Chapter 38 Section 2 The Rise and Fall of Money Making in the Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty made money and inherited the Ming system. Before the Opium War, the money system was fixed, and silver and money went hand in hand.Before and after the five-port trade agreement, Western powers invaded aggressively, and the money-making system gradually declined from the initial stability.The hyperinflation during the Xianfeng period showed that money making had reached a situation where "the setting sun is infinitely good, but it is only near dusk".In the Qing Dynasty, machines were used to cast money, and it was only a flashback. In the early Republic of China, some areas used to cast a small amount of money, which was fleeting.It was eventually replaced by copper coins.

Before the Qing court entered the customs, it had minted money in Manchuria. In 1616, Manchu Tianming sweat money and Chinese Tianming Tongbao were cast, and in 1627, Manchu ten-day Cong coins were cast, imitating the shape of Tianqi big money.The money is written in Manchu in old fonts.After entering the customs, the Baoyuan Bureau was set up in the Ministry of Industry, and the Baoquan Bureau was set up in the Ministry of Households to start casting "Shunzhi Tongbao".In addition, bureaus were set up in various provinces to mint money. The minting bureaus in the past dynasties often increased and decreased, and more than 60 were set up before and after.This is official furnace money, which cannot be counted privately.This decentralized money casting policy has been in place for more than 200 years, and it was not until 1905 that Tianjin set up a general mint to make money uniformly.

Shunzhi formulated the standard "Five Types of Shunzhi" coins, which set Zumo 1,000 Wen as a string, with 70% red copper and 30% white lead.Money is worth one coin per text, which was changed to one coin and four cents in the 17th year of Shunzhi (AD 1660).It is required to mint money like this.Among them, from the first year of Shunzhi (1644 A.D.) to the fourth year of Shunzhi, one type of Shunzhi money was cast, and the antique money with a bare back was worth one cent of silver for every ten coins, and one tael of silver was worth 100 coins.In the fifth year of Shunzhi, the second type of Shunzhi was cast, imitating Kaiyuan coins, with one Chinese character on the back of the money indicating the names of 24 bureaus, such as household, industry, Shaanxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and so on.In the tenth year of Shunzhi, Shunzhi three-style "one-centi money" was cast. The back of the money wore the word "one centimeter" in Zuozhi script, that is, one coin was worth one centimeter of silver, and the name of the bureau was on the left.In the 17th year of Kangxi, Shunzhi four-style Manchu money was recast, and the back of the money has two Manchu characters Baoyuan or Baoquan.In the same year, the Shunzhi five-style Manchu Chinese money was cast. The back of the money wears a full character on the left and a Chinese character on the right, both of which are bureau names.Subsequent generations of casting money were handled in the same way.There are nine Tongbao coins of Kangxi (imitation of the fourth and fifth styles), Yongzheng (imitation of the fifth style), Qianlong, Jiaqing, Daoguang, Xianfeng, Tongzhi, Guangxu and Xuantong.Xianfeng also has ingots and heavy treasures.At the beginning of Tongzhi, Qixiang Tongbao was cast, but it was not used.Tongzhi money has small coins and heavy treasures as ten coins.Guangxu money is the most chaotic, and there are also heavy treasures that are ten ten coins and machine-made coins. There are many small coins, some of which only weigh six cents.There are only two types of Xuantong coins made by Baoquan Bureau and a small amount of machine-made coins.The money made in the Qing Dynasty only kept the prescribed style in shape, and the rest were left to each province's own affairs, which changed with the price of copper and casting profits.More private money.The tragedy of making money to endanger the people is incomparable.

In the fifty-second year of Kangxi (AD 1713), Baoquan Bureau congratulated Kangxi's 60th birthday. In the melting temple, Jin Luohan made longevity coins, later named "Luohan Qian". Youquan, the text is upright.There are many types and versions, the production is neat, and there is a sense of glittering gold. It is said that it contains three percent gold.The "Puer money" in Yili, Xinjiang and other places is a local currency of its own system, made of pure copper, also called red money.In the twenty-fourth year of Qianlong (AD 1685), it was recast in Yeerqiang, mixed with aluminum and zinc, with Chinese Qianlong Tongbao on the face of the money, and place names cast on the back of the money.The weight is two coins, and later reduced to one coin and two cents.During the Jiaqing period, the five coins were added and the ten coins were cast during the Daoguang period. They all stopped casting soon, and the small coins were still used.In the eighth year of Guangxu (1882 A.D.), Li Hongzhang tried casting money in Tianjin.In the 14th year of Guangxu, it was cast in Guangdong, and soon changed to copper coins.

