This New Year, Han Laoshan felt both deeply satisfied and filled with tremendous “dissatisfaction.”
Because in the new year, he would no longer be a “member of the Han Family.”
After Han Qian returned to Xuzhou, everything continued as usual throughout the entire first month, with only one Prefectural Governor’s decree being issued.
The full text of the Prefectural Governor’s decree consisted of just over a hundred characters: “Xuzhou Prefectural Governor Han Qian hereby proclaims that upon receipt of this decree, all laws regarding slaves and bondservants as lowly persons, treating them equivalent to livestock, regarding the birth and raising of slaves and bondservants as similar to cattle and horses bearing young, and laws regarding reproduction and increase of such persons, shall be abolished. Lowly persons and slaves and bondservants shall immediately be released to commoner status. When master households employ laborers and female servants, wages must be negotiated and agreed upon. If no agreement is reached, they may part ways. There shall be no detention or forced enslavement, nor shall anyone be taken in as such…”
The new Prefectural Governor’s decree was equivalent to directly abolishing the old slave system throughout all of Xuzhou’s territory, forcibly dissolving the existing personal dependency relationships. However, to avoid the impact of this decree being too severe, slaves and bondservants could transition to becoming laborers and female servants employed by their master households. For now, no mandatory standards were established for employment wages, allowing for self-negotiation, but buying and selling people like livestock or maltreating them was strictly forbidden.
Because the four great clans of the Feng, Yang, Xi, and Xiang surnames had previously possessed large numbers of fortified settlement slaves, in reality, before the削藩 suppression campaign fully erupted, the vast majority of these people had already had their personal dependency relationships with the four surnames forcibly dissolved.
During the resettlement process over the past two-plus years, these people were uniformly registered as commoner households and granted certain rations of field land, which removed the greatest obstacle to Xuzhou’s abolition of slavery.
Currently, only Han Qian himself could be said to be the last remaining major slave owner and major landlord aristocrat within Xuzhou’s borders.
Counting from the earliest household troops and retainers brought from Jinling into Xuzhou, counting those from Yang Pool Fortified Settlement who followed Yang Qin and others in submitting and were registered under the Han family name, counting the retainers continuously incorporated after the Jingxiang campaign and the slaves and bondservants bestowed as rewards, as well as the large numbers of slaves and bondservants bestowed in one go after the削藩 suppression campaign, Han Qian and his father possessed a total of over six hundred households of household troops, retainers, slaves and bondservants in Xuzhou—over four thousand people, accounting for more than two percent of Xuzhou’s total population.
Adding the twenty-six hundred members of the Xi clan who had been redeemed and brought back to Xuzhou in stages, the household troops, retainers, slaves and bondservants registered under the Han family household reached over one thousand households—nearly seven thousand people, accounting for thirty-five per thousand of Xuzhou’s total population.
After issuing the Prefectural Governor’s decree, Han Qian directly dissolved the master-servant dependency relationships with these retainers and their families, uniformly registering them as commoner households.
Additionally, there were the over four thousand slaves and bondservants from the Feng clan’s westward migration, whose personal dependency relationships with the Feng clan were also formally dissolved all at once—this portion of slaves and bondservants had actually already been resettled during the development of Longya (Linjiang) County, and were in reality already residents registered to Longya County. This time was merely formal legal recognition of that fact.
And from this point forward, Xuzhou’s household registration would not only eliminate the distinction between primary and guest residents, but would also completely eliminate the distinction between commoner and lowly status.
In other words, in the new year, Han Mansion’s chief steward Han Laoshan would no longer be a “member of the Han family.”
However, Han Laoshan was not simply being kicked out of the “Han family” just like that.
Over these years, Han Qian merged all the enterprises established in Xuzhou that belonged to the Han family’s private property—two textile manufacturing yards, two shipbuilding yards, three plantations, the foundry, two coal and iron mines, one weapons and armor workshop, and one precision component casting workshop—all under the Manufacturing Bureau, with total capital of one million shares at one cash coin per share. He also raised new capital of two hundred thousand shares at one cash coin per share to establish the Xuzhou Official Money Bureau.
