unclear

Chapter 705 Mess

Well, it was true that trading tea for horses did work, but the problem remained. Zhu Yuanzhang naively believed that the world would not change, and since he was able to drive out the Northern Yuan Dynasty, establish the Ming Dynasty, and sit on the throne of the emperor, he must be the smartest, so no one was allowed to change the laws he made.

His filial sons and grandsons were really obedient and did not change anything when told not to. As a result, many policies have been used for more than 200 years and are no longer suitable for the modern era. Not only do they not play their due role, but they have become a stumbling block to the development of productivity, thus giving rise to a large number of corrupt officials.

In order to achieve the goal of exchanging tea for horses, Zhu Yuanzhang formulated the Tea Law. It stipulated that tea produced in Shaanxi and Sichuan should be purchased and stored by the government after paying the tea tax. Private individuals were not allowed to buy or sell it, nor were they allowed to hold it. This was the so-called official tea. However, tea from various parts of Jiangnan was allowed to be sold to the private sector in the form of tea permits, which was called commercial tea.

During the early Ming Dynasty, the tea monopoly system worked well and provided a lot of horses for the Ming army. At the cheapest time, the average price of a horse was as low as more than 20 kilograms of tea for one.

However, the reason why a large number of horses could be exchanged was not entirely due to the tea-control system. More than half of it depended on the military strength of the early Ming Dynasty.

In other words, they know they can't beat you, so they have to hold their noses and agree to exchange horses for tea. At least they can get some necessities of life, which is better than causing war.

However, as the military power of the Ming Dynasty declined rapidly, the system of controlling the tribes with tea began to collapse before the middle of the Ming Dynasty. The main manifestations were that the price of horses became more and more expensive, fewer and fewer tribes were willing to pay tribute, and smuggling became more and more serious. As a result, the official tea was piled up and could not be exchanged, and a large amount of it rotted and was thrown away.

Emperors of all dynasties had thought of ways to solve the problem. Starting from Yongle, they issued decrees to crack down on smuggling and contraband transportation. The punishment was raised again and again, even to the point of death by slicing and exile of the family members, but it was still impossible to save the situation.

After more than two hundred years of repeated struggles, what did the tea-controlling system become during the reign of Emperor Jingyang? Zhang Ran was too embarrassed to say, because he didn't know exactly what it was like.

Not only he was not clear, even the Tea Tax Office, Tea Transport Office, Tea Horse Office, Tea Warehouse and other institutions that were responsible for the tea monopoly could not explain it clearly. Because the tea tax in different places was different, and the collection method was also different. Some converted it into silver, while others stored the tea.

However, the tea stored in tea warehouses in various places includes tea from the current year, tea from ten years ago, and even tea from more than thirty years ago. Countless teas have been replaced because they have deteriorated over time.

In the span of more than 200 years, there were countless personnel changes, and the accounts were incomplete and confusing. Not to mention the Ministry of Revenue, even if PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young from later generations were all transported back through time, they would still have no clue.

"What's the point of keeping such tea laws! What's the point of having such a tax office!" Hong Tao knew that the situation of the salt and tea monopoly was very bad, but he did not expect it to be so bad. When he heard about Jingyang's ten-year tea tax, he could not help but slamming the table.

In such a large country, there were 13 provinces and autonomous prefectures producing tea. According to the records during the Hongwu period, the total output could reach more than 5000 million jin, or more than 3 metric tons. Even if there was no increase after more than 5 years of development, it should not have contributed only taels of silver to the court.

That's right, the tea tax in Jingyang for four years was 5 taels, and the rest was all in-kind taxes, all of which were deposited in tea warehouses in various places. But how much was it? The reported figures were probably not even of reference value, and no one would say anything when checking at the local level.

He has been cutting back on his spending and diet, and has not even been willing to build a proper palace. He has to bear all kinds of insults, but in return, he has received a bunch of vampires who are sucking the country's blood desperately. He is furious no matter how he thinks about it. "Your Majesty, calm down. The tea-monetizing areas are in Sichuan and Shaanxi. The mountains are high and the roads are long. There are mixed people of Han and Tibetan origin. The navy and the army are far away from them."

The emperor slammed the table, and all the officials and advisers were silent. But the less people spoke, the harder it would be for the emperor to step down. Seeing this, Yuan Keli had to come out again to smooth things over, and at the same time reminded the emperor not to be swayed by emotions and not to use force easily. If the west was messed up again, he would be surrounded by enemies.

"Huh... Let's leave the matter of salt and tea here for now, but the General Staff and the Royal Guards cannot stop their investigation. They must sort out the whole story in case of emergency."

Even if Yuan Keli did not warn him, Hong Tao would not dare to act recklessly in Sichuan and Shaanxi. This emperor has been in office for more than ten years, and less than half of the provinces can really enforce his orders.

How big was the geographical territory of the Ming Dynasty? This simple question is a bit complicated to explain and needs to be divided into different periods.

When the Ming Dynasty was first established, its territory was indeed quite large. Taking advantage of the collapse of the Northern Yuan Mongolian regime, it occupied Inner Mongolia, Liaodong, Outer Manchuria, and Hami in Xinjiang. Together with the surrendered U-Tsang region and parts of Jiaozhi and Myanmar, the area exceeded 1000 million square kilometers.

However, this period lasted only a few decades, during which the east of Changbai Mountain was ceded to Korea. Starting from the first year of Yongle (1403), the Daning Dusi was abandoned, Jiaozhi was evacuated, and Kaiping, Xinghe and other garrisons in Inner Mongolia were abandoned.

Although the Nurgan Regional Military Commission was established, it was abolished during the reign of Zhu Zhanji, who retreated to Liaodong. During the Chenghua period, the Ming Dynasty abandoned the Hetao area, and then during the Zhengde period, it lost Hamiwei, the only stronghold in Xinjiang.

Since its founding in 1368, the Ming Dynasty had been losing territory. By 1513, after nearly 150 years, it had basically fixed its borders on the line of the Great Wall.

But this is not the end. There is still a large area that only belongs to the Ming Dynasty in name, but in fact neither obeys announcements nor orders. That is the U-Tsang area, which is Tibet in later generations.

The history of this region is long and sensitive, so the author dare not say much. Anyway, for most of the Ming Dynasty, this place was a foreign country similar to Korea or Jiaozhi, where no troops could be stationed or officials could be appointed or dismissed. All they could do was accept tribute and, by the way, formally confer official titles according to the list given by others.

Let me talk about a more sensitive topic. The dynasty that had the greatest impact on the territory of later China was not the Ming Dynasty, but the Qing Dynasty. Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and the Northeast were all conquered by the Qing Dynasty.

Although the Qing Dynasty was indeed much more backward than the European powers of the same period and caused a lot of damage to the country and the nation, it must be said that it definitely made great contributions in seizing territory, and it was able to hold on to it after seizing it. It was much better than the so-called short-lived Tang and Han dynasties, and it also laid the foundation for China's territory in later generations.

(End of this chapter)