Go back to the Ming Dynasty to be a thousand households

Chapter 17
When Huang Laifu returned to Wuzhai Fort with Jiang Dazhong and Yang Xiaolu, it was already dark, and his family was waiting for Huang Laifu to eat.

At this time, Huang Laifu was still full of excitement, he greeted Huang Sihao and Yang Shi, and then went back to his room, his coat was loose and his computer bag was wrapped around his waist, no one could tell.After entering his room, he put the computer bag in the wooden box beside the Kang, calmed down his excitement, and then went to the lobby to eat.

After eating some hastily, Huang Laifu went back to his room, and Mrs. Yang said from behind: "This child, why doesn't he have an appetite tonight?"

Huang Laifu closed the door, lit the oil lamp, leaned on the kang and flipped through the computer.Although he has memories of Huang Laifu's past, he still doesn't know the specific location of Wuzhai Fort in later generations.

At this time, he opened the satellite map data of the whole country, and the historical data map of Wuzhai Fort in the Ming Dynasty.Only then did I discover that Wuzhai Fort is Wuzhai County in Xinzhou City, Shanxi Province. Its geographical location is in the northwestern part of Shanxi Province. County, Hequ County border.The total area is about 1391.3 square kilometers.

In later generations, Wuzhai County had a population of about 10. At that time, Wuzhai Fort had only a few thousand people including the main army and the families of the military households.At this time, Wuzhai Fort, Piantouguan, Hequ, Shenchi, and Ningwu Forts were all at the end of the county.

This is my own development base, a small county with an area of ​​just over 1 square kilometers and a population of less than [-].What should I do?

Huang Laifu looked at the situation in Wuzhai County in later generations, trying to find some inspiration for his own development.He found some relevant introduction materials next to a map of Wuzhai County:

The terrain of Wuzhai County is high in the southeast and low in the northwest. From south to north, the central part of the county is flat with the word "Ding", covering an area of ​​about 164 square kilometers.

The total land area of ​​the county is 208.7 million mu, of which 60 mu is arable land, accounting for 28.7% of the total land area of ​​the county; 74.7 mu is suitable for forest land, accounting for 36% of the total area of ​​the county; Accounting for 50% of the total area of ​​the county.Limestone, granite and clay are widely distributed in the county, with large reserves and broad prospects for development.

The main rivers are Zhujiachuan River, Xianchuan River, Lanyi River, Qinglian River and Lujiao River. It is one of the Fushui counties in Northwest Shanxi.

Wuzhai County is a large agricultural and breeding county. The main food crops are potatoes, naked oats, corn, millet, beans and other small miscellaneous grains; especially potatoes, the annual planting area of ​​the whole county is stable at more than 20 mu, accounting for to one-third of the total arable land area.

Seeing the potato, Huang Laifu shook his head regretfully. According to what he knew and the information he found, the potato, the thing called potato, and the sweet potato, the thing called sweet potato, sweet potato, were born around 22 Wanli, Ming Shenzong. In 1594, after [-] AD, it was introduced from Luzon to Guangdong and Fujian. The first bringers were Chen Fulong, Lin Huailan, Chen Jinglun and others. It was to be spread to Shanxi and widely promoted after the death of Ming Dynasty.

If high-yield crops such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn had been introduced to Shanxi and Shaanxi a few decades earlier, and the local people would have had food to eat, perhaps there would not have been a mob like Li Zicheng, a burglar.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes may not look like much, but they are good things.In the Ming Dynasty, even if the crops at that time were in good weather, the annual grain output per mu was only three to four hundred catties, which was still a good field. In a disaster year, there would be no harvest at every turn.

The harvest of potatoes and sweet potatoes is calculated by the ton, and the yield per mu can be several thousand catties at every turn.Even corn has a much higher yield than other crops such as grains and wheat, and none of the three occupies fertile land, and they can all be cultivated in mountainous and dry land where rice and wheat cannot be grown.It can even improve the soil of the land, turning the original large tracts of uncultivable land into arable land for wheat and rice.