When Han Qian kicked Han Laoshan out of the “Han family,” besides gifting him a residence at Jiming Fortified Settlement for his retirement, he also gave him one thousand shares of Manufacturing Bureau capital and one hundred shares of Xuzhou Official Money Bureau capital as retirement resources, yet Han Laoshan’s heart was still dissatisfied.
Feng Liao, Gao Shao, Feng Xuan, and others from the first group—approximately five hundred-plus people—crossed Snow Peak Mountain on horseback on the sixth day of the second month and arrived within Xuzhou’s borders. At this time, Yang Qin and Feng Yi were also leading the fleet, carrying over two thousand elderly and young into Chenzhou’s territory, while over four thousand more people were crossing the Luoxiao Mountains, traveling through Yuanzhou’s territory. They would need at least another month to reach Xuzhou.
Not being well-trained elite soldiers, even with the elderly and children excluded, a force of four thousand people, even if they could purchase supplies along the way, covering over one thousand li of overland route in one month was already quite good.
The first group of forces to reach Xuzhou primarily entered Qianyang City to rest and reorganize for a period. Feng Liao, Gao Shao, Feng Xuan, Zhou Chu, Lin Haizheng, Chen Jitang, Ji Xiyao, Zhao Qi, Lin Zongjing, Xi Fa’er and others went directly to Jiming Fortified Settlement to meet with Han Qian.
Han Laoshan caught hold of Feng Liao and, without even letting him catch his breath, pulled him into a corner to complain: “Has Lord Feng heard about the Prefectural Governor’s decree that the Young Master issued? Just think about me, Han Laoshan—I’ve worked hard serving at the Old Master’s side for a lifetime. Now I’m half-buried in the earth, my eyes are dim, my mind isn’t sharp anymore, I’m useless and can’t help the Young Master with anything, nor do I have the energy to look after the Young Master’s son. But at the very least, couldn’t he leave me a small plot of land beside the Old Master’s grave? The Young Master now grants me commoner household status—what use is that? Could it be that I, Han Laoshan, at seventy or eighty years old, can still take the imperial examination to become a scholar, or go to the battlefield to earn military merit and exchange it for an official position?”
Because the current era’s exploitation of poor commoners was extremely heavy, in order to escape the burdensome taxes and levies, there were even quite a few landless poor people willing to join large households as slaves and bondservants. At least they wouldn’t have to bear poll taxes and corvée labor, and could barely scrape by and survive.
As for commoners and lowly persons not intermarrying, and descendants for generations eternally being lowly persons unable to become officials—for poor people struggling on the survival line, fighting for every mouthful of food, how could they possibly care about such things?
Han Laoshan had adopted his nephew Han Dong under his name, so he had a descendant to care for him in old age and see him to his final rest. But being a “slave and bondservant” to Han Qian wouldn’t truly cause him any loss. In Xuzhou he could still manage his share of affairs just the same. Whether the old system was abolished or not really made no difference.
Apart from the emotional reluctance at having his relationship with the Han family severed, Han Laoshan’s main unwillingness was in watching Han Qian dismantle such an enormous family estate.
This was simply “squandering the family fortune”!
Feng Liao didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. No matter how skilled his eloquence, it was very difficult to explain clearly to Han Laoshan, whose mind was full of old ways of thinking, all the intricacies involved here.
When the Old Master Han Daoxun was alive, he had first implemented new policies in Xuzhou such as land measure reform and merging guest and native household registrations, which had only just begun to show results. But when Han Qian went to Jinling and recruited slaves and bondservants into military service, promising them land grants, he had actually already embarked on this road of no return that completely separated from aristocratic families and powerful clans.
Returning to Xuzhou to continue all of this, completely abolishing the old slave system was an inevitable choice.
On one hand, Han Qian had to continue carrying the banner he himself had raised.
