After Qin Shi Huang burned books and pit Confucianism, the status of Chinese literati and gentry fell to a low point, and the Jiangnan sales case aggravated this situation. At that time, there was a popular joke in Jiangnan: "Tanhua is not worth a penny", revealing the cruel suppression of the gentry class by the Qing Dynasty.
During the Qing Dynasty, the "Jiangnan Case" was named "Xinchou Jiangnan Case", "Shunzhi 17th Year Jiangnan Anti-Grain Case", "Jiangnan Anti-grain Case", "Jiangnan Anti-grain Non-payment Case" and other different names, and the term "Selling Case" was actually an obscure name for people at that time.
Behind this case, it actually reflects the helplessness of the Qing ** in financial difficulties and the harsh suppression of the Jiangnan region. According to historical records, there are two reasons why the Qing Dynasty launched the "Jiangnan Sales Case".
First of all, the financial income cannot make ends meet and make it impossible to pay military salaries, and the Qing Dynasty hopes to solve this problem by rectifying the national finances, especially the finances of the Jiangnan region.
Secondly, the Qing ** also wanted to take this opportunity to crack down on the high-ranking officials and gentry who opposed him, especially the Jiangnan people. However, despite the great impact of this case, it is difficult to find relevant records in historical books.
Why is that? Is there any hidden secret behind this? This question has not yet been thoroughly answered.
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court was financially poor and there was a shortage of military salaries. The salaries of the front-line troops could not be paid on time, and in some places the army even began to rob the people. The governors of various places went to the imperial court and asked for the allocation of funds and food.
However, the treasury was empty and it was not possible to come up with any food. Therefore, the imperial court decided to seek assistance from the Gangnam region. In order to cope with the crisis, the Ministry of Household ordered Zhu Guozhi, the governor of Jiangsu, to recover the arrears and grain arrears, and demanded that all the arrears be paid within two months.
In order to deal with the gentry's resistance to grain, the three ministries of officials, households, and rites jointly formulated a "new law", the severity of which was shocking. In November of the 17th year of Shunzhi, the Criminal Department punished Jiading County for arrears of money and grain.
Due to the long distance and the large number of people involved, if you go to the capital for interrogation, you will waste a lot of time, so the governor drew up a crime and escorted those who resisted the grain and deceived the government into Beijing for conviction.
In this case, Zhu Guozhi, the governor of Jiangsu, became a key figure and had a major impact on the development of events.
Zhu Guozhi's mishandling of the issue of recovering the arrears of grain led to an increase in the amount of arrears and was resisted by the gentry in Jiangnan. In order to solve the problem, he shifted the blame to the local gentry and officials, and asked the court to punish them according to the new law.
He strictly inspected the gentry, and some were even demoted because they owed only one cent, and some were dismissed for owing only seven cents. Under the high-pressure policy, the gentry who were impeached paid their dues one after another, and those who could not pay were forced and extorted by the government and were in a miserable situation.
Among them, Ye Fangwei, who was edited by Ren Hanlin Academy, was demoted by two levels because he owed one cent, and was jokingly called "Tanhua is not worth a penny" by the folk. Nine other gentry who owed food were wronged, but who did not actually owe food, but were impersonated and demoted.
In the Qing Dynasty, most of the targets involved were the gentry. However, Zhu Guozhi, the governor of Jiangsu, did not carefully check the identity of the gentry, but hastily compiled the list of gentry.
As a result, there were some real gentry identities that were not recorded. Later, the imperial court made a clear positioning of the gentry's identity. In the eighteenth year of Shunzhi, the imperial court issued a decree: the gentry of the Ming Dynasty could not call themselves squires, and only those who were prominent in the Qing Dynasty could be called squires.
This provision reflects the fact that in order to consolidate power, the Qing ** strictly divided the Ming gentry who did not cooperate with the Qing Dynasty and abolished their privileged status, thus establishing a privileged class that obeyed the orders of the Qing rulers.
For this reason, when the case broke out, the imperial court punished the current ** very lightly, and the gentry of the previous dynasty were very harsh. In the early years of the Qing Dynasty, it was a very common phenomenon for the gentry to sign grain, which brought many difficulties to the collection of money and grain at that time.
Therefore, it is necessary to rectify them, clean up the finances, and rectify the unstable factors in the ruling class as a warning to the world.
Under the severe punishment of grain arrears, the literati class in Jiangnan completely collapsed, and the arrogant atmosphere of the Ming Dynasty squires disappeared without a trace. There is no mention of this Jiangnan case in the official history books of the Qing Dynasty, so there is a lack of historical evidence for the details of the case, and this historical mystery is still unclear.