The place of the Han Dynasty** was divided into two levels: the county and the county.
In the history of China, the places were based on counties, and they have not changed until now.
At the top of the Han Dynasty county were counties, and the number of counties was of course subject to change. Broadly speaking, there were more than 100 counties in the Han Dynasty, and one county governed 10 to 20 counties. Probably the number of counties in the Han Dynasty was always between 1,100 and 1,400.
Excerpted from the first lecture of Qian Mu's "Political Gains and Losses in China's Past Dynasties" "Han Dynasty and Han Dynasty ** Organization".
Mr. Qian Mu talks about the organization of the Han Dynasty, which is divided into two parts, the first part talks about the Han Dynasty and the second part talks about the places of the Han Dynasty.
Mr. Qian Mu believes that there are two institutions, one is the Liushang who deals with royal affairs, and the other is the Prime Minister's Mansion that deals with ** affairs. As for the nine Qings of the Three Princes and Nine Secretaries, Mr. Qian believes that they belong to the Prime Minister's Mansion and are part of the **, so he came to the conclusion that the imperial power is light on the weight of the minister.
In introducing this text, in addition to the historical changes in the responsibilities and titles of the corresponding positions, I also talked about some different personal views on this. I think that the most important structure of the Han Dynasty is not only the six Shang of the royal family and the thirteen Cao of the Prime Minister's Mansion, but also the Imperial Council with higher powers and responsibilities than the Prime Minister's Mansion.
Mr. Qian Mu said that in the Han Dynasty, the local ** was divided into county and county levels.
These two levels were separated and formed in the Qin Dynasty, and the Han Dynasty only continued to use them.
The county system implemented by the Qin Dynasty is one of the key features of the monarchy, and its essence is that public power is completely analyzed from private power, which is an epoch-making event in human history. Therefore, the monarchy of the Qin and Han dynasties can also be called the county system.
The county system can be roughly divided into three periods, the first period is the period from Shang Dynasty to the Qin Dynasty to the Six Kingdoms of Qin, this period, at the beginning, the counties belonged to the division.
The county is the fief of the hero. The fiefs of heroes are large and small. Even if it is big, I am afraid it is not as big as a later county. After all, as a vassal state, the land area of the Qin State is only so large, and the entire Qin State cannot be divided into a few counties.
Those who can get larger fiefs must be clans. And the clan is huge, and if everyone in the clan can get a fief, the Qin State will probably have no land to be feuded. Therefore, even if it is a clan, only a few people can get a fief, and the fiefdom can be larger than a county, I am afraid that there are very few.
Because the land area of most feudal counties is smaller than that of counties, when Shang Ying implemented the county system, the counties were under the counties.
The county has obvious feudal colors, so the governing power of the county lies in the county lord, that is, the feudal monarch, even the king of Qin cannot control it.
Whether Shang Ying implemented the county system, he discussed with Qin Xiaogong that he would gradually abolish the feudal system, we don't know. More likely, this process is gradual, the result of a balance of power. The King of Qin had more counties in his hands, and power was more centralized, and there was a foundation for abolishing the feudal division.
On the other hand, the reason why the Qin Dynasty was so short-lived had a lot to do with the abolition of the feudal division.
The abolition of the partition allowed the freedmen to get civil rights, and the common people naturally welcomed it. But the common people are soft-spoken and can't play a role. The real threat to the regime is the magnates, that is, the former feudal lords who have lost their fiefdoms. These people are not only the original feudal monarchs of the Qin State, but also the lost nobles of the Six Kingdoms.
It can be seen that the Qin Dynasty actually made wedding clothes for later development.
The reason why I say that during the Shang Dynasty, it was likely that the counties were separated, there was an important reason, Shang Yang was named Shang Jun and was divided. Qin Prime Minister Lu Buwei, who was several generations late, was sealed in Luoyang and ate 10,000 households. In that era, Wanhu was about equivalent to two counties, which shows the weight of the seal, and it also shows that until Qin destroyed the Six Kingdoms, there was no abolition of the seal.
As for when the county was divided into county subordination, there is no clear historical record. It is now commonly understood that the county was initially subordinate to the county's administrative body.
At the time of the Qin State, in addition to the counties of the feudal monarchs, there were dozens of counties, and the area of the whole country was equivalent to a large county in the later Qin Dynasty.
At the end of the Qin state, through the method of encroachment, he continued to expand his land area, and many new lands were attributed to the territory of the Qin state, and these lands were naturally divided into counties according to the Qin method. These newly established counties were still under the unified management of the Qin Prime Minister's Office, which was no longer manageable and out of date. After all, there is a considerable difference between these new and old county residents.