The issuance and circulation of coins has been in an unstable state since the Song Dynasty, and it was extremely chaotic by the end of the Qing Dynasty.Analyzing the reasons, there are two main reasons: First, from the perspective of the currency itself, the minimum conditions for acting as a currency are customization, fixed value, finalization, positioning, stability, and convenience, so that people can trust it.Qingqian cannot meet these requirements. The key is that the people have lost their trust, and the money system is chaotic and changeable.Official money and private money have been infested one after another.Official money is mainly made of money, there is also small money and bad money, and it is divided into ancient money and modern money.Among today's money, there are different generations of money in this dynasty, with different weight and specifications.Official mints include sample money, system money, Puer money, Arhat money, white money, and card money (for tax purposes).Private casting is more complicated and varies from time to time, such as sand shell, fish eye, old sand board and other names.When exercising, there are many kinds due to the amount of mixed private money. For example, if a large amount of money is made with a thousand private money and a hundred pieces of private money are included, it is called a dime or a nineteen. , split money, pour four or six money, as well as green fruits, pawns and so on.The Qing government stipulated that Shunzhi money weighed four cents per penny, and it was reduced to one penny in the 23rd year of Kangxi (1684 A.D.). The weight of money in subsequent generations was between one penny and two cents per penny, and it was reduced to six cents in the late Guangxu period.The fineness of money, in the early Qing Dynasty, the legal copper was six and lead four, and the Yunnan bureau had eight copper and two leads.In the fifth year of Yongzheng (AD 1727) and the fifth year of Qianlong (AD 1740), the East Bureau and Yunnan-Guizhou were changed to copper and lead half and half.In each generation after Jiaqing, copper accounted for 52-55% in most cases, and in some cases it was reduced to copper, three, lead, tin and seven.Another example is the number of coins that can be cast in twelve taels of copper. It was set at 100 Wen in Shunzhi, 125 Wen in Xianfeng, and more than 300 Wen in the thirty-fourth year of Guangxu (1908 A.D.).There are many such cases, and the chaos of the money system is rare in ancient and modern times.Second, when Qing money circulated, there were the most tricks, which varied from time to time and place, and government money merchants exploited them.For example, the calculation method used when making money, the Shunzhi Money Law stipulates that a copper coin is called a wen, and a thousand wen is called a hang (guan, string).But each place has its own set.In the Zhili area, 100 coins are used as a pendant, in the three eastern provinces, 160 coins are used as a pendant, in Shandong and Hebei, a pendant is used in 500 coins, and in the Yangtze River area, ninety-eight coins are used, that is, 980 pennies are a string. That is to say, the 998 text is consistent.When trading in the market, different commodities charge different money, and some have different prices for different money, with discounts and discounts in various forms.

In view of the harm caused by the issuance of banknotes in the previous generation, the Qing court was cautious about issuing banknotes.Only in the eighth year of Shunzhi (AD 1651), due to the urgent need for military use, banknotes and money were made in parallel. 128,172 470 characters were issued each year, and the issuance stopped after a total of ten years.However, meeting tickets issued by the people are popular, and other pawn tickets, bank bank tickets, and various store tickets are also used as currency under certain conditions.The relationship between silver and money is becoming more and more troublesome, and the fluctuation of silver-to-money ratio is difficult to solve for a long time.After Qianlong, due to the large outflow of silver, the price of silver continued to rise and the price of money fell. Officials arbitrarily changed the quality and weight of money to maintain the price comparison of silver and money.Stimulate the frenzy of private money melting of bad money, and the money with slightly better quality is melted into bad money, which aggravates the chaos of circulation.Some documents attribute the corruption of money in the Qing Dynasty to private casting and smelting and the rise in silver prices. In essence, the culprit is the Qing government.