Apart from the emperor, the richest people are a few famous officials in history, greedy and wealthy businessmen.
200 1 Asian wall street journal made a statistical selection: the 50 richest people in the world in the past 1000. Among them, Sultans Of Brunei's Sultan Hazihashan Bounce, who is worth more than $36 billion, and Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, are still alive.
Of the 50 people selected, 6 are from China, and their appearance spans 800 years. They are Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, He Shen, eunuch Liu Jin, Qing Dynasty businessman Wu Bingjian and Song Ziwen. The Asian Wall Street Journal also said that if the occupation column is "conqueror" and the source of wealth column is "plunder", Genghis Khan can be called "the richest man in the world". At that time, the Mongols laid130 thousand square kilometers of land.
After Liu Jin, the eunuch of Ming Wuzong, was executed, 3,360 kilograms of gold and 7.25 million kilograms of silver were found from his home. At the end of the Ming dynasty, the state treasury had only 2 million Jin of silver.
The gentry of the Qing Dynasty were found to have embezzled 220 million taels of silver.
In 1930s, Song Ziwen was appointed as the finance minister immediately after he returned to China. Since his sister Song Meiling married Chiang Kai-shek, Song Ziwen became more important and became the main channel for China to negotiate with the United States at that time. It is said that in the 1940s, Song Ziwen was probably the richest man in the world.
Wu Bingjian is a thirteen-line comprador. He inherited the silk porcelain business that only a few people were allowed to run at that time, and was the richest man in the world in the middle of the19th century. The wealth accumulated by the Wu family is even more amazing. According to their own estimation in 1834, their wealth has reached 26 million silver dollars (equivalent to about 5 billion yuan today), making them the richest man in the world in the eyes of foreigners. The Wu family's good house built on the bank of the Pearl River is said to be comparable to the Grand View Garden in A Dream of Red Mansions. But after the Opium War, the Wu family soon declined.
Some people nominated Xiao Shenyang, thinking that Xiao Shenyang is also one of the richest people in history. Xiao Shenyang is indeed the king of corruption, but how greedy he is is a topic worth discussing.
Most people are familiar with the legends of "800 million taels of silver" and "Little Shenyang fell off his horse in Jiaqing and had enough to eat", so did he really embezzle hundreds of millions of taels of silver? The conclusion is negative.
The wealth of small Shenyang must be said to be hundreds of millions of taels of silver. This number is incredible. At that time, Jin Yong, the eleventh son of Qianlong, was richer than all the palaces, and his wealth was only 802,000, which caused Jin Yong's panic, for fear that his brother would be suspicious because he was too rich. The wealth of small Shenyang is even 1000 times more than this, and there are rumors that "it is equivalent to the income of the court for 20 years (there are also ten or twelve years, etc.). )".
Now, let's analyze in detail whether it is possible for small Shenyang to accumulate so much property.
Xiao Shenyang was born in a middle-class military attache family. He is not a wealthy family, nor does he have strong savings. Moreover, he has been an official for more than 20 years. At the beginning, he was not a college student, nor a minister of military affairs, nor was he a first-class public. Even if he has been a university student, military minister, first-class public official and other senior officials for more than 20 years, his annual salary is only about 2000 liang. During the 23 years from the rise of Qianlong (1776) to the death of Jiaqing (1799), the accumulated salary was only 452,000 silver, not including him. Of course, he is an old hand in corruption and has a lot of savings in all kinds of financial resources used for bribery and corruption. However, according to the convention, a person's income can't be equal to more than half of a country's annual fiscal revenue (especially in a huge empire like China). Because social productive forces could only develop to that level at that time. It is impossible for feudal countries to increase the surplus labor force squeezed from the broad masses of working people by 50% to reach the limit of doubling. Besides, at that time, Xiao Shenyang was not the only greedy person. Corruption prevailed throughout the Qing dynasty, and no official was greedy. If we follow his wealth ratio, the broad masses of the people will no longer be able to maintain production and society will collapse immediately. In fact, the crisis in the Qing dynasty was not so serious at that time, but the beginning of its climax and decline, not the total collapse of society.
In addition, the widely circulated Criminal Files of Little Shenyang (stored in the First Historical Archives of China, where did the legend of "820 million yuan" come from) is actually a very problematic thing. Among them, there are many defects, such as fonts, words, titles and the amount of property.
Formally, 1 is different from other files kept by China No.1 Historical Archives. Its contents include both the imperial edict of Emperor Jiaqing and a copy of the production list from the perspective of imperial system. There are 20 crimes committed by Xiao Shenyang, as well as poems by him and his little wife, which are a veritable hodgepodge. Some of Jiaqing's imperial edicts can't be found in other files and official books, and I don't know where they originated. In a word, it's more like a miscellaneous collection of anecdotes copied by the people.
2. "The whole case" is not the original file. In the whole case file, the word "Ning" is the last word, which shows that it is taboo, indicating that it did not appear until the Daoguang period.
3. The division of labor recorded in the whole case is inconsistent with that recorded in the case file.
What happened in the whole case? Keywords that may involve harmful information are not allowed to be published. Eleven keywords that may involve harmful information are not allowed to be published. Seven titles, Mr. Mian, Mr. Wang and so on, are completely different from ordinary official documents.
Compared with the same imperial edict in A Record of the Whole Case, most of Jiaqing's imperial edicts are quite different, with typos, changes and additions everywhere, which are not serious. Mistakes abound, such as writing Jing as a conclusion, writing guilt as guilt, writing Fu as if, writing cronies as a party, and so on.
6. The copy of the property list recorded in the whole case is inconsistent with the figures contained in the original file. First of all, the number of houses is inconsistent. Secondly, the number of small Shenyang houses in Beijing recorded in the "whole case" does not match the number of official files. The imperial edict of Emperor Jiaqing quoted in the whole case said that 25 pieces of 106 in He Shen's property were converted into silver "233895 162", and the value of gold, silver, jade and antiques was about100000 yuan. However, these two vital items cannot be found in official archives and official history. Since the late Qing Dynasty, Xue Fucheng, Zhicheng Deng and others have long questioned: "The list of confiscated declared property handed down from ancient times is not based on the small bills submitted to the house at that time."
In addition, the capital of the small Shenyang family-run pawnshop is not consistent with that of the general pawnshop. The whole case records that "there are 75 pawnbrokers in total, (the estimated amount of money is 402,000 yuan), and the original file records that" this money bank opened 12 pawnbrokers and their families ... opened eight pawnbrokers, ... with funds of more than 100,000 yuan. ...
It is doubtful that most of the pawnbrokers listed in the whole case are as high as 300 thousand to 400 thousand, while some are around 654.38 million. During the Ganjia period, the capital of pawn shops in the capital area was generally less than this amount. Twenty-three thousand taels of silver was enough to open a pawnshop, and fifty-two thousand six thousand taels was already a big pawnshop at that time. In any case, it is impossible to reach three or four hundred and two thousand. Too high cost is not conducive to business (capital backlog), but also causes waste, which violates financial laws, so small Shenyang will not operate at a loss.
To sum up, the property of small Shenyang will not reach as much as 120 million silver, but should be around 120 million silver. This figure is more credible. Much less than the legendary 820 million; However, even if it is still staggering, it can still be placed in the position of the first corrupt official in history. Originated from network sharing. . . . . .