The importance of tea in the lives of Chinese people is undoubtedly indispensable, especially in the frontiers and other ethnic minorities’ demand for tea. Even in 's commodity cultural exchanges under the name of "Silk Road", tea has also played an important role. Especially on the maritime trade routes in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, tea became one of the most important commodities for the Qing Dynasty to absorb silver.
Tea is the purse of the Qing government
In the foreign trade activities of the Qing Dynasty, tea is a powerful weapon to resist the dumping of foreign goods and maintain a trade surplus. According to statistics, in the 29th year of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty (AD 1764), European countries imported goods worth about 1.91 million taels of silver to the Qing Dynasty, while the Qing government exported about three Commodities of 1.64 million taels of silver surpassed 1.73 million taels of imported goods. Among these exports, mainly tea, raw silk and porcelain. The trade surplus of
was maintained until the Opium War. To a certain extent, offset the burden of dumping goods and opium in the Qing Dynasty by European and American countries . Especially in the early 19th century, tea accounted for 100% of China’s total exports. Over 70%, the Guangzhou port alone imported 350,000 quintals of tea to Britain each year, worth 94.45 million silver dollars, effectively preventing the outflow of silver from the Qing Dynasty.
Picture above_ Tea exported during the Qing Dynasty
Externally, tea allowed the Qing government to maintain a trade surplus in the import and export economy; internally, tea was an important commodity for maintaining the integrity and stability of the country. In the Qing Dynasty, the "Tea Law" and the "Salt Policy" were national policies that placed equal importance. The sale of tea requires an official "tea guide" to be eligible for trafficking.
There are three kinds of "tea laws" in Qing Dynasty: the first type of
is called official tea, which is stored in Shaanxi, Gansu and other places where it borders with ethnic minorities in exchange for horses; the second type of
is called Shangcha, which was introduced by the government. Vendors use tea for commercial transactions, and the government collects taxes and silver;
The third type is called tribute tea, which is specially used as a tribute to the court.
, as a government in which ethnic minorities entered the Central Plains, the importance of tea is well understood by Manchurians. Therefore, since the first year of Shunzhi, the Qing government has stipulated the standard of trading tea in exchange for horses from the "fans", "grate twelve for horses, nine for middle horses, and seven for dismounting" , for every 100 catties of tea Ten grate, each grate is two. In the 18th year of Shunzhi, the Dalai Lama took the initiative to request the central government to send horses to the central government in exchange for tea.
Above_Qing period Gansu Full picture
In the 11th year of Qianlong, Gansu governor Huang Tinggui played to the emperor. Gansu belonged to Xining, Hezhou, and Zhuanglang. Fan and people were in the wrong place, but tea was the place. Therefore, the Fan and the people in these places used grain to exchange for tea, and the local government used more than 65,500 seals of tea in exchange for more than 38,100 shi of miscellaneous grains. The tea used here is mostly cheap brick tea, rather than precious tea. For example, if one stone is 100 kilograms, every one kilogram of tea can be exchanged for 11.6 kilograms of grain. Such a transaction greatly enriches the local finances, so the governor of Gansu urged the emperor The practice of exchanging tea for grain is "a permanent example" .
is like storing tea in Gansu in exchange for food from the Fans. In the Qing Dynasty, tea in different regions also had different sales targets. Especially after the Opium War, had three largest tea export destinations in the country, namely: Hankou and Shanghai. And Fuzhou.
The tea in Hankou mostly flows to Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Russia, and most of the tea is pressed brick tea;
Shanghai, as the largest tea exporter at the time, exported red and green tea from Jiangxi and Anhui to Europe, and Shaoxing, Zhejiang The tea produced in Ningbo is sent to the United States, and most of the tea produced in Ningbo is imported by Japan;
The tea exported in Fuzhou is mostly sold to the Nanyang Islands and South America.
officially classified such sales methods and channels, allowing the Qing government to use tea as a medium to collect a large amount of silver from all over the world. And tea has also become "green gold" in the economic and trade of European and American countries.
