Eighth year of Chongzhen

Chapter 562 Huge and Complicated Immigration Project
Since Zhu Youjian plans to fully develop the Jianghan Plain, it is inevitable to split Huguang.

Hu Guangcheng, who has jurisdiction over [-] big mansions, announced that the scale of the Political Envoy Division is too large, but the population of the area under its jurisdiction is too sparse, which is not conducive to the smooth implementation of the imperial government's decrees.After the split, the areas under the jurisdiction of the two governor's offices are smaller, which is more conducive to the complete implementation of policies.

In the afterlife of the population explosion, each of the large prefectures under the jurisdiction of Huguang Province is a city with a population of several million. With various supporting modern infrastructures, the utilization rate of land has reached the extreme.

However, the various conditions in the Huguang area now are very different from those of later generations. Not only are the various infrastructures such as road traffic and agricultural technology very backward, but even the most basic factor of economic development-the population is less than one-tenth of that of later generations. .

There are different opinions about how many people there were in the late Ming Dynasty. Some say 5000 million, some say [-] million, some say [-] million, and some say less than [-] million.

These speculations have their own reasons, but they all have a common defect: the lack of detailed and conclusive official data, and the lack of dynamic official statistics.

In the Little Ice Age, which has lasted for more than ten years, under various extreme weather conditions, the dynamic growth and decline of the population are constantly changing every day. In this country where information and statistics are transmitted extremely slowly and opaquely, official efficiency is extremely low, and there are many hidden household registrations. In this era, it is impossible to count the detailed population.

In Daming, the Yellow Book, which stores and counts the number of Dingkou and taxes in the country, was placed by the Taizu on Liangzhou in Xuanwu Lake in Nanjing. Although Zhu Di moved his capital to Beijing after he ascended the throne, the Yellow Book still remained in Nanjing.

In view of the importance of the Yellow Book, Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang finally decided to put the Yellow Book Library in Xuanwu Lake after sending people to investigate countless times.

As the foundation and lifeline of the country, the yellow book must be absolutely guaranteed when it is stored and stored.

At that time, the water surface of Xuanwu Lake was vast, and the several continents in the lake were isolated from the world. "Forty miles around, several continents in the middle, and thousands of feet of broken shore", the safety and defense were relatively guaranteed, and it was a place made by nature for building a warehouse.

Although the natural terrain is unique, the imperial court has not relaxed at all in the security defense of Houhu.

At that time, Xuanwu Lake was designated as a forbidden area, "people are not allowed to spy on it", let alone entering it casually.

The military and civilians along the lake are "not allowed to secretly divert water", the land by the lake is not allowed to be cultivated, and the fish, crabs and firewood in the lake are not allowed to be harvested.

If there is a violation, inquiry is like the law.

It can be said that "the lake is called the Forbidden Lake, the land is called the Forbidden Land, the example must be called the Forbidden Law, and the boat must be called the Forbidden Boat."

An official of the household department named Zhu Fan once wrote: "The king has always attached great importance to the heaven, and the six dynasties have no plans to set up civilian compilations. The collection of books in Houhu is as high as the ages, and the emperor's pictures will be preserved for hundreds of millions of years."

The poem expresses a heartfelt pride in how well protected the Yellow Book is.

Xuanwu Lake is under strict defense and isolation, people "can't miss it when swimming, but they only have to stretch their necks to see them off"

A poet once said with emotion: "Yingzhou is as close as you can go, and the island is soaring in the sky. Few people come to save the territory, and only the pavilions are low in the setting sun."In the nearly 200 years since the Yellow Book Library was built, Xuanwu Lake has almost disappeared from the lives of local residents.

Although the defense is strict and the management is strict, the books in the yellow book library have not been fully protected as people imagined, and insects, damp, and counterfeiting have all caused great damage to them.

For example, in the 15th year of Zhengde, it was discovered that most of the Yellow Book of Jiangxi Chief Envoy fabricated in the [-]th year of Zhengde had been mothed. Among them, "One county has all moths, and another county has ten or eighty-nine moths. The paper is like powder, and the ashes are piled up. Produced by Tu Ding, the characters are incomplete and difficult to recognize. But after being exposed, they were broken one after another."

The condition of the warehouses is also very bad. During the Jiajing period, most of the warehouses had exceeded their service life.In the Wanli period, "beams and pillars were rotten, bricks and tiles collapsed, rain was dripping, and books were hard to collect."

After Zhu Youjian learned of this situation, he deliberately ordered to strengthen the protection and rescue of the yellow book library, but he was powerless to deal with the many damaged album pages, and the various data recorded by many local government statistics also followed The smoke disappeared, which also led to the need to redo the specific population statistics of Ming Dynasty.

In addition to this factor, years of wars, plagues, diseases, hunger, newborn deaths and many other natural and man-made disasters have caused huge population variables, and it has become very difficult to summarize detailed data.

