's take a look, what aspects of Chinese people's lives have been changed by the Warring States Period? A major aspect of the Warring States period that changed the lives of Chinese people was the change in social relations at the grassroots level.If the country's economic system is a house, then the roof of slavery is the slave owner, and the floor is the slave. This is also the social relationship of Spring and Autumn.In the Warring States Period, with the deepening of reforms, the transformation of various countries, and the destruction of small slavery countries, this relationship has long since ceased to exist, and a new house has sprung up: the feudal social relationship.The roof of this house is the landlord; the floor of the house is the tenant farmers; the walls of the house are the owner farmers, large and small.

In the vicissitudes of the Warring States period, those big and small activists, the swaying monarchs, and the generals who denounced Fang Qiu may have different positions, different camps, different views, and different relationships between friends and enemies, but they have the same identity. They are all 100% landlord class. Various historical materials have talked a lot about the social transformation of the Warring States period, but there is one thing that is less talked about: how did the various new classes in this social transformation period come from?For example, how did the landlord come about?

The landlord in the Warring States Period was the absolute protagonist of the Warring States Period.In the frenzy of carving up slavery countries in the early Warring States period, the protagonists were landlords; in the contention of a hundred schools of thought in the Warring States period, those students with different political opinions and the interest groups behind them were mostly landlords; in the reform movement of the Warring States period, Those reformers who were hard or feminine, their true identities were still landlords.Rome was not built in a day, and landlords did not emerge in a day.The landlords who played the mainstay role in the Warring States Period actually went through a rather long process of formation.

Landlords in the Warring States Period mainly came from three types. The first type was the original slave-owner aristocracy. Their status was very similar to the new aristocracy of the British bourgeois revolution.In the general trend of social transformation, their noses are sharper, they can smell the wind more accurately, and they have taken the initiative to change their way of life very early on. They have acquired new interests and become the vested interests of the new mode of production.The representative figures among them, such as the three clans of Han, Zhao and Wei who divided up the state of Jin, replaced the Tian family of Jiang's state of Qi.

The general characteristic of these "new aristocrats" is that they are very smart, and most of them are very unpopular among the original slave-owning nobles.Under the old system, although they owned land and even had relatives with the ruler, they did not have the privileges of aristocratic families, nor the ability to control the army and the government. Their main power was to collect production in the land and maintain abundant life.Because of their low status and few vested interests, during the transformation period of this society, they dared to turn their heads. For example, in their own fiefdoms, they took the initiative to change the way of exploitation, changing the former slave relationship to the later landlord-peasant relationship. Provide various policies as much as possible to enhance farmers' enthusiasm for production.In this change, they were the first to taste the sweetness.Having tasted the sweetness, they have to strive for more sweetness, so they have to expand their power and grab power from the old nobles.Even take power in a country.What these people have in common is that they themselves have transformed from the old system, and they cannot separate themselves from the old system. In the end it will not be complete.The national regimes of Qi, Wei, Zhao, and South Korea during the Warring States Period all belonged to this situation. According to past history books, their final decline was also due to "retaining a large number of remnants of slavery."

Throughout the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there was another group of "new nobles" - gentlemen.The gentleman here does not refer to a good person with high morals, but a new group of nobles who were born out of the old aristocracy in the Warring States Period and grew rapidly after the establishment of the new economic situation.The common identity of these people is the royal family of various countries. Their common characteristics are that they own a large amount of land, their wealth is incomparable to the enemy, and they operate a large number of emerging industries, including agriculture, industry and commerce, and lend usury.In their own manor, there is also a set of powerful people who are completely loyal to themselves, commonly known as "menke".When the number of diners is the largest, it can reach thousands of people, and sometimes they can even influence the situation of the country. In the Warring States Period when the centralized system was first established, they were derivatives of the centralized system, and they were a group of "heterogeneous" that hindered the centralization.These people and the rulers of the country not only use each other, but also restrict each other. The final result is that their power will end with the end of the Warring States Period. talk.Representatives of these people are the famous "Four Gentlemen of the Warring States Period" - Lord Chunshen of the State of Chu, Lord Xinling of the State of Wei, Lord Pingyuan of the State of Zhao, Lord Mengchang of the State of Qi. When they were alive, they were mostly the pride of their country. For thousands of years, it has been regarded as a legend by later generations, but the one who truly accomplished the great cause of reunification was the most thorough reform and no gentleman Qin.