Picture above_ Hu Tianchun, Lu'an, Anhui, Qing Dynasty, tribute tea trademark
The tea that made the British Empire crazy
There is a famous saying in Marx’s Capital: once there is a proper profit, capital isBe bold. If there is a 10% profit, it is guaranteed to be used everywhere... For 100% of the profit, it dares to trample on all human laws; with 300% of the profit, it dares to commit any crime, or even risk hanging its head. The ironic capitalist theory of
is equally applicable to tea trade. In Britain in the 1840s, there were many vicious incidents related to tea smuggling:
In 1744, a customs officer was injured by smugglers in Shoreham and was taken away.
In 1745, three customs officials were injured and robbed in a bar in Grinstead Green.
In 1746, the Hawkhurst group and the Winghamgangs clashed when Sandwich loaded 11.5 tons of tea from the ship onto the backs of 350 horses. As a result, nine people were injured at the scene. By.
In 1747, smugglers shot four native soldiers in Medes.
Smugglers attacked the government customs in Poole Harbour in October 1747. The vicious incidents caused by commodities like
are quite similar to the smuggling of pirates in the Ming Dynasty in China, but they are even worse. According to the official information of the Qing government, after the British imported tea from China during the Daoguang period, collected a heavy tax of fifty taels per hundred catties of tea when sold to the country, but China only levied two pounds per hundred catties for export. Two or five pennies. The huge profit margin of contributed to the origin of the above-mentioned vicious event. At that time, the British people were still eager for the "magic leaves" from the East in the face of such high prices.
Above_Boston Tea (Leaf) Incident: North American people specifically protested against the "Tea Tax Act"
The earliest British people rarely drank tea. In 1699, the British imported only 6 tons of tea. By the end of the 18th century However, it has reached an astonishing 11,000 tons. In a hundred years, tea has moved from aristocracy to common people, and quickly replaced other alcoholic products in Britain as a national drink. "Two ounces (28 grams) of tea a week...can make a cold dinner become steamy" , this was the common knowledge of the British at the time. At that time, the average British worker's weekly purchase of tea and sugar cost one-tenth of the entire family's income. The large amount of tea consumption by has also become the largest source of tax revenue for the UK's finances. The tax revenue brought by tea every year accounts for one-tenth of the UK's total tax revenue.
Faced with such huge profits, trade conflicts are inevitable. Judging from the data in 1834, the UK consumed 53 million pounds of tea throughout the year, and these consumer goods needed to be paid a huge amount of silver to the Qing government in exchange for them, so the British looked everywhere for goods that could replace silver exports to China. As a result of , Britain began to dump a large amount of opium to the Qing. This led to the inevitable outbreak of the Opium War between the two empires on the triangular trade line of tea, silver, and opium, which also became the beginning of China's modernization.
Top picture_ Tea: planting tea seedlings
Top picture_ Picking tea leaves
Top picture_ Stir-frying, using high temperature to destroy the enzyme activity
Top picture_ The finished tea leaves are transported into the warehouse
in the Chinese tea market
After the Opium War, the British quickly discovered a problem. When they exchanged opium for silver and bought tea, the Qing dynasty who saw profitably began to grow opium, and once the Qing government legalized opium cultivation , Britain will fall short in this trade war. Therefore, the British began to focus on cultivating tea trees by themselves. As a result, opium and tea also completed a strange change of identity between the two empires.
In 1848, British botanist Robert Fujun was hired by the East India Company and came to the Qing Dynasty to buy tea seedlings and workers who planted tea trees and fry tea, and brought them back to the British colony-India. British people have opened up two million acres of land here to grow and process tea. Z5z's suitable climate, coupled with industrial production, the British reversed the loss of silver brought by tea in one fell swoop and accumulated a lot of wealth. Remaining after shipping the finished product back to the UKThe British began to sell tea from all over the world and even dumped it in the Qing Dynasty.
