Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1506 Final Chapter Ninety Three Years (Twenty Four)

That is the real despair. It is not the so-called despair of people's wisdom. The despair of the Yan Li school is purely material despair. Seeing the population increase, no matter how you calculate it, you feel that there is not enough land and food. Desperate for not having enough to eat.

Compared with this kind of despair, the so-called lack of wisdom of the people, the so-called lack of wisdom of the crowd, it is like the sorrow of a young girl.

Because, even 50 years ago, Dashun was "revealed" and the people's wisdom was greatly enlightened. They were even more radical than Fage, talking about the empty slogans satirized by Saint-Simon.

Then, those ecological collapse areas, saline-alkali areas, and Yellow River flood areas will immediately be able to live well. At this time, farmers in North Carolina are ridiculed by British gentlemen as "lazy, sunbathing on sunny days, drinking at night, and not being able to eat just a little corn." After feeding the dog, wanting to eat meat, casually go to the grassland by the river to hunt, want to eat fruit and have plenty of berries" life?
The world is material.

Even those European enlighteners who regarded China as an ideal country could not understand the despair of the Dashun elite decades ago.

There is a saying in later generations that China uses 9% of the world's arable land to feed a quarter of the world's population.

Before, the population of Dashun actually accounted for more than one-third of the world, but now it is about two-fifths.

Before Liu Yu engaged in colonial expansion, in fact, the cultivated land in Dashun was not as much as that of later generations.But the population is not a quarter, but a third.

Moreover, Dashun's problem is really special.

For example, Songsu can engage in trade. The so-called "Men farm and women weave, women's work is originally a secondary industry, but gradually becomes the main industry, does not produce rice, and trades with cloth."

But for example, places like Shaanxi, Hunan, Hubei, and Henan.Even if it is easy, what is the price for transporting rice from Siam and then transporting it to Shaanxi and Henan?

It's not that things like commercial transportation and free trade are wrong.Rather, the social consciousness born of social existence in places like Western Europe, where there are many seaports and inland seas, will be biased when understanding Dashun, an imperial province with an inland area spanning thousands of miles.

The ancients said, why not eat minced meat?
Well, in Dashun decades ago, there would often be jokes like "why not rub rhubarb and easy Siamese rice in Gansu?" The problem is that there may be a shortage of food, so what's the matter at this time?
Or rather, think about it the other way around.If the transaction is so easy, then the IQs of those officials in the Ming Dynasty who passed the single-plank bridge examination with thousands of horses and horses are so low that they want to let the salt go to the merchants, just to be able to transport grain to the frontier?

Continuing to Dashun, some of those Confucian scholars who experienced the war in the late Ming Dynasty really experienced deep despair.

When Liu Yu was alive, he ridiculed the Yan-Li School, saying that they still claim to be goddamn Confucians, and they claim to master the six arts from the outside to the inside, and they want all the agricultural arts to be called Confucianism, and they are among the six arts There is an art of "numbering", but when talking about the average land, he can't even calculate the basic mathematics, and he just compiles the data there.

But if you think about it carefully, maybe this is because you really understand that all the arts of agriculture and industry can be called Confucianism, and you really understand the number of the six arts, but because you know too much, so after forgetting, you find despair, and you can only choose to make up numbers to support them. The concept of "the equalization of land is the most benevolent government in the world".

After all, in history, the southward transmission of this school has something to do with the escape of a person who knew astronomy from the school who was hunted down by the hawks and lackeys of the Qing court.It seems unreasonable to say that this school of thought is purely nonsense and that all arts and crafts must be learned to master Confucianism.To understand astronomy, you must know mathematics; and in hindsight, their school is really good in agronomy.

He even had an international perspective very early. In history, he wrote "Poems Concerning Westerners" as early as 1736, worrying that Westerners would first preach and convert, and then suddenly follow the Luzon story.

If you want to talk about such a school, you really don’t know mathematics, and the basic division of the population and cultivated land to calculate the per capita land area seems to be unreasonable.

Thinking about it at this moment, I'm afraid it's just because I understand too much, so the data doesn't support my idea at all, and I want to engage in land equalization, so I have to make up numbers, or even make some weird "inferior fields of 30 or [-] acres, intensive cultivation" After [-] years, it will be the first-class field, and it can be divided into three more people," or something like that.

It is said that they are desperate because a school that claims to be a true gentleman, a master of Confucianism, and a master of the six arts, is neither a gentleman nor the six arts on the issue of "equalizing the land is the most benevolent government in the world", and fabricates data there.

