Compared with the Han and Tang dynasties, the most striking feature of the Song economy is the rapid growth of commodity economy in traditional society. Since the late Tang Dynasty, especially after the Song Dynasty, with the development of agricultural production, the improvement of grain surplus rate, the appearance of the coal-iron revolution, the expansion of handicraft production, the progress of means of transportation (such as oil tankers and seagoing ships) and the improvement of traffic conditions (such as Bianhe River and coastal shipping), the commodity economy has ushered in the second peak after the Warring States, Qin and Han Dynasties. All kinds of new weather that have never been seen before or are not obvious although there are signs are now protruding in front of us.
The first is the growth of commodity agriculture. The commercial planting with Sang Ma, bamboo, tea, fruit, vegetables, flowers and other cash crops as the main body has been accelerated, especially in the Taihu Basin of Liangzhe Road, Chengdu Plain and Fujian coastal areas. Professional tea farmers, fruit farmers, sugarcane farmers and vegetable farmers have emerged in large numbers. Together with independent craftsmen, they began to transform into small commodity producers.
Second, the urbanization process is accelerating. The number of towns has greatly increased, the urban population has expanded, the number of urban industrial and commercial employees has increased, and regional economic center cities have emerged one after another, which has transformed the traditional political cities into economic and commercial cities, and the momentum of urbanization has become increasingly clear. At the same time, the urban pattern has been greatly improved due to the collapse of the classical square market system, urban commerce has broken through the geographical and time constraints, and the modern urban landscape with shops along the street has begun to take shape.
The third is the change of commodity composition and the turning point of commercial nature. Great changes have taken place in the composition of social goods, and there are more and more means of subsistence (such as grain, cloth, tea, etc.). ) and means of production (such as land, cattle, wood, coal, farm tools, etc. ) have entered the field of circulation. The business that used to be mainly selling and mainly serving the upper class of society, mainly luxury goods and local products, began to transform into a large-scale business focusing on the daily production and daily necessities of the Lebanese people.
Fourth, the prosperity of the grass market and the initial formation of the local market. In economically developed or densely populated rural areas, as well as along land and water docks and traffic tunnels, "grass markets" have sprung up in batches, and local markets composed of grass markets, towns and regional economic centers have begun to form, and commodity-currency relations have gained more outposts, infiltrating and eroding the self-sufficient natural economy.
Fifth, the rise of merchant groups and the prevalence of the concept of "profit". More and more bureaucrats, landlords, intellectuals and farmers are engaged in commercial activities, and coastal farmers even raise funds to invest in overseas trade (so-called "smuggling"). With the expansion of the merchant ranks and the abundant commercial capital, the actual status of the merchant class has improved, and the social influence of businessmen has also expanded. At the same time, the concept of profit (so-called "market road"), which embodies the consciousness of businessmen, has a greater and greater impact on traditional concepts. The rise of utilitarianism school in eastern Zhejiang, represented by Ye Shi and Chen Liang, shows that there is a crack in the unification of traditional Confucianism.
Sixth, the expansion of overseas trade. At this time, the overland Silk Road in the Han and Tang Dynasties has been replaced by the "Spice Road" and "Ceramic Road" at sea, and its scale is incomparable to the land transportation between China and the West. Moreover, the scope is wider, and more than 60 countries and regions have established foreign trade relations with the Song Dynasty. At the same time, the material exchanges and economic ties between the Song Dynasty and neighboring regimes such as Liao, Xia, Jin, Tubo and Dali have not stopped for a moment, but the scale has been expanding and the forms have become increasingly diverse. Monopoly trade, smuggling trade, tea-horse trade, tribute trade and other forms have their own magical powers and complement each other. Millions of copper coins minted every year in the Song Dynasty also flowed to the surrounding areas, almost becoming "international currency".
