New Shun 1730

Dead people are not necessarily more useful than living people, the key depends on who is dead.

For example, in the history questions of later generations that express the development of industry and commerce in the south of the Yangtze River, a sentence like this is often used:

There are many layouts in Lizhong (Weifengjing, Jinshan, Shanghai), and many dyers and calenderers are employed in the bureau. They are all from Jiangning, and they come and go in groups.

It ended abruptly.

Just looking at this half sentence reflects the development of industry and commerce, the flow of population, and the popularity of the employment system in Jiangnan.

But if the full text of the last half sentence was also written, it would be a horror story.

After disturbing the village, the people were burdened by it, and they were extremely angry. They gathered people and collected huge sums of money, closed the gates and small gates, and planned to kill in anger. Hundreds of people died.

Shanghai hired some Nanjing people to work, and the conflicts between locals and outsiders increased day by day. The locals together blocked the inner gates and closed the water grates, mostly by blocking the doors, setting fires, and smoldering. Hundreds of people were directly slaughtered.

This doesn't even make a sound in history.

Because those who died were low-level hired workers from other places, just like those who died every year due to famine, fighting for land in villages, or floods and tides. There were always tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, but no one cared at all.

It's actually not a big deal if a little scholar is beaten to death.

But the key to whether the matter is big or not is whether anyone wants it to become big.

Yangzhou's salt merchants are the most powerful group of people in the entire Yangzhou Prefecture. They wanted to make a big deal out of this.

Those who were able to pass the imperial examinations and become scholars were obviously the easiest group of people to organize in Yangzhou Prefecture.

Salt merchants funded academies and supported literati.

The academy gives back to the salt merchants.

This system has been in place for two to three hundred years. Starting from the Plum Blossom Academy during the Jiajing period of the previous dynasty, there were countless academies funded by salt merchants throughout Yangzhou Prefecture.

Guangling Academy, Hanyang Academy, Anshi Academy, Mingdao Academy, Leyi Academy, Zhuhu Academy, Huachuan Academy, Wenzheng Academy, Zhaoyang Academy, Mingxing Academy, etc...

These academies are able to support themselves. Many of them are funded by salt merchants. Tuition funds are also set up in the academies to help poorer children so that they can study with peace of mind.

The principal of the academy received 400 taels of silver for repairs and 600 taels of firewood, rice, and flour.

Poor students can also get financial incentives from salt merchants by entering the academy, and they can also receive one or two taels of silver every month.

As for where the salt merchants’ money comes from…

It's meaningless to argue like this. Just because parents are embezzlers doesn't stop their children from thinking that their parents are the kindest people in the world.

In short, Yangzhou has given birth to a very exquisite old culture with its two industries of water transportation and salt industry.

But these old cultures... how should I put it, if one day the country becomes strong and the people are healthy, it may still be meaningful to dig them out; but for now, seeing that the British side has to independently build steam engines, it will soon It’s time for mankind to make concerted efforts to map the transit of Venus and calculate the distance between the sun and the earth. These people sitting in the academy making these things are really... tasteless to eat and a pity to discard.

No matter what, the old culture is still culture, and even they are the orthodox scholars, while those who learn the new culture are the marginalized people.

With the help of cultural associations, societies, etc., it is easy to organize these idle students.

In fact, these organized students have been dissatisfied with Liu Yu for a long time, and Liu Yu was behind the salt policy reform. This incident can be said to have allowed these Yangzhou students to vent their grievances that have been accumulated for a long time. .

Liu Yu's reputation here in Yangzhou is very bad.

The reforms he carried out in southern Jiangsu directly broke Yangzhou's two legs.

Water transportation was abolished and sea transportation was established. Yangzhou's position was too embarrassing.

With the development of salt in Huaibei and reclamation in Huainan, Yangzhou's position became even more embarrassing.

The prosperity of Yangzhou culture stems from salt merchants sucking blood from all over the country. Almost all the so-called prosperity revolves around salt merchants.

Industry and commerce... I have heard of Songjiang cloth, Nanjing cloth, and Hu silk.

Yangzhou is famous for its cuisine, thin horse.

It should be said that this is a standard "service industry" city.

This has nothing to do with whether Dashun is open or closed. It is indeed unrealistic to expect a city like this where a pure service industry is emerging to study industrial and commercial development.

If maritime transport wants to develop, Yangzhou will decline; if Yangzhou remains prosperous, maritime transport cannot develop.

Waiting for the canal abolition incident to come out, in Liu Yu's view, abandoning the Grand Canal and developing maritime transportation is a good thing no matter how you look at it.

