The Chinese are no stranger to the phenomenon of peasant uprisings, and in our history, they come almost every two or three hundred years, and every time they come, they will always kill mountains of corpses and a sea of blood, and the heavenly streets will trample on the bones of the public secretaries.
If it does not appear for hundreds of years, we will feel strange, thinking that it is not a matter of history, endocrine disorders that cause menstrual instability or something, philosophers, historians, politicians can't help but worry.
Strangely enough, we have almost never heard of any peasant uprising in any other country.
There is no one in Europe, not in Japan, not in the Islamic world, and even less in the Americas, and only China has repeated large-scale peasant uprisings in the world, purging the original dynasty over and over again.
It's strange why this kind of thing is only happening in China?
It is normal that there are no peasant uprisings in the Arab world, because people do not play farming, but mainly nomadism and business thieves. In the history of the Americas, he drank blood all the year round, and was very ignorant, killing a bunch of people at every turn to sacrifice to the sun god, which was not real farming.
The theme of this article is the ancient peasant uprising, let's kick the two worlds apart and compare Europe and Japan.
Let's talk about the conclusion first, because China is the only one in the history of the world, and countries like Europe and Japan, they have actually been feudal for a long time.
Chinese used to call us feudal society in the world before **, and the old people had old-fashioned ideas, which was called feudal thinking, which was a mistake in expression, and after the unification of the six countries by Qin, we no longer engaged in feudalism, we engaged in the ** centralized county system, and the one engaged in Europe and Japan was called feudalism.
If you ask Europeans what is most important in their mixed society, they will still say "blood", not the democratic freedom that some people preach to us, the blood of Europeans is similar to that of Japan, and most of them are immobile from their ancestors and social classes, unlike China, which is formatted every few hundred years.
Those with feudal ideas should be Europeans and JapaneseThe Chinese do not have feudal thinking, and the kind of thinking of the Chinese in ancient times is more appropriate to call the idea of imperial power.
As I introduced in "The Blood of the Chinese", China is the only country on the earth whose land topography is consistent with the direction of the great rivers, and there are two major rivers running through the whole territory along the direction of the country, resulting in China being in a state of great unification for a long time.
Almost all European rivers are short north-south, Japan has no major rivers at all, and their largest river, the Tone River, is only 332 kilometers long, with an annual runoff of only a pitiful 12.4 billion cubic meters, only 1 of the Yangtze River3%。
Due to the geographical environment, most of Japan's cultural derivatives are small and cute, and there are few of them that have the kind of atmosphere and openness in China.
Europe is blocked by large mountain ranges, and Japan's mountains account for 70%, and the mountains and rivers cooperate to break these two large pieces of land into countless glass slags, the difference is that each piece of glass slag in Europe is larger, and the glass slag in Japan is smaller.
Topographic map of Japan, there are too few plains.
The various ethnic groups of human beings look different, and they live thousands of miles away from the world, and they have never been friends at all, but because of the same economic environment, they often do exactly the same behavior and establish exactly the same social structure.
For example, the social structure that Japan established before the Meiji Restoration is basically the same as the social structure of the European Middle Ages.
Yes, before the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese lived in the Middle Ages in Europe.
Feudalism was established in Europe in the 8th century after the fall of Western Rome and the arrival of the Germans, and in Japan at the end of the 12th century, when the Kamakura shogunate came to power.
European feudalism came to an end in the 16th century, and Japan remained in place until the Meiji Restoration.
The living environment of the Chinese peasants under the county system was completely different from that of the European peasants under the feudal system.
The ancient peasants in our Chinese's impression are yeoman farmers or tenant farmers, farmers in medieval European estates, they are actually serfs.
For example, Zeng Guofan's grandfather Zeng Yuping, who was originally an ordinary farmer in Hunan, lived an idle second-rate life, and after the age of 35, because he was ridiculed by others, he suddenly burned the small universe, and he was angry and tried to open up wasteland, and worked hard for more than ten years, and placed more than 100 acres of land for his family, so that he had assets to provide two generations of scholars for his family.
The European serfs, on the other hand, were locked up in the land, could not leave at will, and would change owners along with the ownership of the land, and they were someone else's property, not a person of free will.
European serfs also have no chance to study, they can't buy and sell land, the descendants of serfs are still serfs, and they can't turn over for the rest of their lives, they work for the lord as cattle and horses all their lives, pay taxes in kind on time, and some have to give the lord ** right after marrying a wife.
This **right is not as obscene as everyone imagines, and not all lords have this appetite, in fact, most of the **rights** have finally become a marriage tax, and the bride and groom will give the lord some money, food or textiles, symbolizing the **right to buy back from the lord.
In 2007, when Charles was still the crown prince, he bought a 196-acre manor in Carmarthenshire, Wales, the previous owner of this land did not abolish the ** right, and Charles did not notice this after buying it, in fact, this ** right is the marriage tax, but it was reported by the British gossip newspaper, which made Charles so embarrassed that he wanted to find a piece of tofu and hit him to death.