Seventh, the emergence of paper money and the monetization of silver. With the simultaneous development of domestic and foreign markets, the commercial scale is far ahead of the previous generation. The copper coins with magical charm were unable to cope with the heavy weight and low value (especially in the case of long-distance trafficking and increasing trading volume), so Jiaozi, the earliest paper currency in the world, took the lead in the historical stage of commodity exchange in Sichuan and Sichuan in the early Northern Song Dynasty. Later, the precious metal weighing currency represented by silver also began to enter the circulation field, thus forming a transitional currency system with copper coins, iron coins, silver coins and silver in parallel. The "gold, silver and salt money exchange shops" located in Bianjing and Lin 'an are exchange places for various currencies. There are more than 100 gold and silver trading shops in Lin 'an alone.
All this makes us believe that the commodity economy in Song Dynasty really developed to a new stage. It is no exaggeration to say that the prosperity of China's commodity economy at this time, whether in scale or level, is still far ahead of any country and region in the world at that time, that is, compared with the mid-Qing Dynasty in the18th century, it is not inferior, at least it has its own advantages.
Especially in the southeast coastal areas of Song Dynasty, a brand-new and dynamic open market economy rose under the pull of overseas trade, which was a major change in agricultural economy since Han and Tang Dynasties. In my opinion, the "First Empire" in Qin and Han Dynasties and the "Second Empire" in Sui and Tang Dynasties are both continental empires based on agricultural economy, not only the economic center of gravity is located in the "Three Rivers" mentioned by Sima Qian, that is, the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River; Moreover, the "Silk Road" that lasted for thousands of years between Han and Tang dynasties has been extended to inland Asia. It can be said that all previous dynasties before the Song Dynasty took Sanjiang as their pillow and faced the inland countries in the northwest. However, since the mid-Tang Dynasty, China has changed from a landlocked country to a land-sea country: large seaports such as Guangzhou and Quanzhou have emerged one after another, and the southeast coastal areas are backed by developed agriculture, handicrafts and commodity economy, showing a strong trend of development to the sea. Especially after the Southern Crossing in Song Dynasty, Quanzhou Erythrina Port was becoming the largest port in the world at that time, because the situation was more dependent on foreign trade. Stimulated by the rapid development of overseas trade, the commodity economy in Southeast China, which takes production exchange value as its responsibility, is increasingly prosperous, and the market mechanism based on division of labor and specialized production is playing a greater role in economic life, so the original state of founding a country with its head on the Three Rivers and facing the northwest has become a state of founding a country with its head on the southeast and facing the ocean. The essential connotation of this transition is from natural economy to commodity economy, from single planting economy to diversified management, from basic self-sufficiency to professional division of labor, from main production and use value to production exchange value, from habit-oriented to market-oriented, from closed economy to open economy. All this shows that the commodity economy in the southeast coastal areas of the Song Dynasty, especially in the Southern Song Dynasty, has developed to a brand-new stage!
Historical facts show that under the historical environment of rapid growth of industrial and commercial civilization factors, the initial industrialization process of the Song Dynasty was not only earlier than that of the northern Mediterranean countries and the British Isles, but also not inferior in scale and level. This is mainly manifested in the following aspects:
First, the occurrence of the coal-iron revolution and the emergence of wage labor in private mining and metallurgy workshops.
The Northern Song Dynasty, marked by the surge of iron production and the popularization of steel casting method, ushered in the second great transformation period of China's iron smelting and cast iron industry. The inspiration for this change comes from the large-scale mining and industrial utilization of coal. According to Mr. Xu Huimin's research, although our ancestors realized the burning function of coal as early as the Han Dynasty, the coal mining industry in Hedong (now Shaanxi), Hebei, Shaanxi and other roads was quite developed in the Northern Song Dynasty, as evidenced by archaeological excavations. In order to distinguish it from original charcoal (called "soft charcoal"), words such as "Carboniferous period" and "mineral charcoal" appeared in Song Dynasty, specifically referring to coal. The word "official" in the collection of the Song Dynasty has the words "soft charcoal fields in the west of Beijing, and purchasing carboniferous fields".
