Continuous disasters forced Ming Dynasty to choose to respond conservatively to all non-essential challenges during its 17 or 18 years of prosperity.
Eighteen years into the moderately prosperous period, that is, after 1680, due to the catastrophic disasters in the previous two years, the court would continue to reduce taxes. However, it was not a nationwide tax reduction. It would only continue to extend tax reductions for provinces where the disasters in the previous two years were particularly severe.
A one-year exemption. Provinces that were not so seriously affected by the disaster will already have to pay food grains starting from this year.
However, this did not replenish the imperial treasury. The collected grain was only enough to maintain official and military rations.
It can only be said that after two consecutive nationwide major disasters, it will take at least two more years of rest and recuperation before the disaster can barely recover.
In 1681, the 19th year of moderate prosperity, the country finally fully restored normal taxation, and began to increase the inventory of Changpingcang, which had been reduced by more than half in the previous years. However, it was unable to return to the level before the two consecutive years of disaster. At this time
There was not enough military rations to launch an expedition of thousands of miles.
In 1682, after twenty years of moderate prosperity, we finally encountered a relatively good year. Taking advantage of the rare tendency of "cheap grain hurting farmers", the imperial court increased its efforts to purchase surplus grain and finally restored Changpingcang to normal.
level.
However, the cost was that the imperial court spent a lot of gold, silver, and copper coins. The balance of gold and silver stolen from the Spanish when they captured Manila eleven years ago was basically spent on the reconstruction of grain reserves after this wave of national disasters.
Of course, such measures to benefit the people and benevolent government are very beneficial to win over the people's hearts, win the people's centripetal force towards the Ming Dynasty, and strengthen the support for the reform from top to bottom.
Although Zhu Shuren spent money, the progress of his various legislation and reforms has been greatly accelerated. The legislation of the "Monopoly Law" that was originally thought to take five years was finally completed in three years. Now in the fifth year, the "Ming Dynasty Law" has been completed
The main body of "Civil Code" is almost completed, three or four years ahead of schedule.
The support of the people all over the world for the Ming army has also increased a lot. The army's sense of honor is also increasing day by day. It has been many years since the large-scale war ended, and the new generation of young soldiers who have grown up are not as good as the veterans who were bleeding from the sword in the war to destroy the Qing Dynasty.
Morale and military discipline, courage.
But now, courage is difficult to practice in a peaceful state, but morale and military discipline can at least be restored to the high state during the war to destroy the Qing Dynasty——
Without this morale bonus, it would be difficult to resist the subsequent conflict with Galdan. Nowadays, the Ming Dynasty is the party that "has been in peace for a long time, and the soldiers do not know how to fight", while the Junggar tribe is "camping east and west every year.
After hundreds of battles, he has tempered himself into an elite and powerful army in the world."
After figuring out these situations, as twenty years of prosperity were about to pass, the top brass of the Ming Dynasty finally made up their minds to launch military retaliation against the Junggar tribe's treachery and wanton embezzlement of Ming vassal states.
What was originally planned to be started very early, ended up being delayed for many years due to various reasons. In the end, there were major disasters across the country for two consecutive years, which added up to another four to five years.
…
However, although it was delayed for four to five years by successive major disasters, the four to five years of preparation period in Ming Dynasty were not in vain.
In terms of economic construction, although the past four or five years have been stagnant and fluctuated repeatedly, the total GDP, population, and total food production have not improved much.
However, there have been a lot of improvements in terms of industrial technology and business coordination capabilities.
On the one hand, continuous major famines have caused some of the new overflow agricultural population to change their registration status and become workers when they cannot grow food, and come to the city to find industrial and commercial jobs to make a living.
On the other hand, large-scale Changping warehouses are repeatedly opened to provide disaster relief and collect grain to restore inventory, which also brings huge commercial logistics. In years of famine, although farmers cannot grow food, the government will also find ways to spare farmers.
