Yang Zheng looked at Yang Pu's expression a little moved, and continued: "Look at the Song Dynasty, the territory is less than half of my Ming Dynasty, and the population is not as good as my Ming Dynasty, but the Song Dynasty is the richest era of all dynasties, the Song Dynasty's annual financial income has reached 160 million Guan Wen, and the average year in the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty can also reach 80 million -90 million Guan Wen, even if the Southern Song Dynasty has lost half of the country, the financial income is as high as 100 million Guan Wen. His people do not have much land, but the total tax revenue of the Northern Song Dynasty in the ten years of Xining is 70.7 million, which shows that the taxes of the Song Dynasty do not rely on land, but on commerce, and what does commerce rely on to achieve great development, please forgive me for making bold assumptions, it is science and technology! ”

"Science and technology are the primary productive forces! I don't know if the old man agrees with the statement of the lower official? Yang Zheng glanced at Yang Pu.

Yang Pu said: "The old man may not see it, right? ”

Yang Zheng knew that in this era, it was the era of small peasant economy, and people valued agriculture, especially the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang set the tone of agriculture-oriented, and the later emperors basically continued this ancestral rule, which has not changed, because of the squeezing of the people's taxes to increase the treasury, this result, so the treasury of the Ming Dynasty is also the poorest one of the great unification dynasty, in the fifth year of Longqing in the Ming Dynasty (the country's annual income of 2.5 million taels of silver. In the 28th year of Wanli after Zhang Juzheng's reform, the annual income was 4 million taels (although Zhang Juzheng died after his death, the relatively financial reform was less damaged, and it was only a dozen years after Zhang's death, and it is estimated that this amount is not much less than the annual income during Zhang Juzheng's reign).

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the world was in turmoil, and under the attack of the Houjin and the peasant uprising, the Ming government successively increased the collection of Liao's salary, expropriation and training salary, that is, the famous "three salaries and additional factions", which made the people's grievances boil and smoke everywhere. So how much revenue did this practice, which was rated as "drinking water to quench thirst", bring to the country? It's about 10 million taels a year. That is to say, at this time, the total financial income of the Ming Dynasty was about 15 million taels of silver. If we believe that the general exchange rate of silver money is 1 tael of silver = 1 copper coin, then the fiscal revenue of the Ming Dynasty at this time is only less than 1/10 of the Northern Song Dynasty and less than 1/6 of the Southern Song Dynasty, although this is more than 300 years after the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, although the land of the Ming Dynasty is much larger than that of the Song Dynasty, which is enough to show that the main body of the Song Dynasty's national financial revenue is no longer agriculture, but industry and commerce, and the agricultural society has begun to quietly move towards the industrial society. The huge fiscal revenue of the Song Dynasty was not based on the aggravation of the exploitation of the peasants, but was the result of the rapid development of the national economy, the extreme prosperity of industry and commerce, and the increase in the level of productivity. As a traditionally agrarian country, the direct imposition of agricultural taxes on a large number of small yeoman farmers has always been the basis of state rule, and there is no such situation as the Song Dynasty, because a large number of independent small yeoman farmers are no longer fundamental to the survival of the state, and the Song Dynasty was able to adopt a land policy that was very different from that of other dynasties? "No mergers". For thousands of years, China has traditionally regarded land annexation as a great national hazard and has done everything possible to curb it. So much so that such a cycle is formed?

The redistribution of land at the beginning of the dynasty created millions of small yeoman farmers; After hundreds of years of accumulation, the land was concentrated in the hands of a small number of people, the state lost its tax source, and some peasants who lost their land took risks. A large-scale peasant rebellion broke out, the imperial court collapsed, a new dynasty was established, and the land was redistributed. This practice is entirely a product of the natural economy, which can certainly ensure that the majority of peasants can have some land to cultivate, but on the other hand, it also restricts the division of labor, the development of intensive economy, the rise of industry and commerce, and firmly binds Chinese society to the natural economy. Moreover, this does not completely stop the trend towards land concentration, which must be redistributed at regular intervals, and each redistribution of land is almost always accompanied by large-scale war and destruction.

The Song Dynasty's approach allowed it to successfully break out of this cycle. On the one hand, it does not suppress annexation, so that the land can be intensively managed and a large surplus labor force is freed up (it is estimated that less than 1% of the population at that time owned 70% of the country's land, and 20% of the country's total land entered the circulation market every year); On the other hand, the successful development of industry and commerce not only absorbed a large number of rural laborers (only a copper and lead mine in Shinshu Leadshan often employs more than 100,000 miners, mining day and night), but more importantly, it has promoted the rapid improvement of social economy and productivity. This can't help but remind people of the phenomenon of "sheep eating people" in the early days of the British Industrial Revolution, how similar the direction of social and economic development is, the difference is that the scale of the Song Dynasty is many times larger than that of Britain, hundreds of years earlier than Britain, and the people suffer much less than Britain.

