In this era, because of Zhang Juzheng's whip reform, all the taxes collected by the imperial court were converted into silver, including labor, which could be converted into silver to measure. As a result, silver became the universal currency. However, in the specific daily trading of ordinary people, most of them are mainly copper coins.

However, there are many types of copper coins, some minted by the government and some secretly minted by private individuals; There are emperors of different periods minted and so on. These copper coins, even if they are minted by the government, have different fineness, that is, different copper content, thus forming complex types of copper coins on the market. And different types of copper coins, the purchasing power is actually different. This is very inconvenient for ordinary people to buy and sell in their daily lives.

As for silver, it is generally used for tax silver, as well as in commercial transactions and larger transactions. Silver, like physical money, is inevitably fine, and like copper coins, it is inconvenient to use, and even worse, special scissors and scales are required to measure its weight and determine its value.

In addition, Emperor Chongzhen remembered that it was not unreasonable to say that the Ming Dynasty died in silver and died in a whip method of Zhang Juzheng from a paper summarized by later generations.

Generally speaking, with the progress of society and the abundance of total materials, the corresponding currency must be increased. For example, if the goods are increased by ten, then the currency must also be increased to ten yuan, so that one currency can be used to buy one goods and maintain a normal exchange relationship.

But if the currency does not increase accordingly, that piece of currency is equivalent to buying ten goods (this purchase can also be understood as a correspondence), which is equivalent to a tenfold increase in the value of the currency, which is problematic, that is, the appreciation of the currency.

And at the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was this problem of currency appreciation!

Because the silver mines of the Ming Dynasty, even including the copper mines, are all scarce, and after more than two hundred years of development, the Ming Dynasty has actually been quite prosperous, and the total amount of goods in the society has increased many times compared with the beginning of the founding of the country.

Originally, the Ming Dynasty exported goods to European countries and Japanese countries through foreign trade, in exchange for a lot of silver. It can be said that at that time, the world's silver was flowing into the Ming Dynasty, so that the currency of the Ming Dynasty could barely keep up with the increase in goods, and there was no serious imbalance between goods and currency.

However, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Japanese began to close the country and prohibit trading with the outside world, which reduced the outflow of silver. And Europe began the Thirty Years' War, and the countries began to fight to the death, and military spending surged, so that the outflow of silver was restricted.

Under these two reasons, the inflow of silver into the Ming Dynasty decreased sharply, which immediately caused an imbalance in the proportion of Ming goods and silver.

In addition, there is also a traditional reason, that is, the Ming gentry, including the common people, like to hide the silver they earn in the cellar, and do not use it in the market. As a result, the imbalance in the ratio of goods to silver has been exacerbated. As for the imbalance in the amount of silver between regions, for example, there is more silver in the south of the Yangtze River and less silver in the northwest.

As a result, a serious problem arises.

For example, the imperial court stipulated that one or two taels of silver would be taxed per acre of land. In the past, peasants could exchange half of their grain for one tael of silver, and then pay taxes, and they could keep half of their grain. But now, because of the serious imbalance in the ratio of goods to silver, the peasants who sold half of their grain could not be exchanged for one or two pieces of silver, so they could only continue to sell grain to make up enough silver to pay taxes.

So, there was a tragedy.

Where the imbalance between goods and silver becomes, that is, where silver is scarcer, it is possible for the peasants to sell all their grain for a tael of silver that is not enough to pay the tax. Then, either sell other things to make up for it, and then you are still hungry, or you don't farm and flee from your hometown to escape the land. Either way, it would cause social unrest.

In this case, the wind and rain are still smooth, assuming that the grain yield per mu is not reduced, and there is no situation in which corrupt officials and corrupt officials make things difficult for them. Just because there is a change in the economic relationship between money and land, it can cause social unrest.

If we add the Xiaoice River period at the end of the Ming Dynasty and the rotten rule problem at the end of the Ming Dynasty, it will even aggravate the burden on the peasants, and they will not be able to survive at all, and the chaos at the end of the Ming Dynasty will inevitably start from the northwest.

Of course, in this era, no one has yet realized that the relationship between currency alone has seriously affected the social stability of the Ming Dynasty. Compared with this consequence, the inconvenience of using physical money is secondary.

Therefore, Emperor Chongzhen felt that banks must be established and paper money must be issued, which is one of the most important means of Zhongxing Daming.

Now, taking advantage of the opportunity of the palace to cut manpower, he feels that he can slowly build the bank, and he doesn't need to do it in one step, but slowly start to do it in this direction.

As an emperor, you have a very big advantage, and you can use a lot of resources.

First, it is necessary to print banknotes that are difficult to counterfeit. The paper that was paid as a tribute to the royal palace was one of the best and could be used to print banknotes.

Second, the raid of the Imperial Horse Supervisor and the Jinyi Guard obtained a lot of shops and land that could be used to open banks. Or it was stipulated that all shops should be bought and sold with royal banknotes.

Thirdly, this kind of banknote can be used for the money issued by the palace, including the palace maids, the salaries of the royal family and the army under the royal horse supervisor, etc. After sending it, if you feel uneasy, you can go to the bank and exchange it for physical currency, such as silver and copper coins.

Anyway, at the beginning, it was just to establish the credibility of the banknotes issued by the palace, and to print as many banknotes as they wanted, all of which were one-to-one relationships, and the exchange was released. Let everyone on the side of Jingshi have an impression. It doesn't matter if you get the banknote, you can exchange it back for physical money at any time, so you can trust the banknote.

As long as there is confidence in paper money, then it will start to circulate, and this is the most basic prototype for the establishment of a central bank.

Everything is difficult at the beginning, especially in the Ming Dynasty, the credibility of the Ming treasure banknotes has been corrupted, which has increased the difficulty, but Emperor Chongzhen believes that as long as he continues to do it step by step, he will eventually be able to restore the credibility of the banknotes.

Thinking about these things, Emperor Chongzhen felt that this thing had to be done immediately. In the future, all money will have to be paid out in this situation, which can speed up the establishment of the credibility of paper money.

But now the first step is to find banknotes that can be printed that are difficult to imitate. At this time, the power of the emperor was manifested again. A will go down, let the outer court and the factory guard go to find talents in this area. Of course, he didn't explicitly say that he wanted to print banknotes, only that he wanted to print something unique and difficult for others to imitate.

When Emperor Chongzhen was excitedly busy with this matter, the commander of the Manchu army, the general Dolgon of Mukden, was depressed.