Give them "relief for work".
At this time, due to the pressure of domestic transportation and the need to allocate food remotely on a large scale, it has become a good way to let the farmers who work for work work together with the traditional corvee population to be responsible for the construction of the country's transportation infrastructure projects.
The mouth of hungry labor.
In the end, hundreds of thousands of peasants who were about to starve to death directly took refuge with the imperial court and became corvee workers. They became migrant workers who built bridges and paved roads, and repaired many shipping and transportation facilities in the Ming Dynasty.
One of the most famous projects is the "Hanshui-North Link" canal plan, which failed to succeed in the pre-Song Dynasty but succeeded in the modern South-to-North Water Diversion Project.
In the area of Fangcheng Pass in Nanyang, an area of the remaining veins of Tongbai Mountain was dug through, connecting the Baihe River, a tributary of the Han River, with a tributary of Ruying in the north passing through Ye County. In this way, the water volume of a part of the Han River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, was
, instead of flowing southward, it can flow northward into the Ruying River System, which will slightly alleviate the water shortage in Henan.
More importantly, an inland water transport channel has been opened, allowing supplies from Huguang to go north to Henan. This will allow supplies from Huguang and Sichuan to go north without having to go around a thousand miles of water routes to the east. In the long run, it will definitely benefit the country.
Large-scale material dispatching and transportation saves huge costs, and it is a job that will benefit the future and benefit the future.
And such a project, from the 17th to the 20th year of a moderately prosperous society, in four years, relied on hundreds of thousands of new people who wanted to be corvees to eat public food, plus the original siege of the Ming Dynasty.
The military units concentrated their efforts to build it. During this period, they also overcame the geological problem of swelling soil at Fangcheng Pass, dug a lot of extra earth, and completed the work.
There are far more than one example like this, so in the past four years, the transportation dispatch and road conditions within the Ming Dynasty have indeed been upgraded to a great level, which has reduced the cost for the subsequent centralized transportation of military rations to the northwest frontline -
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After all, under original circumstances, if grain from Sichuan and Huguang was to be transported to Shaanxi and Gansu for the Northwest Army to fight, it would have to first go eastward along the Han River, the Yangtze River, and then transfer to the Huaihe River at Hefei, and then use the Grand Canal system to transfer to the Yellow River. (Sichuan
It is impossible to cross the Qinling Mountains directly by taking the land plank road. Zhuge Liang tried that route and found that the loss was too great. The cost of traveling ten thousand miles by water is not as great as the loss of crossing the Qinling Mountains for several hundred miles)
But now, the grain from Sichuan and Huguang can save more than a thousand miles of waterway from Xiangyang to Hefei. If you add up to twice as much for the round trip, you can save 2,800 miles of water transportation. This is all
cost.
…
In addition to these improvements in transportation infrastructure, Ming Dynasty has also made a lot of progress in other fields of science and education in the past five years.
The development of science and technology will not be delayed by natural disasters. Scientific research has its own rhythm. As long as the basic funds are sufficient, scientists will be idle when they are idle, and they will always have to work on something.
In the past five years, although Robert Hooke failed to improve the "Watt Steam Engine", it was still far away. However, other peripheral small inventions have been made a lot - of course, the Ming Academy of Sciences and major research institutes,
It is also the result of the joint efforts of many scholars at NTU, and it was not the result of Hooker's work alone.
Including the navigation clock that was only invented by the British in 1735 in history, it was finally invented by the Ming Dynasty 55 years in advance, and miniaturization experiments were carried out at the same time, using standardized springs and escapements made of standardized gears.
This device allowed the "anti-turbulence navigation clock" to be miniaturized into a pocket watch in the next few years.
Once this thing appeared, the Ming Dynasty's navigation industry would definitely flourish further, because it was finally possible to use the modern "accurate determination of longitude navigation method".