European serfs also know the rules, they will only get married if they have enough marriage tax, and there is no need to let the lord find a handle on the wedding day, and find themselves unhappy.
China's yeoman peasants have property rights, can read and write, can also run around to exchange information, and have strong cognitive ability, European serfs are a lot of them, so once they rebel, their attack power and organization are several more ruthless than European serfs.
In the eyes of their masters, European serfs were no different from livestock, and their usual every move was under their noses, stared at by knights who practiced killing all day long, and these serfs could not read and write, nor did they have contact with the outside worldIt is a group of production tools with extremely poor combat effectiveness and complete personalityIf they hold back for a thousand years, they will not be able to hold back a rebellious program of action and strategic goals.
The peasants in China were oriented to the liuguan** and the tax was oriented to the Son of Heaven, so they knew that the highest goal was to kill the emperor and do it themselves. And the European serfs lived in the enclosure of the feudal lords, they only knew that it was the lords who bullied them, and they had no original motivation to hate the king at all.
The French Zachary peasant uprising, known as the bloodiest in European history, had no written program for the illiterate people from beginning to end, and the actual participants were only tens of thousands, and it only lasted for two months. These people did not have a hard time with the king at all, and only demanded that the previously agreed tax rates be restored, and that no taxes be raised on them.
You say that Zhu Yuanzhang rebelled, will he only ask the court to change the tax rate? Rebellion for this reason sounds like a joke in Chinese history.
The biggest difference between the European serfs and the Chinese peasant uprising is that the goals are completely different, the Chinese side is **centralized, everyone knows that the Son of Heaven is **, and they all go straight to the emperor's throne. European serfs have their own masters, and the European feudal system is "my little brother's little brother is not my little brother", the top building itself can't figure out who my subordinate unit is, the world view is a mess, who do you call the serfs who have not studied to make trouble?
To put it simply, our peasants have been taught to obey the Son of Heaven since childhood, so we know that we must rebel against the Son of Heaven. But the serfs on the European side, no one taught them to obey the king, but to obey the master, so they could only think of rebelling against the master at most.
Although there was no serfdom on the Japanese side, it was roughly the same as the feudal system in Europe, with the upper classes on both sides being aristocrats, knights or samurai in the middle, and tenant farmers or serfs at the bottom.
As long as the centralization of power is not completed, as long as the feudal system is still being implemented, the details of the oppression of the peasants in different regions are different, and the peasants cannot empathize with each other, and it is difficult to twist into a rope.
For example, the lord of my side is called Matsumoto Ichika, and her biggest hobby is to torture us, forcing everyone to run ten kilometers every day to exercise, and everyone hates her to death. And the lord over there is called Aizawa Nan, and he has to hang up a few friends every day to beat him, and everyone shouts k Mo Ji, and he hates her to death.
However, if there is an uprising, the points of hatred on both sides are not right, the interests are not unified, and there is no spiritual resonance, so they tend to do their own thing, and they cannot unite to overthrow the whole country.
On the Chinese side, as long as the whole country is not unified, such as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period or the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, there will be no large-scale peasant uprisings, because the country is too broken, and the local power has its own ruthlessness.
But as long as China completes the unification of the whole country, every dynasty will be a peasant uprising in the back, because the county system ** is to take the offer of the Son of Heaven to work, and there is a debtor and a master, and if the life can't go on, he will go to the palace.
I have a point of view that I think the peasant uprisings under the Great Unification Dynasty are a bit like cancer.
The longer you live, the higher your chance of getting cancer. The peasant uprising is the cancer of the long-lived **centralization**, and it is a disease that will inevitably occur when the age reaches a certain stage.
Since you have chosen to centralize power in an agrarian society, as long as you live longer, this cancer will happen sooner or later.
And I think that's the pain that comes with the system, and it's unsolvable.
For example, when I chose a job, I chose to be a casual clerk, then I had to endure being respectful in front of the director; And if I choose to be the CEO, then I will have to endure extreme high pressure every day.
There is no perfect thing in the world, everyone and everything has yin and yang, and if you choose a system, there must be problems that cannot be solved.
Every time I read many people write historical summaries, thinking that by the end of each dynasty, how to bring the dead back to life, I used to think so, but now that I have seen more, I am more calm, I feel that at this stage, there is no cure, we must know how to let go, do not forcibly confront the objective law.
It's the same for us to open a company, be in a relationship, and do a career in our lives, as long as we reach the end of this thing, we should let it go, and we should watch things die with a calm mind, and don't struggle with ourselves.
It's far away, back to the topic, a country engages in a sub-feudal system, has the distress of sub-feudal system, engages in **centralization, and has the distress of **centralization.
In ancient times, when a country's productive forces were underdeveloped, it was more suitable for separation, and when the productive forces developed to a certain stage, they could break through the terrain constraints, which was more suitable for centralization.
