Rebirth of Zhu Di's son

Chapter 361 Three factors that determine the size of a territory

"Your Majesty, when I was young, I read history books and found that some dynasties could reach as far as the Western Regions, while others could only stay in a corner."

Xia Yuanji said respectfully: "I thought it was because of insufficient force at first, but later I discovered that even though some places could be conquered by force, the local officials sent could not defend them. Such places repeatedly rebelled, causing the country to fall into the quagmire of war, and the gains outweighed the losses. In the end, I had no choice but to give up.”

Of course Zhu Gaoxu understood what Xia Yuanji meant.

Each dynasty has different capabilities to control its territory due to its different financial and military strength.

After the old dynasty is overthrown and the new dynasty is established, it may not necessarily inherit all the territory of the previous dynasty.

When feudal dynasties of past dynasties opened up territories, they often had to consider three fundamental factors.

The first is military strength, which is also the most important point.

If you don't have strong enough force, you can't even protect yourself, let alone expand your territory.

The second is the ability to govern, that is, the ability to effectively control the occupied territory.

This is reflected in the fact that after setting up county officials or direct military control over the local area, the civil servants or generals dispatched by the court can recruit troops, collect taxes, and collect other supplies from there.

Third, when you cannot effectively control the occupied area, you cannot abandon it. Even if you continue to invest new troops, food and other materials, you must hold on, otherwise the enemy will use this place as a stronghold to launch a counterattack. This is where frontier military defense becomes necessary.

In short, military strength, governance capabilities, and the location of defensive fortresses determine the size of a dynasty's territory.

There is a progressive logic and a certain degree of internal connection between these three factors that determine the size of a dynasty's territory.

For example, starting from the Hongwu period, the Ming Dynasty began to conquer Mobei. During the Yongle period, Zhu Di personally conquered the grasslands three times. It was not until the second year of Qianxi years when Zhu Gaoxu led his troops to personally conquer the grasslands that they completely wiped out the two largest forces on the grasslands, Oara and Tatar.

During the Hongwu period, with the military strength of the Ming Dynasty, it was completely possible to cripple the grassland tribes. However, at that time, it would cost a high price to cripple the grassland tribes, which was not cost-effective for Zhu Yuanzhang.

At that time, for the Ming Dynasty, it was not absolutely necessary to cripple various grassland tribes. It was important to manage the country well and enhance its own strength.

After all, at that time, there were remote mountain aborigines in the country such as Xifan, Nanman, and Southwest Yi who were often in trouble.

Even if Zhu Yuanzhang sent troops to cripple the grassland tribes and occupy the grassland, it would be powerless for the Ming Dynasty at that time to achieve effective rule in the grassland.

What's more, there are many determining factors for winning a war.

Even though the Ming army at that time was powerful in combat, it was normal that they could not win against the nomadic tribes from Mobei who came and went without a trace, and the jungle highland tribes of Myanmar who were good at hiding.

In this way, wherever the Ming army's defensive front line can be maintained, that is the border.

Just like Yunnan during the Hongwu period, there were more military states than civilian states in the territory. In fact, this province was similar to Shanxi and Shaanxi at that time, and it was a defensive frontier province.

Calculated this way, during the Zhu Yuanzhang era, the far north of the Ming Dynasty was Monan, and the far south was Yunnan.

After Zhu Di succeeded to the throne, he conquered south and west, conquered Annan, recovered the Western Region, and established counties in all of them.

In April of the 16th year of Yongle, Zhu Di personally conquered the desert for the third time. He led the Ming army all the way to the lair of Arutai and wiped out the main force of the Tatar Khan Court's [-] cavalry.At that time, Zhu Di could have taken advantage of the victory to pursue, crossed the Yinma River, and destroyed Arutai, but instead he went to Langjuxu Mountain, where he held a ceremony to worship the heaven, that is, to seal Langjuxu.