Before there were nautical clocks with precise timing and that would not be bumped by the waves, it was illegal for human navigation to accurately determine the longitude of their location. This also resulted in many voyages that could only use the latitude navigation method, along a latitude due east.
Sail due west to avoid veering off course.
With the longitude navigation method, sea-going ships can sail more precise routes directly to the destination. On average, it can save 10% to 20% of the voyage mileage, and can also reduce the original mileage by 10% or 20%.
It also reduces the sailing time and shipping costs. It can also make geographical discovery more convenient and map the coastline more accurately.
In addition to the marine clock, Antony Leeuwenhoek, who was Hooke's assistant, not surprisingly also invented the world's first microscope with the financial support of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ming Dynasty, and made the first observational discovery
Bacteria and other microorganisms——
This is not surprising, because the world's first microscope was originally invented by Leeuwenhoek. However, historically, he did not have so many people supporting him in the Netherlands, so he had to spend his own money on research.
Slow down. Now in the Ming Dynasty, all kinds of optical polishing consumables and optical glass base materials are freely available for anyone to use and spend, so naturally the progress is rapid and rapid.
The emergence of microscopes and the discovery of microorganisms, of course, will soon usher in a new wave of blowout in the field of biochemical environmental materials. For example, some people have begun to conduct comparative studies on "pasteurization methods" in history.
Anyway, now that we have microscopes that can clearly see the life and death of microorganisms, we can accurately observe the bactericidal effects of various drugs and hygiene methods. This is definitely a qualitative change.
Just the comparative research of several research institutes under the Academy of Sciences of the Ming Dynasty on various food and military ration preservation technologies in the past two or three years has brought the stability of the Ming Dynasty's expedition logistics support to a new level.
A bunch of small but cost-effective measures and regulations, as well as a bunch of pre-processing techniques, have significantly reduced the probability of the army's rations spoiling and causing stomach upset.
In addition, there have been at least a dozen more small scientific discoveries and inventions that are lower-level than marine clocks and microscopes in the past five years.
Reflecting telescopes, periscopes, eighty-pin Xiaowan spinning machines, cotton smashing machines, improved hand-operated sewing machines, the first-generation pedal sewing machines...Zhu Shuren could not even count them.
After seeing the hope of "rejuvenating the country through science and education," the Ming court gave greater support to Nanjing University and the Ming Academy of Sciences. At the same time, it also began to think about two other major events that would benefit the future and benefit the future.
That is, we are prepared to allow each province to raise its own funds as appropriate and establish a science and engineering university in each province, similar to the way NTU runs its schools.
Therefore, in the past three years, Ming Dynasty has put a lot of effort into research and warm-up of science and education preparations in various provinces to reserve talents.
Unfortunately, because the absolute number of science and engineering talents is still not enough, in the end we have to postpone it and divide it into several small steps.
The first step is to immediately carry out a new round of enrollment expansion at Nanjing University. This started in the 18th year of the establishment of a moderately prosperous society and the eleventh year of the establishment of Nantah University. Since then, Nantah University's annual enrollment has increased from 600 to 600.
Further expanded to 1,500 people at one time.
However, after the expansion, there is also a reduction in benefits, that is, in the future, graduates of Nanjing University will no longer be candidates for official positions according to the treatment of candidates.
In other words, the treatment of "having the opportunity to become an official after studying at NTU" is available only to the tenth class of NTU students, and will no longer be such a good thing.
After the enrollment expansion, the quality of students will decline for the first time, but more talents will be available to carry out basic science education at the local level, turning mathematics, physics and chemistry education into a spark that can start a prairie fire.
Even among the 900 people to be expanded from 600 to 1500, half of them with the lowest admission scores will be directly trained as "normal students" in the future and must be sent to local schools to teach.
Although we are not yet able to establish universities in each province, we can at least establish new schools of various secondary schools.
