The decline of Huizhou merchants: the rise and fall of 300-year commercial empire

1 I don't know how much money was donated. In February of the 27th year of Qianlong, in March of A.D. 1762, Emperor Qianlong went down to the south of the Yangtze River for the third time, entered the palace of Tianning Temple in Yangzhou, and awarded the title of 14 salt merchant from Huizhou. In this regard, Emperor Qianlong said with satisfaction: "During my southern tour, the merchants in Huai River and Huai River were all eager for business and should be grateful." For this promotion, how much money and loyalty 14 salt merchants specifically "donated" is not clearly recorded in the history books, but the wealth of Huizhou merchants in Yangzhou has long been heard by Emperor Qianlong. At that time, the total capital of Huizhou merchants in Yangzhou was at least 50 million taels of silver, while the Qing Dynasty claimed to be the peak of the Qianlong period, and the highest amount of silver deposited in the state treasury was only 70 million taels, so that Huizhou merchants in Yangzhou dared to "donate": Take Bao Zhidao (1743- 180 1), a famous salt merchant in Qianlong Dynasty, as an example. He personally donated 20 million taels of silver and grain1200,000 stone to the Qing government all his life. During this period, Huizhou merchants were undoubtedly the first business gang of the empire. ▲ Behind the Ganlong River, the financial potential of Huizhou merchants in Yangzhou is set off. Huizhou merchants rose in the middle of Ming Dynasty. For the Huizhou government, which governs one government and six counties, namely Shexian, yi county, Xiuning, Qimen, Jixi and Wuyuan, there has always been a proverb that "seven mountains and half water fields, two roads divide the manor". Due to the shortage of arable land, Huizhou people with a rapidly growing population have been in a state of self-sufficiency. During the Jin Dynasty, the local population of Huizhou (Xin 'an County) was only 5,000. However, with the southward migration of the Jin Dynasty and the constant turmoil in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, northern literati began to move southward. Since then, after the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty and the Jingkang Revolution in the Northern Song Dynasty, the people from the Central Plains who moved south have continuously supplemented the population of Huizhou. By the early Southern Song Dynasty, the population of Huizhou had reached more than 65,438+200,000, and by the Ming Dynasty, the population of Huizhou had further increased. By the 25th year of Jiaqing in the late Qing Dynasty (1820), the population of Huizhou had reached 2.47 million. Due to the vast territory and sparse population, Huizhou people, who are struggling to make a living, are forced to start walking out of the mountains on a large scale along the waterways such as Xin 'anjiang to fight for a piece of heaven and earth. In Huizhou during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there was a saying: "I was born in Huizhou and had no previous life; Thirteen or fourteen years old, throw it out; Pack an umbrella and leave with it. Although it is difficult to make a living, Huizhou people, as descendants of immigrants from a large family in the Central Plains, usually send their children to private schools to study, and then let them travel when they are thirteen or fourteen years old. In this small mansion with an area of only 65,438+10,000 square kilometers, it is a village of ten families, and reading is not wasted. Because a large number of people went out to do business to make a living, Wang Shizhen, a member of Amin Dynasty in Ming Dynasty, once said with emotion, "Thirteen Huizhou customs are in the city, and seventeen are in the world", which means that three-tenths of Huizhou people farm at home, seven-tenths do business outside, and nine-tenths of Huizhou people are businessmen. By the Ming Dynasty, Huizhou people had a "big block" based on the Yangtze River Delta and a "scattered across the country" distribution ecology with the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal as radiation channels. In the middle of Ming Dynasty, with the rise of merchants represented by salt merchants, Huizhou merchants began to rise as a royal business gang in Ran Ran. As the representative of Huizhou merchants, salt merchants are the most powerful and wealthy group in Huizhou merchants. In the early Ming dynasty, in order to fight against the Mongols in the north, the Ming government set up nine border towns to station troops on the long border of the north. In order to attract businessmen to send military food to the garrison, the Ming government at that time stipulated that businessmen could only sell food to the northern border in exchange for salt (the official certificate of selling salt), and then resell salt at the designated place to make a profit. Due to the scarcity of salt in ancient times and the huge profits of reverse trading, Huizhou merchants still traveled thousands of miles north. However, due to geographical distance and other factors, before the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the salt business of Huizhou merchants was not as good as that of Shanxi merchants and Shaanxi merchants who were relatively close to the north. After the mid-Ming Dynasty, with silver becoming a common currency, the fifth year of Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty (1492), Ye Qi, a senior minister of the Ministry of Household Affairs, reformed the salt law, stipulating that businessmen no longer need to transport grain to the border, and they can get salt by paying silver to the government salt transport