The social class structure and taxation system of the Northern Song Dynasty

(1) Social class structure

After the establishment of the Northern Song Dynasty, while ending the division and division of the five dynasties, in view of the chaos of the household registration system of the five dynasties, out of the need for centralized and autocratic rule, Yu Jianlong ordered each prefecture to re-compile the edition of the book in the fourth year of Jianlong (963 AD), and register the household registration and land situation of each county. Later, this work was systematically formed, stipulating that statistics should be made every leap year, and the counties should report to the state, and the prefecture should report to the central government, and a leap year chart should be made as the basis for the tax quota of each state and county.

The Song Dynasty divided the country's residents into two categories: main households and customers. The residents who live in towns are Fangguo households, and those who live in villages are rural households. The division of the main household and the customer in the Fangguo household is mainly based on whether there is a real estate and other means of living, and the real estate household is called the main household, and the person who does not have real estate and rents a house is called the customer. The main households in the countryside refer to those peasant households who occupy land and pay summer and autumn taxes to the state; Rural customers are those tenant farmers who have no land, or even no means of production such as ploughing cattle and farm tools, and rent landlords' land, also known as tenants and floating customers. During the Northern Song Dynasty, customers accounted for about 33%-36% of the total number of households. The fact that such a large proportion of peasant households have lost their land and become customers is precisely the result of the vicious development of land annexation caused by the policy of not suppressing annexation.

The main households are divided into five classes according to the amount of assets they occupy: the first-class households of the main households are the households that occupy more than three hectares of land to dozens or several hundred hectares, and they are the big landlord class. The second-class households are households that occupy about one to several hectares of land, and they are the small and medium-sized landlord class. The first and second class households are also commonly referred to as upper households. They annexed land and lived by exploiting tenants. These two types of main households constituted the upper echelons of the landlord class in the Song Dynasty.

The third-class households, also known as the middle households, are mainly those households that occupy a small number of fields, but can support themselves and are relatively wealthy. The third class includes the wealthier yeoman peasant strata in the countryside and the small landlords who do not own much land but lease their land to exploit tenant farmers. Because there are also some annexed houses in the third-class households, the Song Dynasty called the first, second, and third-class households the upper third-class households. The upper third-class households were the landlord class of the Song Dynasty.

The fourth and fifth class households were peasant households occupying thirty or fifty mu or only a few acres of land, and belonged to the yeoman or semi-yeoman peasant class in the countryside, and were also called lower households or poor households at that time. Some poor people who do not have property are also included in the fifth class of households to pay taxes, called propertyless tax households.

The peasants belonging to the lower households of the fourth and fifth classes had a difficult life, and when the harvest failed, they had nothing to live on, and once they fell into the exploitation of usury, they would eventually lose the already small amount of land, so they were also the main objects of annexation by the landlord class.

The fourth and fifth class households account for a large proportion of the main households, often as much as nine-tenths. Among them, the fifth-class households may account for about 70% of the lower households.

The rural clientele was mainly tenant farmers, who had no land or means of subsistence at all, and relied mainly on renting the landlord's land for their livelihood. The customers of the Song Dynasty were generally not the private owners of the landlords, but were also incorporated into the household registration and became the official household of the state, paying the personal tax and paying the husband's service, and some customers directly paid the summer and autumn taxes.

(2) Land holdings and the status of peasants and handicraftsmen

１。 Land Possession (1) After the middle of the Tang Dynasty, the power of the clan was weakened, and the landlords stepped up the annexation of Zhuangtian, and most of the official fields were occupied or abandoned by the landlords and wealthy families. There are three kinds of Guantian in the Northern Song Dynasty: Guanzhuang, Tuntian, and Yingtian. Tuntian and Yingtian are the cantonments of the soldiers' garrisons. Most of the official farms were barren ownerless fields, and after the peasants cultivated them, the imperial court collected rents.

In the form of land tenure in the Song Dynasty, Guantian did not occupy an important position.