Later, when Zhu Di's squadron returned to the court and talked about this matter with Zhu Gaoxu, Zhu Gaoxu asked Zhu Di why he finally gave up pursuing Arutai, but Zhu Di said that his purpose was to weaken the Tatar strength, and it was not necessary to destroy Arutai in one battle.

In fact, it is not difficult to understand. It is not impossible to farm in Mobei, but due to the influence of geography and climate, crop output is limited, and the cost of transporting grain, cattle and sheep back to the mainland of the Ming Dynasty as taxes is very high.

In addition, the situation among the various tribes on the grassland is complicated, and the experience of governing the interior cannot be applied to the herdsmen who live in pursuit of water and grass. Even if Zhu Di conquers the grassland and establishes prefectures and counties, it will be difficult to achieve effective rule there.

Although Zhu Di had an element of great success in his character, he knew that with the comprehensive national strength of the Ming Dynasty at that time, it was impossible to directly manage the grassland, and he would even have to continue to provide subsidies and relief to the grassland.

Just imagine, there are nearly one million herdsmen scattered in the Mobei and Moxi land of about 200 million square kilometers. How can they rule?

Otherwise, you will suffer the consequences!
Historically, after Annan was conquered and turned into a county, Ma Qi, the eunuch sent by Zhu Di to guard it, did evil and oppressed the local people.

Even though there was a good official like Huang Fu who treated the local residents as human beings, the vast majority of officials regarded going to serve in Jiaozhi as being demoted, and even regarded the people of Jiaozhi who were highly Chinese as barbarians.

In this way, the contradiction between the rulers and the ruled became deeper and deeper, and rebellions inevitably occurred many times, which led to the Ming Dynasty abandoning Jiaozhi during the Xuande period.

Zhu Gaoxu knew very well that before the advent of the railway system, whether it was to include the grasslands or the Nurgan region into the tax collection system, it would require a huge amount of manpower and material resources as well as policy tilt.

It was difficult for all the Central Plains dynasties to truly utilize all the resources in the country, so each dynasty only really relied on one or a few core areas.

However, with the advancement of science and technology and the construction of fourth-level roads, by the late Yongle period, the Ming court could control more of this core area than previous dynasties.

For example, Zhili, Guangdong, Lianghuai, Liangjiang, Lianghu, and Fujian are all considered core areas, and the Ming court's ability to utilize resources from all over the country has become increasingly complete.

Even so, border provinces such as Yunnan, Jiaozhi, Beiting, Anxi, and Shaanxi are still military defense provinces that exist to defend the core areas.

The imperial court did not expect the taxes minus expenditures in these provinces to be positive. It would be good if the revenue and expenditures could be as even as possible.

For example, the reclamation of mountainous areas in Fujian and Zhejiang in the past dynasties had far greater political significance than economic value.

Another example is the Fujian, Guizhou, and Yunnan regions. In history, the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties began to develop vigorously. In fact, it was to provide military supplies for the military defense systems stationed there. For the imperial court at that time, it did not expect that there would be too much financial support. income.

The difference is that silver mines were later discovered in Yunnan, which had special economic value. Although the location was more peripheral than Guizhou, it was still more developed than Guizhou.

Therefore, it often happened in history that a certain dynasty voluntarily gave up some territory of the previous dynasty. It was not entirely because the dynasty was incompetent, but in comparison, continuing the rule of the family world and ensuring the wealth of the family was more important than maintaining the so-called vastness. Territory is more important.

It can be said that the first consideration of the Chinese dynasties in maintaining the size of their territory was not financial issues, so that some dynasties knew that there was wealth in the south of the Yangtze River and outside the customs, but they chose not to develop it.

Zhu Gaoxu knew very well that it was unrealistic for a feudal dynasty with limited technological level to maintain a very large territory.

Historically, empires with extremely large territories collapsed very quickly, such as the Mongolian and Yuan Empire.

If Zhu Gaoxu wants to build the Ming Dynasty into a super empire, he must solve three fundamental problems.

(End of this chapter)