On the other hand, if the old system wasn’t abolished, what about the large group of old subordinates who had followed Han Qian and rendered meritorious service—these people who this time had loyally abandoned the military merit rewards they could have obtained after taking Jinling to follow Han Qian back to Xuzhou? Should Han Qian reward them with land, or reward them with slaves, bondservants, and household troops, letting them grow into newly emerging aristocratic families and powerful clans in Xuzhou?
If that really happened, with Xuzhou’s severely insufficient population resources, where would the large labor force needed to develop manufacturing come from?
To ensure possession of sufficient freely employable labor, not only must the old system be abolished, but Xuzhou would also, on the foundation of the current relatively open social customs, further protect women’s rights. After all, the cotton textile manufacturing that currently created the greatest profits for Xuzhou employed over ninety percent female workers.
And once the old system was followed, with large numbers of elite veteran soldiers all reduced to private troops and retainers of newly emerging aristocratic families and powerful clans, how could Xuzhou continue to implement the recruitment system to solve the legacy problems of the private troops and retainer system?
By completely abolishing the old system of slaves and lowly persons, and releasing to freedom the over one thousand households of retainers and slaves and bondservants under his personal name, Han Qian’s authority in Xuzhou would not be weakened—it could even be further strengthened.
The individual retainers loyal to Han Qian, although their direct personal dependency was dissolved, would see most of their elite members either incorporated into Xuzhou’s military and administrative system or incorporated into the Manufacturing Bureau and Official Money Bureau, and would continue to serve Han Qian through these two systems.
More importantly, these elite members, having rendered distinguished service, were already supposed to be converted from lowly to commoner status and granted official positions. Moreover, doing this would also make Han Qian’s exercise of power in Xuzhou more efficient and thorough.
For rewarding the old meritorious subordinates, besides promising positions within the two systems, Han Qian handled everything else through distributing Manufacturing Bureau and Official Money Bureau capital shares. He no longer rewarded money, silk, or land in the traditional manner, much less rewarded slaves and bondservants.
Xuzhou currently had a total cultivable land area of only two million mu.
Although in the early period of rewarding land, each person might only symbolically receive three to five hundred mu, and the total amount wouldn’t occupy too large a portion of Xuzhou’s total cultivated land, once land became the standard and symbol of the new aristocracy’s status and identity, Han Qian couldn’t prevent everyone from having the impulse and pursuit of annexing and purchasing land.
Han Laoshan didn’t understand these principles. He only felt that Han Qian dissolving such an enormous family estate was truly squandering the family fortune.
Of course, there were also many old subordinates who didn’t understand, but the vast majority of old subordinates were newly risen from the bottom. Even Lin Haizheng, Gao Shao, Tian Cheng and others hadn’t lived the good life for very long. This new policy basically made them all beneficiaries.
The vast majority of people, apart from having strong reluctance about emotionally “severing” their relationship with the Han family, had no other resistant emotions.
If they delayed three to five years and waited for newly emerging aristocratic families and powerful clans to rise in Xuzhou before implementing such new systems, there would likely be more or less unpredictable negative impacts.
During the return journey to Xuzhou, Feng Liao had already learned the content of the new Prefectural Governor’s decree Han Qian had issued. Although it was only just over a hundred characters, what it involved in every aspect could be said to touch every corner of Xuzhou.
Feng Liao, together with Gao Shao, Lin Haizheng, Zhou Chu, Feng Xuan, Chen Jitang, Ji Xiyao, Zhao Qi and others, had also fully discussed the new policy decree during the journey.
Of course, whether what they had in mind was consistent with Han Qian’s original intent, as well as how to more deeply advance the new policies going forward, and how Xuzhou’s military and administrative system should undergo new adjustments, could only be known after meeting with Han Qian.
Feng Liao also patiently listened to Han Laoshan vent his complaints. After Han Laoshan’s emotions had settled somewhat and he walked away quite satisfied, Feng Liao hurried over to pay his respects to Han Qian.