Hangzhou was the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. Why didn't the Yuan Dynasty suppress its development?

In 1276 AD, the Yuan army came to Lin'an (Hangzhou, Zhejiang), the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. Emperor Gong surrendered and died in the Southern Song Dynasty (not counting the two kings in exile, the Southern Song Dynasty should be destroyed in 1276, not 1279). After the Yuan Dynasty unified the world, as the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, what was the status of Hangzhou in the Yuan Dynasty?

Map-Location of Lin'an (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang), the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty,

is different from the nearly devastating disaster caused by the Qing Dynasty's extermination of Nanming. The Southern Song Dynasty did not cause much damage to the social economy of the South, and the economic and cultural development of the South has not been interrupted. Although Hangzhou is no longer a capital city, it is still the center of the region. Hangzhou has a population of over one million and its business is very prosperous. At that time, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces consisted of the original four roads of West Zhejiang, East Zhejiang, East Jiangxi, and Fujian. It had jurisdiction over the Yangtze River in the north, Fujian in the south, the sea in the east, and Poyang in the west. It was the most economically developed area in the Southern Song Dynasty.

Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces have the largest population and the most developed economy among the eleven provinces in the country. The Yuan Dynasty naturally attached importance to it. The Yuan Dynasty moved the governing office of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces to Hangzhou and governed 30 roads in the southeast region. In the first year of Wenzong to Shun (1330), 46% of the households registered by the Ministry of Households were in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, and 37% of the annual grain requisitions were in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. As the governor of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, Hangzhou has become the southern economic center of the Yuan Dynasty.

Map-the location of Hangzhou and its surrounding topography

The so-called "Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces regard the provinces as the most important, with vast land, people, complicated government affairs, rich valleys, and the court's attention." Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces are so important, the Yuan Dynasty The number of troops stationed in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces is the largest of the three southern provinces. The officials stationed in other provinces are Pingzhang, while those stationed in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces are the prime minister.

The capital of the Yuan Dynasty was established as the capital (now Beijing), and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal was dredged, which made Hangzhou at the southern end of the Grand Canal and its connection with the northern region unprecedentedly strengthened. In this way, Hangzhou's long-standing disadvantage of being relatively safe and southeast has been completely changed, and it has marked that Hangzhou has entered a new stage of historical development.

Figure-Schematic diagram of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal

There was no transit tax during the circulation of goods in the Yuan Dynasty. The tax was only levied when entering sales. At that time, there were four sites with the highest tax in the country above 10,000, except for one at the confluence of the Yangtze River and the canal Zhenzhou (Yizheng, Jiangsu), the other three are in Hangzhou. This shows how high Hangzhou is on the economic map of the Yuan Dynasty. This also depends on the unification of the Yuan Dynasty, breaking the iron fence when the Jin and the Southern Song Dynasty confronted each other, and the frequent exchanges between the north and the south made the canal become more and more important. While

products traveled from north to south through the canal, it also brought a lot of people flow. Southerners walked north along the canal, went to Beijing for sightseeing, and found a way out. The northerners went south to serve as eunuchs, do business, and study abroad. Various concepts and cultures are exchanged and integrated here. It can be said that Hangzhou and Dadu, one south and one north, became the two centers of cultural exchange and integration in the Yuan Dynasty. However, Hangzhou is more economical, which is equivalent to the current Shanghai (economy).

map-Hangzhou location and surrounding topography

expands towards inland and ocean to carry out overseas trade, and Hangzhou has become an important node city in this system. Different from the traditional "tribute trade" in the Central Plains, the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty sent private commercial representatives to conduct commercial trade as early as the grassland period. The mercantile tradition of the grassland made non-governmental overseas trade basically unrestricted. During the Yuan Dynasty, Quanzhou Port was the end point of Southeast Asian and Western trade, and Qingyuan and Liujiagang were central ports for trade with the peninsula and Japan. Hangzhou, like Guangzhou, Quanzhou, and Qingyuan ports, has established a municipal paris to manage overseas trade.

Picture-Yuan Dynasty sea and land transportation diagram

At the same time, Hangzhou, as the capital of Jiangsu and Zhejiang and the southernmost end of the canal, has also become an important access point for various trade routes. Developed transportation has made Hangzhou a transportation and economic hub. People in Yuan Dynasty praised Hangzhou as "the prosperous mountains and rivers, crossing Wuyue, Fujian and Zhejiang, rich in tribute, and also rich in Jingguang, Sichuan and Sichuan."

Hangzhou was rich in the Southern Song Dynasty. However, due to the division of North and South, Hangzhou’s central role in North-South exchanges cannot be realized. In the Yuan Dynasty, this shortcoming disappeared. Hangzhou's position in the world trade system was higher than that in the Southern Song Dynasty, and it was still one of the world's central cities at that time.