Chapter 518: Border Fortress Infrastructure

Corvée labor, since the Qin and Han dynasties, has been a form of unpaid labor that the authorities forced commoners to perform. This included manual labor, miscellaneous service, military labor, and so on. In essence, corvée labor was also a type of tax.

Unlike taxes paid in gold, silver, or goods, when the authorities imposed corvée labor, what they collected was the people's labor power.

In ancient times, corvée labor was one of the most important powers of the authorities, equal to taxes in gold and silver. Throughout the dynasties, corvée was numerous and harshly strict; by the end of a dynasty, it would evolve into the fuse that ignited the phosphorus-laden rebellion of the common people.

From the rough labor of carrying sedan chairs and sweeping at the yamen, to repairing bridges, paving roads, clearing river channels in winter, and even going to the border fortresses to fight, deliver grain, and carry loads — all of this was conscripted for free by the authorities relying on the corvée system. Often, those serving the labor had to bring their own dry rations and straw sandals, making them the absolute Five-Copper-Coin Party.

For a feudal dynasty, corvée labor was the basic condition for maintaining the operation of the authorities. Without tax revenue, the authorities would go bankrupt; without corvée labor, the authorities likewise could not last three days.

In short, any act where the authorities conscript the people to expend labor power without paying remuneration can be classified as corvée labor.

Even in later generations, during the early nation-building period with low productivity, the government would likewise mobilize the populace for infrastructure construction — regardless of the starting point or the slogans shouted, this was corvée labor in a different form.

To put it bluntly, it was still poverty: no money, yet wanting to construct things, so this was the only way.

However, this social management model of corvée labor was necessarily existent in eras of low human productivity, because the authorities could not collect enough currency from the people to support public services.

In ancient society, the economy and finance were underdeveloped; the authorities had no money-printing machines, and the people had no WeChat transfers or credit currency. In fact, the vast majority of farming households only ever had a few copper coins on hand year-round, so the authorities could only directly collect labor power to offset taxes.

In fact, since ancient times, there had been people who paid money to hire others to "serve as substitutes" for labor, but this practice mostly occurred among urban residents and rural landlords, and was not mainstream before the Ming dynasty.

What truly ended corvée labor as a social form was the improvement of human productivity.

The spread of industrialization turned heaven and earth upside down, changing everything. As early as 1937, during the Great Depression in America, Roosevelt began hiring people to dig pits... one group dug pits, and another group filled them in.

Look at that: the commodity wealth gushing out from machines could no longer be absorbed by society, requiring the government to pay people to dig and fill pits just to get the stagnant economy flowing.

The above, including the milk poured into the Mississippi River, are all signs of the industrial society's reversal — the government began trying every means to give people money and create job opportunities; free corvée labor was no more, because only by letting working people obtain wealth would they dare to consume the endless industrial goods, allowing the social economy to function and life to barely continue.

And this time, the "New Version Corvée of the New Social Experiment Project" promoted in Zengcheng County by Ding Liqiu, the number one figure of the Guangzhou Special District, was a hybrid of history and later generations — a freak.

In the early Ming dynasty, corvée labor was divided into three types: first, Lijia Labor; second, Equalized Labor; third, Miscellaneous Labor.

Lijia Labor was community work, where those serving usually worked right in their local neighborhood. Equalized Labor was the authorities' regular service, rotated among everyone, encompassing all kinds of tasks requiring travel far from home. The remaining Miscellaneous Labor was temporary in nature, used to respond to sudden events.

These forms of corvée labor were implemented until the mid-Ming period, when changes occurred.

First, as external colonizers arrived in droves with silver coins produced in Mexico, the Ming Empire naturally experienced a certain degree of inflation, which objectively added a certain amount of circulating currency to the economic environment.

Next came the appearance of the great premier of a generation, Zhang Juzheng: the Single Whip Law.

The Single Whip Law stipulated: the land tax, corvée labor, and other miscellaneous levies of each prefecture and county were to be combined into a single item, collected in silver, and paid based on acreage calculation.

The Single Whip Law greatly simplified the tax system, making tax collection convenient. At the same time, it made it difficult for local officials to cheat, thereby increasing the imperial court's fiscal revenue.

After the Single Whip Law, the monetization of taxes and corvée became the norm, and the practice of the people paying "labor silver" to substitute for conscription was widely promoted throughout the Great Ming.

Although after Zhang Juzheng's death, the Single Whip Law encountered frenzied resistance from vested interest groups and was ultimately destroyed and overturned, some provisions naturally remained, among them the corvée labor conversion.

However, this time, after Comrade Ding Liqiu arrived in Zengcheng County, he was about to reverse the course of history: restore the old system, conscript corvée labor, and mobilize personnel.

At the end of December 1630 in the solar calendar, on a day approaching the Laba Festival in the lunar calendar, Zengcheng County issued a formal announcement to the entire county's populace, signaling a difficult year-end: the corvée labor for the fourth year of Chongzhen was to be conscripted in advance.

After the Single Whip Law, to alleviate the uneven burden among households across neighborhoods, the unit for assessing labor silver was expanded from the Lijia to the prefecture and county. And this time, the order to conscript corvée labor in Zengcheng County was precisely issued by the County Yamen.

Of course, although the order was ostensibly issued by the County Yamen, in reality it was orchestrated and pushed by Ding Liqiu. Having a deep impression of Ding Liqiu's background and the Cao Zong behind him, Gu Tai, the Gu County Magistrate — this sesame-seed official — had no capability to resist in this regard.

In the late Ming, officialdom was corrupt and rife with abuses. After the imposition of the "Three Levies," those above acted and those below imitated; beyond the "Three Levies," in some places, duck levies, ox levies, and rice-worm levies also openly appeared. As for collecting future years' taxes in advance, that was even more commonplace and no longer considered news.

Therefore, the Zengcheng County Office's advance conscription of next year's corvée labor did not cause much of a stir. The crux of the matter was that this time, the official document stated clearly: the labor silver was doubled.

After this official document was issued, a few households rejoiced, while ten thousand were plunged into sorrow.

The doubling of labor silver probably meant nothing to the wealthy — merely a matter of one fewer meal at a restaurant. However, for the vast number of impoverished farming households struggling on the brink of bankruptcy, this clause was a death sentence.

But sorry, that was exactly the effect that Great Lord Ding Liqiu wanted — what were those gaunt, emaciated poor families doing clinging to those two acres of land? Wouldn't it be better to come serve this Great Lord's corvée, and be taken to new lands to become farm owners?

Thus, in the fourth year of Chongzhen after the new year, the corvée labor pushed behind the scenes by the Transmigrators was formally implemented in the Zengcheng region: large numbers of impoverished farmers who could not pay the labor silver were first conscripted to Xiancheng by the official Great Ming corvée system, then transported to Huangpu Military Port, and then put on ships to Taiwan to "construct the border fortress."

Yes, according to the wording in the memorial recently submitted to the imperial court by Cao Zong, Taiwan was now the border fortress of the Great Ming, requiring the court to send people to build some city towers and Dun Tai, and perhaps construct a Changcheng or the like "to prepare against external threats."

With so many infrastructure projects, of course the Great Ming had to send people over — no problem there.