department. This change is called "color folding method". With the implementation of the reform, the original foreign villages in Serbia gradually disintegrated. Due to the Yellow Sea in the east and the canal in the west, Yangzhou became the salt industry center in the Huaihe River area of the Chinese Empire in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the annual tax revenue in Huaihe region accounted for 50% of the national commercial tax, mainly salt tax, which was the "top priority". In the contest between the Imperial Business Center and Shanxi merchants, Huizhou merchants, as rising stars, gradually came from behind and finally almost came out on top. In Yangzhou in the middle of Ming Dynasty, Huizhou merchants originally shared the world with Shanxi merchants and Shaanxi merchants. At that time, Huizhou dialect and Shaanxi dialect were the most popular in Yangzhou, because the locals thought that people who spoke such words were the richest. However, in the commercial competition in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, Shanxi merchants and Shaanxi merchants, who were less educated and more conservative and stingy, gradually lost in the competition with Huizhou merchants with cultural background. ▲ At that time, in Yangzhou, compared with Shanxi merchants and Shaanxi merchants, most of them were illiterate louts. Huizhou merchants and even apprentices and younger brothers generally received basic education in their hometown. Compared with Shanxi merchants and Shaanxi merchants, they still wore broken fur coats and chewed cakes after they became rich. Huizhou merchants dared to repair gardens, build academies, raise theatrical troupes, and generously bribe officials. For the bureaucrats who came from the imperial examination, Huizhou merchants who are rich and have high cultural accomplishment are not only gold owners, but also Confucian businessmen who are willing to give money and can talk about poetry. For example, Wu Yanxian (1555- 1624), a Huizhou merchant who sold salt in the late Ming Dynasty, was ashamed of his knowledge of literature and history, even some great scholars at that time, because he was knowledgeable and versatile. Because Huizhou is good at group governance, it was recorded in Shexian County, Huizhou during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty that "everyone today is nothing more than our city (Shexian County). Although there are also people who come to Qin Jin (Shanxi merchants) to admire Jia Yu, there are not many bitter friends compared with Shanxi merchants who operate sporadically. Huizhou, as the ancestral home of Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, founders of Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming Dynasties, and Zhu, a master of Neo-Confucianism, has been called "Queli in Zhu Cheng" and "Southeast Zou Lu" since the early Ming Dynasty. Huizhou proverbs are widely circulated, so it is better to raise pigs without reading. Three generations without reading is better than a litter of pigs. It is under the influence of the concept that "the old family in the world is nothing more than accumulating virtue for hundreds of years, and the best thing in the world is reading" that Huizhou began to rise sharply in the ancient imperial examination. According to statistics, from the Song Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were 2,086 Huizhou scholars, and 28 of them were champions, accounting for a quarter of the total number of historical champions in China. As far as a single city is concerned, the number of champions in Huizhou is second only to Suzhou. Due to the importance attached to reading and the wide distribution of political resources in Ming and Qing Dynasties, it also provided political escort for Huizhou merchants. After Huizhou merchants became rich, they also regarded their children's education as the only magic weapon to ensure family management from generation to generation. In this regard, Daokun Wang (1525- 1593), a native of Huizhou in the Ming Dynasty, took Daokun Wang himself as an example and described this characteristic of Huizhou merchants' families as "good scholars". His family has been operating the salt industry for generations, and his family is very rich. In his generation, his father deliberately tried to make him study and be an official. Wang Daokun also lived up to expectations. At the age of 23, he was admitted to the Jinshi, and later became an official at the Ministry of War of the Ming Dynasty (equivalent to the Deputy Minister of National Defense). Together with Qi Jiguang and others, he became a famous anti-Japanese star in the late Ming Dynasty, but outside the background of Confucian businessmen and ministerial officials, Wang Daokun was still a scholar. With the support of the political resources of "left Confucianism and right Jia", the political channels of Huizhou merchants have also been rapidly broadened. Take the Ming Dynasty as an example. The former Minister of War, Prince Taibao, Hu Zongxian, the governor of seven provinces, the former Minister of Rites of the Ming Dynasty, and Guo Xu, the great scholar of Wenyuange, were frequently "meritorious" by the Qing Dynasty, such as being from a salt merchant. He has been admitted to the Jinshi, and he has served as a minister of military aircraft. He has gone through Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang dynasties. Their family can be described as an evergreen tree in politics, while Cao Wenzhao, who used to be a minister of military aircraft and a minister of household affairs, has a closer relationship with Huizhou merchants in Yangzhou because of his fellow countryman. Among them, he went to Jiangnan six times and asked