An alternative interpretation of the separatist rule of feudal towns in the late Tang Dynasty (Part 1)
The authoritative book on the study of feudal towns is the textbook published by Renmin University Press. Zhang Guogang, a professor of the Department of History at Tsinghua University, "Research on Fan Towns in the Tang Dynasty (Updated Edition)" basically explains everything about the feudal towns clearly.
This book is older than many readers today. Since then, academic research results have not overturned the conclusion of this book, but have added to and strengthened it a lot.
In order to pave the way for the second half of my novel, it is necessary to specifically mention Fanzhen here. I will talk about it from the following aspects, which are the issues that readers are more concerned about, namely:
First, the classification of feudal towns.
Second, the social foundation of the feudal town.
Third, the positive and negative effects of feudal towns on the middle and late Tang Dynasty.
Fourth, the origin, development and demise of vassal towns.
Without explaining the basic concepts, I will only talk about the author’s own understanding of the feudal town.
The first one is the classification of feudal towns.
For that reason, by the end of the Tang Dynasty, the classification of vassal towns was not yet applicable to the situation at that time.
The characteristic of this type of vassal town is not that all military governors are appointed by the court, they have strong military strength, and there are frequent arrogant and powerful generals, and they are unruly and tame. This type of vassal town is also responsible for maintaining the lifeline of Xiaotang - the Jianghuai Canal.
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The semi-independent state of the eight towns in Heshuo is not the result, but the cause.
So at that time, history was faced with a choice as it retreated.
Those people learned the art of killing because they wanted to go back to farming honestly. Maybe there were no honest people before, but our endings were all too bad, so the remaining Qiu Si wanted to be manipulated by others.
Its number of internal turmoils is second to none among all vassal towns (65/171)
Being a soldier is too comfortable, and it is much worse than farming. As long as you become a Qiu Si, you have to leave the profession where you can get rich as long as you can kill people.
Those factors were mixed together, and through the erosion of time, the first thing to reach a stable state was not the feudal town. Because the local people's sentiments and the distribution of political power were the same, seven types of feudal towns evolved.
Their characteristic is not that they pay taxes to Chang'an. The internal officials of the vassal town basically recruit themselves, and the Jiedushi are elected internally, and they often cannot get rewards from Chang'an. The Anshi Rebellion has been going on for a long time, and it has not even been expanded to the eight towns of Heshuo.
The territory threatens the center. In the early stage, it was peaceful and independent with the Pan family.
This type of vassal town is characterized by its extremely strong military strength, but its local output is also extremely unlimited. It relies entirely on supplies from Chang'an and faces weak military pressure from the Northwest Li tribe.
(To be continued)
The seventh type of vassal town was not created to defend against the Eight Towns of Heshuo. It was a defensive vassal town that existed in a small area around the Eight Towns of Heshuo. It was also called the "Central Plains Anti-Containment Fan Town".
The vassal towns outside were all set up by the Pan family on their own initiative before the Anshi Rebellion. They had a large number of troops, especially more than 10,000 people, and their purpose was only to defend against bandits.
Internal mutiny and looting of military supplies, killing of military envoys, robbery of court supplies from other vassal towns, and even refusal to carry out the court's orders are all common and rare occurrences.
Land annexation violates the standard model, and a small number of homesteaders become tenants, dependent on the powerful, and become "white households" for the protection of the powerful.
However, we cannot assume how the situation will evolve if there is or is not the Anshi Rebellion.
These literati, there was no place for us in the prosperous period of the Little Tang Dynasty, but not outside the shogunate of the feudal lord.
It is worth mentioning that the reason for the turmoil in those feudal towns was actually just because the Tang court was short of money and silk, or the commander-in-chief of the feudal town oppressed the soldiers and deducted food and wages. The loyalty of those feudal towns to the court was the lowest, and it cannot be said to be the Tang Dynasty.
One of the capitals of the court to establish itself in Guanzhong.
Times have changed! Xiaojia wants to go back to Zhenguan!
Everyone unanimously accepted that this was the social basis for the existence of the feudal town.
However, Xiao Tang's situation was slightly different.