The second type of landlord class is the bureaucratic class in the Warring States Period.They replaced the old nobles in the past, became the executors of the state power in the Warring States Period, and became the helpers of the central group of the monarch. The way they became landlords was to obtain land rewards from the monarch through meritorious service.During the Warring States Period, the main reward given by the monarch to his ministers was land, especially in the Three Kingdoms of Han, Zhao and Wei in the Sanjin area. The land that King Wei bestowed to him once, the prime minister of Wei, who was once the master of Shang Yang, was the highest. At that time, there were 1 million mu.Wu Qi was rewarded with 200,000 mu of land by the king of Wei for his meritorious service in defending the important land of Xihe.The composition of this type of landlord is more complicated. Some are transformed from the old aristocrats, and their backgrounds are relatively noble, such as the male uncle seat;

In addition to rewards from the monarch, some bureaucrats are also very investment-minded.In this era, they like to use their salaries to buy land. For example, Zhao Kuo, who talks about military affairs on paper, has a high degree of love for land. He even goes out to lead troops and buys good land when he sees it along the way.Because of this, his mother concluded that he was not capable of leading soldiers.At that time, this kind of situation was very common in the bureaucracy. Money is easy to depreciate, but land will never depreciate. Having land is not only a symbol of status, but also an economic guarantee.

The expansion of the bureaucratic landlord class is also related to an important policy in the various reforms of the Warring States Period: rewarding military exploits.This policy was first implemented in the State of Wei, and later carried forward by Shang Yang in the State of Qin.The main content of this policy is to award land as a reward to those who have made meritorious service on the battlefield.These bureaucratic landlords who acquired land through military and military exploits are completely different from ordinary bureaucratic landlords. They were often important forces in the political arena of the Warring States Period.