(2) Officials occupy landOfficials in the Song Dynasty occupied a large number of fields, mainly using the proceeds of exploitation to purchase land by themselves, and no longer had the privilege of occupying land with official ranks, nor did they have restrictions on the number of fields occupied.

(3) Since the middle of the Tang Dynasty, landlords have occupied large tracts of land and formed landlord Zhuangtian. The landlord Zhuangtian in the Song Dynasty was even more viciously inflated. The big landlords built houses on the village to live in, forming the village courtyard. Tenants called floating tenants also lived in the landlord's farm, and each village formed a village as a natural economic unit. The landlord's farms are all over the place. In the Song Dynasty, there were statistics on the rented fields, except for the small plots of land that the yeoman farmers had, mainly the landlords' farmland.

Officials in the Song Dynasty could purchase land at will and become landlords, and landlords could also become officials at all levels after passing the imperial examination. Officials and landlords have merged into one and occupy the vast majority of the country's land. Encouraged by the policy of not suppressing annexation, the royal family, aristocrats, bureaucrats, and landlords annexed more and more land.

２。 Peasant StatusThe landlord took possession of the land and exploited the tenant peasants in the form of rent, which was the form of exploitation of the peasants by the landlords in the Song Dynasty. The peasant class consisted mainly of tenant farmers who rented landlords' land and yeoman and semi-yeoman peasants who owned small plots of land. They were jointly subjected to economic exploitation and political-political-oppression-oppression by the landlord class, but they were in different situations.

(1) Tenant farmer: Tenant farmer is the customer. Tenant farmers were completely landless and lived on renting landlords' land, making them the poorest stratum of the peasantry. A large landowner can own hundreds of tenants. There are even thousands of large landowners in the Liangchuan area. Tenant farmers were exploited by landlords for rent and usury.

The common method of exploitation in the early Song Dynasty was to collect rents by sharing. The land rent rate generally accounts for more than 50% of the harvest. If the tenant does not have cattle and farming tools, but rents from the landlord, the rent will be increased. The other is the fixed rent system, in which the landlord sets a fixed amount of rented rice. Rent was the main means by which landlords took possession of land and exploited tenant farmers.

With the development of tenant relations, usury by landlords has also become an important means of exploitation. When the landlord lent grain or money to the tenant peasants, he wanted to exploit two to three times the interest, and even asked the peasants' children to be used as collateral as collateral, in fact, as unpaid slaves. The tenant farmers did not have enough harvest to pay their rents and could not afford to pay their debts. Borrowing every year, going into debt every year. Tenant farmers have been exploited by landlords for generations. Among the peasants of the Song Dynasty, the tenant farmers were the most oppressed and the most revolutionary. In the struggle of the peasant class against the landlords, the tenant peasants were always the basic revolutionary force.

(2) Among the yeoman and semi-yeoman farmers, there are also a large number of yeoman farmers who occupy a small amount of land. According to the statistics of the household registration of the Northern Song Dynasty, the fourth and fifth class households in the main household are the poor households, and the number of customers is roughly the same. But in reality a considerable number of them were semi-subsistence farmers who doubled as tenant farmers, or even entirely tenant farmers. Because, first, in order to extract more taxes, the Northern Song Dynasty government rented the landlord's land to semi-yeoman farmers, although there was only a small amount of land, they were still included in the main households, and in the fifth class households, a large number of semi-yeoman farmers; Second, after the yeoman peasants went bankrupt and sold their land to the landlords, they became tenant farmers, but they could not immediately cancel off their land properties, change their household registration, and save their property with taxes.

Although the yeoman peasants did not hand over their ancestors to the landlords, they had to pay heavy taxes and forced labor to the government, and their lives were also very difficult. Homeless and semi-yeoman farmers relied on cultivating their own small plots of land, which made it difficult to provide food and clothing, and in the face of famine in the fierce year, they had to borrow money from the landlords, and they were exploited by the landlords' usurious loans, and finally went bankrupt and became tenants.

