When Yuan Shizu arrived in the Yuan Dynasty, people living in China at that time were divided into four categories: the first category was Mongolians, including people from former Mongolian ministries; The second category is Semu people, including Xixia people, Hui Hui people, Western people and even some Europeans living in China. The third category is the Han people, including the Khitan, Nuzhen and the Han people under the former Jin Dynasty. The fourth category is southerners, referring to the Han nationality and the people of all ethnic groups in southwest China under the rule of the Southern Song Dynasty. The Yuan rulers classified the Semu people as second class in order to improve the status of the upper class of the Hui people and make them assistants to the Mongolian aristocratic rule. The purpose of dividing the Han people into Han people and South people is to divide the Han people and weaken their resistance.
The Yuan government used various methods to determine the grades of these ethnic groups. In the ruling institutions, the chief executive and the officials in power are both Mongols or Semu, followed by Han Chinese, and for a long time after the death of Song Dynasty, few southerners served in the central government. The local official, Ludahuachi, is also generally held by Mongols, and it is stipulated that Semu people are tongzhi and Han people are general managers, and tongzhi and general manager are mutually restrained and obey the command of Ludahuachi. In terms of military organization, there are differences among Mongolian army, Tanmachi army, Han army and newly attached army. When sending troops, the armies were convened in different ways, mainly Mongolian army, and the military power was in the hands of handsome Mongolian army. The criminal law stipulates that Mongolians, Semu people and Han people belong to different organs for trial. The Mongols hit the Han people, but the Han people didn't fight back. The Mongols killed the Han people and only exiled to the north to join the army. It is also stipulated that Han people and southerners are not allowed to get together to meet the gods, not to hold bows and arrows, and not even to keep dogs and magpies. Expropriation: if it is counted as a horse, the Mongols will not take it, the Semu people will take one third, and the Han people and southerners will all take it. In addition, many decrees recorded in Yuan Zhang Dian were made for Han Chinese and southerners, and it was pointed out that Mongolians were not bound by these decrees.
However, this policy of ethnic discrimination does not apply to some Han landlords who take refuge in Mongolian rulers. The laws of the Yuan Dynasty prohibited Han people from holding bows and arrows, but Yuan Shizu said to Wang Weihe of the Han Palace, "Your family is not compared with other Han people, and you are not prohibited from holding bows and arrows, so you can hold them." Some Han landlords who took refuge in Mongolian rulers for a long time, such as Shi in Daxing, Zhang in Yizhou and calm Dong Shi, had almost the same status and treatment as Mongolian nobles in the Yuan Dynasty. On the contrary, many Mongolian underclass people did not enjoy the privilege of ruling the nation. Mongolian herders on the grassland are increasingly poor and even bankrupt and exiled under the exploitation of heavy military service and tax. By the middle of the Yuan Dynasty, a large number of poor Mongolians often flowed to most places, such as Tongzhou and Zhangzhou, and some of them were sold to the homes of Han and Hui people as handmaiden.
At the end of Yuan Dynasty, ethnic contradictions and class contradictions intensified.
In the late Yuan Dynasty, the land was highly concentrated, and the Mongolian nobles had completely become feudal landlords, each occupying a large amount of land. Timur, the emperor of Taiding, had given the government 7000 hectares of land before he ascended the throne. When Shun Di was in power, the land accompanying Princess Nulun was allocated by the government to Minister Bo Yan, and there were also 5,000 hectares. There are still so many land donations and allocations, and the actual land occupied is of course more. In order to win over Mongolian princes, the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty gave them gold, silver and farmland as soon as he ascended the throne. At that time, the court gave the minister a field of 100 hectares at a time, which was later increased to several thousand hectares and then to several thousand hectares. Most of the fields used to be in the north, but later they turned to fertile areas such as Suzhou in the south of the Yangtze River.
Most Mongolian aristocrats rented the land they seized from farmers under harsh conditions and exploited it through leasing. During the reign of Wu Zongshi, "Venus" recruited land 1230 hectares, and collected 500,000 stones every year, with an average of four stones per mu. Such heavy exploitation will inevitably lead to the death of farmers. Wang in Huainan still occupies farmland in Yangzhou, and often sends people to various towns and villages to "collect debts and rent, drive away farmers and plunder wheat and grain." During the reign of Emperor Wenzong, Minister Yan Timur asked the emperor to rent the palace fields around Suzhou to his brothers and son-in-law, and then they sublet them to farmers.
The wind of annexation by landlords of Han nationality is increasing day by day. There are 450 farmland tax households in Chong 'an County, Fujian Province, which collect 6,000 grains, of which 50 households collect 5,000 grains, accounting for one-ninth of the taxpayers in the county, but actually occupy five-sixth of the land. In Jiangnan, in addition to collecting rent from tenants, landlords also collect silk materials from tenants at will, distribute extra food, and even force tenants to serve as servants. Some landlords also fly around and secretly send them to avoid their servants, and the phenomenon of uneven tribute is very serious. As a result, "everyone is welcomed by millions, but little people have nothing to hide." Due to the uneven taxation in the northern region, there is also a saying that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".
In the early years of the Yuan Dynasty, the government repeatedly ordered landlords to reduce rents, and this ban was later abolished. In the second year of Injong Yanyou (13 15), he also ordered people to "verify fields and acres" in Huaibei and Jiangnan. But the landlord bought off the government and concealed the land, and officials wanted to be proud of it. Therefore, the sandy land and saline-alkali land cultivated by farmers in Huaibei are also used as cultivated land. At this time, farmers in Jiangxi and other places were aroused to fight against the increase of land rent by including farmland.