Another type of landlord class is very "inspirational", that is, commoner landlords. There are two types of this group, one is the small and medium-sized landlords of the common people, and the other is transformed from owner farmers, handicraftsmen, and even slaves. landlord.The means by which they acquire land are mainly land sales.The largest proportion of this group is the landlord class of industrial and commercial origin. A popular saying in the Warring States Period was: do business to make a fortune, and use land to protect wealth.Lu Buwei, who was in power in the early days of Qin Shihuang's accession to the throne, is an outstanding representative of this type of figure. Another group that is more inspirational is that many self-cultivating farmers have gradually owned land through personal hard work.This group is mainly distributed in the early Qin and Zhao areas where there were many people and little land.The rulers at that time generally adopted a policy of rewarding land reclamation. The state gave legal protection to land reclamation and provided farm tools. Especially the Qin State, as long as you dare to dig the land, the state will give you whatever support you want.Shang Yang's campaign of "abandoning well fields and opening rice fields" in Qin State became a catalyst for this process. Many early self-cultivating farmers occupied a large amount of land through dedicated farming and transformed themselves into the landlord class.In China at that time, the reason why the population of the Qin State grew rapidly and the population of the six countries poured in was because it was the place where it was the least difficult to change from a self-cultivating farmer to a landlord. Landlords naturally correspond to farmers. As a group trampled under the feet of landlords, farmers in the Warring States Period mainly included three groups: owner farmers, tenant farmers, and farm laborers. Among them, there are two types of origin of the owner farmers: one is the civilian class in the slave society, but more of them are escaped slaves in the slave society, those escaped slaves who escaped from the rule of the slave owners in the early days, and exiled to new areas through active reclamation Open up new land and gradually become a self-cultivator with legal property.This type of self-cultivating farmers was generally distributed in Qin, Chu, and Wu areas at that time. With the frequent wars in the Central Plains, a large number of slaves fled, and they began to migrate to sparsely populated areas. Today's East China, Guanzhong, and Jianghan The plains are the best destination. Although the content of the reforms in different countries during the Warring States Period was different, one of the purposes was the same, that is to desperately increase the number of self-cultivating farmers.Because the increase in the number of self-cultivating farmers means that the country can expand the tax sources for tax collection, ensuring that the emerging feudal country establishes a complete fiscal revenue and expenditure system.On this point, Li Kui, the master of the Warring States Reform, once had an incisive summary: if the agriculture hurts, the country will be poor.But for the various vassal states, the increase of self-cultivating farmers is the most difficult, because the landlord class below the monarch is trying every means to conceal the population and turn a large number of people into their own tenant farmers.Therefore, when the Wei State reformed, the state adopted the method of providing farm tools and legal protection to increase the number of self-cultivating farmers. However, when the Qin State Shang Yang reformed the law, it adopted more stringent measures. Brothers will be punished by the law regardless of family separation after they become adults, and the Baojia Lianzao system will be vigorously promoted.When Zhao She, a famous general of the State of Zhao, was a tax official in his early years, the reason why he offended Lord Pingyuan, who was in power at the time, was also because Lord Pingyuan deliberately concealed his population and evaded taxes.The booming period of a feudal country is bound to be a period with a large number of self-cultivating farmers, and the main starting point for the decline of a feudal country is the increasingly serious land annexation.This economic law began in the Warring States period. The self-cultivating farmers in the Warring States period were not as wealthy as those in the later Han, Tang, Song and Ming Dynasties. At that time, production was backward and the land yield was low. The land of a self-cultivating farmer was about 30 mu.They own seeds, farm implements, and bear heavy taxes.During the Warring States period, tax rates were different in different countries. Taking Wei Wenhou’s era as an example during the prosperous period of the Wei State, Li Kui, the reformer of the Wei State at that time, once estimated that a family of self-cultivating farmers with 30 acres of land, calculated on the basis of 5 people, would get the grain per mu The output is 3 buckets, and the tax they need to bear is about one-tenth.Apart from eating the taxed grain, about one-third of the grain can be sold for money.The money from the sale, including the annual expenses for clothes, can barely maintain food and clothing.This is still an ordinary production year. If there is a flood or drought, the bankruptcy of the owner farmers will become a common thing.Therefore, in the Warring States Period, all countries attached great importance to the construction of water conservancy to maintain the stability of production.Even so, the poverty level of the owner farmers in the Warring States period was far greater than that of the Chinese farmers under the unified feudal dynasty. What is worse than the owner-peasant is the tenant farmer.Shareholders are basically converted from slaves in a slavery society. Compared with the miserable life of slaves, their situation is obviously much better. They lease the land of the landlord and have their own production tools.However, half of the annual harvest has to be handed over to the landlord, and at the same time they have to bear the land tax, so it is even more difficult for most of them to maintain food and clothing.A considerable number of tenant farmers are bankrupt self-cultivating farmers. They encountered floods and droughts and were unable to bear the country's taxes. "Lu's Spring and Autumn" once recorded: During the Qin-Zhao Changping War, because the Qin Dynasty continued to increase taxes to ensure the front supply, a large number of self-cultivating farmers fled. Compared with hired farmers, tenant farmers are still better, because hired farmers not only have no land, but also have no farm tools.Some of them work as servants for the landlord's family, and some even serve as helpers for wealthy owner farmers during the busy farming season.Their standard of living has already caught up to that