At present, each province has a science and engineering middle school in the provincial capital, which teaches basic mathematics, physics and chemistry knowledge before entering university, and also teaches traditional literature and philosophy.
The final graduation teaching level is roughly equivalent to the mathematics and physics level of the second grade of junior high school in later generations, plus some common sense of chemistry and biology.
This work started in the 18th year of a moderately prosperous society and has been initially completed in the 20th year of a moderately prosperous society. In this year, at least one comprehensive middle school has been established in each provincial capital of the Ming Dynasty, with an enrollment of several hundred students.
about.
Among them, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanchang, and Wuchang were the fastest places to build middle schools in the country. By the time they were well-off for 20 years, they already had students studying in the third grade.
These provinces originally attached great importance to culture and education. After the imperial court issued the policy, the local gentry responded wildly and actively in the first year and actively donated money to build middle schools.
Guangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Beijing, Kaifeng, Jinan, and Fuzhou are a little later. They are the first comprehensive middle schools built in the 19th year of Xiaokang. They now have second-grade students.
The remaining provincial towns that were relatively remote or poorer finally built middle schools in a hurry to meet the imperial deadline of 20 years of well-off society.
Even if there is little money and no one donates, the existing problems should be solved first, and in the worst case, the enrollment will be reduced a bit. If there are not enough teachers assigned, then some courses will be reduced first.
During the final inspection by the Ministry of Education, the imperial court also confirmed that each province already had middle schools teaching mathematics, physics and chemistry, and was quite satisfied with the result. However, during the inspection, it was also found that some poor provinces did not have adequate hardware and teaching staff, so they also contacted the imperial court on this matter.
report.
After discussions with officials from the Chinese Ministry of Education, the cabinet was consulted, and the cabinet finally made a decision, recommending that each province establish "libraries" based on prefectures and counties in addition to the first general science middle school.
It is required that within one year, a library be established in all provincial capitals that can be used by students to read at home. However, due to limitations of the technology and management level of the times, it is definitely not allowed to borrow books, and can only come to the library to read on-site.
, you cannot take books home, and you have to be searched when entering and leaving the library to avoid stealing books.
As for the full set of basic mathematics, physics and chemistry textbooks that must be provided in the library, the Ministry of Culture and Literature of the imperial court will uniformly distribute them to all provinces. Anyway, block printing and movable type printing are very mature now, and the imperial court's engraving and printing of books is not expensive. One plate printing can cost several thousand.
Ten thousand volumes is no problem at all.
In the end, the imperial court will distribute books according to the standard of about 30,000 sets. The provincial capital libraries in each province will be equipped with at least 1,000 sets of all general mathematics, physics and chemistry textbooks. Of course, traditional textbooks such as the Four Books and Five Classics will also be distributed for free borrowing.
In the next three to five years, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports will also order all provinces to have a public free library in each city within three years, and the required books can be allocated part of the quota originally received by the provincial capital library.
Within five years, every county will have a public free library. The source of books can also be shared from the province's 1,000 sets. At the same time, local squires can donate part of it themselves. All libraries are open to visitors, but they are not allowed to
loan.
The imperial court was only responsible for the provision of original teaching materials, and let local gentry raise funds for construction and daily operations. The imperial court did not provide a budget. However, it could set up merit tablets at the entrance of the library for those who donated money to write down each person's contribution. The contribution reached a certain amount.
Yes, in the future, the younger generation can give priority to the Imperial College to donate students.
With more basic facilities such as middle schools and libraries, I believe that Ming Dynasty's plan to build a university in each provincial capital should be promising in the next few years.
Although this kind of university is destined to be a simplified and abridged version of Nanjing University, and graduates cannot enjoy administrative-level treatment. But it is better than nothing, and it can also enrich Ming Dynasty's scientific and educational talent team.
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PS: A new book has been opened and I need to finish it as soon as possible. The second update today is almost 10,000 words. There may be another update in the afternoon, but not necessarily. Don’t wait.