Chapter 71 Renzong Chapter 13 The Cotton of the Empire
Chapter 2196 Renzong Chapter 13 The Cotton of the Empire
About a year ago, during the reign of Emperor Taizong, a long-lasting war between the north and south merchant gangs broke out in the shopping malls of the Han Empire, using the already large-scale cotton industry as the battlefield.
It can be said to be the first organized and large-scale commercial war in the imperial shopping mall. It affected a wide range of areas and had far-reaching influence. Although it was initially initiated by some large cotton merchants, as time went by, many interests surrounding the cotton industry participated.
, are gradually getting involved.
During the long-term struggle, the entire cotton market was in chaos, from cotton merchants to cotton workers, and then to cotton farmers. It can be said that it has affected the entire industry, affected people's livelihood, and even had a tendency to spread.
At the same time, the business struggles in the Han Empire were always fought with bayonets. Because of the overt and covert fighting between the northern and southern business gangs, there were many casualties, and large-scale armed fights occurred one after another.
Later, the local officials could no longer suppress the situation and the imperial court took over. Under the severe reprimand and supervision of Emperor Taizong, the imperial court struck hard and even dispatched troops to rectify the chaos, calm down the incident and get the situation back on track.
The North-South Cotton War, on the surface, was the result of northern cotton merchants feeling threatened by the rise of the southern cotton industry, and they did not hesitate to use some extraordinary means to curb the development of the southern cotton market, especially to prevent some southern cotton merchants from "daringly"
He dared to sell Nanbubei openly and steal food from their rice bowls.
Under the instigation of some large cotton merchants in the north, a large-scale purge was carried out against the "southern cotton" forces heading north, and the tactics were extremely ruthless and inhumane.
Whether they were employees on the surface, spokesmen who supported them secretly, or many partners, they were all attacked, killed openly, or assassinated. Goods yards and cargo ships were attacked, and cotton products were looted and burned.
As for the cotton merchants in the south, how could they be good people? When the northerners showed their knives, they also rose up to resist. The north was corrupt, so they would cause trouble for those northern merchants in the southeast. Thus, a truly cruel war began.
From the perspective of ordinary people, it is like seeing flowers in the mist. Even if ordinary people are close, they can only see where there is water, where there is a boating accident, where there is a fight. Yes, no matter how big the trouble is, there will be more deaths.
In the treatment of many government officials, people are just treated as ordinary "civilian fights". Once the corpse is disposed of, it is peaceful.
Obviously, it is impossible for a few businessmen to start a business fight of this scale. Since they do not have the energy or the courage, there are obviously higher-level dignitaries wrestling with each other behind the scenes.
At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that there is a "North-South Controversy" that has run through the history of the empire for several generations. Behind the attack of northern cotton merchants on southern cotton merchants is not the suppression of southern powerful bureaucrats by the northern magnates who control the general trend of the empire.
It is precisely because of this that in the final aftermath, not only the cotton merchants from the north and the south who were directly involved were severely punished, but under the rule of law of the imperial court, their families and property were destroyed. In the imperial officialdom, anyone found to be involved
Officials who do nothing or act indiscriminately are denounced.
Of course, those who were willing to be dogs and horses and directly participated in it were not just as simple as being demoted and removed from office. Even among the upper-level dignitaries, there were many people who were warned and punished, fined, dismissed from office, beheaded and even seized titles.
Although Taizong was famous for his benevolence, it was only because he valued rules. Once he crossed the line, his methods were not gentle at all. This was one of the few "severe punishments" in the Yongxi Dynasty, and it was precisely because of such an example.
In front of them, other restless dignitaries and erratic businessmen have just become alert and dare not act too recklessly.
The North-South Cotton War more than sixty years ago was of great significance. It was a major reshuffle related to the development of the cotton industry. Many big businessmen who were originally famous fell. Of course, they were not irreplaceable. Soon after, new people came back.
Rise, interests have no emotions and do not recognize people.
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In that war, both in terms of the process and the result, the north actually had the advantage. After all, the Central Plains and Hebei were the places where the imperial cotton industry really rose and grew, with richer heritage, larger scale, and more resources.
At the same time, it has the support of a large number of powerful people in the court, and the political advantage is even greater.
Therefore, in the end, the industries and channels that southern cotton merchants worked hard to operate in the north were wiped out. After that, "southern people did not dare to go north" and could only cultivate the southern market, lay a solid foundation, and expand overseas along the way.
It was dormant for more than ten years before I dared to mention the matter of going north again. In the past thirty or forty years, fierce struggles have always existed, but they have never been as fierce as the one during the Yongxi Dynasty.
Now more than sixty years have passed, three generations have grown up, and the situation in the cotton industry has undergone completely new changes.
First of all, political discrimination has been basically eliminated. The complete rise of common people's bureaucracy, the unfolding of civilian politics, the convergence of the elite class, the rise of the southeastern economy, and the improvement of political status have made imperial politics continue to be more balanced and conservative.
A situation in which one wind completely overpowers another.
This is also a process that is continuously beneficial to the development and growth of the southern cotton industry.
As for the cotton industry itself, the scale of the cotton industry in the 21st year of Orthodoxy was more than ten times larger than that in the Yongxi era. The number of people engaged in cotton weaving alone exceeded one million, let alone those involved in planting.
, transportation, sales and other links.
In Shanghai alone, there are hundreds of thousands of cotton textile practitioners. Among them, there are large factories (official textile factories), government-supervised commercial factories, large private factories, and private workshops of varying sizes, and there are many more.
Part-time working families jointly gave birth to the prosperity of Shanghai's cotton textile industry.
As for Shanghai, since its founding, it has always been the cotton textile and trade center in the southern part of the empire. Seventy years later, this status has not been shaken, but has become even more stable.
Not only the surrounding Suzhou and Xiuzhou, but also the entire Jiangnan Dao, and even the cotton from Jiangxi, Huguang, Fujian, and Guangdong have become the raw materials for Shanghai cotton textiles. It is not easy to rely solely on Shanghai cotton to meet the clothing needs of people all over the world.
Reality, but it does account for half of the empire's cotton industry.
Such great development is naturally inseparable from technological progress, whether it is the cultivation of cotton or the processing of cotton textiles. Especially the latter, in the past thirty years, the empire's cotton textile technology has undergone another round of innovation
, mainly reflected in cotton textile tools.
On the basis of Zhou's (Zhou Renjun, who took the lead in promoting the Great Leap Forward of Imperial Cotton Textile Technology) instruments, cotton stirring machines and flying shuttle looms were all created. Shanghai was also the source of this round of technological innovation.
Twenty years ago, a Huaixi cotton merchant named Bi Sheng invented a three-spindle spinning machine. Later, he improved the five-spindle machine and the seven-spindle machine, which greatly improved the spinning efficiency and gave birth to the spinning machine. The real boom of the Empire's cotton industry.
Although cotton-padded clothing has not yet become fully popular in the empire, it has replaced traditional silk and linen and become the main source of clothing for the common people of the empire.
Of course, the linen market is declining, but silk, a noble clothing, is still very prosperous, and it is a completely different track from cotton.
With the innovation of cotton textile technology in the south, the north has gradually been unable to keep up, and the situation of strength and weakness between the north and the south has been fundamentally reversed.
