“…So, the famous salt banknote method in history appeared.

The court issued salt banknotes, and merchants spent money to buy salt banknotes. The salt banknotes recorded the output of salt and the price that merchants could sell.

However, the good times did not last long, and this salt banknote method soon encountered problems again.

The problem is that the salt bill is over-issued.

With such a treasure that makes money, the court certainly hopes to make more money, the better. Since we want to make more money, we must print more salt money.

However, when there were too many salt banknotes, this system naturally became invalid. Therefore, in the late Northern Song Dynasty, the concept of salt introduction was proposed.

If you propose this system, you must be one of the four thieves, Cai Jing and Cai Daguan!

As a famous treacherous minister in history, and with the image of a demon portrayed in Water Margin, Cai Jing has always been notorious in history, but no matter whether he is a treacherous minister or not, the salt induced system proposed by him is very effective.

From this perspective, he, as the prime minister, did not accomplish anything~”

Yang Yuanshan had a dark face, "Don't talk about those messy things, just talk about the key points~"

"Okay, the salt invoice proposed by Cai Jing was reformed on the previous salt banknotes. Originally, the salt banknotes only indicated the price and quantity of salt, and there was no deadline. In other words, after the salt merchant bought the salt banknotes, he could completely stock up on the goods and control the salt price to a certain extent.

But salt induced is different. After Cai Jing's reform, salt induced is divided into long induced and short induced, long induced external routes, and short induced local routes. The most important thing is that this thing has a term, long induced one year and short induced three months, and the quantity and price of transportation and sales are limited.

Isn’t this the prototype of futures?

You should know that the essence of modern futures trade is actually everyone's expectations of future materials, because some commodities will be produced and sold for a long time, and the price of these things may be different when you produce and sell.

Therefore, modern futures often agree on a price to trade these materials.

The salt banknotes at that time may have different prices when they were bought and sold. From this point of view, they already have the nature of modern futures.

After this salt-inducing system, the sales broke their promises and finally brought generous profits to the country.

According to statistics from some historians, the military expenditure in the early Southern Song Dynasty could be roughly offset by the income from the state selling salt.

So the Song Dynasty was really rich at that time. After the Song Dynasty, it was the Yuan Dynasty. The Mongols basically followed most of the Central Plains systems, especially in this salt-inducing system, and did not make any major changes, and they were almost 100% inherited.

It was not until the Ming Dynasty that this salt induction system began to evolve.

In the early Ming Dynasty, especially during the Hongwu period, the biggest problem of the country was the Northern Yuan Dynasty in the north.

During Zhu Yuanzhang's reign, although he drove the Northern Yuan court back to the northern grasslands, the enemies in the north were still very powerful. Therefore, during Zhu Yuanzhang's reign, he carried out many northern expeditions and fought against the enemies in the north.

Since we were going to fight, food was naturally the top priority. However, at that time, the country had just been established and the north was in war and there was no surplus grain to support the army. The only way was to transfer food from the south.

However, if you adjust food from the south, it costs a lot, and in this process, things like corruption are prone to occur.

Old Zhu Duo is smart. After a moment of thinking, he decided to combine selling salt and transporting grain!

Under Lao Zhu's push, salt merchants wanted to buy salt turtles, so they could no longer use money, but instead used grain. To be precise, they were asked to transport grain to the front line, and how much grain they transported to the front line, and exchanged salt turtles based on this.

This method played a great role in the early Ming Dynasty.

In fact, this method was not first created by Lao Zhu. It appeared in the Song Dynasty. However, because of the corrupt officials of the Song Dynasty, there were too many loopholes in this system. After one set was implemented, the country lost money, so it was later banned.

But Lao Zhu was different at this time. Everyone knows that the Hongwu period was the strictest time in the 5,000-year history of China, and even the method of peeling daylily was used.

Therefore, this system was very useful at that time, which not only guaranteed the country's income, but also transported a large amount of food to the front line at the lowest cost.

But Lao Zhu probably did not expect that this system accelerated the formation of salt-induced futures.

You should know that the transportation was extremely underdeveloped at that time. The merchants transported grain from the south to the north, and then returned from the north, and went to Nanjing to exchange for salt inlets with the certificate of transporting grain, then took the salt inlet to the salt farm to get salt, and then went to the sales ground.

During this period, it will take at least one year or more, and it will be possible for two or three years to go long.

After such a long time, the price of salt fluctuates too much.

In order to improve the operation of this process, people at that time came up with a more practical method - cooperation division of labor!

In this system, there are special grain transport merchants, salt transport merchants and salt sellers, forming a complete industrial chain. Grain transport merchants specialize in grain transport, salt transport merchants resell salt transporters, and salt sellers are specifically responsible for selling salt.

After hundreds of years of development, salt inspiration has already had strong futures attributes and was almost free to trade in the Ming Dynasty. What is the difference between this and our futures today?

In fact, if we continue to develop according to this momentum, the emergence of salt-induced futures may lead to the rise of the germination of capitalism and then deriving into other fields, allowing the Ming Dynasty to first develop a complete futures trading system, and even enter the capitalist society first around the world.

But unfortunately, things did not follow this script to move downwards.

This salt-inducing futures trading system reached Dingfeng during the Hongzhi period of the Ming Dynasty!

However, as the enemy in the north gradually weakened, the wars in the north became less and less, and the country no longer needed to transport grain to the north on a large scale. Moreover, with the advent of the Age of Discovery, a large amount of silver poured into China. Silver gradually became monetized from the middle of the Ming Dynasty. In the past, it used grain for salt to attract, and then returned to exchange silver for salt to attract.

This system has made the entire salt ingest futures trading system more perfect. In Jiangnan, some places specializing in auctioning salt ingest have even appeared, similar to the futures market in the futures market.

At this time, the salt intake was no longer just something used to get salt, but became futures bonds that were officially put into the market and caused price fluctuations due to changes in salt prices.
Chapter completed!