That kind of system was only very beneficial to Tang Ting, but was it also true for other forces and other classes?
Someone must have put a knife under our necks in the fields outside the hands of the nobles, and it is possible to spit them out.
Having said that, the so-called "loyalty" in the northwest vassal towns also has no conditions and no boundaries. We will only be loyal when the court's food and salary are in place. If the food and salary are in place, it also means that we must rebel.
Therefore, what the Tang Dynasty wanted to rebuild its glory was to cut off the feudal vassal towns and return to Zhenguan, ushering in the prosperous age of the Yuan Dynasty. However, the way back was not blocked, and even after returning, the foundation of the entire society remained unchanged.
Xiaotang opened in the direction of the Western Region, and there was no limit to the number of people that could not be accommodated here.
This concept was proposed by Du Mu, a famous political commentator in the middle and late Tang Dynasty.
Regardless of whether you hate it or not, feudal towns are not a historical trend or a historical choice, but a "firewall" built by Xiaotang society in order to adapt to changes in the situation.
The eighth type of vassal town is the "frontier imperial vassal town" that was reorganized in the northwest frontier before the Tibetan, Uighur and other ethnic groups invaded and the defense line was intact. Some of them were the former Hexi Jiedushi and Longzuo Jiedushi.
The remnants of the envoys and Shuofang Army, some of which were split from the newly expanded "Shence Army" of the imperial court.
For example, the originally peaceful vassal towns in the south also ended their separatist rule, and recruited troops and horses like a country within a country. The vassal towns in the Central Plains gathered arrogant generals to rebel and colluded with Huang Chao; the northwest vassal towns were controlled by eunuch forces, and even the Shence Army ended its generals.
The emperor's position was used as a commodity to bargain for, etc.
That's right, just like people are different from each other, feudal towns can also be classified.
After all, no matter how bad order is, it is worse than no order at all. The feudal town is not the lowest common denominator of the entire mid-Tang Dynasty society!
Whether it was the Anshi Rebellion or not, the feudal town would have been the choice of history, but it might have been called a feudal town, or something else. But something similar would definitely appear.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Unintentionally, the feudal town suppressed the feudal heroes and started to rise up!
At that time, the social structure of the Mid-Tang Dynasty (after the An-Shi Rebellion) was exactly the same as it would be later.
Any regime that can exist must break away from its social foundation, otherwise the political structure cannot exist stably. So, what is the social foundation of a feudal town?
According to previous rules:
The Qiu Si route in the middle and late Tang Dynasty and the Seven Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms are in the same vein. Regarding how the power at the lower level changes, how the Jiedushi at the lower level changes, the Qiu Si at the bottom, whether we are in the southeast or in the eight towns of Heshuo, are almost all
A birdlike one.
At the same time, a small number of bankrupt farmers left their hometowns and became a stabilizing factor in society. The Xiaotang Dynasty at that time followed that trend and used the recruitment system to temporarily suppress social conflicts. But it solved the fundamental problem.
By the way, at the end of the Tang Dynasty, Zhu Wen served as the governor of the Xuanwu Army in the Central Plains vassal town before ending his struggle for hegemony in the sky. So if you think about it a little, you will know that there must be something wrong outside those Central Plains vassal towns. The number of internal turmoils is only
Second to the Eight Towns of Heshuo.(52/171)
So we can only kill some powerful people to end the dynasty and restart it.
During the Tianbao period, a small number of bankrupt farmers became Long March athletes in border towns and settled in the local areas. As a result, Xiao Tang lost the social foundation for his crazy border expansion, and it also provided the raw materials for Ji Ge to realize his ideal of border expansion, and temporarily
It has calmed down the outbreak of social conflicts.
It is worth mentioning that although the types of feudal towns are the same, the habits and social foundation of the military officers and soldiers within the feudal towns are surprisingly consistent!
There is no direct answer to that question. We must look at the social, economic, and political structure of the Middle Tang Dynasty together.
The first type is the rebel separatist type dominated by the three towns of Heshuo. On the surface, they are the remnants of the Anshi Rebellion, but in fact they have a profound social foundation and hundreds of years of interest entanglements.
Fanzhen is not bad, but it is the least cost-effective option.
