Commercial Research in Song and Yuan Dynasties

The Song and Yuan Dynasties are the middle period of China's development, and various social mechanisms have their own new development trends. Business is no exception. At this time, it has entered the heyday of its development. According to the commercial economy of Song Dynasty, some scholars compared China at this time to modern western society, which is biased, but it is enough to reflect the prosperity of business. The development of business depends on the enhancement of the overall economic strength of society. First of all, the level of agricultural production has improved rapidly, especially after the economic center of gravity moved south. The development of paddy fields in South China has expanded the rice area, with a total cultivated area of 500 million mu and a population of 654.38+0.2 billion. The allocation of resources and population is basically reasonable. Secondly, the commercialization of agricultural products accelerated, and cash crops began to be planted in large areas. The government will no longer levy taxes on farmers in kind, but gradually implement money instead of taxes. In the process of political reform, money replaced service. The monetization of tax directly promotes the development of business exchange. Third, the handicraft industry has a high technical level and is developing vigorously. For example, there are official kilns, Ru kilns, Jun kilns, Ding kilns and so on. The rapid increase of industrial and commercial population and the increasing demand for various consumer goods have also promoted the development of commerce, and made some products begin to develop towards the trend of long-distance trafficking nationwide. For a long time, businessmen engaged in transshipment have abided by an unwritten rule: there is no firewood for a hundred miles, and there is no firewood for a thousand miles. Grain, a daily commodity, can only be traded in and around the place of origin. Although successive governments have also transported some grain from grain-producing areas to Kyoto by water, they are limited to official transportation organized by the government, and ordinary businessmen are afraid to ask for it. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, with the opening of the North-South Grand Canal, the water transport industry developed greatly and its position became increasingly important. The transportation principle of not selling firewood for a hundred miles and not selling firewood for a thousand miles put forward by the Han people was basically observed by the Tang people. During the Northern Song Dynasty, with the development of water transport, merchants ignored the long journey of selling grain for thousands of miles. Businessmen's long-distance grain transportation is just a small flower in the social and economic life of the Northern Song Dynasty. However, as a new phenomenon in the history of commercial transportation, it has had a positive impact on the development of commodity economy, promoted the continuous development of economic exchanges between North and South, and impacted the inertia of closed and scattered natural economy. At the same time, grain, as a daily necessity, broke through geographical restrictions and entered the market, which also reflected the increasing dependence of non-agricultural population on the grain market. Generally speaking, people who eat commodity grain are basically not in the category of self-sufficiency. They are not engaged in agricultural production and need to rely on the existence of the market. The development of this phenomenon will inevitably weaken the natural economy. Due to the appearance of long-distance grain transportation, the commercial service objects of long-distance grain transportation have also changed, and they are no longer limited to the royal family and nobles. In the past, for a long time, most of the goods trafficked by businessmen were luxury goods, aiming at meeting the needs of the royal family and nobles. Therefore, the scope of this kind of transaction is very narrow and has little to do with the broad lower social groups. Grain is a kind of daily necessities, which is not only supplied to the royal family and nobles, but also needed by ordinary people. This kind of materials enter the market through long-distance trafficking, expanding the trading scope from royalty to ordinary people, thus invigorating the commodity economy. In the Song Dynasty, merchants not only sold grain, but also sold tea. Tea is a regional cash crop in the south of Jianghuai. The climate and soil in the Yangtze River basin are suitable for the growth of tea trees, especially in mountainous and hilly areas. During the Northern Song Dynasty, tea was mainly produced in Jinghu Lake.