of slaves. Han Feizi once said in his book that the economic income of three farm laborers is not enough to support an old man, which shows the miserable economic situation. There were also slaves in the Warring States period. At that time, the big industrial and commercial landlords still kept a large number of slaves. They had only food but no income, and some even grazed with cattle and horses.But this situation is no longer the mainstream of the Warring States Period.The Warring States Period was the period when the feudal social relationship between landlords and peasants was formally established.The embryonic form of Chinese feudal society had already been established during this period. The direct impact of the changes in the production system and social structure of the Warring States period was the improvement of production standards, to be precise, the rapid advancement of China's industrial and agricultural production technology.If we use a horizontal comparison, China before the Warring States Period was in sync with the contemporary Western slavery countries in terms of production level, while China after the Warring States Period had already left the world far behind. The first rapid production progress in the Warring States Period was the progress of agriculture.The feudal lords competed for hegemony, on the surface they were fighting for military power, but in essence they were fighting for money and grain reserves. Therefore, the countries in the Warring States Period spared no expense in improving agricultural technology.The most prominent manifestation is the use of a large number of iron farm tools. According to archaeological discoveries after the founding of the People's Republic of China, iron farm tools from the middle and late Warring States period have been unearthed from Liaoning in the north to Guangdong in the south.For example, in the Wei tomb of the Warring States Period in Huixian County, Henan Province, 160 pieces of iron tools were unearthed at one time, including 58 pieces of agricultural tools. The biggest difference between iron agricultural tools and the previous stone and wooden agricultural tools is that the production efficiency is improved, and the second is that it can complete deep plowing. The wasteland that cannot be developed into arable land can be reclaimed into good land because of the appearance of iron farm tools, and more and more individual farmers can also vigorously reclaim wasteland and own their own land because of the use of iron farm tools. A change in the mode of production is a change in the social structure. Another technology that promoted the development of agriculture in the Warring States Period was cattle farming.During the Warring States Period, ox farming has been vigorously promoted as a common farming method. Using ox farming is like mechanized farming in modern agriculture.Not only has the production efficiency been greatly improved, but it has also changed the proportion of agricultural production during the Warring States Period.Before the Warring States Period, the recognized agricultural powers among the various states were the Jin State in the Central Plains and the Qi State in the East.However, after the Warring States period, Qin State in the northwest became the number one agricultural power. The important reason is that Qin State vigorously promoted cattle farming since Shang Yang's reform.They themselves have abundant animal husbandry reserves, and the reserves of cattle are extremely rich, so the promotion of livestock farming is unique compared to the other six countries.At that time, Qin State not only had cattle farming, but also horse farming, and Qin State also had a "national welfare system". Agricultural standards have developed rapidly in just a few years.The reason why Qin State was able to win several wars, especially in stalemate battles such as the Battle of Changping, was that its strong national money and food reserves became an important reason.A change in farming methods brought about subversive changes in China's economic territory during the Warring States Period. Another important innovation in the progress of agriculture in the Warring States Period was a major change in fertilizers.During the Warring States period, there were already "dung seeds", that is, the use of animal bones and pockmarks to make juice and stir, as fertilizer to increase the yield of the land.Xunzi also said in his "Fuguo Chapter": Fertilizing the fields with manure is what farmers should do.The agricultural fertilizers at that time included, in addition to manure, green manure made by burning weeds into ashes.These two kinds of fertilizers have been continuously developed since then, and have been used in the entire Chinese feudal society. The famous school "Nongjia" in the Warring States Period has a very detailed summary and elaboration of agricultural farming techniques, including deep plowing techniques, manure cultivation, and seeds. The identification and planting of these have formed a sound theory during the Warring States Period.When Qin Shihuang wanted to drive away guests from the six countries, Li Si used rice planting as an example to persuade Qin Shihuang, saying, "Rice that was originally only grown in the south can take root in Qin, let alone talents from the six countries."These remarks not only made Qin Shihuang change his "foreign exclusion" idea, but also showed that rice was widely planted in the south at this time. The changes in agricultural output during the Warring States period can be seen from the self-report of Li Kui, a famous minister of the Wei State. Li Kui believed that in the early Warring States period, the yield of an acre of land in the Wei State was one and a half stones, while iron tools and fertilizers were used. Finally, the output can be increased by four times at most, or doubled at least.That is to say, during the Warring States Period, the yield of one mu of land was between three and six stones.Even the most common stone and a half, according to the records of the British scholar Joseph Needham, is at least twice as high as that in Europe at the same time. The development of agriculture in the Warring States Period not only enhanced the strength of the major powers at that time, but also supported the long-term war between them. In terms of social life, the important impact it brought was the prosperity of social industry and commerce. The industry and commerce in the Warring States Period, both in terms of transaction scale and development scale, were far from the same level as in the Spring and Autumn Period.The most important change is that industry and commerce has increasingly become a "national activity". As early as when Zheng Zhuanggong was Xiaoba, he used to enhance the country's strength by developing industry and commerce.But the industry and commerce in the early Spring and Autumn period, including the industry and commerce in the Western Zhou