Chapter 295 The Empire's organized plunder and massacre of foreign barbarians
Because Daming does not need slaves yet.
After all, Daming still has a lot of unemployed people.
So, what Daming needs is farmland, not population.
After these aborigines were wiped out, Li Zicheng ordered them to be burned, and then sprinkled the ashes produced after the burning, mainly composed of white phosphorus and plant ash, on the field, and waited for the Ming officials to bring the people who moved here The fields are cultivated here.
White phosphorus and plant ash are both good fertilizers, so they need to be sprinkled on the fields.
Because the elements needed by crops are phosphorus and potassium.
In the Indochina Peninsula at this time, a group of Han people from Guanzhong had already been divided into fields in a coastal area where the Ming army patrolled and stood guard.
In this period of history, the five-year severe drought in Shaanxi reached the point of cannibalism, which also directly contributed to the large-scale peasant uprising in Shaanxi in the early years of Chongzhen.
In this life, Shaanxi still inevitably experienced severe drought.
So, during this period of time, the Han people who were relocated by the imperial government using state power were mainly the grainless people in Shaanxi, and there were also many people in Guanzhong.
It is conceivable that after many years, many people here will start to speak the Guanzhong accent.
However, what the Guanzhong people who immigrated here did not know was that their fields were taken from the local aborigines by the imperial court and given to them.
But there is no other way. If the court wants to solve the problem of overpopulation by slaughtering its own people, it can only slaughter foreigners!
In addition to the people in Guanzhong, Daming also sent many old farmers who were good at growing rice in the south as technicians to teach these Han farmers who migrated from the north to grow rice.
Daming does not lack farmers with excellent agricultural technology. After all, Daming is an agricultural empire with a long history of agricultural technology. Therefore, the crops here grow better than the original crops.
Of course, it may also have something to do with these soils becoming more fertile.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that after the original aboriginal forces in these places were wiped out, the food accumulated by these aboriginal people through farming would naturally be directly plundered by Ming and transported back to China.
Therefore, through the grain plundered from these natives and the grain tax handed in by the newly relocated Han people after harvesting, Daming was able to transport a large amount of grain back from Nanyang every year.
Every year, grain transport ships appear in Guangzhou, Yuegang, Dinghai, Denglai, and Tianjin almost continuously.
After these grains were transported back to China, they further enriched the granaries of Ming Dynasty in Tongzhou and other places, as well as the granaries used for military purposes in Nine Sides, and the Changping warehouses used in various provinces to stabilize prices and provide disaster relief.
Besides, the Ming court also added many granaries dedicated to building large-scale projects and large-scale disaster relief due to the large inflow of grain.
At this time, Shaanxi has added several large granaries directly managed by the Ministry of Households, so that the new refugees caused by the severe drought will not starve to death.
No way, the drought in Shaanxi during this historical period was indeed severe.
Generally speaking, a two-year drought is considered a major disaster, and it is very rare for more than two years.
But during this period, Daming encountered a five-year drought!
And according to historical development, there will be locust plagues in Henan, large-scale floods in the Huanghuai region, large-scale famine in the Jiangnan region, and large-scale plague in North China.
So, Chongzhen in history was quite difficult.
Because according to research, historically, when Chongzhen was emperor, there were catastrophes almost every year.
Turn back.
Therefore, it is impossible for Shaanxi during this period not to have a large-scale peasant uprising, and it is also impossible for hundreds of thousands of refugees and bandits to follow.
In addition, it is impossible for Daming in this period to solve the problems of people's livelihood internally. Even if you make iron-blooded reforms and divide the fields and land, if God does not cooperate, you will greatly reduce food production, and you will not be able to solve the food needs of most people. question.
Even if Tianqi, like Chongzhen, reduced his share of the emperor's food to only five dishes, and then forced other nobles to follow suit, it would not work.
Fortunately, in this life, under the influence of Zhang Gui, Daming changed the national policy, broke the Confucian moral constraints, and transferred the pressure caused by natural disasters and man-made disasters outward.
A large amount of Nanyang’s food resources canaled into the country, coupled with domestic internal reforms, the administrative efficiency and the cleanliness of officials have also been improved a lot, so it did not lead to large-scale peasant uprisings.
It's just that the contradictions within the ruling class still exist.
As a farming civilization empire, when most of the rulers of this country are feudal landlords, he still opposes the transfer of contradictions from the bottom of his heart.
Because it would harm their interests.
Nanyang’s food resources were transported back to China in large quantities, which prevented many people in Shaanxi from selling their sons and daughters, and also prevented many people from using usury to solve the problem of food and clothing.
So landlords can't take advantage of natural disasters to annex fields and enjoy cheap labor.
"Sin! Feed food to the poor!"
Ma Wenmao, a landlord in Shaanxi, gritted his teeth angrily when he saw the porridge factory under the grain store directly under Tongguan Guancang distributing dry porridge mixed with sand to the poor passing by, and said: "The Shaanxi officials in the court don't know how to stop the court from doing this. Such a shameless act of wasting food!"
It is not just the landlords in Shaanxi who are dissatisfied.
Coastal landowners involved in smuggling Nanyang grains to hype up grain prices are also very dissatisfied with the fact that Nanyang grains are taken back to the country by the imperial court with state power to solve people's livelihood problems.
You know, these Nanyang grains were originally a resource for them to make a fortune.
In addition, the natives are naturally dissatisfied with Daming's brutal way of directly plundering their food and destroying their population.
But these people are dissatisfied and dissatisfied, and they can't resist the powerful force of the Ming Dynasty. They can only watch helplessly as the Ming Dynasty uses national power to force resources at home and abroad to solve people's livelihood and strengthen national strength.
Although many landlords in the private sector were dissatisfied, and many indigenous landlords overseas were also dissatisfied, the Ming court did solve many domestic crises by directly plundering foreign countries or indirectly plundering food resources and land resources through trade.
Not to mention the avoidance of large-scale peasant uprisings, the advancement space of many scholars, especially the humble scholars, has also increased a lot.
After all, the newly occupied land required a lot of officials to manage. In addition, because internal conflicts needed to be shifted outward and external resources were transferred to solve internal conflicts, many official positions were increased. Therefore, the Ming court had to repeatedly expand the number of candidates for the imperial examination.
The benefit of this phenomenon is that although there are voices dissatisfied with the status quo, there are more and more voices of support. In addition, once such a trend is formed, it will be very difficult to withdraw it in the future. After all, withdrawing means that a large number of officials will be laid off.
The reason why the Ming court can do this now is that the Department of Industry can continuously provide advanced firearms, so that more civilians can become well-trained elite soldiers, and they can plunder and develop in an organized manner.
It's just that if the Industrial Division wants to continuously provide advanced firearms, it needs more resources to provide support for the Industrial Division, such as the iron ore that the Industrial Division urgently needs right now.
Apocalypse and his favorites want to continue to maintain the operation of the Department of Industry, and then let the army continue to plunder resources outside in an organized way and return to the country, let the bureaucrats continue to manage the newly opened land and the newly relocated people in an organized way, so that If it settles down again and reproduces to form a new Han civilization settlement, it must continue to adhere to the current policy of external expansion, especially at the moment to really develop the iron mines in Maoshan and bring Xianzhou back.
It can also be seen from this that if the Ming Dynasty wants to realize the country's rejuvenation by transferring the internal crisis to the outside, the imperial court must use national power and forcibly organize it.
It is impossible to expect civil society to have the motivation to push the court to do so.
Why can only rely on the imperial court to mobilize state power to grab resources in an organized way, instead of relying on the people to grab resources spontaneously?
(end of this chapter)