It can only be said that for a group of heretical Confucian schools who "take suffering for joy and end up suffering", it is really hopeless when it comes to compiling data, making false accounts, and compiling arithmetic.

This despair goes something like this:

If someone told them clearly now, in the future relying on breeding, chemical fertilizers, air nitrogen fixation, hybridization, genetic modification and other technologies, the yield per mu can exceed a thousand catties.Nor are they necessarily desperate.

The problem is, no prophet told them that the future would look like this.According to their understanding, if the crop rotation is intercropped in two years, three crops in one year, two crops in one year, etc., the maximum yield is three stones per mu, and it has to go to the field and add water to the field.

After a little calculation, it is impossible not to despair.

This kind of despair of Dashun elites decades ago is the so-called "grand narrative" kind of despair that has nothing to do with individuals.

Desperate: Seeing that the Yellow River has flowed south for hundreds of years, it has been constantly raised and breached, and we all know that sooner or later the Yellow River will decide to re-elect the river channel from the north to the sea. Salinization and ecological collapse will cause large-scale land degradation, and a catastrophe that will last for decades and affect tens of millions of people-in history, the salinization and land degradation of the Yellow River and Huai River have continued for a long time. Not decades, but centuries.The respectable county magistrate in the later article "My County Magistrate's Father" is busy with sand control, alkali improvement, drought resistance, and tree planting, which is the aftermath of the final Yellow River Hebei a hundred years later.

Desperate: No matter how you calculate it, the population is rising steadily, and the per capita land area is getting smaller and smaller. Sooner or later, even if the land is completely equalized, it is unlikely to be full of widespread poverty.

Desperate: Even if the land is equalized, the population is still rising, so what should we do in the future?After all, the land is still getting less and less.

This despair is the despair of the eighteenth century.

Later generations, the Industrial Revolution gave birth to the proletariat.Proletarian revolutionaries, with their eyes on the future of industry, will not despair because they know that industrialization can solve the problem of food shortage.

In the past, the elite among a group of landlords who were one step ahead had never seen the industrial age, and it was impossible for them to believe that a mu could produce a thousand catties of grain.

When Liu Yu appeared, when Dashun began to explore the world and seize the tail of the age of great exploration, the problem was still not solved.

Realizing borders and reconciling people's upside down are two different things.

In fact... people can give birth to their own children.

Let’s say that in Australia at this time, 20 people are enough for the purpose of “strengthening the border” and “occupation”. After 200 years, even if you give birth to yourself, you can also give birth to tens of millions of people.

Or in North America at this time, for the purpose of "strengthening the border" and "occupation", 100 million people are enough. There are fur traders and ginseng dealers carrying and hindering immigrants from the Appalachian Mountains. The buffer period of a hundred years is the same. million people.

However, solving the upside-down suspension of the people is a different matter from this.

If the vision of "one-hundred-acre farmland and a family of five" is to be achieved, it means that 2 million people in Dashun should be resettled.Even counting the diversion from the Northeast, Southeast Asia, and the Western Regions, at least 5000 million people have to emigrate overseas.

This is not a difficulty at all with "solid borders", "occupation", and "colonization as a living space".

It is even said that the difficulty is two orders of magnitude worse - the premise is that you have to treat the people in the central and western regions as compatriots, at least as human beings.

Commerce does not produce commodities, it is just a porter of commodities.

In business, it is impossible to trade grain, and it is even more impossible to trade land.

Currency, is the half equivalent, not the item itself.

The world is material.And it can be determined that this is not a real world where five loaves, two fish, and a thousand people are full.

Indeed, Europe accelerated after 1800, and France finally eliminated the last famine in 1855.

Is this just the power of technological progress?

The problem is that France has 3 million acres of arable land and a population of 1855 million in 3000.

Shandong now has a population of 3000 million, but only 9000 million mu of arable land.

In other words, 100 years in advance, in 1755, Shandong Province had a population of 1000 million, and there was no disaster of diversion of the Yellow River. If there was no large-scale famine, would there be a large-scale famine?
With a population of 3000 million, 3 million mu of arable land, and no famine, is that something to be praised?
Conversely, the whole of Europe has the best agricultural conditions, the best arable land, 3 million mu of arable land. By the middle of the 19th century, the loyal kings of the Taiping Army used steam engines and steamships to destroy Yama, and the Chilean saltpeter mines had already been exploited on a large scale. , only raised 3000 million people and finally there is no famine, are you proud?