From a slightly grander perspective, if the canal is not abandoned, even the Yellow River and Huaihe River cannot be managed and should be abandoned.

But from the perspective of Yangzhou, what does this mean?

This is Southern Jiangsu robbing their wealth, allowing water transportation not to go through the canal, but by sea. This is tantamount to directly turning Yangzhou, the original "North-South intersection" location, into a very embarrassing and insignificant existence.

Coupled with the reclamation of Huainan and the development of salt in Huaibei, this is equivalent to giving up even the salt industry in Yangzhou.

The problem is that if Songjiang Prefecture does not have sea transportation, at least it is famous for its cotton textile industry.

Yangzhou Prefecture is a city that relies on the service industry to develop. It has a transit port status similar to Batavia and Macau. Once it changes its business route, it will inevitably face many problems.

They say Yangzhou is famous for its splendor, but what are the famous industries and commerce in Yangzhou? Does the service industry count as industry and commerce?

The so-called "Yangzhou Salt Affairs Competition is extravagant and beautiful, weddings, funerals, food and drinks in the hall, clothes and horses, and one hundred thousand dollars are often spent", many people's livelihood, or this abnormal prosperity, revolves around the consumption of salt merchants of.

The salt administration reform has not yet completely decided to abolish Huainan salt, but Yangzhou's decline has already shown signs.

Since Dashun abandoned the Grand Canal, Yangzhou's strategic position as the intersection of the canal and the Yangtze River, the north and the south of the Yangtze River, has suddenly disappeared.

Even the goods from the south of the Yangtze River prefer to circulate in Zhenjiang, and then go down the river to Songjiang Prefecture. From there, they either go north or south.

This is a decline that is visible to the naked eye, and many locals can feel it.

Some businesses and shops that originally prospered due to the canal transportation and the intersection of goods from the north and the south are now depressed or closed.

However, before this decline, Yangzhou was too rich.

The culture was prosperous, and salt merchants invested in academies, making it a cultural center. And cultural centers need money to support them. Once the money is gone, sequelae will appear.

For example, a large number of scholars and students.

In fact, this number is far beyond the limit that Yangzhou can accommodate without the status of a canal hub and a salt industry center.

The living standards of many students were indeed seriously affected by the abandonment of the canal.

Not only the millions of canal workers, but once the trade route was changed, the affected and involved people were huge. The canal workers were only directly affected, so wouldn't those who opened shops, hotels, and restaurants next to the canal be affected?

According to the tradition of students, if they were really dissatisfied, they could write a memorial to express their opinions.

"Summoning" means to break up, which roughly means to strike.

The memorial is why we strike, what we want to ask for, and what we are dissatisfied with the officials or the court's actions.

However, they couldn't do anything about the canal issue.

What can they ask for in Yangzhou City? What to accuse?

Accuse the abandonment of the canal?

This accusation is weak, and the righteousness is not on their side.

No matter how stupid the ministers in the court are, they know the benefits of abandoning the canal, and this matter is forced by the emperor, what is the use of opposing it?

Asking Yangzhou City not to abandon salt and turn it into land reclamation?

But Yangzhou City does not produce salt, it is just a logistics center.

Liu Yu's scheme is to cut off the firewood from the bottom of the pot, directly reclaiming wasteland, and the reclaimed land does not belong to the people of Yangzhou, but to the salt households on the coast.

Even if Yangzhou opposes, it is useless.

Otherwise, even if a memorial is made and reported to the Yangzhou prefect, what can the Yangzhou prefect say?

He can say: OK, you go back, I have decided on this matter, tomorrow the Songjiangfu seaport will be demolished, the Weihaiwei naval base will be blown up, the Grand Canal will be dredged, and the Grand Canal will be used in the future.

However, he is only the Yangzhou prefect, and his words do not count.

Shipping is different from collecting taxes.

Tax increases and so on need to be approved by local people. If local students do not agree, they can submit memorials.

Shipping does not require the approval of Yangzhou students: whether they approve or not does not affect the departure of ships from the Yangtze River estuary to Tianjin Port.

These grievances have been pent up in the hearts of the students in Yangzhou Prefecture for a long time, but they have never had the opportunity to vent them.

If they really want to rebel, rush into the Forbidden City, abolish the Academy of Sciences, destroy the shipyard, and destroy Weihaiwei, they must take the Grand Canal, but they dare not.

Write some sour articles, but it is useless, the emperor doesn't care at all.

Now that we have finally caught such an opportunity, how can we not make full use of it?

