Before the Song Dynasty, the tenancy system was based on private ownership of land. Therefore, although the tenancy system did not occupy a dominant position until the Song Dynasty, the records about the tenancy system appeared as early as the Qin and Han Dynasties with the emergence of private ownership of land.
By the Han Dynasty, due to land annexation, more and more fields were in the hands of landlords, and many landless peasants or bankrupt yeomen rented land from landlords to make a living. Because there is no land and no hukou, these tenants gradually become the dependents of aristocratic families.
Tenants attached to powerful families
"The Biography of Zhong Changtong in the Later Han Dynasty" records: "There are hundreds of great people, and there are thousands of handmaiden, all in vain." The main source of apprentices here is these tenant farmers, who can't leave their owners at will and don't register in the national household registration. Their wives and children are forced to become apprentices, except for being exploited and enslaved by powerful landlords for generations.
The "tenant farmers" after Wei and Jin Dynasties are also called trilogy, and the status of trilogy is still very miserable. They can be regarded as gifts, and the manor owners who are persecuted to death will generally not be punished. The trilogy's personal rights don't seem to be much higher than slaves.
In the Tang Dynasty, the status of the trilogy was still not greatly improved.
? On Tang Law? There is a record: "When I was a child, I didn't return, and I had no worries about food and clothing. My master uses slave animals. And its growth, because of marriage, such people, with the Lord, have no household registration. If so, it's called a trilogy. This shows that Buqu's social identity in Tang Dynasty was serf, and he needed the owner's consent to get married, so he still had no household registration and was severely bound by the landlord.
As can be seen from the above, the tenant farmers before the Song Dynasty had no household registration, attached to the landlord, had serious personal constraints, and had extremely low social status. They were severely exploited and enslaved by landlords, and even their lives were not guaranteed, let alone their enthusiasm for production. Therefore, the tenancy system before the Song Dynasty was strictly a primitive tenancy phenomenon.
Tenancy system in Song Dynasty I. Reasons for the emergence of tenancy system in Song Dynasty.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in the Song Dynasty, it inherited the territory of five dynasties and ten countries, and also inherited the reality that the land equalization system was destroyed and could not be implemented since the end of the Tang Dynasty. In order to promote the development of agriculture and even the whole social economy, and to change the scene of national depression and decline at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the rulers of the Song Dynasty took the lead in implementing the land policy of "no farmland system and no annexation" for the first time. In essence, the land granted by the state is basically abandoned, and the legitimacy of private property rights and the commercialization of land are recognized and protected, allowing them to trade according to economic laws.
The Song Dynasty ended the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.
Under this land policy, the state no longer blindly restricts the merger and circulation of land as in the past, so there have been frequent land transactions and a large number of land have been merged by landlords. This will inevitably lead to two extreme situations: on the one hand, a large number of farmers lose their land and have no land to cultivate, on the other hand, landlords are unable to cultivate their huge amount of land. In this case, the labor supply and demand market has quietly formed, and the mode of production and production relations of tenancy system have also produced tenancy system.
Second, the characteristics of the tenancy system in Song Dynasty.
In the tenancy system of the Song Dynasty, the state divided the national population into main households and customers according to whether there was industry or not, which constituted the two main bodies of the tenancy system. The owner owns the land, and the customer is a tenant farmer who does not have his own cultivated land.
No matter the client or the client, the court has included them in the national household registration. "They are all compiled by the people, and there is no distinction between upper and lower." In other words, in form, the customer has achieved the same status as the main account. At least in front of the country, the political status of the landlord as the main household and the tenant farmer as the customer is equal, and there is no longer a strong personal subordinate relationship between the Ministry and the private landlord in the Tang Dynasty.
Under the tenancy system, customers not only have formal household registration and social status promotion, but also have personal freedom to migrate.
Renzong Tiansheng five years, the next letter: "Jianghuai, Zhejiang, Jinghu, Fujian, Guangnan armies, ... from now on, customers will start to move, not to mention the owner's reasons." They have to close the venue every year, discuss where to go and take care of each other, that is, they have to move privately. If the owner is unreasonable, Xu Jing County will discuss it in detail. " (Song Yao Hui's Food Collection).
This imperial edict is the earliest imperial edict about the right of customers to move independently in the Song Dynasty, which shows that customers have legal protection when they move, and after moving, customers naturally get rid of their personal attachment to their owners.
With the freedom of personal migration, customers' ways of making a living began to increase. In addition to cultivating the land of landlords, customers can also cultivate as farmers or run part-time vendors.
Customers who also operate suppliers.
For example, "Chen Wu, a new farmer in Leping, is a servant of Zhai Jiatian. Every vacation is cultivated by others." Another example is "Zheng Sike, a native of Xianju, Taizhou, is a tenant in Lintong, living in a store later, or buying and selling yarn, silk and seafood." (Yi Jian Zhi Zhi).