Self-cultivated farmers, semi-self-cultivated farmers, and tenant farmers must only rely on agricultural production and cannot have food and clothing, and must operate sideline businesses in addition to farming.

But even the sideline production has also been taken by the government. Unable to survive, they were forced to rise up and rebel.

Homesteaders and semi-farmers were an important revolutionary force against the landlord class.

(3) Slaves and maids The Northern Song Dynasty retained a certain number of slaves and maids, which were mainly used for serving in the homes of landlords and bureaucrats. Slaves and maids had no property, their status was extremely low, and all families obeyed the orders of the landlords and bureaucrats.

３。 Craftsman Status: Craftsmen are direct producers in the handicraft industry. Most of the government-run handicraft industries in the Song Dynasty adopted a system of differential employment between recruitment and recruitment, and craftsmen were recruited to serve in turn, and they were given employment value and food money. Private handicrafts generally adopt the system of peace, and the relationship between the employer and the artisan is generally consensual. In some economically developed areas, there are also machine households. This kind of household or workshop specializing in the textile industry is the inevitable result of the separation and development of handicraft industry and agriculture, of which there are thousands of them in Zizhou (now Santai, Sichuan). However, machine owners are often forced by the government or official history to weave horses, and they are paid less or in arrears, and eventually go bankrupt and lose their jobs.

In the Northern Song Dynasty, there were also many wealthy merchants living in Guo, the county seat. There are many businessmen in Kaifeng, the capital with assets of more than 100,000, and there are also many wealthy businessmen who reach one million. Many scholars also took advantage of every opportunity to traffic goods for profit. The status of the merchant was improved, and he became one of the four people of the feudal state (Shinong Gong Gong), and obtained the qualification of Qi Min. The state allowed the prodigies and capable people among the merchants to participate in the imperial examination, and also allowed their children to participate in the imperial examination. Merchants could also accept the imperial court's recruitment to manage taxes for the feudal state, or pay money to the government to serve as an envoy's attaché, or marry clans and officials to make friends with powerful people and obtain official positions. Merchants generally had to buy land to make themselves landlords or merchants and landlords.

(3) Taxation and forced labor

１。 Taxation in the Song Dynasty The taxation in the Song Dynasty followed the two-tax system since the middle of the Tang Dynasty, namely the summer and autumn taxes. However, the two taxes in the Song Dynasty were different from the two taxes of the Tang Dynasty, which were shared, yong, and adjusted into one, but specifically referred to the field tax. In addition to the two taxes, there are also taxes, miscellaneous taxes, and forced labor.

(1) A man who is 20 years old is considered a man, and a man who is 60 years old is an old man. Men between the ages of 20 and 60 are required to pay a piece of money (or millet or silk). Tenants who are registered as customers also have to pay the same amount of money as the main household. However, this kind of personal tax is only practiced in the southern region, and the amount of the tax varies from place to place.

(2) Field tax (two taxes)

The Northern Song Dynasty field tax, the law stipulates that the landowner is taxed according to the quantity of land, and the tax is collected once a year in summer and autumn, also known as summer tax and autumn seedlings. Autumn tax refers to the collection of grain per mu after the autumn harvest every year.

In all parts of the north, it is roughly a stone per mu of medium fields, and one bucket of official taxes is lost. In Jiangnan, Fujian and other places, there are three buckets of tax per mu. In the Song Dynasty, the autumn tax was often not levied according to the actual output, but according to the fixed amount per mu, and the tax amount was also quite different due to the different agricultural production conditions in various places. Summer tax money, or folded into silk, silk, cotton, cloth, wheat to pay, in the summer when the field and silkworms are ripe. The tax amount is set according to the rank of upper, middle and lower fields, but there are great differences in different regions.