The rise of coal mining industry not only eased the contradiction of the shortage of traditional firewood fuel, but also increased the iron output (it is estimated that the annual iron output in the Northern Song Dynasty is between 35,000 tons and150,000 tons, which is close to the level of145,000 tons to180,000 tons in Europe at the beginning of the 8th century). At the same time, the improvement of furnace temperature and smelting efficiency promotes the transformation of casting technology; In particular, the large-scale promotion of the steel casting method characterized by "raw and cooked"; As the inevitable result of all this, it is used to sharpen wrought iron and steel for farm tools and various tools. These major developments constitute the spectacular scene of the coal-iron revolution in the Song Dynasty.
As early as 1959, Mr. Ke Changji pointed out that according to Su Shi's Book of the Emperor of Xuzhou, the "Thirty-six Smelters" under the jurisdiction of Li Guojian near Xuzhou had an employment relationship. According to Su Shi, each of these 36 private iron smelting workshops has more than 100 workers and has the atmosphere of handicraft workshops; All kinds of smelting furnace owners are "rich in money", which shows that the capital is abundant; The government closed the Hebei market ("the railways supervised by the state are not allowed to enter Hebei"), and all metallurgical households have "unemployment worries"; Soon, the ban was lifted, "iron making went north" and smelters "all obeyed", which shows that this is commodity production and there is an interval market. Three or four thousand iron smelting workers are mostly "hungry and cold, strong and forbearing" (3), which reflects that they are divorced from the land to varying degrees, and most of them are divorced from political governance. At least during the period of being employed as a worker, no matter to the landlord or the country, there is no bondage of personal attachment, and the right to "treat one's own labor as one's own commodity" is obtained.
Second, the rise of private Zhuotongjing in Sichuan and Chongqing and the economic struggle of employees.
During the reign of Renzong in the Northern Song Dynasty (1041-1048), Zhuotong well appeared for the first time in Jingyan County, Sichuan Province, marking the transition of drilling technology from shallow well with large mouth to deep well with small mouth. It pioneered the "impact retreat method" in drilling technology, and the "cutting edge" made of wrought iron steel blade should be the first deep well drill bit in the world, which pioneered the modern sinking drilling technology. In the technology of shaft lining forming, the "casing waterproof method" was pioneered, and the bamboo casing used (that is, the origin of the names Zhuotongjing, Zhuozhu, Bamboo, and Yiqiao) is obviously the predecessor of wood conduit and modern copper conduit in Ming and Qing Dynasties; In the process of chip removal, the "valve fan mud cylinder" was pioneered; In the process of bittern extraction, there is a "bottomless open" bittern extraction pipe instead of the original skin, which automatically opens when entering the water and closes when exiting the water. These great achievements have laid the basic principles of modern deep well drilling technology from all aspects, and thus have been praised as "the father of modern oil drilling" by the history of science and technology.
It is precisely because Zhuotong well essentially refreshed the old technology of large-mouth shallow wells and showed great advantages in terms of digging cost, brine quality and production efficiency, so it spread rapidly once it appeared, and it spread all over Nanling Prefecture, Jiazhou, Rongzhou and other places in Sichuan in just 20 or 30 years. "There are thousands of streams connected to the valley, and the stove is second to none." Mr. Guo, an expert in salt history, according to the dictation of Lingzhou magistrate during the Xining period of Emperor Taizong, proved that there was not only employment relationship but also economic struggle to improve working conditions in Sichuan well salt industry. According to Wen Tongshuo, there were more than 100 barrel well workshops in Jingyan County at that time, and each workshop employed "forty to fifty to thirty or twenty people" respectively. Most of these thousands of craftsmen come from "other counties in other States" and have left the land. Its way of making a living is to "be a servant", that is, to make a living by selling labor; If they are not satisfied with the working conditions or treatment during their employment, they will join hands with each other and protest collectively. The so-called "mutual seduction, causing a heated discussion among the parties"; If there is no improvement, I will settle accounts with the well owner "Hao Zhe" and ask for salary. The so-called "calculate the value of work and ask for it"; Looking for another job, the so-called "foreign investment, accustomed to" ⑥, obviously free to come and go.
