New Shun 1730

If the Joseon Dynasty had come to this point spontaneously, Quan Zheshen and Meng Songlu would not have been talking at cross purposes.

The reformists on the Dashun side, or the retro-style Confucian scholars who advocated reform based on the past, could understand the various problems that arise from normal development by looking for traces in history.

In other words, even if Quan Zheshen did not understand what Meng Songlu said, Meng Songlu could understand Quan Zheshen's distressed thinking because he had experienced it and could at least read about it in the history books of the Celestial Empire.

But the capitalist buds and industrial revolution of Dashun destroyed the normal and spontaneous historical process of the Joseon Dynasty.

The problems that the Joseon Dynasty is facing now, especially the impact on the rural areas around Seoul, where the Joseon scholars and officials gathered, after the textile industry revolution in southern Jiangsu and the opening of Incheon, were driven by external forces.

Meng Songlu could not experience these things personally, and it was impossible for him to find similar cases in history books.

Even if he looked through history books, he could not find the story of "the country's handicraft industry being impacted by external forces" in the past.

It looks somewhat similar to the situation in Northeast China, but it is completely different.

The development process of Dashun in Northeast China was shaped by capital directly from scratch. Even though there were immigrants in Northeast China before, due to factors such as climate, environment, and land, the small peasant economy of men farming and women weaving was extremely fragile and could be broken by capital.

The situation in Joseon was completely different. The old system was very solid, and it had been hundreds of years since Lee Seong-gye.

Northeast China was like a high-rise building on flat ground; Joseon was a transformation of urban villages.

Taking Joseon's in-kind tax as an example, we can clearly understand the huge difference between Joseon and Dashun.

For example, Joseon's military cloth is actually a kind of in-kind tax.

The system of combining farmers and soldiers and turning it into a standing army system must increase taxes.

Soldiers must be supported.

To support soldiers, they must be clothed.

Clothes must be clothed.

Clothes must be paid by paying taxes.

If you don't serve in the military, you have to pay taxes and cloth.

According to Huang Zongxi's law, because this thing is collected per capita, it will inevitably lead to a large number of lower-class people choosing to join the nobles and literati to evade taxes; and the nobles and literati will inevitably hide their population. It is the same as the Ming Dynasty's problems of joining the nobles and literati, and then these taxes are all placed on the good people who are the backbone of society.

Then, social contradictions will inevitably increase.

Then, there is a huge suzerain country next to it, and it is impossible for peasants to overthrow it in an uprising.

Then, they can only try to reform spontaneously.

Reform, the economic situation is like this, and there are only a few changes.

Divide the land tax into acres.

Divide the land tax into literati.

Gentry and nobles are exempted from taxes.

Gentry and nobles pay taxes together.

Basically, these four things, arranged, combined, split and reconstructed.

Similar to the thinkers in the late Ming Dynasty, the Confucian scholars in Korea also gave various solutions to these four arrangements and combinations.

There is the mouth money method that distributes taxes to everyone according to the head of the population.

There is the household cloth method that requires "gentry" to pay taxes together.

There is a cloth-knitting method that divides the land tax into acres.

There are many similar ideas of arrangement, splitting and combination.

It's just the same after all the changes.

If there is no Dashun entry, no Busan lease, Incheon port opening, and the light industrial revolution in southern Jiangsu from the loom to the countryside, the subsequent evolution route is very easy to infer.

Everyone has to pay military cloth.

It will inevitably give rise to the development of family handicrafts.

I am good at weaving cloth, so I weave cloth, and then everyone needs to pay cloth as a tax, and there will definitely be people who will bring things to exchange with my cloth.

The increase in exchange promotes the commodity economy.

Even if there is no gold and silver currency, it does not mean that it is completely impossible. In essence, it is the same as the comprehensive tax monetization reform carried out by Liu Yu in southern Jiangsu-the court does not collect grain, so it forces everyone to sell grain for currency. This is the fastest way to promote currency, as long as the grassroots do not have the ability to resist tax uprising.