Although the taste of these miscellaneous grains is not good, but when people are about to starve to death during a catastrophe, who cares whether the taste of the food is good or bad?It tastes much better than bark, grass roots, and Guanyin clay.Moreover, in terms of nutrition, both potatoes and sweet potatoes contain a lot of starch and multivitamins, which are no worse than cereals and wheat.

Regrets are regrets, sighs are sighs, high-yield crops such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn will not fall from the sky. Even if you go to Guangdong, Fujian and other places to look for these crops, who knows where they are?
The sea of ​​people is vast and the territory is vast. Finding some crops is like looking for a needle in a haystack.I don’t know when I found it. These days, I walked from Shanxi to Guangdong, and then walked back, and then looked for some crops that are not common to local people like looking for a needle in a haystack. How many years would it take? Two years, three years, or five years?

But no matter what, Huang Laifu decided to send his capable men as soon as possible to search for these high-yield crops in Guangdong, Fujian and other places. If they can't find them in Guangdong and Fujian, they will go to Luzon and other places to look for them as far as possible.To find it one day earlier is my blessing, and it is also a blessing for the people of Ming Dynasty.

The prospect is beautiful and bright, but the long-distance water cannot quench the near-thirst. The most important thing right now is to solve the problem of food for the military households in Wuzhaibao.

For the common people in the north and the soldiers in the important towns of the Nine Borders, the weather these years has been a bit strange, either severe cold or severe drought, it seems that God never stops.

This year is the 17th year of Wanli. Fortunately, it’s just that the weather is a bit abnormal. In summer, Beijing lacks rain, and epidemics prevail in May and June, and the drought extends to Shandong.However, South Zhili suffered from floods due to excessive rainfall. After autumn, there was another earthquake in Shanxi, which was relatively ordinary.

But last year, that is, the 16th year of Wanli, there was a terrible drought in Shaanxi and Shanxi.In the spring of each year, soybeans and wheat are back to the green filling season. There is a long drought and no rain, coupled with strong winds, there is no harvest for green stems, and only [-] to [-]% of the crops are harvested.From June to August, there was severe drought and no rain. The autumn seedlings planted were exposed to the sun and wind, and all of them were scorched, and the harvest of autumn grain was absolutely impossible.

The disaster area covered Xi'an, Yan'an, and Qingyang prefectures, as well as some prefectures and counties in Fengxiang and Gongchang prefectures.Frightened farmers from all over the country took care of the old and the young and fled to various places to beg for a living.

For such a severe famine, Emperor Wanli had to do his best to relieve the disaster, and he was busy until the end of the year before he breathed a sigh of relief.

To be honest, Emperor Wanli has passed through such worrying days for many years. Since the early years of Wanli, there have been more and more problems in this heaven, either floods in the south or droughts in the north.

As a result of various frequent disasters, not only the food and clothing of the people in the north are worrying, but the military and civilian problems on the nine borders are also very serious.The army of the Ming Dynasty implemented the farming system. The heavy troops of the Ming Dynasty army were concentrated in the nine border towns, and these nine border towns were all in the north. Severe droughts occurred frequently all year round, which led to a sharp drop in the harvest of the farm, and even some years there was no harvest.

The farmland cannot be self-sufficient, so the Ming government needs to distribute the military pay and food, coupled with long-term internal and external troubles, resulting in a sharp increase in military expenditures.During the reign of Emperor Yingzong, the annual salary of the frontier army was only tens of thousands of taels. By the early Wanli period, the military expenditure had reached more than 20 million taels.In the 46th year of Wanli, Ningxia, North Korea, and Bozhou had three major campaigns, and military expenditures reached [-] million taels.From the [-]th year of Wanli to the seventh year of Apocalypse, in the [-] years before and after the military was used against Houjin, the military expenditure amounted to more than [-] million taels.

