Lu Ming

Chapter 519 Frontier Fortress Infrastructure
Corvée, since the Qin and Han Dynasties, is a kind of unpaid labor that the government forced civilians to do.This includes forced labor, miscellaneous labor, military service, etc.In essence, corvee is also a kind of tax.

Different from the gold and silver tax in kind, the government distributes corvee and collects the labor force of the people.

In ancient times, corvee was one of the most important rights of the government, which was equivalent to the gold and silver tax.Throughout the dynasties, corvée has been numerous and harsh. At the end of the dynasty, corvée evolved into the fuse of the rebellion of the people at the bottom.

As small as the rough labor of carrying sedan chairs and sweeping in the yamen, including repairing bridges and paving roads to clear rivers in winter, and even going to the border fortress to fight and deliver food, they are all collected by the government for free through the corvee system-in many cases, those who apply for the service are still You must bring your own dry food and straw sandals, which is an out-and-out five-coin party.

For feudal dynasties, corvee is the basic condition for maintaining the operation of the government.Without taxes, the government will go bankrupt, and without corvee, the government will not last for three days.

In short, any behavior in which the government enlists the people to pay labor without paying remuneration can be classified as corvee.

Even in later generations, in the early days of the founding of the country with low productivity, the government will still mobilize the people to build infrastructure—no matter what the starting point is or what slogans they shout, this is corvee labor in disguise.

To put it bluntly, we are still poor, have no money, and want to engage in construction, so this is the only way to go.

However, the social management model of corvee must exist in an era of low human productivity, because the government cannot receive enough money from the people to support public services.

In ancient society, the economy and finance were underdeveloped, the government did not have money printing machines, and the people did not have WeChat transfers and credit banknotes in their hands. In fact, most farmers only had a few copper coins all year round, so the government could only directly collect labor to offset taxes.

In fact, since ancient times, people have used money to hire people to serve as "servants", but this kind of behavior mostly happened to urban residents and rural landlords, and it was not mainstream before the Ming Dynasty.

What really ended the social form of corvee was the improvement of human productivity.

The popularization of industrialization has turned the world upside down and changed everything.As early as 1937, during the Great Depression in the United States, Roosevelt began to hire people to dig pits. One group dug the pits, and the other group filled the pits.

Look, the commodity wealth gushed out of the machine is beyond the capacity of the society to digest, and the government needs to hire people to dig and fill the pits to make the stagnant economy flow.

The above, including the milk poured into the Mississippi River, are all signs of the reversal of industrial society-the government began to find ways to send money to the people to create job opportunities, and there is no such thing as free corvee, because only those who work can get wealth. Talented people dare to consume endless industrial products, so that the social economy can operate, and life can barely survive.

This time, Ding Liqiu, the No. [-] person in the Guangzhou Special Economic Zone, promoted the "new version of corvee labor of the new social experiment project" in Zengcheng County. It is a combination of history and future generations, and it is a freak.

There were three types of corvee in the early Ming Dynasty, one was Lijia service, the other was uniform corvee, and the third was miscellaneous.

Lijia service is community labor, and the conscripts usually work in the local Lifang.Junwei is a regular servant of the government. Everyone takes turns to share, and there are various jobs for traveling abroad.The remaining miscellaneous is of a temporary nature and is used to deal with emergencies.

These types of corvee forms were implemented in the middle of the Ming Dynasty and changed.

First of all, as the external colonists came with silver coins produced in Mexico, the Ming Empire naturally experienced a certain amount of inflation, which objectively added a certain amount of currency to the economic environment.

Next is the appearance of Zhang Juzheng, a generation of famous ministers: a whip method.

The One Whip Law stipulates that the land tax, corvee and other miscellaneous levies of each state and county are always one, and the combined collection of silver taels is converted and paid by mu.

The one-whip law greatly simplifies the tax system and facilitates the collection of taxes.At the same time, it made it difficult for local officials to cheat, which in turn increased the fiscal revenue of the imperial court.

After the one whip method, the monetization of tax and service became the norm, and the practice of people handing in "service silver" instead of levy was widely promoted in various parts of Ming Dynasty.

Although after Zhang Juzheng's death, a whip method was crazily resisted by the vested interests, and was eventually destroyed and overthrown, but some items were naturally preserved, including the conversion of corvee.

However, this time when Comrade Ding Liqiu came to Zengcheng County, he was going to reverse the course of history: restore the old system, conscript corvee, and recruit personnel.

At the end of December in the Gregorian calendar in 1630, when the Lunar calendar was about to reach the Laba Festival, Zengcheng County issued a sad official announcement to the people of the whole county: to conscript Chongzhen for four years of corvee in advance.

After the one-whip law, in order to adjust the uneven burden of households in Lifang, the compilation and review unit of the service bank was expanded from Lijia to prefectures and counties.And this time Zengcheng County's order to levy corvee was issued by the county government.

Of course, although the order appeared to be issued by the county government, it was actually driven by Ding Liqiu's operation.After a deep understanding of Ding Liqiu's background and Cao Zongbing behind him, the magistrate of Gutaigu County, a sesame official, has no ability to resist in this regard.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, there were many corruptions and abuses in the officialdom. Since the addition of the "Three Rates", it has been effective. In addition to the "Three Rates", in some places, even the rates for ducks, cattle, and grass insects have also appeared in a grand manner.As for the collection of taxes for future years in advance, that is even more commonplace, and it is not considered news.

Therefore, the Zengcheng county government dispatched the new-year-old corvee in advance this time, which did not cause much disturbance.The crux of the problem is that this time the official document clearly stated: double the amount of money.

After this official document was issued, several families were happy, but thousands of families were sad.

The doubling of service money is probably not a big deal to the rich, it is nothing more than a matter of skipping restaurants.However, for the vast number of poor farmers who are struggling to go bankrupt, this one is fatal.

But I'm sorry, this is what Uncle Ding Liqiu wants - what are the poor ghost's family doing on those two acres of land with yellow faces and emaciated faces?Why don't you come to answer my corvee and take you to Xintiandi to be a farmer?

So in the fourth year of Chongzhen after the New Year, after passing through the corvee behind the scenes, it was officially implemented in the Zengcheng area: a large number of poor peasants who could not pay the service money were first conscripted to the county by the official Daming official corvee, and then transported to Huangpu Naval Port, and then took a boat to Taiwan to "build a frontier fortress".

Yes, according to Cao Zongbing's recent note to the court, Taiwan is now a frontier fortress of Ming Dynasty, and the court needs to send people to build some towers and piers, and then build a Great Wall or something "to prepare for foreign enemies."

For so many infrastructure projects, of course Daming had to send someone over, there was nothing wrong with it.

(End of this chapter)