The cloth of North Korea can also be used as both currency and commodity to a certain extent.

Just like the silver of the Ming Dynasty, it changed from a commodity to currency.

The development of commodities, exchanges, and markets.

The next step is the disintegration of the old rural system, the polarization of the rich and the poor, the annexation of land, and the commercialization of goods.

But the problem is that the Dashun Industrial Revolution broke out.

The Korean family handicraft industry, which had just emerged and developed because of the military cloth tax reform, really couldn't withstand the impact of Dashun cotton cloth. It couldn't withstand it at all and collapsed completely in a few years.

Moreover, the tax system of the Korean state really helped a lot here - under the military cloth system, hundreds of thousands of people had to buy cotton cloth and pay taxes.

The Korean state itself was also very happy: through the rice repayment system, that is, the compulsory green seedling loan with Korean characteristics, it made a profit from the interest; the rice repayment interest was sold to Dashun in exchange for cotton cloth, and then the cotton cloth was sold to the people, and the people were forced to pay taxes with cloth, and then they made another profit.

The court's income was rising.

It was originally a process of moving forward with two legs in turn: the development of family hand-woven cloth industry, the bankruptcy of farmers and the annexation of land, the development of cities, and the gradual absorption of these bankrupt populations centered on handicrafts.

Now it is because of the outbreak of the Dashun Industrial Revolution that the other leg has been broken directly.

The countryside went bankrupt, and the handicraft industry did not develop. The little capital that had been accumulated by the middlemen of Sino-Japanese trade goods flowed into the comprador business groups.

Compradors are the same in every country.

The British East India Company wanted the British wool textile industry and cotton textile industry to die, so that Indian cotton cloth would directly destroy the traditional textile industry in Britain.

The French East India Company wanted all the coffee plantations in France's colonies to go bankrupt, so as to open up the market for tea.

After the Dashun took Nanyang, the Dutch East India Company quickly cooperated with Dashun to eliminate the remaining handicraft guilds in the Netherlands.

So the Korean Kingdom had a reality that Meng Songlu could not understand at all at this time.

This reality was suppressed by Liu Yu in Dashun, including cutting off the canal, changing the salt policy, and controlling cotton yarn, all of which were trying to prevent the impact of southern Jiangsu on the surrounding provinces. In particular, the cutting of the canal increased the cost of inland transportation, and the advantages of the initial industrial revolution were offset by the transportation cost, and it was not easy to push to Anhui.

In short, how to solve the inherent problems of feudal society was the direction of reflection in the ideological circles in the late Ming Dynasty.

For the Korean Kingdom, it was how to solve the new problems of semi-feudal and semi-colonial society.

These are two completely different directions, and for the Korean Kingdom, this problem is unsolvable.

Without external interference, how could the vassal states in East Asia resist this imperialism that had completed military reforms, initiated industrial revolutions, and whose distance from Seoul to the Weihaiwei naval base was even shorter than that from Beijing to Jinan?

Korea tried to resist and issued a ban on luxury.

And then nothing happened.

The ban on luxury and the subsequent "Huang Ming Tong Ji" literary inquisition incident made Korea present an extremely strange state.

Ideologically, every attempt at reform will lead to a reactionary resurgence, and the ideology will become more closed and conservative.

Economically, due to the impact of commodities, the Korean "imperial" merchants who were originally responsible for the court and the local areas, similar to the Dashun salt merchants, quickly became compradors, with a narrow and wide seaport, and the impact spread rapidly.

This compradorization is more complicated than the invasion of Western imperialism.

Because "respecting Zhou" is the foundation of Korea.

The pro-China nature of the compradors carries the political correctness of Lee's Korea.

This is a very realistic problem. If you don't respect Zhou, it won't work in reality.

You can whisper in your inner circle that Dashun has no kingly way to its vassal states and is all hegemonic, which is a typical change from Xia to barbarian.

But can you say it officially?