The amount of tax in summer and autumn is only the minimum standard that is stipulated. In the actual expropriation, the Song Dynasty also used the so-called method of transfer and conversion to increase the exploitation. Transfer, refers to the excuse of the need for grain and grass at the border, order Hebei, Hedong, Shaanxi to pay the autumn tax, by the taxpayer to the border to pay, the harvest area of the autumn tax, transport to the poor harvest area to pay, in order to make up for the shortfall, move one to the other, move near and far, so it is called branch migration. If you are unwilling or unable to bear the toil of traveling long distances, you will have to pay an extra sum of money to move your feet. The conversion is the cash and various quotas of silk, cotton, cloth, and wheat stipulated by the government for the summer tax, which are arbitrarily exchanged according to the price situation and under the pretext of temporary needs, and the exploitation is aggravated, such as the exchange of silk for money, and then the exchange of money for wheat.

During the change, the government arbitrarily raised and lowered prices. The government colluded with the merchants and landlords to make profits by turning corruption into a profit, and the peasants who paid taxes were heavily oppressed.

(3) The official village rents the land of the official village to recruit tenants to cultivate, and the government collects the land rent, which is called the endowment of the public land. No one pays the second tax in the official field, and the government often adds the second tax to the tenants of the official village, that is, the so-called duplicate payment. Tenants are doubly exploited.

(4) During the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, each secession country set up a name, set up a variety of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, and extorted property. After the unification of the Song Dynasty, all these harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes were inherited, collectively known as miscellaneous changes, also known as Yanna. Miscellaneous changes are more stringent than the miscellaneous taxes of the Five Dynasties. For example, in the Southern Tang Dynasty, people were allowed to make wine privately, pay koji money, and exchange official salt for the people's silk and grain, while the Song Dynasty forbade private wine making and no longer scattered official salt, but the original people who paid qu money, silk, silk and grain and rice still had to pay the old amount. Miscellaneous changes include silkworm salt money, cowhide money, artemisia money, agricultural tool money, shoe money and other names. In addition to the miscellaneous changes stipulated in the Song Dynasty, the Song Dynasty also extorted a variety of property at any time and forced the peasants to contribute in the name of Jinfeng and Tugong (contributing local products).

(5) Heliang and Hemai (buying grain) refer to the government's compulsory purchase of private grain and rice; And buying refers to the government's compulsory purchase of private cloth. Nominally, it is a bargain and a purchase, but in fact it is a forced expropriation, and it is not even at a cost. Although the law stipulates that the purchase of peace is limited to households of the fourth class and above, and the purchase is limited to the upper class households, the homesteaders and semi-farmers who actually belong to the lower households cannot be avoided.

Among the various types of tax items, miscellaneous changes change with the two taxes, and the two taxes are also based on the amount of the two taxes. Miscellaneous and harmonious, and buying is actually a tax on top of taxes, and a rent on rent.

２。 The mission of the Song Dynasty and the service law of the Northern Song Dynasty included errand service and husband service. Servitude is the landlord's service to the state, and the servitude refers to the peasants being transferred by the state to perform labor, and they are two systems of completely different natures.

(1) Errand service, also competent service. The current civil and military officials and the state and county Xu Shi and the powerful and wealthy families are called the situation households, and the families of the officials and their descendants are all called the official households. Situational and official households enjoy the privilege of exemption from military service. The service is fulfilled by the first, second, and third class households in the main household, that is, the large and small landlords. This system was actually the government's power to squeeze and rule over the vast number of peasants by the so-called landlords of the households, and relied on the landlords and gentry to expand the basis of the feudal rule of the Song Dynasty. The main contents of the errand are: Yaqian - the duty is to take care of the warehouse or escort property for the government. The statutory role shall be performed by the landlord of a first-class household with assets of more than 200 yuan. As a former officer, he can be exempted from the subject allocation, discount, and can be awarded an official title, which is promoted every three years, and can be promoted up to the commander of the capital.

Lizheng, the head of the household, and the village scrivener - the duty is to collect taxes for the government superintendent. Li is collecting rents and has the right to arrest people and send them to the county to be whipped; The head of the household is Lizheng's deputy; The village scrivener helped Li Zheng to handle the paperwork. The statutory office is being played by the first-class household in turn, the head of the household is the second-class household, and the township clerk is played by the third-class household. They use the power in their hands to embezzle and extort money, and they are the vicious minions of the government ruling and suppressing the people.