merchants such as Huizhou merchants to help "donate" and "donate". The secret combination of politics and business cultivated by Huizhou merchants from generation to generation has also given Huizhou merchants a variety of well-connected political resources in salt industry, pawn, tea, cloth and other businesses, which is the highest model of the combination of politics and business in China. That is, in the context of pandering and "donating money", as Qianlong said when awarding Huizhou merchants their titles in Yangzhou, Huizhou merchants rose again after the war and turmoil in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and gradually monopolized the commercial trade of the largest saltworks in China and Huaibei saltworks at that time through collusion between officials and businessmen. The Qing court and local officials have always reciprocated the contributions of Huizhou merchants, giving them many monopoly rights. At that time, there was a "general manager" of salt affairs in the two Huai Dynasties, and an unprecedented "first general manager" appeared during the Qianlong period. Jiang Chun, a Huizhou merchant, was the "first general manager". These "general managers" and even the "first general manager" are not only representatives of merchants in Huai River and Huai River, but also contacts between the government and salt merchants. In fact, they have a semi-official and semi-commercial status. Take Jiang Chun (1720- 1789) as an example. After six trips to the south of the Yangtze River, Jiang Chun attended the welcome and reception. He donated as much as1120,000 taels of silver to the Qing court all his life, while Gan Long named Jiang Chun "Inner Mongolia". Jiang Chun is known as the "No.1 Huizhou merchant in the world" because of his deeds such as "building a white pagoda with salt overnight, and taking the place of Huizhou cuisine". However, political demands are endless, and Huizhou merchants are also declining at the peak of Qianlong Dynasty. Take Jiang Chun, the first Dandingxing merchant in Qianlong Dynasty and Huizhou merchant in Yangzhou, as an example. Qianlong received endless political reception in Jiangnan and the Qing court for six times, and kept the task of "donating money", which also made Jiang Chun, who was once extremely rich, on the verge of bankruptcy. In addition to receiving a "gift" when Qianlong went down to the south of the Yangtze River, Jiang Chun also donated 200 yuan for the 80th birthday of Empress Dowager Cixi. In the thirty-eighth year of Qianlong, the Qing court fought in Jinchuan, and Jiang Chun donated four million and two thousand silver. In the forty-seventh year of Qianlong, the Yellow River levee was built, and Jiang Chun donated two million and two thousand silver; In the fifty-third year of Qianlong, the forest uprising in Taiwan Province forced him to "donate" 200,000 yuan to the military, which was ostensibly a political donation. Private bribery and political reception almost exhausted Jiang Chun's financial resources. In Jiang Chun's later years, the Chiang family was declining. 1789 After Jiang Chun's death, during the Daoguang period, the Qing court, which was increasingly in deficit, forced the Chiang family to hand over another 402,000 pieces of silver in the name of rectifying salt affairs. However, the descendants of the Chiang family, whose financial resources have been hollowed out, were unable to pay a huge fine and eventually their property was damaged. The Qing court completely forgot that Jiang Chun, the first red top merchant in Qianlong, contributed as much as165438+202,000 silver. For them, the hollowed-out red-top businessmen have no use value. The decline of Jiang Chun family also started the overall decline of Huizhou merchants. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Huizhou merchants monopolized the salt business of the empire almost through political collusion, but the price of monopoly was all kinds of high bribes and political "donations" on the surface or under the skin. Wool comes from sheep, so in order to shift the burden, Huizhou merchants shifted the burden to commodities such as salt prices. Take Kangxi Dynasty (1662- 1722) as an example. At that time, Yizheng and Tongzhou in the south of the Yangtze River were close to salt-producing areas such as Huaibei and Huaihe River, and only sold two or three pence per catty of salt, but in Jiangxi, Huguang and other places, the price of salt per catty rose to twenty pence. With the deepening of official exploitation, the price of salt merchants keeps rising. During the Daoguang period (182 1- 1850), the salt price in Hankou, Hubei Province once reached 40 to 50 yuan per catty, and in some places it rose to 80 to 90 yuan per catty. What's more, in some remote areas, the price of salt is as high as several hundred pence per catty. As a political cost caused by salt monopoly and collusion between officials and businessmen, with the passage of time, the price of salt in the Qing Dynasty soared to the point where ordinary people could no longer afford it. In this case, people have to buy private salt at a relatively low price to meet their daily needs. Due to the large-scale flood of private salt caused by the rising salt price, the official salt sales of Huizhou salt merchants also appeared unsalable, but the annual sales stipulated by the Qing court were paid every year. With more and more salt money owed, Huizhou salt merchants had no choice but to ask the Qing court for installment payment: either 15 years or 30 years. During the Daoguang period, the salt merchants of Huaihe River, mainly Huizhou merchants, owed tens of millions of silver to the Qing court. Because salt merchants can't repay their debts