In other words, Dashun is now assuming that it has soared to the level of technology in 1855, the year when France held the World Expo. According to this ratio, Dashun needs 30 billion mu of arable land to ensure that 3 million people will not suffer from famine.

Don't talk about technology, it doesn't appear at the click of a button, it needs to be accumulated.

Even if the technical level of the Paris World Expo era is reached in an instant, it will take 40 billion mu of arable land to ensure that there will be no famine.

The question is, does Dashun have 40 billion mu of arable land?
In other words, if Dashun now has 40 billion mu of arable land, would the former elites be in despair?Will you choose to accept Liu Yu's reform ideas?
Changes always occur when too many contradictions have accumulated and the old set can no longer hold up.Living well, who has nothing to do and has a change addiction?

Dashun does not have 40 billion mu of arable land.

As for agricultural technology, there is definitely a huge gap between the use of machinery and the world's first level in the Paris World Expo, but the yield per mu... is actually the same.

In order to fabricate the advanced technology of the United Kingdom, many people are purely bad, and falsified the data there - in the original statistics, it was written that the wheat production per acre was 1750 bushels in 18 and 1850 bushels per acre in 27.As a result, in order to show the advanced technology of the United Kingdom, the acre was quietly replaced by the mu. The result may have been calculated by oneself. If it were replaced by the mu, in 1750, the yield of 1000 catties of wheat per mu was a bit of a lie, so it was quietly changed from 18 to 8 , this seems to be a little credible, but by 1850, 27 was still retained, that is, the yield per mu was 1500 catties.

In 1850, 1500 catties of wheat were produced per mu. What are humans doing after that? In 170 years, human beings have gone backwards?You know, 170 years later, in 2022, the average yield of summer grain wheat in Henan is 900 catties per mu, and another bumper harvest will be made.
And if you don't compile the data, don't tamper with it intentionally, or use a little brain, even if you can distinguish wheat seedlings from leeks—of course, this requirement is actually quite high—it is easy to come to a terrible conclusion:

If the average yield per mu in Dashun at this time reached the average level in 1860 when the first industry in Britain was completed, then about [-] million people in Dashun might starve to death.

That's a good deal.

There was an important reform in the British Agricultural Revolution, from the three field system to the Norfolk crop rotation system.

The three-field system was before the Agricultural Revolution.

Wheat was planted in the first year, peas in the second year, fallow in the third year, and wheat again in the fourth year.

The Norfolk crop rotation system came after the Agricultural Revolution.

Plant wheat in the first year, turnips in the second year (like the kind of kohlrabi eaten by sister Lin of Gao E Xiaji Xu, a relative of mustard lumps), barley or wheat in the third year, donkey Xidou in the fourth year .

That is to say, under the Norfolk crop rotation system, the average yield of wheat per acre in 1860 was 1500 catties, equivalent to about 250 catties per mu—there was neither three crops in two years nor two crops in one year in the UK. Not three times a year.

In this way, in the United Kingdom in 1860, the staple food—turnips were not inedible, but whoever used mustard lumps as the staple food—the average annual yield per mu was only 125 catties.

Of course, maybe 1860 was still a bit "underdeveloped".

In 1900, the average yield of wheat per hectare in France was 18HL per hectare, which is a wonderful unit, and HL is a hectoliter.According to the minimum wheat flour milling standard of 76 kg per hectoliter, that is roughly converted to 2736 catties per hectare.

One hectare is 15 acres.

In conversion, the average yield of wheat per mu is 182 catties.

As proof, considering that the unit may have been miscalculated, another data is [In 1910, the yield of wheat in the Paris Basin was 24 quintals per hectare, about twice the average yield per mu].

The quintal is 200 catties, which is very standard and does not need to be converted; as for the hectare quintal, it is all in the meter system. After the French Revolution, it was the first to make a set of metric units, using water and the meridian of the earth as the standard without religion and culture. The unit of conflict, this hectare is also very standard.

Convert from this.

24 times 200 and then divided by 15 is about 320 catties.

Basically, it can be mutually confirmed with the previous average yield of 182 catties per mu.

In other words, in 1910, World War I was about to start, and the planes were flying into the sky. The average yield of wheat per mu in France was only 180 catties.

Well...that's what happened.

So, if you look at the data, that's the case.

However, if we abstract the "agricultural revolution", "technological revolution", and "the first and second industrial revolutions" into a labeled thing and put them into our minds, we will commit a lot of "labeled thinking and imaginings" "mistake.

Once it is labeled, many wrong ideas will arise: labeling, and then imagine that Europe will soon fight a war at that time, and the yield per mu will not be more than a few hundred catties?