In addition to farming for others and participating in business activities to increase income, customers also have a development direction-upgrading to the main household.
Some customers in the tenancy system in Song Dynasty could be promoted to main households. This is not only the customer's own idea, but also encouraged by the government at that time, because it can increase the national tax revenue. Since land is allowed to be bought and sold, customers can use the money they earn to buy land and become owners. For example, Zhenzong Jingdezhen has received more than 330,000 households in the past three years.
Upgrading the landlord makes it possible for tenants to change from farmers to landlords, which greatly improves the enthusiasm of customers.
In addition, the rent of tenancy in the Northern Song Dynasty is generally divided into tenancy, and there is a quota for a single tenancy. The rent is paid according to the proportion of the harvest, generally 50%, and both parties get 50%.
Rated land rent, the amount of land rent payable per mu is specified in advance, and paid according to the specified amount. Whether it is divided into land rent or fixed land rent, customers can get more for more work, and they can be urged to care about production and strive to increase production.
Hard-working customers.
According to the hierarchical system of feudal society and the etiquette of pecking up and down, the political status of tenant farmers was obviously lower than that of landlord class, but with the development of tenancy system in Song Dynasty, the economic dependence between landlord and tenant farmers became more and more obvious, which was an important change that could not be ignored.
"Tenants rely on landlords to support their families, and landlords also borrow tenants to plow and pay rent to support their families. They must be trying to survive. Today, people are warned that tenants should not infringe on landlords, and landlords should not abuse tenants. " An article about encouraging agriculture.
As can be seen from the above, in the tenancy system of the Song Dynasty, tenants had household registration and their social status was improved. Thanks to the encouragement of the state, tenant farmers can also buy land and become main households, which also brings the possibility of cross-class tenant farmers. At the same time, tenant farmers have certain freedom of personal migration, and they can participate in some commercial activities and farming to increase their income. The practice of dividing land rent and fixing land rent can also make tenants work harder and get more.
All these show that the tenancy system in Song Dynasty reduced the attachment of tenant farmers to landlords, stimulated their enthusiasm for production, objectively increased farmers' income and lightened farmers' burden. At the same time, the relationship between landlord and tenant is getting closer and closer. This greatly promoted the development of agricultural production, and the further development of agriculture also promoted the development of commodity economy in Song Dynasty.
The tenancy system and peasant uprising in the Song Dynasty made it extremely difficult for the ancient peasants in China who had always been "resigned" and "self-indulgent" to risk being wiped out and rebelled. Only when they are really cornered and can't live at all will farmers resist.
peasant uprising
Secondly, the cruel exploitation and oppression of local tyrants, evil gentry, bully landlords and corrupt officials will naturally lead to peasant uprisings in this area, but obviously more conditions are needed to make most farmers in the country feel unable to survive, overcome difficulties such as inconvenient transportation, ineffective information and scattered isolation, and eventually lead to large-scale peasant uprisings in the country.
At present, historians believe that only when the following four points are met at the same time will a nationwide peasant uprising break out.
First of all, there needs to be a highly centralized government system with a nationwide governance scope.
Second, there must be a bureaucratic team that respects the same ideology and can faithfully implement the policies and regulations formulated by the central government.
Third, the land system implemented by the government makes the burden on farmers unbearable.
For various reasons, the power of the ruling group has been weakened.
Let's demonstrate it through these four points.
As a unified feudal centralized country, Song Dynasty was obviously satisfied with the first and second points. Regarding the fourth point, the weakening of the power of the ruling group is only a relative statement, which is difficult to measure. However, as a Song Dynasty, which has always carried out the policy of valuing literature over martial arts and was repeatedly hit by a few regimes such as Liao, Jin, Xixia and Mengyuan, the power of the ruling group was weakened too much, especially in the Northern Song Dynasty and the late Southern Song Dynasty.
In this way, the first point, the second point and the fourth point are all consistent, so judging from the result that there was no nationwide peasant uprising in the Song Dynasty, the argument result is definitely that the third point is not in line with the situation in the Song Dynasty.
Is it true?/You don't say. Combined with the characteristics and functions of the land system and tenancy system mentioned above, the third point is obviously not in line with the situation in the Song Dynasty, which is consistent with the demonstration results.
Of course, in order to be more rigorous, we will demonstrate it from another angle through the characteristics of the peasant uprising in the Song Dynasty.
One of the characteristics of the peasant uprising in the Song Dynasty is that the scale of the peasant uprising in the Song Dynasty is generally small. Although peasant uprisings were frequent, they did not develop into large-scale uprisings sweeping across the country. But often confined to a corner, showing full compromise, without clearly expressing the will to overthrow the feudal dynasty. This can be seen from the main slogan of the peasant uprising in the Song Dynasty, "Equal wealth". Although this slogan embodies the desire of the peasant uprising to pursue average wealth, it does not further put forward the revolutionary program of "anti-kingship" aimed at overthrowing the feudal autocratic regime.