Therefore, it became necessary to establish a higher level of administration to administer these new counties.
Is there a possibility that the ** sent by the Qin State to these new places, at the county level, still according to the Qin system, send county orders. The higher level is actually led by the county lord, but it is not a fief in nature.
Basically, the prefectural order has only administrative power and no military power. The higher-level administrative organs often govern more than ten or twenty counties, and even forty or fifty counties in large counties, which is a very large area, equivalent to a vassal state, and even much larger than the vassal states sealed at the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty. Therefore, it is impossible for the county lord not to master the military power, and if he has the military power, the emperor does not know the taste of the food and sleeps on the pillow.
First, the emperor refused to give the county lord the right to be, and second, the emperor did not dare to hand over the power of the county lord to people he did not trust. These county lords, led by feudal monarchs, are very likely.
This move also has the advantage of increasing the power of the county to appease the feudal monarch, and at the same time, it gradually weakens the fiefdom nature of the county, and finally achieves the goal of abolishing the fief.
Therefore, the county can no longer be called the lord of the county, because there is no land ownership, that is, there is no private right and only public power. The official name of the county is called the county guard.
By the time Qin unified the Six Kingdoms, the county had become the higher-level administrative body of the county. Neither the early Qin nor the early Han dynasty completely abandoned the fiefdoms.
And these fiefdoms are already very small.
In the Qin and Han dynasties, it was the second stage of the county system, that is, the county became the higher-level administrative body of the county. During the Qin and Han dynasties, the county became the higher-level institution of the county, and there was another feature, that is, the military power of the county lord was reduced during the Qin period.
An important reason why Chen Sheng and Wu Guang rebelled at the end of the Qin Dynasty and quickly swept the whole country was that the counties did not have military power. If there is, the soldiers of one county will be enough to suppress it, and it is impossible to form a spreading trend.
Mr. Qian Mu said, "The upper part of Hanshi County is a county, and of course the number of counties is subject to change. Broadly speaking, there were more than 100 counties in the Han Dynasty, and one county governed 10 to 20 counties. Probably the number of counties in the Han Dynasty was always between 1,100 and 1,400. ”
What Mr. Qian said is an approximation.
I checked, in the first two years of Emperor Hanping, there were one hundred and thirty counties, one thousand three hundred and fourteen counties, twelve provinces, and two hundred and forty-one Hou countries. The smallest county has jurisdiction over three counties, with more than 30 counties under the jurisdiction of 10 counties (including 10 counties), and the largest county has jurisdiction over more than 50 counties, with a total population of nearly 60 million, with an average of about 40,000 people in one county.
The imperial court has to manage one hundred and thirty counties at the same time, which is very difficult. So, ** came up with a way to establish a system of inspectors, dividing the country into thirteen supervision districts, and each supervision district sent an assassin.
This has in effect formed the superior body of the county. But because this superior is not an agency, but only a ** commissioner, and there is no government office in the strict sense, it naturally cannot be called an administrative agency.
Later, this inspector system became an official system, and when the government was opened, it entered the ** administrative system below the imperial court, that is, the third stage of the county system, which did not belong to the county system. This is probably the reason why this period is not called the county system when it is divided into historical divisions.
In addition, it is important to note: The Qin Dynasty abolished the separation, and the steps were a bit big. It's almost three to five. The entire Qin Dynasty was only about 20 years old, and the feudal system was basically abolished. As mentioned earlier, the reason why the Qin Dynasty became a short-lived dynasty has a great deal to do with the fact that the abolition of the division was too fast. When Liu Bang established the Han Dynasty, he learned this lesson, and at the beginning it was a parallel system of counties and states, and a large amount of land became a feudal state, and the emperor could control very few counties.
According to records, although Liu Bang eliminated most of the princes with different surnames such as Han Xin and Yingbu through various methods, he still set up nine princes and kings with the same surname, as well as some other fiefdoms of meritorious heroes.
Later, these feudal lords continued to expand, and the large feudal kingdoms even had four to six counties.
At the beginning of the establishment of the Han Dynasty, there were only more than 60 counties, of which more than 40 counties were in the hands of the princes and kings, and less than 20 counties were in the hands of the Son of Heaven.
Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty and Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty cut the feudal domain many times, strictly limited the land area of the feudal state to below the county, and took away the private rights of the feudal monarch, and only retained the financial income in the fief to the feudal monarch, and the rest of the power, or to **, such as military power, or sent by ** to guard the county order.
From then on, the fiefdom was turned into a food estate, and the true unity of the country's governance was realized.