Third, the commodity production nature of ceramic industry and its expanding domestic and international markets.
Ceramic production in Song Dynasty entered a mature stage. Up to now, China 17 provinces and 130 counties have found the ruins of Song Dynasty porcelain kilns, most of which are folk kilns. Dehua kilns in Fujian Road and porcelain kilns in Jinjiang and Xiamen, as well as Quanzhou Ciyao, Anxi, Nan 'an and Tongan kilns, are the production bases of large-scale export porcelain in Tong Tong Port of Quanzhou. On a large-scale "sea ship" with compass navigation, "merchants distribute goods, and people have to wait several feet to go down and store things, and lie on it at night. There are many pottery goods, and the size is matched, and there is no shortage of space. " ⑧ Japanese scholar Takashi Sanshan made field trips along the Silk Road for many years and published the book Maritime Silk Road in 1979. The second chapter introduces the distribution of Song Dynasty porcelain in Singapore, Jakarta, Saigon, Mysore, Madras, Bambur, Samara, North Africa and Faustine. Cui Xichun, a Korean scholar, said, "China porcelain found in North Korea, especially in the Northern Song Dynasty, has the largest number of products, mainly distributed in the central and southern coastal areas of the Korean Peninsula", and the products "almost include all the products of famous kilns in the Song Dynasty" (2) This shows that the ceramics industry in the Song Dynasty has the nature of commodity production and has a broad overseas market as far as its main part is concerned.
Fourth, the emergence of tens of thousands of textile users and the formation of the convention of businessmen and employers.
The "machine shop" in Song Dynasty was generally a family workshop composed of family members specializing in textiles, and was an independent commodity producer in nature. There are also a few machine users who practice employee production. According to Mr. Qi Xia's estimation, the number of mobile phone users in the Northern Song Dynasty was about 654.38+million, which was considerable. The problem is that except for a few mobile phone users, they are all in cities (for example, Jinhua in eastern Zhejiang means "people in cities mainly weave cloth, claiming that clothes are the world, so they are particularly rich." (4), most of them are distributed in rural areas, and their products need to be concentrated through middlemen and transported to the market to truly become commodities, so there is a merchant employer. Chen Tai's Unjust Dream, published in Yongle Dadian (13 16 1), is a typical example of Jiangxi businessmen and employers during the Xichun period of Xiaozong in the Southern Song Dynasty (65438+1970s 2002). Chen Taiyuan, the wronged shopkeeper, was originally a cloth dealer in Fuzhou. At the beginning of each year, he issued productive loans ("loans") to machine operators in Chong 'an, Le 'an and Jinxi, and then went to these places to ask for linen in summer and autumn, and then shipped it out. As the business grew bigger and bigger, there appeared agents who had waited for the "owner" and "the first owner" to release money and collect cloth. Le 'an alone "accumulates thousands of horses". Judging from "so long", it is not accidental that this practice has lasted for a long time before Xichun. This practice is no different from the "accounting room" in the Ming and Qing dynasties in essential characteristics, and belongs to the merchant employer convention. Mr. Guo pointed out that in the silk weaving industry in Zhejiang and the silk brocade industry in Sichuan, there were also practices such as "taking silk to lend money", "paying customers on credit" and "paying silk money in advance", which showed that merchants and employers were widely distributed in the Song Dynasty, and their activities could be seen in Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Sichuan.
Fifth, in tea, paper, printing and other industries, private workshops are also dominant, engaged in commodity production, with a considerable market, and wage labor can also be seen inside. For details, please refer to the relevant chapters in my book.
