A special thank you to my patrons:
—Jacob Mooe, kevin Williams, Jose Sierra, Archer, Acedia, kurtis newman, Little Sand, Kyle.S406, Alin Kadas, sediaz, Flavio Rodrigo.
You can read 50 chapters ahead of everyone on p@treon.
P@TREON - [email protected]/lessaservantofcosmos
(just replace the "@" with "a")
ps: Please support me on P@treon. I can really use your help!
————————————————————
Though the candlelight was somewhat dim, a cold, glittering gleam still shimmered across every plate of armor. What stood displayed within the hall was none other than the full suit of heavy armor Fei Qian employed for his long-hafted saber troops.
Cui Hou hesitated, his words halting and stumbling: "My lord... if we are to sell this armor... this... I fear..."
The reason for Cui Hou's hesitation was that every local gentry clan, so long as it was of any significant size, possessed its own blacksmiths. Apart from forging farming tools, they also produced weapons and armor needed for their manors. Moreover, items like armor typically cost tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of cash. A suit of full-body heavy armor such as this, as excellent as it was, came at an equally exorbitant price—at least five or six hundred thousand as a starting point. Not every gentry clan was willing to make such a purchase. There was no helping it. In the minds of most people today, a man given a spearhead was already a soldier. Those willing to outfit their troops with a set of armor like this were truly few and far between.
Fei Qian chuckled and walked over to stand before the armor. "This is merely... a prototype. Of course, if someone wishes to buy it, they may—eight hundred thousand cash for one set. But what I intend to speak of is not the armor itself, rather..." Fei Qian rapped his knuckles against the iron plates of the armor and said, offhandedly, "We shall say that we have discovered an iron mine and require goods and materials to ensure the needs of opening the mine." Bringing out this suit of armor was equivalent to implying that they had iron ingots to spare, enough to fashion entire sets of full-body armor.
Cui Hou shot to his feet in an instant, his eyes blazing. His eyes, now widened to the size of soybeans, he asked in a hushed voice, "My lord... is that true?"
Fei Qian, his expression hovering somewhere between a smile and seriousness, replied, "What do you think, Yongyuan?"
The Han dynasty did not prohibit weapons and armor, but it did forbid private iron mining. Such a venture—one that yielded immense returns from a single investment—was not permitted for private exploitation. Yet by now, these regulations were practically a dead letter. Wherever iron ore existed across the land, it was being surreptitiously mined.
"That being the case, I suppose there is none after all..." Cui Hou felt a trace of disappointment. In the Han dynasty, an iron mine was worth even more than a gold mine. The entire Xiongnu people had been utterly crushed by the Han precisely because the Han wielded iron tools that were a full developmental cycle ahead. And at present, practically everything required iron—not just armor and weapons, but farming implements and daily necessities as well. Thus, every single iron ingot was a hot-selling commodity in high demand; there was never any worry about finding a market.
Cui Hou began to grasp what Fei Qian was driving at. Use the iron mine as a tantalizing lure. And an iron mine was naturally something that could only be spoken of verbally, never committed to paper—this, everyone understood. Thus, the agreement would simply state how many goods were lent and how many iron ingots would be repaid in the end. Breach of contract would then be converted into a sum of money.
But what Cui Hou did not understand was this: even if, in the end, no iron ingots were delivered, they would still effectively be paying out a considerable amount in interest. How could Fei Qian be so confident that, when the time came, they would surely be able to make even more money? Yet seeing Fei Qian's expression of complete assurance, Cui Hou ultimately did not ask. He chose, once again, to place his trust in him. After all, the bulk of his own family fortune had been amassed largely by relying upon Fei Qian; it stood to reason that Fei Qian would not treat this as a frivolous game.
Fei Qian escorted Cui Hou out of the hall, then turned and walked back inside alone.