The benefits of this are that the Song Dynasty did not fix the people on the land, but vigorously developed commerce, coupled with the rapid development of science and technology, the living standards of the people in the Great Song Dynasty have always been at a unique height, so that in the later period, Sima Guang, an important minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, complained about the extravagance of the world and said: The current peasant pawns actually wear silk shoes. Many Western scholars say that the standard of living of a European monarch at that time was not as good as that of a soldier guarding the city gate in Bianliang, Tokyo. When Marco Polo, a merchant from Venice, the most prosperous city in the West at that time, came to the capital of the Yuan Dynasty, which had only absorbed a little bit of Song civilization, he felt dazzled, as if he was in paradise on earth. It can be seen that the standard of living in the Song Dynasty at that time was so high."

But after this continuation through the Yuan Dynasty, it did not continue, especially Zhu Yuanzhang could not see businessmen wearing gold and silver, restrictions everywhere, plus Zhu Cheng's science is deep-rooted, people in the world are proud of reading, science is the only one, the original Song Dynasty created a good beginning, after the Great Yuan Dynasty, to the Ming Dynasty Due to Zhu Yuanzhang's limitations, science and technology have long been unable to attract everyone's attention.

"Is science and technology the primary productive force? Why don't you listen to me? Yang Zheng said confidently.

Yang Pu already had this meaning, in such a scene, talking about learning has always been his dream life, so when he heard Yang Zheng say this, he nodded and said: "It's okay, the old man also listens, how this technology is the primary productive force." ”

The science and technology of the Song Dynasty can be said to be generalist scientists such as Shen Kuo and Su Song represent the ideas of the early scientific and technological empiricism of the Song Dynasty. Shen Kuotong Guò accurately measured the meridian circle and discovered the existence of the geomagnetic declination, which was 400 years earlier than in Europe. Shen Kuo also determined the location of the North Star for centuries. This allows seafarers to use a compass to determine direction more accurately while sailing. Shen Kuo also has a lot of research in geology. After a long period of observing strange natural phenomena, he shed light on a geomorphological and climate change principle. Based on the observations of solar and lunar eclipses at the time, he analyzed that the sun and moon were spherical rather than planar, thus expanding the theory of early Chinese astronomers. During his tenure as Si Tianjian, Shen Kuo recommended Wei Pu, an astronomer and mathematician from the Northern Song Dynasty, who together used cosmological hypotheses to depict changes in the orbits of planets, including retrograde. With the assistance of Wei Pu, Shen Kuo recorded and mapped the moon's trajectory three times a night in a row, thus correcting errors about the moon's movement, which was another important achievement of his life. Unfortunately, however, there were many political enemies in the imperial court at that time who tried to sabotage Shen Kuo's work. Eventually, the imperial court accepted their correction of the sun and moon's errors, but only partially adopted the theories proposed by Shen Kuo and Wei Pu about the orbits and velocities of the planets.

Su Song was one of Shen Kuo's political opponents, and in three years Yu Xining completed a book on pharmacology, the Ben Cao Tu Jing, which covered knowledge of related disciplines such as botany, zoology, metallurgy, and mineralogy.

The treatise covers many pharmaceutical applications, such as ephedra. He was also the author of five different large star maps, and his extensive cartographic work addressed the frontier issues that had been pending between the Song Dynasty and the neighboring Khitan since the Liao Dynasty. However, Su Song's greatest achievement is the water transport instrument elephant platform, the upper layer is the mechanical drive armillary sphere (for astrometry), the middle layer is the armillary sphere (celestial movement demonstration), and the lower layer is Si Chen (automatic timer), Yuan You began construction in Kaifeng, the capital at that time, in the third year.

It was completed in the seventh year of Yuanyou. Su Song's water transport instrument elephant platform in the use of pendulum machinery is 13 centuries later than the European Antikytla machinery. However, Su Song's water transport instrument platform is currently known to be the world's earliest "uninterrupted" chain transmission power equipment, the earliest transmission mechanical power chain by the ancient Greek philosopher Ferro in the 3rd century BC invented, in the seventh year of Yuan You in his book "New Ritual Elephant Law Essentials" described the design points.

This is an example of the extreme characteristics of the Song Dynasty, these two people are not only scientists, but also officials of the Great Song Dynasty, in fact, not only them, Su Shi, Ouyang Xiu, Sima Guang, these people who have greatly developed the culture and technology of the Song Dynasty, are all high-ranking officials of the imperial court, which can also show that the Song Dynasty appointed many officials with scientific knowledge, these people have mastered the knowledge of multiple disciplines, which is conducive to the management, military and economic development of the Song Dynasty. These wise men such as Shen Kuo were involved in many fields such as mathematics, geography, geology, economics, engineering, medicine, art criticism, archaeology, military strategy, diplomacy, and so on. He once undertook a border survey and made a three-dimensional map of mountains, rivers, roads, etc., out of wood and sawdust.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The first one is sent, please watch! Please subscribe!