national surname chiming

Chapter 514 Daming's Terrifying National Power

After Zheng Chenggong conquered Luzon Island, Ming's military conquest of Southeast Asia for several years finally came to an end.

The large sums of gold and silver robbed from Manila made up for the military expenditures for years of military use.However, the consumption of food and ammunition still takes time to re-produce. After all, gold and silver cannot be directly turned into material wealth, and can only be used to invest in expanding reproduction.

Therefore, long-term recuperation, good farming and technological advancement are absolutely necessary.

Fortunately, with the prosperity of the Ming Dynasty, there are no unsightly people in the surrounding neighborhood who insist on courting death.

On the one hand, the Ming Dynasty continued to deepen the promotion of "abolishing Ding Separation" internally, and implemented the separation of workers and peasants in all northern provinces, and abolished the poll tax for farmers and the land tax for workers.

New progress has been made every year in the development of wasteland and farming in the outer northeast. Although Cao Bianjiao and Huang Degong have died of old age in the past few years, and their descendants have inherited the title, they can no longer inherit the local planning power that is like a feudal town, but this does not affect them at all. The inertia of Northeast development continues to move forward.

The land reform work in the southern tropics is still progressing steadily with the naturalization of one or two chieftain tribes every year, and Li Dingguo works hard to maintain order and subdue those who do not obey.Li Dingguo, who is nearly fifty years old, is still in good health and has a much longer life than in parallel time and space. He can continue to guard the southern border for Daming and be his Duke of Yue.

The science and education undertakings within the Ming Dynasty, as well as the talent selection and training mechanism, also continued to operate stably, with occasional improvements.

Nanjing University has finally begun to send batches of graduates to the society.Seeing that there is a surplus of science and engineering talents that can be used for basic science and engineering education in local provinces, Zhu Shuren is also gearing up to make more big moves.

The development of science and technology, after initially being temporarily delayed due to Nanjing University's large number of elite backbones, has once again entered the fast lane of scientific research as talent has become abundant again.

Every aspect seems to be so prosperous, and more than six years of peaceful development have passed by.

……

The wheel of history came to the 15th year of Xiaokang, that is, 1677 AD.

After six years of peaceful development, according to Zhu Shuren's original plan, by this year, Daming's second seven-year plan should have been completed, and it should also start with the Junggar tribe in Northwest Galdan.

However, due to the delay of additional wars in the Nanyang region, the digestion and absorption of the new territories in Nanyang, the conversion of the land and the continuous cleansing and extermination of the natives who hated the Han in Luzon, the imperial court took up a considerable amount of energy and time.

Therefore, the rhythm of using troops against northern Xinjiang in the second seven-year plan has also been delayed, and it is not yet ready to do so.

But this is also very normal, and the plan can't keep up with the changes.

Fortunately, Zhu Shuren, who has been in a stable position for many years, finally felt that it was a good time for Daming to show off his muscles as time went on for 15 years.

The development of the past six years or so has already taken Daming's national strength to a whole new level, which is by no means what the former opponents could have expected.

Poverty and backwardness limited the imagination of Daming's enemies towards him.

Twenty-five years ago, in the eighth year of the first Emperor Zhu Changxiao's Longwu, when the Ming and Qing wars had just ended and the Central Plains had been reunified, the population of the country fell to a historical level at that time due to continuous wars, with only 25 million people left. After all hidden households have been investigated, there are still only 6000 million people.

In contrast, the peak population of Daming during the Wanli period was close to 4000 million, and it was still close to 2000 million in the early years of Chongzhen.So the 6000 million people have already halved their household registration compared to the peak of the Ming Dynasty, but compared to the worst time of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in the parallel time and space, there are about 2000 million more.

(Note: Historically, in the early Qing Dynasty, the Nanming area was repeatedly conquered and massacred, and the minimum national population fell to more than 4000 million. Zhu Shuren's butterfly effect kept the south from falling, and the Qing people killed more than 2000 million people with their butcher knives.)
In the peaceful era, when the violent war just ended, if births were encouraged, it would be normal for the population to double in the past two decades. Afterwards, the contradictions in arable land would become more intense, and the population would not be able to support the population, so the growth would gradually slow down.

However, the 25 years after the Ming Dynasty destroyed the Qing Dynasty were not always peaceful. After all, every five or six years of peaceful farming by Zhu Shuren, they had to use foreign troops for a round.In the past 25 years, there have been three rounds of military deployment in the middle, namely the Northeast, Fusang, and Southeast Asia.

In addition, Zhu Shuren paid attention to the living environment of the people, and insisted not to allow the poor peasants to divide the fields too thinly, at least let the people in the fields maintain an average of more than ten mu of cultivated land per household, so the quality of life of the people is actually far superior to that of other dynasties. Poor farmers who are on the verge of starvation and death because of the lack of fields.