There probably was an iron mine; it was just that, for the moment, they did not have one yet. This region of Bingzhou held a variety of mineral resources, exceedingly abundant—coal, in particular... But even if they did have an iron mine, Fei Qian still intended to repay these people in coin. This was because, at the end of every dynasty, runaway inflation always erupted.
Runaway inflation was the best, the most brutal, and also the final method by which those in power harvested those beneath them. Since the whole structure was about to collapse anyway, the thinking went, why not grab a fortune and flee? Conversely, moderate inflation... well, ahem...
The paper currency of later ages operated on a credit-based economic model—a vastly complex macro-system of monetary and credit circulation. Printing additional paper money did not necessarily lead inexorably to inflation; many factors were involved, and only specialists could truly comprehend it. The Han dynasty's economy, however, was exceedingly simple—so simple that even a half-baked dabbler like Fei Qian could understand it.
In fact, as far back as the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, China had already surged ahead of the ancients of the West—the Greeks and the Romans—and begun using copper coinage. Each state had its own distinctive style, until the Former Qin dynasty unified them all into the round-coin-with-square-hole pattern.
Gold and silver were of relatively high value and could not possibly be used by the common people to buy firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea. Thus, gold and silver circulated only among the gentry clans and great merchants, generally involving large-sum transactions of luxury goods. Even when used, it was in the form of silver beans or gold leaves; otherwise, there would be no way to make change. Copper coinage, of lower value, could be utilized in the small-sum retail transactions that governed the common people's food, clothing, shelter, and travel.
The First Emperor of Qin was the first to unify the currency, establishing a gold-and-coin-based monetary system, creating the currency model that Huaxia would follow for thousands of years: "gold" referred to actual gold, while "coin" referred to copper cash. Silver was only incorporated into the monetary system at a much later period. The right to mint copper coins was reclaimed by the government during the Qin dynasty, which uniformly stipulated the weight and form of the coins. At that time, the weight of copper coins was measured in units; one liang was set as twenty-four zhu, and the legal weight of a single copper coin was twelve zhu. Thus, Qin coins were popularly known as "half-liang coins." The half-liang coin was square-holed within and round without—the so-called "Brother Square-Hole."
In the early Han, the imperial court was only responsible for stipulating the weight and form of copper coins; the right to mint was devolved to private hands, and copper coins could be freely cast by private individuals. It was not until the reign of Emperor Wu of Han that the court completely seized the minting prerogative, unifying the casting and issuing of the historically renowned Wuzhu coin. These were also the coins Fei Qian was currently using at this stage.
Fei Qian drew out several copper coins and placed them on the surface of the desk. One coin represented the imperial court. He then picked up another to represent the officials, yet another to represent the merchants, and finally, one last coin to stand for the common people. This was the simplest model of currency circulation in the Han dynasty. The court minted coins and paid them to officials. The officials used the coins to purchase goods from merchants. The merchants, in turn, used the coins to buy from farmers or small-scale handicraft producers. Finally, through the payment of taxes, the coins returned to the hands of the court.
Yet within this tiny cycle, too many factors could cause the entire model to collapse. Metallic currency was no guarantee against inflation. Quite the contrary—because the circulation model in ancient times was excessively simplistic, it was even more susceptible to catastrophic, avalanche-like consequences triggered by a single action.
In truth, the current economy, in Fei Qian's eyes, was already teetering on the brink of collapse. It was simply that very many people—or rather, practically everyone in the Han dynasty—did not understand economics and rarely possessed a macro-level perspective. Therefore, in the eyes of some, money was still believed to be money. But in reality, these people had merely healed their wounds and forgotten the pain. After all, the last bout of runaway inflation had passed nearly two hundred years ago—a span of time somewhat too remote. Moreover, the economic problems they now faced had not been caused by a single year or two, but had accumulated insidiously over the long period of military campaigns against Xiliang and the suppression of the Yellow Turbans.
Wait. Fei Qian suddenly thought of a question—a question that seemed to have been overlooked, even across various forums in later ages, and indeed, one he himself had not considered throughout his long time in the Han dynasty.