Due to the aggravation of disasters and continuous wars, by the 30th year of Wanli, the old treasury was almost exhausted, Beijing's grain was exhausted, and Taicang had no new year's expenses.In the 36th year of Wanli, Wang Ruolin was ordered to inspect the treasury during the incident. He found that there was only 38 taels of silver in stock, and there was nothing left in the foreign treasury.From the 960th year of Wanli to the seventh year of Apocalypse, more than [-] million taels of military salaries were owed to various border towns.

The food and payment of border towns have exhausted the country's finances to a great extent.At the end of the Wanli period, especially after the Liaodong crisis, the national finances were basically unable to recover, which led to the failure of the war against Houjin.

The military households in Wuzhaibao did not understand the above situations. They only knew that due to natural disasters, the farmland to which Wuzhaibao belonged had not had any harvest for several years.Their current life can only rely on the poor monthly rations given out every year from above, and they don't know when such a day will be the end.The life of the military households in Wuzhaibao that Huang Laifu saw was just a microcosm of the life of the military households in the Nine Frontiers Town at that time.

The harsh and repeated weather made the soldiers and civilians in the north of the Ming Dynasty at a loss. What happened to God?However, Huang Laifu knew that such a miserable life would continue in the future, and it would last for decades, and it would become more and more serious in the future.

This is the famous "Little Ice Age" in history. There were two times in Chinese history.Especially at the end of the Ming Dynasty from 1580 to 1644, the temperature dropped suddenly to the lowest point in the millennium.

The precursors of the catastrophe can be traced back to the early Jiajing period. It became obvious in the 13th year of Wanli (1585), but it fluctuated from time to time. It suddenly intensified around 1600, and the peak of the catastrophe was not reached until the Chongzhen Dynasty.The overall warming of the temperature did not resume until around 1650 after the fall of the Ming Dynasty.

The extreme cold caused the rainfall area to generally move southward, which caused disasters in almost all parts of the country in the Ming Dynasty.First Qin and Jin, later Heluo, followed by Qi, Lu, Wuyue, Jingchu, Sanfu, and a nationwide severe drought.At the same time, the plague also began to spread. The plague that spread to several provinces in North China finally broke out in Shanxi, and it spread to the Gyeonggi area at the end of the Ming Dynasty. This directly led to the easy capture of Beijing.

Long-term and high-density disasters are a fatal blow to an empire with a large population. Zheng Lian, a native of Shangqiu, Henan in the late Ming Dynasty, made a detailed account of the disasters in Henan Province during the Chongzhen period in his book "Records of Henan Changes". The statistical chronology is shocking after reading.

"...Chongzhen had 3 years of drought. 4 years of drought. 5 years of severe drought. 6 years of floods in Zhengzhou, the Yellow River was as hard as a rock. 7 years of summer drought locusts. 8 years of summer drought locusts, Huaiqing Yellow River ice. 9 years of summer drought Locusts, floods in Kaifeng and Shangqiu in autumn. Great summer locusts in 10 years, heavy snow in April in Shanxi. Severe droughts in 11 years, thousands of miles of red land. Severe droughts in 12 years, Qinshui exhausted. Severe droughts in 13 years, Shangcai ground cracked, Luoyang Earthquake, Dou Mi Qian Qian, people eat each other. In February 14, there was a great famine, summer locusts, and migratory locusts ate wheat like harvesting. Huaiqing Earthquake in 15, Kaifeng Yellow River in September..."

"Journal of Yubian" also copied the full text of Lu Weiqi's memorial to the court.Mrs. Lu, who used to be Minister of the Ministry of War, retired at home. Witnessing the serious disaster in Henan, he couldn't complain.Zoushu was written in the seventh year of Chongzhen, and every word is bloody, and I can't bear to read it.

Huang Laifu's gaze stayed on the computer. In history, the Ming Dynasty, which created a splendid civilization but suffered from suffering and devastation, did not survive 1644. Although the disaster gradually eased after a few years and finally returned to normal, potatoes and sweet potatoes, etc. High-yield crops were also quickly promoted.Can my own arrival change the fate of the Ming Dynasty?

