Chapter 14 Section 3 The Popularization of Cotton Weaving Industry in the Country

The rulers of the Ming Dynasty attached great importance to the cotton planting industry. In addition to continuing to promote cotton planting and cotton textile production with government orders, there were also incentives.At the beginning of the founding of the country, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the world to "every farmer with five to ten acres of land should plant half an acre of mulberry, hemp, and wood cotton, which is more than ten acres. If there are more fields, the rate is poor. There are divisions in person. If you are lazy, it is better to punish those who are ordered. Instead of planting mulberry, use a bolt of silk. Instead of planting hemp and cotton, use a bolt of linen and cotton cloth" ("History of Ming Dynasty Shihuo Zhi").In the first year of Hongwu (1368 A.D.), a tax in kind was promulgated: "Zhongshu Shengzuo, the amount collected by the mulberry family is eight taels per mu of hemp family, and four taels per mu of kapok." The previous order, regardless of region, requires farmers to It is necessary to plant cotton and accept cotton, and if the natural conditions are not suitable for cotton planting, also accept cloth.Farmers who do not grow cotton can only buy cotton cloth to pay taxes.The latter order requires a tax rate per acre that is twice as high for hemp growers as for cotton growers.The policy that the tax on cotton planting is half that of hemp planting naturally leads more farmers to plant cotton.In the twenty-seventh year of Hongwu (1394 A.D.), farmers from all over the country were ordered to "if they have the spare capacity to open up land for cotton planting, they will donate their taxes at the rate of juan" ("Hongwu Shilu").The example of the so-called tax exemption for cotton fields was created this time.Until the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the cotton fields in Taicang, Jiangsu, also cited the precedent of tax exemption for cotton fields in the tax and service book, and were able to delay the land tax.These policies of rewarding cotton planting provided a large amount of raw materials for the cotton textile industry and promoted the development of cotton textile production.

According to the "Wanli Accounting Records", the areas where the Ming government expropriated physical tribute of cotton and cotton cloth included the chief ministers of Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Shaanxi, Huguang, Sichuan, and Jiangxi, as well as the northern and southern Zhili prefectures.Most of the prefectures under the jurisdiction of each prefecture pay cotton or cotton cloth. For example, 30 of the 36 prefectures and counties under the jurisdiction of Xi'an prefecture collect cotton cloth; 27 prefectures and counties under the jurisdiction of Chongqing prefecture, 17 collect cotton or cotton cloth.The amount of cotton cloth collected, according to "Ming Shilu" records: Hongwu years (AD 1368-1396) collected 600,000 horses per year, and Yongle years (AD 1403-1424) increased to 900,000 horses, up to 17.8 million match.In just a few decades, the amount of expropriation has increased several times, which shows that by the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the production of cotton weaving industry had spread all over the country, and there appeared cotton cloth "every inch of land", " Looms, every ten rooms must have" grand occasion.

The most developed area of ​​cotton textile production in the Ming Dynasty was in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, especially the Songjiang area including Shanghai, Qingpu, Huating and other counties. Yarn (in Jiashan County)".There are many varieties of cotton fabrics produced in Songjiang, the more famous ones are standard cloth from Sanlintang, Longdun cloth from the western suburbs of Songjiang, Dingniangzi cloth from Yicheng, and medicine spot cloth from Qinglong.The farthest and best-selling one is the three-shuttle cloth, which imitates the weaving method of Zhiqiu Luo when weaving. A soft heald is added to the loom, and the soft heddle is stepped on every three shuttles to make the warp yarn twist and form a thin fabric. road hole.Sanshuo cloth is especially suitable for wearing next to the skin due to its structure of Luo weave. It is said that the emperors of the Ming Dynasty used Sanshuo cloth produced in Songjiang as underwear.

In the Ming Dynasty, many cotton fabrics were processed in jacquard imitation of silk fabrics.For example, the Songjiang cloth turban unearthed from the tomb of Zhu En in the Ming Dynasty in the Beijing History Museum has woven natural patterns looming on it.Another example is the striped flower and square pattern cloth woven with red, yellow, and blue threads in the Ming Dynasty in the Palace Museum. It shows the simple and honest atmosphere of folk crafts. Before the Opium War, the cotton weaving industry in the Qing Dynasty was still dominated by traditional hand-woven production. The scale was quite large and the output was also high. There were many large factories with thousands of looms and thousands of workers. In addition to being self-sufficient, cotton fabrics are also exported in large quantities.In the 1830s alone, cotton cloth exported from Guangzhou to Europe, America, Japan, Southeast Asia and other places reached as many as 1 million pieces every year. 1819 was the year when my country exported the most cotton cloth, reaching 3.3 million pieces.At that time, when the British East India Company purchased Chinese cotton cloth, it specifically designated purple flower cloth produced near Nanjing, and the order quantity rapidly increased from the initial 20,000 pieces to 200,000 pieces.The so-called "purple flower cloth" has a natural brown color (not dyed), and is hand-spun and woven with purple-flowered cotton, so it is named after the color of the cotton.This kind of cloth was all the rage in Britain at that time, and the fashionable clothing of British gentlemen in the 1830s that people see in the London Museum today are exactly the Chinese purple flower cloth trousers and spun silk shirts.