Li Xiao pondered for a long time and decided to first adopt a similar approach to Shandong for the land annexation situation in the Jiangnan area.

That is, landlords or yeoman farmers in various places will review and report their own land, and then the government will verify and compare them, and in this way, the acres of land will be measured and counted.

When he was in Shandong, Li Xiao implemented such a policy, which can be described as ingenious. At that time, the local landlords in Shandong thought that Li Xiao was doing this for the convenience of collecting taxes in the future, so they all tried to reduce their own land as much as possible, so as to greatly reduce the amount of taxes they paid at that time.

As a result, he did not expect that Li Xiao then sent someone to check and confiscate all the land that the landlords had concealed as terra nullius, so that the landlords of Shandong suffered a great loss, which can be said to be beyond remorse.

Therefore, with the precedent of Shandong in the past, the current landlords and gentry in the Jiangnan area are all smart, and they all judge and report according to the actual number, and they dare not lie at all. They thought that in this way, Li Xiao would have nothing to do with them, so they could only acquiesce to the status quo in the end.

In the end, after Li Xiao arranged for the personnel to personally check in various places, they found that the amount of land reported by him was similar to the actual number of acres. It can be seen that with the painful lessons of the landlords of Shandong, these landlords in the south of the Yangtze River are all very well-behaved.

It's just that, in this way, it's completely fine?

They completely underestimated Li Xiao's ruthlessness and skill.

At the end of December of that year, a few days before the Chinese New Year, a long new notice was issued in the streets and alleys of the entire Jiangnan area occupied by Li Xiao.

In the notice, Li Xiao laid down a completely new policy.

That is, the local landlords and gentry and yeoman farmers in the south of the Yangtze River, each household can only retain a maximum of 200 acres of land, and this regulation is called the basic land of the landlord. The amount of tax paid on these basic fields is temporarily the same as that of Shandong, while the land south of the Huai River is twice as much per mu as that of Shandong.

The reason why the amount of land tax in this area of the south of the Yangtze River is twice as much as that of a northern place like Shandong is not that Li Xiao deliberately oppressed, but that he made a prudent decision after carefully considering the output of the local fields.

Because, the so-called "heavy endowment" in Jiangnan is actually compatible with its economic development level. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the innovation of production technology, the introduction of new varieties, and the superiority of natural conditions made the agricultural output of the Jiangnan region far exceed that of the northern region.

"Suhu is ripe, the world is full", this proverb has fully reflected that the agricultural production in this area occupies a pivotal position in the country.

As early as the Northern Song Dynasty, Fan Zhongyan said: "The minister knows Suzhou, and the daily inspection books and books are 34,000 hectares of land in a state. In the benefit of Minoru, two to three stones per mu of rice, more than 7 million stones of rice. ”

In the Southern Song Dynasty, Gao Side said: "In the east and west of Zhejiang, Shangtian harvests five or six stones per acre, so the proverb 'Suhu Lake is ripe for the world'"

In the Ming Dynasty, the Ming man Xie Zhaoqian also pointed out: "The northerners do not like to govern the first and store more fields, but they do not enter the Yangtze River, and they cannot reach one out of ten." ”

Even in the Qing Dynasty, Yin Huiyi, a Qing man, also said: "The land in the north is wide, and one husband cultivates it, from seventy or eighty acres to one hundred acres, and the force is thin." ”

Therefore, if it is only because of Su Songtianfu, it is considered to be a heavy endowment if it is higher than that of the northern region, and obviously does not take into account the huge difference in economic level between regions.

The reason why Li Xiao stipulated a limit of 200 acres of basic land, instead of dividing the land as cruelly and resolutely as later generations, was actually because of the maximum improvements and compromises made under the condition that the country had not yet been completely unified and the people's thinking had not yet reached the level of modern times.

Because of the 200 acres of land, most of the yeoman farmers and small and medium-sized landlords have been included in the densely populated Jiangnan area, where there is little land. You must know that in the late Ming Dynasty, in the south of the Yangtze River, with more than 30 acres of land, it was enough to be called a local rich family and landlord. Ordinary homesteaders generally only have two or three acres of land, or even only a few acres of land.

In this way, Li Xiao greatly reduced his own antagonism through appropriate compromises and concessions. Now he has to resolutely deal with only the big landlords and the big gentry whose population is only a minority.