In 1892, Liu Bingzhang, the governor of Sichuan, sighed in a telegram to the Qing Premier’s Yamen: Sichuan’s tea was sold to Tibet in order to benefit, and the proceeds were also used to govern Tibet, but the British had already begun to move from India to Tibet. Sell tea. This has directly led to the unsalable tea in Sichuan, and the silver for governing Tibet has been lost. In the long run, not only Tibet will be difficult to manage, but also the tea farmers in Sichuan will lose their jobs, either starving to death or becoming bandits, affecting stability.
Above_In 1875, Boyersky photographed the main tea trading market in Shaanxi Province-Hanzhongfu
. At that time, there was not only one place in Sichuan that tea could not be sold. When the United States saw the British tea growing rich, it also began to buy tea seedlings from the Qing Dynasty, up to 120,000 plants a year, which also reduced the United States’ demand for Chinese tea, and Japan also began to look for other teas. Purchasing channels, among the big tea consumers in the past, only Russia is still buying Chinese tea in large quantities.
In desperation, in the early years of Xuantong, Hankou and Fuzhou began to purchase foreign machinery and hired Indian tea roasters to save the tea market in the Qing Dynasty, but the final result was that the Qing Dynasty only seized part of the remaining markets in Eastern Europe and Africa. In this trade war, it was completely defeated. According to 2009 data, China’s tea output value was about 30 billion yuan that year, while the output value of Lipton tea in the United Kingdom reached 23 billion yuan, and the price of Chinese tea is 40% lower than India, 60% lower than Sri Lanka, and even higher than Kenya. It's 20% lower.
Above_Tea ads in Qing Dynasty
The traditional handicraft industry that survived very hard
In addition to tea, the status of silk and porcelain in the late Qing Dynasty has also become precarious in the world market. Since silk weaving technology began to spread throughout the world as early as the 14th century, the monopoly of finished silk in the Qing Dynasty gradually lost its advantage and it could only profit by exporting raw silk raw silk.
After the rise of the European silk textile industry, Persian raw silk and Bangladeshi raw silk began to squeeze out the Qing dynasty raw silk market , but because the Qing dynasty raw silk was of better quality, it still had a place. Until the Meiji Restoration, Japan's silk weaving and raw silk production gradually rose, and eventually became the world's largest producer after World War I.
As for porcelain, since the British successfully fired the first porcelain wine glass in 1768, it marked a gap in the stability of the traditional Chinese porcelain family, and the export trade of Qing Dynasty porcelain was hit hard. Twenty-four years later, the British East India Company completely stopped all trade in Chinese porcelain. Nowadays, the market share and price of Mason porcelain, Royal Dalton porcelain and Wedgwood porcelain in the world porcelain trade market far exceed those of Chinese daily-use porcelain.
Picture above_ Qing Dynasty Ji red-glazed porcelain bowl
In the 18th to 19th century, when the global industrialization was highly developed, the Qing government not only did not "open eyes to see the world", but also treasured the traditional handicraft industry as its own magic weapon. Until the Opium War, the literati class in the Qing Dynasty believed that if foreigners did not have tea, they would die because of indigestion. Such short-sightedness and ignorance also made the Qing Dynasty eventually become "a spectator and a victim of economic globalization."
The Qing government's practice of "putting eggs in the same basket" has led to the destruction of foreign trade in an unprecedented development and changes. It is precisely because of the large-scale shrinkage of foreign trade and the erosion of the political system that the Qing government rapidly weakened in the era when countries around the world were vying to rise, and was expelled from these commodity trading systems that once made China famous.
Text: Wei Siwei
References:
[1] "New Food and Merchandise History" Du Junli
[2] "Manuscripts of Qing History•Food and Merchandise Records•Tea Law" Zhao Erxun (Editor-in-Chief)
[3] "Chinese History of Cultural Relics• Ming and Qing Dynasties" National Museum of China (Edited)
[4] "Tea, Hobbies, Development and Empire" Roy Moxham (written) Bi Xiaoqing (translated)
The text was created by the History University team, with pictures from Network copyright belongs to the original author