Through the above brief summary, we can see that the start of the primitive industrialization process in Song Dynasty is all-round. Driven by the coal-iron revolution, all sectors of handicraft industry, including metallurgy, ceramics, well salt, textile, paper making, printing and other industries, once showed all-round prosperity; The private handicraft industry has risen in an all-round way. Except for a few industries such as coinage and military industry, its dominant position has been undoubtedly established, and it has regional markets, interval markets and even overseas markets to varying degrees. At the same time, the employment relationship with modern colors and the convention of businessmen and employers are also growing tenaciously. All this makes us believe that the handicraft industry in Song Dynasty entered a new period of development, a period of preparing conditions for the emergence of modern industry and providing historical premise for the arrival of capitalist mode of production, which we call the pre-modernization period. If this momentum can be maintained continuously for two or three centuries, it will certainly lay a solid foundation for the later industrialization of factories (machines).
Now we have to ask, did the society in Song Dynasty have all the conditions to start the process of primitive industrialization? My understanding is "three are short of one", that is, three of the four conditions are met and one is still missing.
First, under the pressure of population growth (the population of Huizong in the Northern Song Dynasty reached 1 100 million, which was 1 times higher than that in the Han and Tang Dynasties), the occurrence of agricultural revolution, the increase of grain surplus rate and the growth of commercial agriculture provided an economic basis for the process of primitive industrialization. Because the population growth rate exceeds the expansion rate of cultivated land area, a large number of landless or less farmers have been produced, and they have been forced to make another living and enter cities and industrial and commercial fields in large numbers. The improvement of agricultural productivity provides these non-agricultural population with essential food supply. According to my calculation, an agricultural labor force produced about 4000 Jin of grain every year in Song Dynasty. It is 1 times higher than that of the Han Dynasty and 30% higher than that of the Tang Dynasty, which is roughly equivalent to 1984 and the production of 4379 Jin per worker. This achievement is related to the change of farming system in Song Dynasty. Around the turn of the Song Dynasty, that is, in the first half of12nd century, the double cropping system was recognized as the basic farming system in the Yangtze River Delta, Chengdu-Chongqing Plain, Jiangsu-Anhui Plain, Fujian coastal areas, and Ji Tai Basin in central Jiangxi. The average multiple cropping index is about 134%. The increase in grain output has also freed up more arable land to grow cash crops. The situation of small land and large population in the southeast region is also forcing local farmers to seek more efficient cash crops, such as ramie, mulberry, tea, sugarcane, fruit trees, vegetables, and even medicines and flowers. When there is a corresponding market around the producing area, the focus of producers will naturally shift from the use value of products to its exchange value, so professional tea farmers, sugarcane farmers, fruit farmers and vegetable farmers emerge in large numbers, and commodity agriculture has developed.
Second, the promotion of the coal-iron revolution and the expansion of domestic and foreign markets have led to the rise of technological innovation within handicrafts. For example, the promotion of steel casting method in steelmaking, the invention of copper lining method in copper smelting, the use of "spinning" (that is, simple lathe) in metal processing, the small-mouth deep well technology represented by "Zhuo barrel well" in well digging, the promotion of pedal spinning wheel and the use of shaft warping method in textile processing, the invention of watertight cabin in shipbuilding, the use of navigation compass, the maturity of hard fiber softening technology such as bamboo pole in paper industry and printing technology. I have devoted myself to the details, so I won't repeat them here. It is no exaggeration to say that the Song Dynasty was a period with the richest achievements, the greatest achievements, the fastest progress and the greatest influence on later generations in the ancient history of China, which not only surpassed the prosperous times of Han and Tang Dynasties, but also lagged behind the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Such great scientific and technological progress and technological innovation are obviously the internal driving force for the start of the primitive industrialization process. It is not difficult to see the ingenious conception and extraordinary efforts of craftsmen in Song Dynasty from manual labor to machine production.
Third, the relaxation of personal attachment and the acceleration of urbanization have led to the evolution of urban nature and the emergence of citizen classes. Since the collapse of the land equalization system in the mid-Tang Dynasty, the increase of land circulation rate has led to the collapse of the lifelong system of master and servant, and the growth of land ownership in rural family economy has led to the basic separation of administrative jurisdiction and land ownership, while the deviation between land ownership concentration and land parcel dispersion has forced the management mode of Buqu manor system to decline day by day. Driven by these economic reform trends, the main body of farmers in the Song Dynasty really broke away from the serf status of the original department, guests, apprentices, private people, handmaiden and tenant servants, and gradually gained the right to migrate and withdraw rent. Once they leave the land and flow into cities or mining areas, they may make a living by selling their own labor, as we have seen in mining, metallurgy and well salt industry.