On this, it is the basic field situation formulated by Li Xiao. And those big landlords and gentry who have more land, occupy a wider area, and move thousands of acres of land, their excess land of more than 200 acres is called the surplus land of the landlords, and the government does not force them to confiscate it, but in this way, the landlords have to pay more per mu, which is ten times more than the basic land.

The land tax is ten times that of the basic field, which is not a small amount.

In this way, the interests of those big landlords and gentry are naturally extremely harmed, and it can even be said that Li Xiao's approach is equivalent to forcing them to do right with the official households.

It sounds like the government is forcing the people to rebel, or lifting a stone to shoot themselves in the foot.

It's just that Li Xiao is so stupid?

Of course not, because, while he is giving pressure, he is also giving them a way out.

That is, he clearly pointed out in the notice that if these big landowners and gentry felt that they could not afford such a large amount of land tax, they could mortgage the surplus land to the government for cash.

When the government buys these surplus land, it will not lower the price of the land, but will send a notary public to supervise the government to acquire the land at a price 10% higher than the market price.

Now Li Xiao has a lot of money and a lot of gold and silver, and he has no problem with the financial resources to acquire these lands.

Li Xiao believes that this kind of method of giving a concrete way out can greatly reduce the intensity of resistance of these big landlords and gentry, so that they will not blindly resist the government to the end.

Moreover, Li Xiao's design of such a high land tax actually blocked these big landlords, another way of cold and violent confrontation against the government.

That is, if Li Xiao's tax on these fields was only set at two or three times that of the basic fields, then of course these big landlords and wealthy gentry could replant all those surplus fields into mulberry trees or cotton, and offset Li Xiao's large amount of land taxes through the high profits of such cash crops.

Because, now the handicraft industry in the Jiangnan area has developed vigorously, driving the extremely strong demand for raw silk and weaving materials. The income of planting mulberry and cotton is much higher than the income of planting rice, and in the entire Jiangnan region, all kinds of land have already been gradually transformed from rice to silkworms.

The grain production area in the south of the Yangtze River in the Ming Dynasty was concentrated in the Wusong area, and this area was also the production area of silk, which led to the contradiction of mulberry rice competing for land. The silkworm industry gave impetus to the textile industry, which eventually evolved into urbanization and the germ of capitalism.

The sericulture and silk weaving industry center is basically concentrated in the south of the Yangtze River, and is widely distributed, such as the Taihu Lake basin and Hangzhou, Jiaxing, Huzhou and other places in western Zhejiang, have begun to appear in large numbers of silk weaving towns.

One of the most obvious examples, such as Shengze Town in Wujiang County, Suzhou Prefecture, was originally a deserted village, and there were only 50 or 60 inhabitants in the early years of Hongzhi, which can be described as desolate and ordinary. It is from this period that the local residents began to engage in a large number of silk weaving industry, to the Jiajing period, it has developed into a city, to Wanli, Tianqi, it is to become a famous silk industry giant town in the country.

According to European missionaries at the time, there were 200,000 weavers and 600,000 spinning workers in Songjiang alone (present-day Shanghai and Suzhou), a huge number comparable to that of Britain in the early days of industrialization.

Such a change, from the perspective of human profit-seeking, is actually very understandable.

A farmer grows an acre of land, if it is to plant rice, get three or four stones of rice, but three or four taels of silver, if it is to plant mulberry and raise silkworms, get a load of silk, it is more than thirty taels of silver, even if the imperial court collects rice as a tax, buy rice and pay it, as far as he is concerned, the income is far higher than that of rice. In this way, naturally, he will turn to growing silkworms.

And this kind of urbanization led to the rise of grain in Jiangnan in the Ming Dynasty year by year, of course, compared with farming, the income of the people in Jiangnan also rose correspondingly, so at the beginning, it did not cause too much harm.

It's just that the price of this grain has risen faster and faster, and finally reached a level that is unbearable for the people.

In the national rice price list studied by the Ming Dynasty, the average rice price in the 20s of the 17th century has reached 1.6 times that of the 10s of the 17th century, showing a sharp upward trend. The growth of people's incomes is much lower than that.

People are iron, rice is steel, and income does not increase, but this grain still has to be eaten. So, what to do if you don't have money and can't afford to eat?

Then grab it.

During the Chongzhen period, only in Suzhou and Songjiang Prefecture and other places, there were many outbreaks of rice grabbing, or rent resistance, and some people rebelled.