Traditionally, we believe that the sub-feudal system will allow the local government to restrict the power, but like the Zhou Dynasty, it was the early adoption of the sub-feudal system, which strengthened the rule of the local government, but later the productivity came up, and this ancient system dragged down the country's development, so it could only replace it with a more efficient county system.
France's transition from feudalism to centralization is a good proof of this.
During the First Hundred Years' War between Britain and France, the British, because of their small population and lack of cavalry, changed the style of fighting in the feudal knight era to rush to win the game, and focused on using the terrain to ambush Welsh longbowmen, who held 1The 5-meter-long, penetrating yew wood bow killed and wounded a large number of French heavy cavalry.
The French cavalry was very brave and had few opponents in the bloody battles of Europe, but their style of play belonged to the era of feudal knights, and the British reformed this shabby style of play, and the French were very uncomfortable, and many excellent generals and elite cavalry died at the hands of Welsh longbowmen.
The French cavalry couldn't beat it, so they began to study dismounting and fighting, and the armor was also upgraded, but the British ** officer commanded more efficiently, and the British ** team was also better mobile than the French infantry in the ancient mud, and both sides were not afraid of death, but the French still lost very badly.
I read that some of the information says very well, Britain was able to defeat France at that time, or because Britain did a better job of centralizing power than France after the Doomsday Judgment, and it was the centralization that pushed Britain to take the lead, and France was defeated and retreated, and even the capital Paris was taken by the British.
What prompted France's transition from the feudal era to the most centralized power was Joan of Arc.
At the moment when France was beaten in the face with blood by the British, in 1429, the 17-year-old Joan of Arc, who wanted to go to the front to fight, relied on the results of the Battle of Herring to gain the trust of the crown prince (later Charles VII) and obtain the command of the army.
Joan of Arc reformed the French style of fighting, mainly attacking the British fortress with stone artillery, and the British army was destroyed in six days, and the French suddenly realized that they began to pay attention to artillery construction.
Joan of Arc was active on the battlefield for a very short time, and in May of the following year she was betrayed by the Burgundian nobles, and thus captured by the British, and burned to death by the British a year later.
Although the Joan of Arc died, the French were awakened by heavy artillery, and Charles VII began to reorganize the army five years after Joan of Arc's death, the most important of which was to build an artillery unit. But artillery is very expensive, and feudal France, ** has a meager finance, is short of money, very short of money.
Charles VII could only form an alliance with the great merchant Jacques Cole to reform the tax system and levy a large number of new taxes such as the poll tax, which gave ** unprecedented financial strength and officially promoted the centralization of power in the Kingdom of France.
In the end, the French relied on heavy artillery to defeat the British.
It can also be said that it was Joan of Arc that activated the ** centralization of France and defeated the British.
The Hundred Years' War between Britain and France seems to be a longbow against heavy artillery, but in fact, it is more than the two countries, which enters the first centralized power, and whoever enters the door first has political and military advantages.
In the 16th century, feudalism in Europe came to an end, while Japan dragged on until the 19th century. That's because Japan didn't have a real neighbor to threaten them, so there was an extra 300 years of solidification, and if there was a neighbor with a fast evolution, Japan would have been beaten out of a long time ago, and it was impossible for feudalism to maintain until the 19th century.
If the Japanese feudal system represents a rigid Asia, then the ** feudal system represents a rigid Europe.
Feudalism was established in the 9th century, decades after the centralization of power by England and France, and in the fifth year after the discovery of America, ** was also busy establishing serfdom throughout the country in 1497, and the Code of Ivan III stipulated that only one week before and after the Yuri Festival in late autumn could serfs be transferred from one master to another.
It was not until 1861 that Alexander II officially announced the emancipation of the serfs, two or three hundred years later than in Western Europe.
It is no wonder that after defeating Napoleon, the young aristocrats who walked around France were greatly stimulated and did not hesitate to risk their lives to launch the Decembrist uprising.
From feudalism to centralization, it should have been a normal evolutionary process in every country, but after Europe was destroyed from serfdom, the eighteenth century entered the industrial revolution, and the country began to industrialize, and without the peasants, there would be no peasant uprisings.
So when the British and the French started the Opium War, the Chinese side was still making trouble with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and both sides were confused when they looked at each other.
After seeing the new world, Chinese intellectuals began to reflect on themselves with the pathos of the Decembrists, but in fact, to put it bluntly, it is a problem of productive forces, not a problem of the original sin of the nation.
On the last day of 2023, I spent a day in my study, starting with the peasant uprising and talking about the impact of centralization on the world.
As the sky fades outside the window, the last days of the year are coming to an end.
Finally, I want to make a summary, that is, China, because of its special physique of "the same big rivers as the country", has always been different from other countries in the world in the process of growth and development.
The ideas are different, the people are different, and the form of government is different.
We must find the best way to govern China, not to copy any theory of governance in the world, but to think more, reason more, and practice more, so as to find the most suitable political concept and governance method for us.
Learning from others' strengths and then integrating into the characteristics of our own nation is the best guide for our country to grow up in the future.