under political pressure, ordinary people can't afford salt because the price of salt is too high. In order to change this dilemma, in the twelfth year of Daoguang (1832), Tao Shu, the governor of Liangjiang, began to break Huizhou in order to get rid of the disadvantages of Huai salt. After the implementation of the ticket salt law, the salt merchants in Huaihe River area were gradually activated, which not only promoted the decline of salt prices, but also increased the fiscal revenue of Liangjiang area by more than 65438+ 1 100 million silver. With the breaking of the monopoly privilege of Huizhou salt merchants, Huizhou salt merchants also began to decline sharply. Because salt merchants are the strongest among Huizhou merchants, the collapse of Huizhou salt merchants also fully shows the future of Huizhou merchants' decline. In this regard, Huizhou merchants came up with ways to cut peach trees everywhere to vent their anger. Because the peach sound is the same as Tao Shu's "Tao", the promoter of the ticket salt law, someone wrote a poem and joked about it: "Play him as a peach girl, but cut down peach trees." There are ups and downs, why blame Tao Shu? While Huizhou salt merchants declined, the Taiping Rebellion broke out in 185 1. From 185 1 to 1875, the Taiping Army and the Nian Army rose continuously in the north and south, and the war spread widely to more than 600 cities in the Qing Dynasty 18 province. As a result of the war, the trade route was cut off, which paralyzed the daily operation of Huizhou merchants. Forced by the turmoil, Huizhou merchants began to return home in large numbers to avoid disasters. However, what they never expected was that in 1854, the Taiping Army first captured Qimen in Huizhou, and then the Taiping Army and the Qing Army launched a tug-of-war in Huizhou for 12 years. Both the Taiping Army and the Qing Army were brutally plundered in Huizhou-""Zeng Guofan was stationed in Qimen, and the troops were plundered, but they were all cellars. Under the cruel war and the plague and famine that followed, Huizhou, as the base camp of Huizhou merchants, was also devastated, so that Zeng Guofan wrote in the memorial of the Qing court: "In southern Anhui, Jiangning, people eat people, or there is no farming for dozens of miles, and the village is smokeless." ▲ The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is a turning point in the decline of Huizhou merchants. After more than 20 years of war, Huizhou merchants' business gangs are everywhere from south to north. In addition to salt industry, tea industry, pawn industry, timber industry and other traditional major projects of Huizhou merchants have also been fatally damaged. After putting down the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Uprising and the Nian Army Uprising successively, Huizhou merchants suddenly found that even if the war stopped, the external environment they faced suddenly changed dramatically. At that time, as China's traditional "three treasures" (tea, ceramics, silk), with the large-scale introduction of tea by the British in India, Sri Lanka and other places, the tea trade has been declining. The quality of ceramics produced by Europeans is getting better and better, and the import of China porcelain is gradually cancelled; On raw silk and silk, sericulture and silk industry in Japan and Europe are also rising, and China's market share is shrinking. Contrary to the gradual decline or even disappearance of tea, ceramics, silk and other export businesses, foreign high-quality goods such as woven fabrics are continuously imported into China. In this case, tea trade, as the second main business of Huizhou merchants besides salt industry, gradually declined among Huizhou merchants. In addition, Huizhou merchants who run cloth business are gradually eliminated, and Huizhou merchants have been dealt a fatal blow in almost all directions in their traditional main business. As the last surviving Huizhou merchants, Wang Youling, the governor of Zhejiang Province, and Hu Xueyan, who started as an official and military merchant, committed suicide after failing to fight against the Taiping Army. Later, they took refuge in Xiang and Zuo, and became Zuo's right-hand men in the southern expedition, the northern expedition and financial operation. Through Xiang and Zuo's protection, they managed banking, pawn, medicine, tea, raw silk and other businesses. ▲ Hu Xueyan (1823- 1885) is the last big boss of Huizhou merchants. 1882, Hu Xueyan suffered huge losses due to its defeat in the raw silk war with foreign businessmen. In this case, Li Hongzhang, a clan member of Huai clan who has always been at odds with Hunan clan, immediately appointed Sheng Xuanhuai, an official and businessman. On the one hand, he was slow to pay the official bank to Hu Xueyan. On the other hand, it spread news on a large scale and provoked depositors to run on banks in Hu Xueyan. Hu Xueyan's business empire, which lasted for more than 30 years, finally fell apart in just a few months under the strong suppression of the Huai forces headed by Li Hongzhang. 1884, Hu Xueyan finally died of poverty and hatred. Before he died, he repented to later generations: "White tiger (silver) is terrible!" Hu Xueyan's death also became the last true portrayal of Huizhou merchants in the Ming and Qing Dynasties for more than 300 years. They used to be the first businessmen in the empire, but now they have completely fallen to the world. References: Pang Limin: Shanxi Merchants and Huizhou Merchants, Anhui People's Publishing House, 20 17, Wang Shihua: The First Business Group, Anhui Normal University Press, 20 16, Zhao Yan: Six Lectures on Huizhou Merchants, Anhui University Press, 20 14.