Looking at the Ming historical records, in August of the 11th year of Chongzhen, the thieves of Dongting Dongshan planned to rise up and were suppressed by the governor of the imperial history Zhang Guowei, and later the rest of the party rose up again and was still subdued.

In November of the same year, there were treacherous people who used the locust plague as a rumor to advocate rent resistance, and people from all over the country responded, and more than 1,000 people gathered to burn the house and rob the money, and were finally suppressed by the prefect Niu Ruolin.

In June of the 13th year of Chongzhen, there was a rice riot in Suzhou.

In the first month of the 14th year of Chongzhen, the citizens of Suzhou Fucheng rioted and grabbed rice.

……

Such a record of Ming history is really exciting.

So, how expensive was rice in Suzhou in 1640? 100 copper coins a catty, which is about 50-100 yuan a catty.

Think about it, a family of 3 spends 3,000 yuan a month to buy rice, and the cost of food a month is more than 4,000 yuan.

Therefore, the essence of the food crisis is that the production of grain is insufficient, which leads to excessive marketization of grain, and under the effect of marketization, the price of grain has soared.

In China's Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Pearl River Delta regions, whether it is the end of the Ming Dynasty or the present, grain is highly marketized, and basically, everyone needs to buy grain from outside. Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions were originally the main grain producing areas, but now due to changes in cultivated land, they have become grain procurement areas. Eventually, due to the lack of food supply, it turned into a food crisis.

In modern times, the most recent and typical example is the Arab Spring of 2011.

The root cause of this revolution, which aims to overthrow the authoritarian governments of the Middle East, is the inflation of food prices.

It is important to know that most Middle Eastern countries, because of their poor geographical environment, rely on imports for 50% or more of their food, which makes their position very vulnerable to commodity price fluctuations.

For example, in Egypt, the food price inflation rate reached an astonishing 19% at the beginning of 2011, and the cost of living for Egyptians suddenly increased to an unbearable level.

Earlier, there were many examples, such as the successive failed harvests in France in 1788 and 1789, which caused the price of bread to skyrocket. The French people, who were already struggling to survive and spent 50% of the average income of ordinary workers, had their daily food expenses soared to 88%, and the whole French society quickly fell into crisis, and finally the Revolution broke out.

Of course, now under Li Xiao's rule, because of the large amount of grain production in Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and Australia, especially with the existence of cash crops such as sweet potatoes and potatoes, even if the entire Jiangnan region has become mulberry fields and cotton fields, Li Xiao's grain supply is also sufficient and surplus, and there is no problem at all, which can ensure that grain prices are stable, so that the vast majority of ordinary people can afford it.

Therefore, in order to prevent the landlords and gentry from using the profits of mulberry fields and cotton fields to purchase grain, and then offset the crooked path of land tax. Li Xiaocai decided to use such a large amount of land tax to scare them off, so that they could no longer make up their minds, so that in the end they could only obediently buy all the surplus land to the government under the premise of willingness.

The reason why Li Xiao made up his mind to regain this large amount of land from these landlords and gentry was mainly due to the following three considerations.

The first point is that through the way of redeeming land, the power of the landlords and gentry, which is extremely powerful in these places, will be greatly reduced, and they will be allowed to pay taxes and taxes and spit out their surplus land. In this way, the number of tenants in the landlord's family was reduced, and physical exploitation was reduced as much as possible.

The second point is to distribute the redeemed land to the landless tenants and the displaced people in the form of two or three acres per household, so that they can survive on the land.

Because of the current Jiangnan, although there are a large number of unemployed and homeless people, they can live and settle in the workshop. However, because the provinces are all in war and the number of displaced people is too large, it is still difficult for the workshops in the south of the Yangtze River to absorb all the population, and the streets and alleys of these prefectures, counties and towns are still full of displaced people, so for the sake of social stability, a large amount of land is still needed to resettle them.

The third point is that after Li Xiao mastered these surplus fields, he could replant all these surplus fields into mulberry fields and cotton fields in the form of national planning. In this way, because of the abundant sources of materials, it was possible to continue to expand the scale of the workshop, and because it controlled the vast majority of the land, it was possible to have absolute pricing power in raw silk and cotton balls, so as to prevent the landlords and gentry from disturbing the market and raising prices at will. In this way, the silk and cotton market in Jiangnan was strongly controlled to ensure its stability and order.

After this policy of basic land and surplus land was finally fully implemented, something happened that Li Xiao never expected.