Everyone knows that the mastermind behind the court's tossing in Huainan is Liu Yu. Now we are taking this opportunity to vent our grievances.

Another thing is that they are also depressed and confused.

Once the trade route structure of a city that has risen with the help of its special geographical location changes, it will be completely hollowed out internally without any decent industry and commerce. These local students in Yangzhou don't know where their future lies.

Be an official? There are not so many vacancies for officials.

Dashun learned from the lessons of the previous dynasty and implemented a provincial quota system. Although Jiangsu Province has many quotas, even if Yangzhou is culturally prosperous, it cannot beat Suzhou, Changshu, Songjiang and other places south of the Yangtze River. Those are the real strong counties in the imperial examination.

There are not so many officials to be, and it is difficult to be a Jinshi.

As a result, they have to read and learn to read.

Originally, they lived a good life.

The blood sucked by the salt merchants just showed a little from the cracks between their fingers; at the starting point of the north bank of the canal, any shop is also prosperous.

The service industry is prosperous, and there is no need to think about being an official. Reading books, painting, studying bronze and stone, and researching ancient books, holding literary meetings every three or five days, and taking a pleasure boat for seventy or eighty days, eating the leftovers of the salt merchants is enough, and the life is happy.

Now everything has changed, and these students really can't accept it. They don't know what to do in the future. The resentment in their hearts is really beyond words.

With this resentment, with the help of societies and academy literary gatherings, six or seven hundred students from Yangzhou Prefecture and its surrounding counties soon gathered together.

Various articles were circulated among these people.

Fortunately, there were still people in control, and the sensitive canal issue was not involved in these public opinion issues.

Now Huainan salt has not been abolished, and the abandonment of the canal has caused many grievances among the people of Yangzhou.

But if the problem is directed in this direction, it would be looking for trouble. If it really gets out of hand, I am afraid that the court will finally accuse them of "Yangzhou is all rebellious", which will be a big trouble.

The canal is a national policy, and it was decided by the emperor. If there is a commotion because of this, it will be bad.

It is not the same as before.

In the past, if there was a little chaos in Yangzhou, it was necessary to try to appease it, so as not to cut off the canal transportation and separate the north and the south.

Now, even if there is chaos, it is afraid that it will not affect the court's mobilization of troops, tax collection, and grain storage.

So the problem can only be directed to the direction of "regulating the people's permanent property and dividing the grassland equally".

After these organized students worshipped the Confucian Temple, they wrote a scroll to tell the sages why they wanted to strike.

Then they went to the county where the incident happened.

After entering the city, there were condolences, funerals, and a lot of grand events. I don't know how many articles were written praising this person as a "righteous man".

Liu Yu watched coldly and let these people make trouble.

The conflict between him and the salt merchants was a conflict between salt and reclamation.

The problem between the salt households was just a simple conflict over the property rights of the grassland.

These people must think that they represent the desires of the salt households and plead for the people, so let them make trouble. The bigger the commotion, the better.

Liu Yu was at ease.

But this group of students frightened some gentry and merchants in the county by doing this.

This group of students from Yangzhou said, "Dividing the land and enfeoffment is the work of the king; dividing the marshes equally is also the work of dividing the land."

They want to fully restore the feudal system on the marshes and pass it down from generation to generation.

But the gentry and merchants in the county will curse in their hearts. These marshes were occupied by them in every possible way. These people just talked about dividing the marshes equally, so why not divide the shops in Yangzhou equally?

The students' agitation and writing of the court papers are not trivial matters. If the officials really can't withstand the huge pressure and have to retreat, then this will be unchangeable.

Now the marshes are in hand, which is simply a hot potato.

Fundamentally speaking, these local gentry and merchants don't like to abandon salt and reclaim wasteland. They really want to maintain the current situation.

However, their power was too weak, and neither side wanted to maintain this state.

Judging from the conflict between Liu Yu and the salt merchants in Yangzhou, if Huainan continued to produce salt, the salt merchants could only advocate the system of enfeoffment of salt households; if Huainan did not produce salt, the grass marshes would be taken back for reclamation.

These gentry and merchants did not like to abandon salt and reclaim wasteland, but they definitely did not like the salt households to produce salt.

The former at least had compensation and land. The latter, but they suffered a huge loss.

Seeing that more and more students came here to gather in the name of condolences, these gentry and merchants had no choice but to ask for an audience with Liu Yu.

Some people thought that if it really didn't work, they should take a step back and share some soup with the salt households who sold the grass marshes.

If they continued to make trouble like this, they might really make a big fuss. The income from their grass marshes was not legitimate, and it would not benefit anyone if it got out of hand.