page_title: Qing dynasty
section_title: Silver
hierarchical_section_title: Qing dynasty / Economy / Silver
caption_attribution_description: Pilgrim flask, porcelain with underglaze blue and iron-red decoration . Qing dynasty, Qianlong period (1736-1795). Signature at the bottom reads translated Da Qing Qianlong nian zhi. Object was bought by the Imperial German envoy Max von Brandt (1835-1920) in Beijing. At Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin-Dahlem.
context_page_description: The Qing dynasty, officially the Great Qing or commonly known as China, was the last imperial dynasty of China. It was established in 1636, and ruled China proper from 1644 to 1912. It was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The multiethnic Qing empire lasted for almost three centuries and formed the territorial base for modern China. It was the fourth largest empire in world history in terms of territorial size.
  The dynasty was founded by the Manchu Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria. In the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, originally a Ming vassal, began organizing "Banners" which were military-social units that included Manchu, Han, and Mongol elements. Nurhaci united Manchu clans and officially proclaimed the Later Jin dynasty in 1616. His son Hong Taiji began driving Ming forces out of the Liaodong Peninsula and declared a new dynasty, the Qing, in 1636. As Ming control disintegrated, peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng conquered the capital Beijing in 1644. Ming general Wu Sangui refused to serve them, but opened the Shanhai Pass to the Banner Armies led by the regent Prince Dorgon, who defeated the rebels and seized the capital.
context_section_description: Perhaps the most important factor in the development of the second commercial revolution was the mass influx of silver that entered into the country from foreign trade. After the Spanish conquered the Philippines in the 1570s they mined for silver around the New World, greatly expanding the circulating supply of silver. Foreign trade stimulated the ubiquity of the silver standard, after the re-opening of the southeast coast, which had been closed in the late 17th century, foreign trade was quickly re-established, and was expanding at 4% per annum throughout the latter part of the 18th century. China continued to export tea, silk and manufactures, creating a large, favorable trade balance with the West. The resulting inflow of silver expanded the money supply, facilitating the growth of competitive and stable markets. During the mid-Ming China had gradually shifted to silver as the standard currency for large scale transactions and by the late Kangxi reign the assessment and collection of the land tax was done in silver. By standardizing the collection of the land tax in silver, landlords followed suit and began only accepting rent payments in silver rather than in crops themselves, which in turn incentivized farmers to produce crops for sale in local and national markets rather than for their own personal consumption or barter. Unlike the copper coins, qian or cash, used mainly for smaller peasant transactions, silver was not properly minted into a coin but rather was traded in designated units of weight: the liang or tael, which equaled roughly 1.3 ounces of silver. Since it was never properly minted, a third-party had to be brought in to assess the weight and purity of the silver, resulting in an extra "meltage fee" added on to the price of transaction. Furthermore, since the "meltage fee" was unregulated until the reign of the Yongzheng emperor it was the source of much corruption at each level of the bureaucracy. The Yongzheng emperor cracked down on the corrupt "meltage fees," legalizing and regulating them so that they could be collected as a tax, "returning meltage fees to the public coffer." From this newly increased public coffer, the Yongzheng emperor increased the salaries of the officials who collected them, further legitimizing silver as the standard currency of the Qing economy.
caption: Pilgrim flask, porcelain with underglaze blue and iron-red decoration. Qing dynasty, Qianlong period in the 18th century
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