Dynasty, were actually just "slave masters' games."The merchants in the slavery society themselves appeared as derivatives of the slave owners. At that time, the main task of the merchants was to sell luxury goods to the slave owners.At that time, the Chinese people had a large gap between the rich and the poor, and their social status was low. The slaves could not even have enough to eat. But in the Warring States period, this situation has undergone earth-shaking changes.From the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period, the impact of income distribution was the change in the distribution of social wealth. A large amount of social wealth flowed to the common people, small and medium-sized landlords, and even self-cultivating farmers also owned part of the wealth.The increase in agricultural production has also given farmers more surplus materials that can be exchanged.The self-cultivating farmers in the Spring and Autumn Period could barely use their annual harvest for subsistence, but the self-cultivating farmers in the Warring States Period could use one-third of their crops for commodity exchange in an ordinary year.Therefore, a large number of farmers participated in commercial activities, which was an epoch-making change in China's industry and commerce during this period. Another reason for the commercial prosperity of the Warring States Period was the expansion of the activity area of ​​the Huaxia people.In the Western Zhou Dynasty, the main activity areas of the Central Plains vassal states were concentrated in the Yellow River Basin. With the continuation of the vassal hegemony in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, the activity area of ​​the Huaxia people expanded day by day. There are more and more exchanges in traditional economic zones.The more exchanges, the more mutual transportation of goods.At the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, commodity trade in the Central Plains was already very prosperous, and a large number of luxury goods that were originally only patented by nobles flooded the market. Fan Li, who turned to business after escaping from Yue State, soon became wealthy beyond the enemy's country, and became Tao Zhugong, the ancestor of local Chinese merchants. During this period, more and more people participated in commodity trading.From the original aristocrats to ordinary farmers and handicraftsmen, not only big merchants bought agricultural products from farmers and handicrafts from handicraftsmen, but also transactions between common people appeared, such as between farmers and handicraftsmen. trade.Compared with the Spring and Autumn Period, the circulation of goods in China's industry and commerce during this period has surged, and the most profitable trade industry during this period was the trading of luxury goods.During the Warring States period, the old nobles disintegrated, new landlords emerged in large numbers, and the upstarts increased day by day, so the demand for luxury goods also increased day by day.For example, when ivory from the south is sold in the northern market, the price difference is as high as 200 times.According to Xunzi, horses from the north, ivory from the south, and pearls from the west are all available in markets in the Central Plains.During this period, China's industrial and commercial activities were not only nationalized, nationalized, but also internationalized. The prosperity of the commodity economy has also created a new wealthy class - the class of industrial and commercial landlords.In the vicissitudes of the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States, they are the panacea for all forces.Industrial and commercial landlords quickly accumulated huge wealth through commercial trade, and they used their wealth to buy land, becoming the newly rich landlord class.These people do business and farm land, and the economic benefits are huge.Some people have also achieved cross-regional operations, set up companies in various countries, monopolized trade distribution channels, and realized "transnational operations."The countries in the Warring States Period were not unified, but the commercial market in the Warring States Period was gradually unified by them. Industrial and commercial landlords with money naturally began to think about power. They made their own fortunes by making good friends with bureaucratic landlords. Seeking convenience, he even began to seek to manipulate state power. The typical character among them is Lu Buwei.When he was in Zhao State, he regarded Qin Gongzi Yiren, who was a hostage in Zhao State, as a "rare commodity", gave his wife and money, and helped him return to China to seek the throne of Qin.His investment paid off quickly. Being the son of the King of Qin gave him what he dreamed of—power.The panaceas of these early power systems, along with the expansion of economic power, have gradually changed from a parasitic position in the original power system to a dominant position. At the same time as the industrial and commercial landlords, there were also credit landlords who wandered in the industrial and commercial circles of the Warring States Period.The so-called credit landlords, according to folk sayings, are "lending usury".In the Warring States Period, it was not easy to lend usury. Most of them were the "new aristocrats" of the landlord class, especially the gentlemen of the new aristocracy.Contrary to industrial and commercial landlords, commercial and industrial landlords have business as their main business and politics as a side business, while credit landlords have politics as their main business and usury as a side business.For example, most of Meng Changjun's usury income was used to give gifts to his followers and expand his power. However, Lu Buwei, who became the prime minister, used his power to monopolize Luoyang's industry and commerce, and became a bureaucrat swaggeringly. Under the prosperous commodity economy, China's feudal urbanization process intensified during the Warring States period, and it was never separated by the wars of the Warring States period.In the Spring and Autumn Period, even the capitals of the vassal states could not exceed 900 feet, which was almost shabby compared to the cities in the Warring States Period.Urbanization in the Warring States Period was a process of expansion of old urban areas and a process of continuous emergence of new cities.New cities emerged during this period, including Yi County in Hebei, Handan in Hebei, Kaifeng in Henan, and Luoyang in Henan. The scale of old cities was also expanding. For example, Linzi, the capital of Qi State, had 70,000 households and a population of 210,000 in the early Warring States period. , this data is inconspicuous today, but in comparison, London, a major city in Western Europe a thousand years later, will only have more than 100,000 people.This is a number worthy of the pride of every friend who loves Chinese history.