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"...Golden autumn in October, the fruit is fragrant. On October 10, the reporter learned from the relevant departments of Wuzhai County that the autumn harvest work in Wuzhai County is about to succeed, and the grain production has achieved a bumper harvest for four consecutive years. It is estimated that the total grain output this year will reach 29 4 million catties, an increase of 2.2 million catties of grain compared with the previous year, a year-on-year increase of 5100%, the highest level in history..."

Huang Laifu's eyes stopped on a report in Wuzhai County in later generations. Slowly, he made a decision to give priority to the development of agriculture in Wuzhaibao. Anyway, Wuzhai County in later generations is also a large agricultural county.

Although Huang Laifu's computer has a lot of modern industrial and technological materials, considering his current strength and the environment at that time, Huang Laifu decided to develop agriculture first. This is what he can do under his current conditions. Wuzhaibao originally focused on farming host.Of course, industry and commerce must also be developed, but we will wait until the generals of Wuzhaibao have enough food and clothing and have money and food.

Giving priority to agriculture is a decision made by Huang Laifu after careful consideration.

The Ming Dynasty in the future will be trapped in the Little Ice Age for several decades, with frequent disasters and serious shortage of food production. It can be said that the future of agriculture has a very bright future in the next few decades, and there is no need to worry about no market.If I can solve the food problem of the military households in Wuzhaibao by then, and then use some points to bring noodles to solve or alleviate the problem of food shortage in the Ming Dynasty, it will be the result of both fame and fortune.

Moreover, Huang Laifu believes that vigorously developing commerce when agriculture is unstable will not bring any good results. In this regard, the Ming Dynasty has already learned a profound lesson.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, commerce was extremely developed, especially during the Wanli, Tianqi, and Chongzhen dynasties, overseas trade was huge, resulting in a large amount of silver flowing into China. According to incomplete statistics, the amount of silver flowing into China from overseas at the end of the Ming Dynasty was as high as [-] million taels.

It’s just that the influx of so much silver has inevitably led to inflation. The prices of various commodities have soared, and the price of food has also soared. The dichotomy between the rich and the poor has become more serious, causing many problems.

The instability of agriculture and the prosperity of commercial trade when grain production is insufficient will cause another problem.For example, in the grain production center of the Ming Dynasty, the people in the south of the Yangtze River saw the benefits of business and felt that growing grain was not cost-effective, so they used a large area of ​​land for the cultivation of cash crops, which further reduced the grain production. This is the so-called rice mulberry and the like. controversy.

Originally, the north of the Ming Dynasty was trapped in the Little Ice Age for decades, and the food was already seriously insufficient. In addition, the grain production in the south was declining year by year, which led to the shortage of food in the Ming Dynasty, and the price of food was rising steadily, and the price of food was soaring It also drives up all items, forming a vicious circle and exacerbating social conflicts.

This is typical non-agricultural instability.

The agriculture is unstable, the people have no food, no matter how prosperous the business is, it is like duckweed without roots, and it will fall when the wind blows.Therefore, in the face of the extremely low grain productivity in ancient times, frequent disasters and backward transportation.China's thousands of years of "emphasis on agriculture and suppression of business" policy is not without reason.

No matter how prosperous the commerce in the late Ming Dynasty was, it could not save the social collapse caused by the collapse of agriculture, and many factors of instability seemed to be added to the fire.

Moreover, there is another point that the commercial development in the late Ming Dynasty and the inflow of a large amount of silver did not bring any benefits to the national finances.The country's finances are still tight.Because the trade dividends among them are basically divided among those big merchants and literati officials.Small people and the government are the victims of inflation.

On the one hand, the founding of the Ming Dynasty was based on a society dominated by small and medium-sized landlords and self-cultivating farmers. In terms of fiscal revenue, a simple small-scale peasant society has always been used as a reference.The various systems, including the financial system, formulated starting from the small peasant society are difficult to change with the development of society, and officials generally do not have the ability to cope with various environmental changes.