Prosperous business promotes the development of the city. In the Northern Song Dynasty, the capital of song dynasty in Tokyo was the largest commercial city, which was recorded in detail in Song Zhu's Tokyo Dream. During the Southern Song Dynasty, Hangzhou was a commercial metropolis, and its business tax revenue ranked first in the country. The population of these two cities reaches nearly one million. Even so, Kyle Poirot was amazed in his travel notes. The role of these economic centers is very significant, and a multi-level market network has been formed around them. With these cities as the center, towns and markets as the foundation, and under the premise of economic development, spider-web regional markets are naturally combined and connected. In turn, they not only greatly promoted the development of commodity economy, but also promoted the increasingly significant changes in cities. With the further prosperity of urban commerce, the sexual system, which began to decline in the late Tang Dynasty, completely collapsed. Residents in the square broke through the fence and set up stalls on the street, while businessmen in the city tore down the fence to expand the space for business activities. To sum up, the distribution and trading behavior of urban commerce has become several modes: one is that shops are separated from the restrictions of the same trade block and scattered independently everywhere; One is that most of the transactions of peer shops or vendors are still gathered in one place. Generally speaking, retail stores and grain stores for daily necessities are often scattered in various streets and lanes to facilitate consumers' purchase; The wholesale of special commodities such as gold and silver, jewelry, colored silks and general commodities is concentrated in some streets, such as fruit shops, ginger shops, yarn shops, meat shops and herring shops in the capital of song dynasty. At the same time, the space restriction of the square time zone was cancelled, which completely broke the time restriction of commercial activities. Business activities in many cities lasted all night. In addition to popular food and supplies, there are many big restaurants in the night market. Urban residents live a life of singing and dancing in Liangyuan, and wine like a knife can break their worries. For example, the night market in Tokyo can be said to be all over the street, including first-class shops in Tokyo and vendors who buy stalls on the street. There are a lot of records in the book Chinese Dream in Tokyo, and it is also reflected in the book Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan in Song Dynasty. In addition to male citizens and prostitutes, there are also women who visit the night market at night. Wagoulan is another main place for Tokyo residents to engage in night activities, including zaju, Quyi, puppet show and shadow play. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, a large number of grass markets and fairs appeared in rural areas, and on this basis, fixed shops were established, which were no longer limited to regular opening, but opened daily. Therefore, a new name, Town, appeared in the commercial history of China and the history of local administrative system of China. Generally speaking, towns are managed by officials. Because towns are often the result of commercial and economic activities, their prosperity is often higher than that of county towns. With the existence of towns, rural grass-roots commodity exchange activities such as bazaars and fairs are linked with cities through towns. The market network of Binzhou Vocational College began to form and the market system began to build. Through the effective connection between the rural market and the urban market, the one-way flow of agricultural products from rural areas to cities has become a two-way flow between urban and rural areas through taxation, greatly improving the ability of commercial activities. All kinds of businessmen are active, including small traders and wholesale traders. The prosperity of industrial and commercial towns in Song Dynasty was not comparable to that of ordinary counties and cities. According to statistics, in the Northern Song Dynasty, among the more than 0,000 counties and cities in China, there were 323 with taxes above 5,000 yuan, and there were 1 .78 towns. In the commercial activities of the Song Dynasty, there was a huge group of businessmen, and the phenomenon of all people doing business appeared. From big officials to small officials to ordinary people, even from pharmacy doctors to temple monks, all of them are keen on making profits in business. Bureaucrats in business Song D.

Before the Song Dynasty, under the strict market management system, the number of people engaged in industry and commerce in cities was relatively small. Unified business hours, unified price system, strict quality inspection and peer-operated store system make the competition between peers more moderate and there is no spontaneous request for organization. Most of the big merchants are engaged in or engaged in trafficking trade, generally do not belong to cities, and become a force separated from urban merchants, and merchants have great power. Small and medium-sized businessmen who do sales in the city are mainly from humble origins. With the vigorous development of private property shops, Zuo Jia has become an important force among businessmen. Foreign businessmen are often subject to local businessmen, and some goods are difficult to sell without going through local big businessmen. Because the merchants in the Song Dynasty were in a favorable position in commodity exchange, some merchants turned to the merchants in the Song Dynasty, and most of them took their residence as their business center. Later, there were merchants with fixed purchase places and fixed sales places. These big businessmen set up large-scale buildings and shops in cities, set up specialized wholesale markets and formed guilds. However, the hanging in the Song Dynasty and the hanging in the Han and Tang Dynasties are two completely different organizations. The guild of Han and Tang Dynasties was controlled by the government in organization and businessmen in business, and did not have the basic functions of monopolizing the market and excluding dissidents. In the Song Dynasty, guilds were organizations that were restricted by officials and businessmen and had the strength to compete with them and safeguard their own interests. This is the original organizational form of China Guild. The development of commerce puts forward higher requirements for commodities and coins. First, the demand for currency circulation has increased. In the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty, the number of coins minted each year was more than ten times that of the prosperous Tang Dynasty, but it was still not enough. Second, the demand for credit currency increases after the circulation demand increases. Because the development of credit currency can make business activities more convenient, metal currency has developed into paper money. China's earliest banknotes appeared in Sichuan, and flying money is equivalent to today's drafts. In addition, money has a growing impact on society and has become a very important form of wealth. Money is the largest item in the total fiscal revenue. In ordinary family life, monetary expenditure also occupies an important position. There is a poem that says: selling rice can buy a bunch of wages, a city with everything. The power of money has also had a great impact on social order, speeding up the vertical flow of society. The rich and the poor work in turn, and the farmland of 800 owners has been changed in one thousand. Are examples of this situation. People who get rich in business activities can change their status and even influence government policies through the power of money. Due to the influence of monetary power, land was bought and sold frequently in Song Dynasty. Businessmen and even tenants may become landlords, and landlords may be reduced because of the loss of land. These are the functions of money. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, overseas trade was extremely developed. Following the system of Song, Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties, the sea routes were continuously expanded, and a large number of Chinese and foreign businessmen set sail, connecting Japan, the Korean Peninsula in the east, Java, Indonesia in the south, and a large number of countries and regions in the western Arabian Peninsula and the east and west coasts of Africa in the vast waves of the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific Ocean, thus forming a new pattern of international trade in which porcelain incense medicinal materials in the Song Dynasty frequently circulated in Rong Sheng.

The material demand of the East and the West often transits through the merchants in China port. At that time, Guangzhou, Quanzhou and heming in China were already famous international seaports. In order to ensure the smooth progress of trade, after the establishment of the Song Dynasty, the Municipal Shipping Department was specially set up as the port management organization. In addition to the functions of collecting points and purchasing goods, municipal shipping officials are also responsible for public safety, attracting and organizing foreign trade, hosting