Following Wu Zong (1308-131year), Li Renzong (13 12- 1320) and Yingzong (/kloc) At this time, the country's military and political power has been handed over to the powerful Mongolian minister.
Luxury and corruption have become the norm in the supreme ruling group. The Mongolian royal family and the government of the Yuan Dynasty used most of the fat and ointment collected each year for unrestrained old-age gifts and "Buddhist services". When Wu Zongshi was in power, the government invested 2.8 million ingots every year, and he spent more than 8.2 million ingots in less than a year. After Injong ascended the throne, he spent more than 20 million ingots, most of which were used to reward Mongolian nobles. During the reign of Wu Zongshi, the expenditure on religious activities such as offering sacrifices to gods and building temples was as high as two-thirds of the total government revenue. According to the statistics of the Missionary College in the fourth year of Injong's Yanyou (13 17), only one food was provided for the Buddha. In that year, * * * used 439,500 Jin of flour, 79,000 Jin of oil and 27,300 Jin of honey, and slaughtered 1 10,000 sheep every day. After Yingzong, emperors were greedy for money and good things and plundered endlessly. In this case, finance is often tight, so that "the court never has a day's reserve." In order to make up the deficit, the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty had to raise taxes and issue paper money indiscriminately, and the people were exploited even more.
By the end of Yuan Dynasty, corruption and exploitation became more and more serious. The government sells officials and rewards the public. Officials have all kinds of tricks. "Spending money on the first day of attendance, chasing money on holidays, paying for birthdays, doing business to arrange money, sending money to meet people, chasing money, and suing officials for money are nothing. I have succeeded in finding money for many days, except for the Texas, America and Japan branch, and I have worked well in recent days. Even the incorruptible visiting officials "go to every county, and each county has its own vault to check money and weigh it as silver, which is similar to the market." "
By the time of Shun Di, all corruption had reached its peak, with the arrogance of Mongolian nobles and lamas, the corruption of officials and the tyranny of landlords increasing day by day. The Mongolian royal family headed by Shun Di was also "ugly and smelly" and the rule of the Yuan Dynasty was on the road to collapse.
Parallel to cruel corruption and exploitation, serious natural disasters have appeared one after another. In the first year of Yuan Dynasty (1333), there was heavy rain in Gyeonggi, and there were more than 400,000 hungry people. In the past two years, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces have been affected by disasters, with a hungry population of 590,000. In the third year of Yuan Dynasty (1337), Jiangsu and Zhejiang were hit again, with more than 400,000 hungry people. In the fourth year of Zheng Zheng (1344), the Yellow River flooded three times and hungry people were everywhere. Forced by natural and man-made disasters, farmers left the land in droves and armed uprisings rose.
As early as the second year of Taiding (1325), Bodhisattva Zhao Chou-4 and Guo in Xizhou, Henan Province revolted and put forward the slogan "Maitreya deserves the world", which started the peasant uprising at the end of Yuan Dynasty. In the third year from Shun Di to Yuan Dynasty (1337), Zhu Guangqing and Nie Uprising took place in Guangdong, which was called "the Buddha was born in Dingguang" in history. In the same year, an uprising took place in Banghu, Henan Province, where incense was burned and people gathered, and the rebels "held the Maitreya Buddha flag". In the fourth year of Yuan Dynasty, Monk Peng and Zhou revolted in Yuanzhou, and more than 5,000 peasants revolted. "The vests are all written in Buddhist characters." By the beginning, small-scale uprisings had spread all over the country, with more than 300 uprisings in southern Beijing alone.
Most of the peasants who held the uprising were Han Chinese and southerners, so Mongolian rulers were more hostile to Han Chinese and southerners. Bo Yan and others once put forward the idea of killing the five surnames of Han people, namely Zhang, Wang, Liu, Li and Zhao, and reiterated that Han people should not be armed or unarmed, and northerners should not repay those who beat southerners today. The implementation of these bans further ignited the flame of resistance.
All kinds of folk songs against Mongolian rulers are circulated everywhere. Liu Futong called for "the south of the Yangtze River is poor and the north is prosperous". At that time, someone said, "Talbai, northerners are the masters and southerners are the guests. Tar, southerners will be the masters. " He also said: "When it rains, people will complain. When they are in the same place, things will change." These folk songs strongly reflected the increasingly intensified ethnic and class contradictions at that time. The Red Scarf Army Uprising at the end of Yuan Dynasty was a total outbreak of ethnic and class contradictions, and more importantly, class contradictions.
"A one-eyed stone man provoked the Yellow River to rebel against the world" is a popular folk song in the disaster-stricken areas of the Yellow River in Zheng Zheng for ten years (1350). In the eleventh year of Shun Di's reign, the world was turned upside down because of the yellow mess. This year, the Yuan government ordered Jia Lufa, Daming, ministers of the Ministry of Industry, and other/kloc-0.5 million farmers to build rivers, and at the same time sent troops to suppress them along the Yellow River. It was these peasants who served on the Yellow River construction site that ignited the fuse of the Red Scarf Army uprising. After the Red Scarf Uprising broke out, there was a time when "poverty led to chaos". Within a few months, the flags of the Uprising were raised everywhere among the Yellow River, the Yangtze River and the Huaihe River.