Elder chiefs, archers, and strong men – their duties were nominally to catch thieves for the government, but in essence to help the local government suppress peasant revolts. The elders are served by the second-class household wheels, and the archers and strong men are filled by the third-class household wheels, and everything is under the command of the seniors. Sometimes, strong men are also drawn from fourth-class households. At the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty, the landlord class also competed for the front and the right. They can take advantage of the opportunity of the errand to plunder their property and get promoted to become rich. Later, the law became more and more confusing. If there is a loss of official property in front of the ya, it must be compensated, and even the treasurer is picky and blackmailed. Lizheng and the head of the household are not even urging taxes, and they must also compensate for the compensation on their behalf. Therefore, many landlords regarded it as a burden and were unwilling to serve as servants. Some small and medium-sized landlords, especially those of third-class households, often went bankrupt as a result of their forced labor.

According to the decree of the Song Dynasty, the errand servants were assigned according to the household in the upper household. As a matter of fact, official and situational households did not serve, female households, single households, and monks were exempted from service, and large landlords also tried to evade the service, and they all passed on the service to the peasants. In the end, all kinds of poor labor were carried out by lower-class landlords and yeoman farmers, and even customers were sent to serve. Errand labor places a heavy burden on the people. Those who act as archers and strong men must bring their own clothes and crossbows. Those who are skilled in martial arts can't even get rid of it for life. When the households fled, the head of the household had to pay the taxes himself, and the people who sent the head of the household also fled. The phenomenon of the escape of the household registration in the Song Dynasty was born under the weight of land annexation and forced labor. During the Xianping period (998-1003 AD), 2,500 families fled in Caizhou (present-day Runan, Henan), which reduced the government's land income by more than 5,300 yuan.

(2) Husband's service, also known as miscellaneous servitude. In the Northern Song Dynasty, on the surface, the husband service was based on the Dingkou department, but the official households and the situation households enjoyed the privilege of exemption from military service, and the upper third-class households that had already undertaken the service no longer paid the husband service, and the landlords who were assigned to the husband service often paid people to hire people to serve on their behalf or forced the tenants to serve on their behalf, so in fact, only the self-cultivated farmers and semi-self-cultivated farmers of the lower households were responsible for the husband's service. At the same time, tenant farmers are classified as customers, and as the employees of the state, they must also be subject to servant according to their mouths. In the Northern Song Dynasty, the husband service was actually unpaid labor borne by the vast number of peasants, such as yeoman farmers, semi-yeoman farmers, and tenant farmers.

There is no fixed time limit for servitude. Before spring ploughing, the person who transferred the hair was called the spring husband, and the person who was transferred because of the urgency of the fortification was called the urgent husband. The central government and local officials in the Northern Song Dynasty were able to send peasants to serve in the army. Large-scale projects include: dredging of river channels. The biggest service is to control the flooding of the Yellow River. Almost every year, the Northern Song Dynasty had to send servants to block breaches or build dikes. Large-scale projects are dispatched to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. The area of requisition is as far as Hedong, Jingxi, Huainan and other roads. Servants come from afar, and the levy period is often one to two months, resulting in the abandonment of farming.

Civil construction. Including the construction of cities, the construction of official houses, temples, as well as the construction of roads, bridges and other things. To build city defenses along the border in the north, it was necessary to frequently recruit a large number of servants.

Transportation of official goods. The government transports grain, grass, salt, tea, and other official goods, and all levies the burden on the peasants, which is a kind of heavy husband's service.

During Dingfu's military service, the government also gave a little money and goods, but it was difficult for it to really fall into the hands of the servants. The servants came from all over the country, and not only abandoned farming, but even died tragically on the roads and in the government offices. During the reign of Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty, more than 100,000 people died on the road in Lingzhou.