The combination of intermittent wars, suppressing excessive subdivision of fields, and immigration settlements made the population recovery more orderly.In the last 25 years, the population growth of the 50 provinces in Guannei Han reached about 6000%, that is, from 9000 million to [-] million.

However, considering the reclamation of areas outside the Northeast Pass, the entire Northeast, including Liaodong, also has a population of more than 800 million.

And Kyushu Island in Fusang still has more than 300 million people, plus Ezo and Dead Leaf Island, as well as Tsushima and Ryukyu, the total population of these five areas is close to 400 million (the population has only slightly increased in the past ten years after the conquest of Kyushu 30, but the population ratio has changed a lot. The male population in Fusang has dropped sharply, and women have been conquered by Han immigrants to take concubines, so the number of Fusang people has decreased by more than 80, and the Han population has increased by millions.)

The Nujiang-Ayeyarwady river valley plains in Myanmar conquered by the Ming Dynasty had a total population of more than [-] million people, and the total population of Jiaoshan Mountain, Sanxuan and Liuwei Mountains was nearly one million.After Vietnam was conquered by the Ming Dynasty, the Red River Basin Plain, which is also the former place of Jiaozhi in the Han and Tang Dynasties, plus Hue and other places until the border between North and South Vietnam, has a combined population of more than [-] million.

The reason why the local population has not continued to grow in recent years is also related to Daming's elimination of malicious dissidents.The rebels should be eliminated slowly, and then the Han people in the south, especially those in Guangxi and Yunnan, should be gradually removed.

Finally, after six years of peaceful farming in the Philippines, there were originally about 20 Han Chinese who were originally from Fujian and Chaoshan. After the accomplices of the Spanish colonists who hated the Han people were purged, a large number of indigenous women who could barely be regarded as yellow race were arrested. Being a concubine to the Han people, the population of the Han people also recovered very quickly.

In order to suppress the tendency of the local people not to return to the king, Zheng Chenggong also organized the newly increased population of more than [-] landless peasants in Fujian to move to Lv Song Island.

In this way, the population ratio of the purebred new Han people who have just moved from Fujian also exceeds that of the old Fujian and Chaoshan people who have been to Nanyang for several generations, ensuring that their identification with Ming Dynasty will further increase.

However, Fujian has many mountains and few farms. Since ancient times, it has been prone to the problem of insufficient farmland due to the increase of rural population in mountainous areas.Otherwise, the Fujianese of all dynasties would not have gone to Nanyang or immigrated to the world so easily.

Zheng Chenggong wants to organize people to go to Luzon, there is no need to force it, the whole process is very benevolent.Moreover, Zheng Chenggong paid the freight of the immigrants out of his own pocket, and did not charge them for the boat tickets to cross the sea. This made the poor peasants in Fujian feel grateful and felt that they had gained a chance to go out into the world for nothing.

After all the surrounding territories are secured, there will be 800 million in the Northeast, 400 million in the five places of Fusang, and a total of 800 million in Southeast Asia (2000 in Myanmar, [-] in Vietnam, [-] in Luzon, and [-] in Luzon). Adding up, the newly occupied land outside the customs also has a population of [-] million, half of which are The remaining half of the Han people are also Sinicized people, or women and children of other races who were conquered and occupied by the Han people.

In this way, together with the 9000 million people in the 1000 traditional Han provinces in the Guan, the total population of the Ming territory has also returned to [-] million.

This figure is about the population figure in the seventh year of Chongzhen.At that time, Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong failed in the first wave of rebellion, and they feigned surrender one after another. The massacre of the world's population and the death of the famine had not yet reached the worst time.

Zhu Shuren went around and around, and finally returned to the level at that time 40 years after the seventh year of Chongzhen, but now the Ming Dynasty has popularized corn and potatoes, and has also developed the fertile black land in the northeast and the Red River and Irrawaddy river valley plains in Southeast Asia.

The country's water conservancy facilities have also been greatly improved, and the years with the most severe and intensive disasters have passed, so the quality of life for the same 1000 million people is simply worlds apart.

While the population is growing, the people are still living and working in peace and contentment, and the support of the people of the world for Daming has reached a new peak.This kind of people's aspiration is the fundamental guarantee for Daming's future mobilization and stability.

This is by no means a praise, but there is real evidence.Because in the seventh year of Chongzhen, according to the statistics of the land in the world, there were only more than 7 million mu in total. In fact, because of the successive years of famine in the Northwest, a lot of land has been degraded. On Daming's account at that time, it actually fell into the hands of the enemy.

Therefore, in the seventh year of Chongzhen, the total cultivated land area of ​​the eighteen provinces in Guanzhong controlled by Ming Dynasty was actually only more than 6 million, less than [-] million mu.

In the original history, the two arable land censuses in the Yong and Qian years of the Qing Dynasty only had more than 8 million mu of arable land.However, considering that the Qing Dynasty actually controlled some of the northwest region more than the Ming Dynasty, and the newly generated fields in the northeast part of the Guandong, the scale of reclamation in the Guan was actually similar to that of the Ming Dynasty. The newly added terraced fields can be regarded as the increment of the Qing Dynasty)
The so-called Qianlong prosperity in later generations relied on barely [-] million mu of arable land to support [-] million people through intensive cultivation, and the per capita land was only two mu.