Take the labeling away and you'll find something very scary.

To put it simply, based on the wheat yield per mu in France in 1910, Dashun's population and cultivated land at this time...

If you really want to engage in the Norfolk four-wheel system, engage in the enclosure movement to engage in animal husbandry, and engage in planting grass this year and planting grass next year to raise cattle and horses...

If Dashun is at the level of a chicken in the whole country, it will be reduced according to the population of [-] million people.

What do these data mean for Dashun?
It means that even if there is a "prophet" in Dashun, even if saltpeter, sulfate, phosphate, etc. are used as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizers to set up experimental fields...

If industrialization is to catch up to the level of Fritz Harper's fertilizer factory in 1913, or the level of industrial production, then it is pure bullshit.

impossible.

Of course, it is not difficult to find a group of craftsmen to make a simple generator regardless of cost.

It can be said that what kind of fertilizer plant is to be built, let's go according to 100 years.

Of course, agricultural technology does not only rely on chemical fertilizers, but also water conservancy, improved seeds, scientific planting, etc., and so on.

But fertilizer is definitely a key link.

In other words, Liu Yu used natural "chemical fertilizers" such as saltpeter to make a big cake for Dashun.In other words, industrialization is the pie of a bright future.

But in fact, he himself knows that industrialization cannot be accomplished by a "prophet".It won't happen in a few decades.

Therefore, in fact, the only option left in reality-immigration and reclamation.

The agricultural revolution in Western Europe, in Dashun, was not a revolution, but a retrogression.At least at this time, it can be 100% sure that it is going backwards.

People in Dashun will cultivate land. If they are lucky, the silt soil left after the flood of the Yellow River can actually surpass the average yield of wheat in France in 1910—the simplest ones are wheat and peas. For interplanting, add two years and three crops to calculate the average.

That is to say, the Western European-style agricultural revolution is useless for Dashun; and the industrial revolution, even if it catches up to 1910, the yield per mu of arable land will be the same; unless it is held back to match the German level in 1913, it will be pure It will be too scary to catch up to the level of Germany in 40.

In other words, if there is no immigration and reclamation, even if the first industrial revolution breaks out, the food in Dashun will still not be enough.

And the huge sense of "despair" caused by insufficient food and the population is easier to understand-in other words, if Dashun is inside, even if the first industrial revolution has been completely completed now, then Dashun will still face food shortages. The problem of not having enough to eat.Moreover, when those people were "desperate", they didn't even know what the first industrial revolution was.

Indeed, the first industrial revolution greatly promoted the development of productivity.

The question is, can textile mills make steamed buns?Can steel mills produce rice?

If not, then for Dashun, the impetus for the first industrial revolution is not that great - I am already the world's number one in cotton cloth output, and I have forced various administrative orders in Europe to play Mai Tai, then Where is the impetus behind the initiative of the first industrial revolution?

This question, Liu Yu's distorted theory of industry and commerce, gave the Dashun group an answer.

This answer is what Li Yan and Liu Yu talked about before Liu Yu ran away:

Repair railways, build ships, and engage in infrastructure.

Let the food grow legs and travel from overseas to the Central Plains, so that the concept of "per capita grain possession" has practical significance.

Let people with long legs run from the Central Plains to overseas. If the food does not grow legs, and the cultivated land does not grow legs, if it does not come, I will go to it.

And repairing railways, building ships, and building infrastructure are the impetus for Dashun to carry out the industrial revolution... in a righteous way.

That is to say, if Dashun's industrial revolution wants to gain the support of the elites of the old era, or at least those who can still benefit the people and the world, they can and can only follow the example of heavy industry. Try hard.

Because, in addition to the support of some elites produced in the old era, the support of the emperor is also required.

The emperor, on the other hand, would not care about the spinning wheel driven by the steam engine, but he would care about the water wheel driven by the steam engine.

A steam engine is a steam engine.It is a cow, a horse, a water row, and a windmill.

A spinning machine is a spinning machine.

A bag of urea and two catties of fine seeds are definitely more shocking than a watch in the old days.

Because from top to bottom, the most feared thing in my mind is the food problem.

The root of guiding change is to hide industry and commerce in the food issue after all.

So, now, has the food problem in Dashun been solved?
not at all.

It can be said that the various problems Dashun is facing now, according to Liu Yu's statement, are essentially food problems.

Including the abolition of the banknote pass, whether the land can be traded, whether to equalize the land, etc., and so on.

In the future, it will be a matter of relocation, immigration, and industrialization, which one to go first and which one to go later.

in reality...