Northern Expedition? Emperor from Zhen? Small China restores the orthodox kingly way of China? The earth is round, which is derived from astronomy and geography, and there is no such concept as "China". In fact, barbarians and Chinese are the same?

Saying any of them would be a disaster.

Historically, Kim Ruo-hsing, a Confucian scholar in the Kingdom of Korea, proposed the idea of ​​"China is already a barbarian, and Korea is the orthodox one. Advise the king to use the rituals and music of the emperor" during the peak of Qian Xiaosi's rule.

Regardless of whether the caste system of Korea is the orthodoxy of China, just saying that in 1768, it was really...

It can also be seen how rotten the minds of the scholars and officials of Yelang were. Not to mention opening their eyes to the world, it is a luxury to open their eyes to the surrounding areas.

The decadent forces and feudal consciousness in North Korea are much more deeply rooted than here.

The Jin Dynasty, which had fought with the Japanese devils for many years, did not change its title from "Cabinet Prime Minister" until the last "Crown Prince" Yi Eun "died" in 1970.

The standard routine of mourning for the "king and father" for three years and the prime minister inheriting the throne.

Compared with the traditions of the Green Forest and Red Eyebrows who had no pressure to rob the royal tomb, the kings and generals, and the dog-footed emperor, the situation on both sides is really too far apart.

Whether it is reality or tradition, the difference between this thing that calls itself "Little China" and Dashun is so big that it can't be learned at all.

The communication between the two people is irrelevant because of some basic things that are assumed. Speaking the same Chinese and using the same classics, they can't communicate at all.

At the end of the communication, Quan Zheshen could only try to say the purpose of his visit.

"To be honest, Brother Meng, I find it hard to understand what you said."

"I came here because I heard that after the salt administration reform, some great scholars and kind-hearted gentry bought a large piece of grass land."

"I want to restore the ancient well-field system and the harmonious village agreement, and implement the ancient school politics. That's why I came here specially. I will go to Nantong and go north tomorrow."

"I think Brother Meng is not that kind of mediocre person."

"I heard that when the salt administration was reformed, many students made a big joke. Some people ridiculed it and wrote a poem: Tang and Song shoes and socks weighed several kilograms of cotton, stepping into the clear frost at dusk Smoke."

"The light green Zhou Yi is long and trails the ground, and the red long fan half covers the sky."

"I have just read a volume of words and can rule. Even if I have spent a lot of money, I still have money."

"The rich are always bowing their heads, but if they come to the village, they are full of spirit."

"Such corrupt people are useless to the Tao."

"If all of us have the spirit of a gentleman and can be as moral as the ancients, I am afraid that the world can be governed."

"Now someone has finally tried to buy land and write the Tao in running script. Brother Meng has lived here for a long time, haven't you ever gone to see it?"

Hearing this, Meng Songlu couldn't help but laugh bitterly, thinking that he had more than just gone to see it? He was a member of the school, and together with the rest of Taizhou and the descendants of the late Ming masters, he tried to do something similar to the He Xinyin Juhetang of the previous dynasty.

The reason why he appeared in Songjiang this time was because there was a problem with this large village community with a retro township agreement.

The problem is not big or small, in short, one word, lack of money.

This time, when building the canal from Funing to Nantong, all groups or companies that have enclosed land in Huainan must pay this money according to the number of acres of land.

The province only provided one-third of the funds, and the remaining one-third was up to whoever benefited and paid.

Liu Yu did not want to set this as a model at all, and neither gave special funding nor preferential treatment.

He even wrote a letter to mock, which made Cheng Tingzuo so angry that he almost vomited blood.

The letter was simple, with only one sentence: Mr. Mianzhuang is not solving real problems, but setting up a stage to perform an ancient drama to satisfy the retro desires of various schools. Pretend that the main contradiction in reality is how to feed people with 100 mu of land per capita, and then through complex attempts, an amazing conclusion is obtained: 100 mu of land per capita can feed people!