These literati officials often feel alienated from the development or decline of the private economy, their eyes are darkened, and they have no way to start.Not to mention the complex changes in the business world.Naturally, the country's tax revenue and budget cannot be increased or decreased accordingly.Many officials in the Ming Dynasty were completely unaware of the changes in social and commercial wealth, and had no concept of increasing taxes in business, and would only habitually stare at poor farmers.

On the other hand, in the late Ming Dynasty, the entire country’s economic center of gravity had shifted to industry and commerce. At this time, the civil official group had colluded with the merchants, and to a certain extent, the civil official group was the spokesperson of the merchants. They divided up a large amount of commercial trade. Bonus, if the court and the emperor think of increasing the country's fiscal revenue from business, they will be frantically obstructed by the civil servants.

Stand up for those who obstruct them, such as Emperor Wanli, who increased the three salaries, raised mining taxes, and increased commercial taxes.He was scolded by civil servants, big merchants, and later Tatar royal servants with ulterior motives.

To be honest, Huang Laifu did not agree with the increase in the three salaries. This would increase the burden on the peasants, and their burden was already heavy.However, Huang Laifu was in favor of discussing the tax on mining and increasing the commercial tax.

Merchants and literati accounted for 90% of the country's wealth at that time, so what's the matter with paying some taxes?Since they are all national citizens, you businessmen and officials are not obliged to pay taxes. Do you have to put all the burden on the farmers?Although some merchants were harmed when they opened mines to negotiate taxes, the lesser of two evils!It is better to make businessmen cry than to make peasants cry.When merchants cry and make noise, the country is in chaos; when peasants cry and make rebellion, the country is in danger of subjugation.

This is evident in Emperor Chongzhen. Because of being fooled by the civil servants, Emperor Chongzhen vigorously reduced and exempted commercial taxes and transferred most of the national tax burden to the ordinary people, making the rich richer and the poor dead. Chance.Although he won the title of some literati and Mingjun, it also aggravated social conflicts and accelerated the pace of national subjugation.

In the end, the Chongzhen Emperor died, and those civil servants and big businessmen who forgot their righteousness for personal gain did not get any good results.Either he died under the knife of Li Zicheng and other rogue bandits, or he died under the knife of the Hulu, or he was a slave with money and pigtails, and became a slave to the people.The wealth they have worked so hard to accumulate, ranging from tens of thousands of taels to as many as 10 taels, and millions of taels of silver, has also become the wealth of others, or turned into dust.This is the so-called truth that if there is no skin, the hair will not be attached.

Therefore, before the agriculture is unstable, food is insufficient, and the national financial system is unreasonable, the more prosperous the business, the more negative effects it may bring.

On the other hand, if agriculture develops, food is plentiful, and the needs of the people are diversified, industry and commerce will naturally develop.At this time, the development of commerce cannot be stopped even if you want to.Moreover, business at this time will be well integrated with agriculture to better promote social development.

Looking at the world, it is the same.A typical example is Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Agricultural Revolution in England is generally believed to have led to the Industrial Revolution.At that time, the huge demand for food due to the growth of the British and European populations led to the private and national land enclosure movement in the UK, and the operation mode of large leased farms had an absolute advantage in the British countryside.This kind of large leased farm management method greatly promoted the development of British agriculture, and the golden age of British agriculture came.

The British agricultural revolution created the necessary preconditions for the industrial revolution.It not only provided the necessary food and raw materials for the industrial revolution, but also created an army of free labor and a vast domestic market, and also accumulated abundant capital for the industrial revolution.

Finally, the development of British agriculture has accelerated the prosperous development of British commerce. The two are mutually integrated and promoted. When the development reaches a certain level and the productivity cannot meet the needs of the market, it is natural to improve related technologies. Therefore, the machine-based industry The revolution begins.

The development history of modern Britain is a relatively successful period. Huang Laifu hopes to learn something useful to himself and the country from the successful development history of other countries.That night, he kept checking the relevant information until the computer ran out of power, and then reluctantly went to sleep.

And that night, he also made plans for his future development.

(End of this chapter)