It's still the old horse's sentence [distribution itself is the product of production...a certain form of participation in production determines the specific form of distribution, and determines the form of participation in distribution]

The form of production is the social relations of feudalism, capital, and so on.

These specific forms are distributed in the form of possession of means of production, land rent, tribute, wages, etc.

Cancellation of the money pass, whether the land can be traded, whether the land should be equalized, etc., are themselves [distribution].

for example.

The current hand-woven textile industry in Hubei, through manual labor, distributes some grain, salt, etc. through their cotton cloth in social production.

Well, now your mechanical textile industry in Songsu, with the advantage of overseas raw materials, has taken away the [allocation] of these hand weavers in Hubei.

Then you give them money to buy grain and salt?
Judging from the existing situation in Dashun, don't even think about it.When Liu Yu reformed and moved the trade center from the Pearl River estuary to the Yangtze River estuary, hundreds of thousands of boatmen, porters, compradors, Cantonese embroidery weavers, etc. lost their jobs. A cheaper way - Kusanagi.

The current debate within Dashun can be understood in this way:

Some people want land in the interior.If you have money, you can buy it with money. Anyway, buying and selling, land deed transactions, and lending are allowed, and small farmers are prone to bankruptcy. This is normal.

Some people also want land and don't want to pay rent, but they own everything except paying taxes.If the court doesn't give it to you, then you can uphold justice for yourself. You Li Zicheng can do it, but I can't do it?
Some people want the mainland market.The market in the mainland is not empty. Since Hubei can have a textile industry, it is obvious that they have to sell the cloth.But you people are too backward, why not use Indian cotton yarn and advanced steam engines, we want to represent progress and eliminate backwardness, but we will not give compensation and basic survival guarantees.

Some people feel that these machines seriously hurt their existence.You said it’s okay for me to find a carpenter to rub a loom, or save up money to buy a pedal machine with iron wheels, but how can I afford a steam engine and a loom?If you can’t afford it, then everyone should fight together. If you can’t afford it, no one can own it, or you’ll all starve to death.

Etc., etc.

Finally, is there a "compromise" solution, that is to say, the politics of the country itself can be regarded as the product of a compromise under the irreconcilable class contradictions? Is there a compromise solution?

Now, there are so many classes and so many contradictions in Dashun.

Small farmers, tenant farmers, landowners.

Handicraftsmen, subcontractors, and large commercial capitals.

Employers, factory owners.

Free large financial capital and established oligarchs and plutocrats.

Here, who is the soft persimmon?
Who is the easiest to pinch?

Who can pinch to the future?

This can basically be regarded as the problem that Dashun wants to continue reforming now, and it is also the source of controversy.

Coupled with the problem of Dashun's land system.

And because the real power that the imperial power in Dashun relies on is capital, military aristocrats, real school industrial and commercial power, navy, and colonial interests.

In other words, it is this group of people who feel that there is still a need for reform.

Then this question finally evolved into the simplest choice:

Is it crushing small farmers?
Or crush the tenant landlords in the Mainland?
If you choose to crush the small farmers, you will completely loosen internal and external restrictions. Capital, cheap commodities, and commercial capital lending money will flow in together by railways and steamships.

It is enough to suppress the resistance of these [-] million people.

If you choose to kill the tenant landlord, you will have a wave of extremely crazy changes, and you will not hesitate to fight a war between the east and the west.

The old forces and traditional forces will resist with an unprecedented unity to ensure the social conditions they need to survive—the rebellion will be directly led by scholars.

to not fix?

Li Yan knew very well that once he died, Dashun would be completely messed up.

He wants to give his children and grandchildren a go.

Therefore, the recall of the "Prophet" was actually Li Yan's desire to use Liu Yu's body to make a choice: whether to crush the small peasant or the tenant landlord.

Whichever you choose will do.

Because Liu Yu is a "prophet" and not a thinker, there are many contradictions in his words and his actions are mixed with black and white.

For example, Liu Yu’s policy in Songsu was completely reactionary at the time—women came to work in the factory, and their wages were paid half to their in-laws, husbands or parents, instead of sending people to their homes to promote equality between men and women, personal freedom, and women can work to support themselves. of.

There are many directions for interpretation of this matter.

It's okay to talk straight.

Or vice versa.

The same is true for whether it is to pinch small peasants or landowners.

There are bones to wear.

Li Yan asked people to bring Liu Yu's coffin back from thousands of miles away, just to express his choice in front of the coffin.

(End of this chapter)