Today, although the Ming Dynasty only has a population of 1000 million, the scale of land reclamation has far exceeded that of the Qianlong period in parallel time and space.

The arable land in the provinces within the Guanzhou remains at about [-] million mu. In southwest Yunnan and Guizhou, the land has been reformed and returned for decades, and more than [-] million mu of land has been increased.

The Red River Basin in Vietnam has 900 million mu of arable land, plus other sporadic coastal farmland north of Hue, the Vietnamese area occupied by Ming Dynasty has a total of 300 million mu of land.

The Nu River and Irrawaddy River valleys in Myanmar occupy the area, with more than 400 million mu of land.In Kyushu and other places in Fusang, the registered land in the shogunate period was "more than three million stones high", which is actually converted to [-] million mu.

As for Dayuan Island, which has been developed and constructed by the Zheng family, the agricultural conditions are actually better than those of Kyushu Island, and the two islands are about the same size.It’s just that the construction time of Dayuan Island was short after all. So far, only the coastal plain facing Fujian has been developed, but nearly 300 million mu of farmland has also been reclaimed.

And the development that greatly enhanced the potential of Daming's national power obviously came from the Northeast.That would account for one-third of the cultivated land in China in later generations, and if fully developed, it would be at least half of the total of the eighteen provinces in the pass.

(Note: The calculation here includes the northeastern part of Inner Mongolia. If later generations only count the three eastern provinces and exclude Inner Mongolia, it will only account for 23% of the country's cultivated land, but the northeastern part of Inner Mongolia still has 1.7 million mu of cultivated land)

Although the development of the Northeast today is far from being comparable to that of later generations, after more than two decades, it can be considered a small success.

The development of the Heilongjiang River Basin is only more than [-]% of that of later generations.But despite this, it has surpassed the historical level of the Qianlong period. The so-called "Crossing the Guandong" in the later Qing Dynasty actually went to the Songnen Plain, and did not go to the main stream of Heilongjiang for large-scale development.

So much so that by the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were only a few dozen villages on the north bank of Heilongjiang.It can be seen that there are not many times more on the south bank, and the entire main stream of Heilongjiang has no more than [-] villages in the late Qing Dynasty.

But now, the Ming Dynasty has a population of more than 10 and more than 1000 million mu of arable land along the main stream of Heilongjiang River. It is distributed in at least seven or eight cities, hundreds of towns, and more than 1000 villages. Compared with the development level of the late Qing Dynasty in parallel time and space At least five times higher.

The average person can cultivate [-] acres of black land, and this average includes the elderly, children and women.In fact, a strong labor force generally needs to plant thirty to forty mu of land, which is very hard, but it is also enough to have enough food and clothing.

Sufficient savings can even allow farmers to complete primitive accumulation. Gradually, every family has its own cattle, and even more than one cattle in general. It further relies on modern technology to upgrade plows and other labor-saving agricultural tools.

On the more thoroughly developed Songnen Plain, the intensity of reclamation today has exceeded 500% of that of later generations, and the cultivated land reclaimed has also exceeded the 20 million mu mark. The population of more than [-] million on the Songnen Plain can also be more than [-] per capita. Acres of fertile black land for arable land is also taken as an average of women, children and the elderly, and strong laborers can plant at least [-] to [-] mu.

Coupled with the subsequent development of the Liaohe Plain, the entire Northeast has now provided Daming with 6000 million mu of arable land, which has reached more than [-]% of the total arable land in the [-] traditional Han provinces in the Guan.

In the 15th year of Xiaokang, the world re-counted the cultivated land, conducted a thorough investigation, and finally calculated that the country's cultivated land was 5000 billion [-] million mu, which has exceeded [-]% of the peak period of the Qing Dynasty in the parallel time and space.

Nationwide, per capita arable land is still more than nine mu.

Coupled with the fact that the industry of the Ming Dynasty far exceeds that of the same period in history, over the past 15 years since the implementation of the abolishment of Dingzhi reform, there have been more than 400 million people registered as workers, soldiers/conscriptions, and the actual population of farmers is only 700 million. .

Calculated in this way, the per capita arable land of the rural population has reached an astonishing nearly eleven acres.Even if there are still some problems left over from the land merger of the rich and powerful families in the south, the poor peasants can basically ensure that each strong laborer can plant at least ten acres of self-cultivated land.

The strength of the Ming Dynasty has already been called the most in the history of China.

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PS: It is necessary to quickly pass the timeline, so the chapter of the journal inventory is the results of farming.

The last copy of this book is coming soon, Junggar and Rakshasa. I won’t write about the others in detail later, but just skip a rough chronology.It's almost the end of the book.

(End of this chapter)