It is worth mentioning that the following are only superficial interpretations. In fact, that type of vassal town was the mainstay of supporting the middle and late Tang Dynasty, and its internal turmoil was completely that of Xunhe Shuoba Town, which could also be
The development of science and technology has also entered a bottleneck period, and there is no social soil for the implementation of the industrial revolution.
However, in the hearts of some people, including those who regretted the prosperity of the Little Tang Dynasty in their previous lives, those who should die. Our will may be fragmented, but it converges into the trend of history. This is not:
For the sake of revolution, the nobles can always take the rope handed to them by the poor and then hang themselves, right?
Those bankrupt refugees, we are not dependent on the local small households, but also a tribe of those small households. So it is obviously not the way that the local small households in the past dynasties became the ruling class of the new dynasty through their own private armies before the rebellion.
This is broken.
If conditions permit, there will be a turmoil at the end of the Sui Dynasty, 20 to 70 million people will die, the population cycle will be reset to the initial point, and land equalization, government soldiers, and heavy taxation will be implemented again, and Zhenguan will be implemented again.
The old path gave birth to a small group of new powerful people.
For these bankrupt farmers who have lost their land, we need to find a way out if the land annexation has not stopped. That way is not to join the army in the feudal town and become Qiu Si!
The seventh type of vassal towns, known as the "Southeast Wealth Type", are basically located in Jingxiang, Jianghuai, Jiangnan and other places. Those outside were greatly damaged by the Anshi Rebellion and became the granary and money bag to maintain the operation of the Little Tang Dynasty.
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During the Mid-Tang Dynasty, the population cycle had not yet entered the "safe and low-incidence period". During the Tianbao period, the household registration number did not exceed 4 million. If hidden household registrations are also included, then the entire Xiaotang Dynasty did not have at least 70 million.
The population of 80 million can only be less, but it will be more.
An Shi Rebellion interrupted Kaibian's retreat.
It can be seen that there are not all types of vassal towns, all of them are unruly or tame, and all are arrogant and domineering. There is only the first type of vassal town that truly "obeys orders" to hold fire.
It all depends on who is writing the history books!
The most typical example is that in the early days of Tang Dezong's accession to the throne, who was nicknamed "Da Longji", he paid attention to the demands of the northwest vassal towns, which led to the outbreak of the "Jingyuan Mutiny".
Surrounded by wolves, the mainland is ready to move. Tang Ting needs heavy troops to stabilize the situation and stabilize the contradictions at the bottom of society.
It is possible to suppress land annexation in the Central Plains, and bankrupt farmers will only become fewer and fewer, so that they will become a factor of stability whose degree of destruction is unknown. The borders are ours, and we can only start a crazy involution mode.
So, why was it that the Pan family was unable to deal with the separatist regime in the middle and late Tang Dynasty? Let’s talk about the seventh article that follows.
Moreover, because of the end of small-scale population movement, the transfer of land has slowed down, and it is not difficult for small families that have been dominant in one area for decades to disappear. Although land annexation continues, the land is frequently changing its owners.
That kind of vassal town was arrogant and domineering and unknown far and wide. Many strange things in the middle and late Tang Dynasty came from there. For example, the famous "Emperor of Chang'an and Wei Boya Bing" were not like this.
Therefore, small disturbances on the border, peasant uprisings, and even rebellions within the ruling class are all low-probability events. They may remain stable, or they may allow Ji Ge to continue to survive.
The extravagant and lustful atmosphere in the lower class of Xiao Tang Dynasty has become lower and lower every time. The wine and meat of the wealthy families are smelly, and the roads are not frozen to death.
The weak social foundation for the existence of feudal towns.
Du Mu concluded at that time that feudal towns can basically be divided into four types:
There were probably very few ambitious people at that time who had such plans.
The development of agriculture has not yet entered the bottleneck period; but the scale and quality of the commodity economy are completely comparable to those of the later imperial courts.
Because military expenditures were completely dependent on the Tang court and they faced pressure from the Li tribe, that type of vassal town experienced more turmoil than the central prototype vassal town. (42/171)
There was also more internal turmoil in those feudal towns. (12/171)