Zhu Youjian plans to launch a national census in three years' time, and rebuild the yellow book while counting the national population, so as to provide a basic data for subsequent economic development.

The Yellow Book Library will also be moved to the capital, and the dry climate in the Northland is more suitable for preserving these precious paper materials and documents.

According to the information held by Zhu Youjian, the total population of Daming is now about 2000 million, of which 6000 to [-] million are concentrated in the most prosperous and affluent Jiangnan area.

Huguang Province, which is in urgent need of development, has a total population of less than 2000 million, which is still quite small. This is also the main factor why the Jianghan Plain has not been developed on a larger scale.

The combined population of the two provinces of Hunan and Hubei in later generations is equivalent to the total population of Daming today. This gap in numbers cannot be made up without the support of a large amount of food.

"The Ministry of Household Affairs, Henan Governor's Yamen and related local governments must intensify efforts to relocate people to the Jingxiang area, and strive to ensure that there will be no more people stranded in the disaster-stricken areas of Henan before the end of next year!"

It has been about a year since the hard-hit disaster victims from various prefectures in Henan have migrated to Jingxiang. According to the data reported by each prefecture, more than 200 people have emigrated to Jingxiang in the past year, and there are still [-] remaining victims. Duowan stayed in the local area, and while receiving relief from the government, he actively carried out production and self-help, although the effect of this self-help was almost nothing.

However, according to the situation reported by Jin Yiwei and several inspectors, although various minor situations continued to occur, the entire migration process of the victims was progressing smoothly.

Zhu Youjian allocated 50 taels of silver from the internal funds to the governor's office in Huguang, and the government stepped in to buy a large amount of grain in the area under its jurisdiction. Under the guidance of the government, the young and strong were organized to build a number of granaries along the migration route of the victims, and then store the purchased grain in them for the consumption of the victims. With the joint efforts of officials at all levels in the two provinces, the relocation of the victims was carried out relatively smoothly. .

The strategic plan for developing the large granary in the Jianghan Plain has been formulated and arranged, and the rest is to wait patiently.

Population migration has been a huge and arduous project consuming countless human, financial and material resources since ancient times, as evidenced by the Three Gorges Project in later generations.

The resettlement work in the Three Gorges Reservoir area lasted for 14 years from the beginning to the end, and the total number of relocated people was about 130 million. This is already a very remarkable achievement.But now Zhu Youjian is facing the problem of relocation and resettlement of tens of millions of disaster-stricken people in the northern border of the Ming Dynasty. In this era of extremely backward conditions, the difficulty can be imagined.

However, compared with the immigrants in the Taiping era, the current relocation work also has a huge advantage that future generations cannot match: the relocation is much simpler, and the resettlement after the relocation does not need to cost too much.

In this era when most people in the northern border are still struggling to die, the government's willingness to lend a hand is enough to make thousands of desperate victims grateful.

In order to be able to survive, what about leaving home?So what if the ancestral home is abandoned?There is still a chance of survival if you embark on the road to another country, but you can only wait for death if you stay in the hometown where the grass roots and bark have been eaten away.

In the face of survival, nothing is important.

When they heard the elders of the government say that as long as everyone goes all the way south, there will be food to eat, countless hungry people embarked on the journey without hesitation in the hope of keeping their families alive.

On the road from Nanyang Mansion to Xiangyang Mansion, a large number of half-clothed and haggard disaster victims moved forward slowly every day. On the way forward, many people fell down on the side of the road while walking. He didn't get up, and amidst the howling of his relatives, the others didn't even look at him, and continued walking numbly.

The vast majority of people are used to this kind of thing, and almost everyone only thinks about how they can survive.

People are not as good as dogs in troubled times.

In order to give the deceased a face, the young and strong hired by the government push the carts and store the corpses along the way. After the cart is full, they find a place where there is no one and burn it and bury it.

Few would dispute that.

What about cremation?It is better than being abandoned in the wilderness and falling into the belly of wild dogs.

It was under such a major premise that the speed and number of immigrants reached more than [-] people in one year.

The victims who arrived earlier had to first build houses in the places surveyed by the officials of the Ministry of Industry under the arrangement of the local government. In places where the water source was insufficient, the well-drilling team had to dig drinking water wells in the designated villages.

Most of the resettlement sites surveyed by the officials of the Ministry of Industry are determined by the local aboriginal villages, which saves a lot of complicated matters. The resettlement work has progressed extremely rapidly.

Although the immigration work has made considerable progress, Zhu Youjian still ordered to speed up the pace of immigration, strive to complete this important task as soon as possible, and completely eliminate the unstable factors brought about by the gathering of refugees.

After emphasizing the importance and urgency of the resettlement project, Zhu Youjian proposed another plan that made all the ministers feel refreshed.

　Immigration is a very complicated matter, involving various aspects, and it will take many years. If I write it in detail, I am afraid that everyone will say that it will be watered down, so I will briefly mention it.

　　Thanks to Venus for the graphics card reward.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)