In feudal times, monarchs, as the rulers of the country, theoretically had the power to use the state's revenues.
So for a long timeThe ruler's personal expenditures and state expenditures were mixed, which has had a very bad impact on the country's fiscal order.
In the Qing Dynasty, China's feudal political system reached its peak, and in order to better distinguish between the two forms of expenditure, the Qing rulers set up an internal affairs office outside the household department to be responsible for the expenditure of the royal family.
From the relationship between the two, we can also get a glimpse of the direction of the political situation in the Qing Dynasty.
As a fast-rising regime, the Manchu Qing Dynasty borrowed a lot from the institutional experience of the Ming Dynasty politically in order to stabilize the political situation as soon as possible during the reign of Huang Taiji, and the same was true in the management of the harem and the court.
However, in the Nurhachi era, the upper echelons of the Manchu Qing Dynasty implemented the Baoyi slave system, which was completely different from the court management method of the Ming Dynasty, and the Baoyi slaves during the Huang Taiji period had become an inseparable existence for the Manchu aristocracyTherefore, it was difficult to completely overthrow, and in order to manage this group of people, Huang Taiji decided to establish the department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Therefore, in the early days of its establishment, the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not have the power to control the finances, and its expenses were mainly the salaries and bounties of the enslaved slaves, which had to be withdrawn from the Ministry of Finance.
Since the early Manchu Eight Banners adopted a distribution system of dividing the spoils of war equally, Huang Taiji, as a ruler, did not actually have much discretionary funds.
But later, in order to strengthen the centralized rule, he revised the financial distribution rules of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and he stipulated that all the spoils of war should be concentrated first, and then distributed according to the financial situation of each banner.
This was still nominally an equal distribution, but it gave the ruler the power to control the revenue.
With the strengthening of centralized power, Huang Taiji finally had his own "small treasury", and the Ministry of Internal Affairs has since become the existence of the custody of the imperial family's funds.
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty during the Shunzhi period, the national tax situation was not optimistic, and the war in various places was not over, so there were many places where money was needed.
Therefore, Shunzhi ordered the abolition of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and put all the finances under the management of the Ministry of Households, which played a positive role in promoting the centralized distribution of finances and was conducive to the stability of the Qing Dynasty.
During the Kangxi period, most of our country has returned to stability, fiscal revenue has improved, coupled with the emergence of royal industries such as Huangzhuang, so that the royal family has its own income**.
In order to keep the money and distinguish between the internal and external courts, Kangxi restored the establishment of the internal affairs office and clarified its functions in charge of the financial management of the palace.
Although the Qing Dynasty royal family must have had private income at this time, these income was still far from enough compared to the huge expenses, so the Qing emperor specially set aside a part of the household income for the use of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, namely"Treasury Reserve Inner House Reserve Silver Two".This situation lasted until the early Qianlong Dynasty.
In the middle and late Qianlong Dynasty, the population and economic level of the Qing Dynasty developed to the extreme, and at this time, the royal estates and other industries had spread all over the country, which made the income of the internal affairs government significantly higher than that in the early Qing Dynasty.
At the same time, the Qing Dynasty royal family also monopolized the mink, ginseng and other specialties in the Northeast, and there was still a lot of surplus in these materials to meet the needs of the court, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs would put them on the shelves to the outside world.
Because of the monopoly of these goods, the ** of these items in the Qing Dynasty was very high, which also brought a lot of income to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
In addition, part of the salt tax in the Jianghuai region will also flow into the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and with the development of the economy, the amount of these taxes will also rise, and those salt merchants will also pay part of the income in order to curry favor with the Qing court, which is called"Merchant reimbursement"., which made the Internal Affairs Office make a lot of money.
After having surplus money, the Ministry of Internal Affairs also set up the largest money bank in the country, and began to issue usury in the capital and other places, this kind of capitalless business also made the funds of the Ministry of Internal Affairs more abundant, even if Qianlong built a number of royal gardens in his later years, the Ministry of Internal Affairs still has a large amount of financial surplus.
However, due to land annexation, the tax situation of the household department has become less optimistic.
In order to balance the expenses of the inner and outer courts, Qianlong ordered the internal affairs government to hand over the surplus funds to the household ministry for use, and in the eight years from Qianlong's 33rd to 40th years alone, the internal affairs government replenished nearly 8 million taels for the household department, which alleviated the problem of insufficient expenditure to a certain extent.
During the Jiaqing and Daoguang periods, although the country's economic situation declined, the internal affairs government was still able to make a profit by relying on salt taxes and usury, and it could send two or three hundred thousand taels to the household every year.
But with the outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion in the first year of Xianfeng, the good days of the Ministry of Internal Affairs also came to an end.
The outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion not only dealt a heavy blow to the ruling foundation of the Qing Dynasty, but also cut off the financial delivery from the Jiangnan region to the Qing Dynasty, in which the salt tax and the income of the imperial village were the most important funds of the internal affairs government.
At the same time, the outbreak of the uprising caused panic throughout the country, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not dare to issue usury on a large scale as before, which suddenly made the deep-pocketed Ministry of Internal Affairs unable to make ends meet.
In such a difficult situation, the Qing rulers had no idea of cutting back on food and clothing, and their daily expenses were still staggering.
For example, Emperor Tongzhi spent 5.4 million taels on the wedding alone, and the cost of celebrating Cixi's birthday during the Guangxu period was even more amazing.
Under these circumstances, the Ministry of Internal Affairs had to follow the practice of the early Qing Dynasty to ask for silver taels from the household department, but at this time the household department was not as good as it was at that time, and under the pressure of military expenses and war reparations, they could not make ends meet.
At the most difficult time, there were less than 30,000 taels of silver left in the household, which was shocking for a dynasty as vast as the Qing Dynasty.
Therefore, the household department has repeatedly made requests, hoping that the emperor can refuse the application of the Internal Affairs Office, but after all, the money of the Internal Affairs Office is to be used on the emperor's relatives and relatives, how can they reduce their own use?
Therefore, the emperor of the late Qing Dynasty appeased the household department to consider these suggestions, and on the other hand, he continued to approve the application of the internal affairs government for funds, which made the household department miserable.
By the end of the Qing Dynasty, with the further aggravation of social problems, the internal affairs government almost completely lost its ability to collect revenue independently, and all their expenditures had to be borne by the household department, which further increased the pressure on the Qing Dynasty's financial system and accelerated the collapse of the Qing Dynasty to a certain extent.
The establishment of the Qing Dynasty's internal affairs government marked the complete maturity of China's feudal financial system.
Although the Qing rulers' starting point for distinguishing between the expenses of the inner and outer courts seemed to be good, with the economic downturn of the Qing Dynasty, the Ministry of Internal Affairs gradually became the spokesman for the Qing imperial family's misappropriation of household funds.
The Qing emperor obviously valued his own standard of living more than the state, so how could such a ruler win the support of the people? The rapid fall of the Qing Dynasty is naturally reasonable.
Some of the views in this article are referred to from "Analysis of the Financial Relationship between the Household Department and the Internal Affairs Government in the Qing Dynasty", published in the "Historical Monthly" 2014 Issue 09.
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