At the same time, the process of urbanization is also accelerating. In Song Dynasty, not only the number of cities increased sharply, but also the nature of cities changed with the increase of commercial significance. Bianjing and Lin 'an, as capitals, are cosmopolitan cities with a population of one million. Although they are still political and military centers, their industry and commerce are still very prosperous. Suzhou, Yangzhou, Chengdu, Ezhou and other cities have gradually grown into regional economic centers because they are located in economically developed areas or traffic tunnels. What is more noteworthy is that a few productive industrial and commercial cities appeared in the Song Dynasty, such as Jinhua in eastern Zhejiang, which can be considered as an important textile town. Li Guojian, near Xuzhou mentioned above, can be regarded as a metallurgical town, as well as the lead mountain field in Jiangxi and the Censhui field in Guangdong, where hundreds of miners and metallurgists often gather. There are also tens of thousands of well salt craftsmen in Jingyan County, Sichuan Province, which is a salt town. There are thousands of potters in the world-famous Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, which is a hometown of ceramics. As for Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Mingzhou and Banqiao in the north, they are new port cities, from Quanzhou to "making a living by ships" to "500,000 people have no worries" in the Southern Song Dynasty.
The increase of cities and the growth of their commercial significance have accelerated the flow of rural population to urban areas and the transformation of suburban farmers into small commodity producers (such as tea farmers and fruit farmers). At the same time, the number of bureaucrats and landlords who run industry and commerce in cities is also increasing. The development of urban handicrafts, commerce, transportation and service industry provides fertile soil for the growth of employment relations. One of the main results of all this is the prosperity of the citizens in cities (including mining areas and ports). In the literature of the Song Dynasty, there are "rich businessmen and giants", "smelters", "grinders" and "tea farmers", as well as "old people" and "market leaders" (the above is one side), as well as "miscellaneous craftsmen", "businessmen are refined businessmen", "people's embroiderers" and "wandering hands are the end" (the above is the other side) Even the struggle between citizens and miners, which was regarded as an important manifestation of the germination of capitalism in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, was also a clue in the Song Dynasty. As mentioned earlier, the salt workers in Jingyan County are "servants and laborers". When they are not satisfied, they can be regarded as economic struggles. Wang Ge, a miner in Susong, Zhou Shu, Anhui Province, was an armed fighter during the reign of filial piety in the Southern Song Dynasty. As we all know, the combination of capital and wage labor is the basic structure of modern industrial society. It is in this sense that we regard the historical process of rural population flowing into cities, the development of employment relations and the rise of the civil class as the social conditions on which primitive industrialization depends.
It is with the support of the above three conditions that the process of primitive industrialization in the Song Dynasty made the above progress. Unfortunately, this process did not bear the positive fruits of modernization, and the direct cause can of course be attributed to the interference of war. /kloc-at the beginning of the 0/2 century, nuzhen fighters frequently went south to the Yellow River to drink horses; The following13rd century began with the Mongolian-Jin War, followed by the Song-Mongolian (Yuan) War, and the Central Plains and Jiangnan were repeatedly ravaged by war disasters. Although it was reunified under the rule of the Yuan Dynasty, the feudal lords' enfeoffment system, craftsmen's bureau system (in fact, it was a slave system) and the system of "driving the mouth" and "civilian market" revived in a wider scope (originally limited to the jurisdiction of Liao, Xia and Jin Dynasties), and it was not until the founding of the People's Republic of China in the early Ming Dynasty that it returned to the historical track opened by the Song Dynasty. That is to say, from the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, in the historical period of more than two centuries, the process of primitive industrialization was dying because of repeated blows.