Why does this prosperous population appear? Those Qing historians think it was brought by the wise Manchu rulers. Their first reason is that the territory of the Qing Dynasty has expanded. How many people did the territory expanded by the Qing Dynasty bring to China? In the heyday of the Qing Dynasty, the territorial area was 6.5438+0.3 million square kilometers, compared with 9.2 million square kilometers in the Ming Dynasty. Comparing the territory of Qing Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, there were more Mongolians and Beijingers in Qing Dynasty, but these places are still vast and sparsely populated, so it is hard to say what population will be added to China. Moreover, the Qing dynasty lost a large territory in the northeast and southwest than the Ming dynasty. So in terms of territory, the population of the Qing Dynasty should be similar to that of the Ming Dynasty.
The second reason cited by scholars of Qing history is how diligent the rulers of Qing dynasty were and how much they paid attention to water conservancy and agriculture. Compared with the population before China, it is now known as the "rule of Han scenery" and "rule of Zhenguan" in the prosperous times, but it is only 60 million. By the middle of Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, it was only 654.38+0 billion at most. Moreover, in the past history, once the population of China reached more than 80 million, the contradiction between man and land was very sharp, and peasant uprisings were prone to occur. The reason is that the land in China can support a certain number of people, and agricultural production is not "how bold people are and how high the land is", but is limited by the level of productivity. Compared with the agricultural production in Ming and Qing dynasties, the mode of production has not changed; The only change in agricultural production is that high-yield crops such as sweet potato imported from the United States have been popularized in China. It is the promotion of sweet potato that has created this prosperous time.
Sweet potato is a high-yield crop, which contains a lot of starch and vitamins. Strong adaptability, drought resistance, alkali resistance, strong resistance, like warmth and sunshine, not frost resistance. This is an easy-to-maintain crop.
Sweet potato originated in Central America and later spread to Luzon (present-day Philippines). Internationally, it is generally believed that sweet potato was introduced to China during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty (1594) and was introduced by Chen Zhenlong, a businessman from China who traveled across the ocean.
Chen Zhenlong's ancestral home is Changle County, Fujian Province. When he was doing business in Luzon in his early years, he found a sweet and delicious potato there and secretly bought it. I brought it back to Fuzhou and tried to plant it on the edge of the city, which achieved unexpected success. At this time, it happened that there was a drought in central Fujian and the crops failed. Chen Zhenlong asked his son to give sweet potatoes to Fujian Governor Jin at that time, and advocated the extensive cultivation of sweet potatoes, thus helping the people in central Fujian to tide over the famine. To this end, Fuzhou has specially built a sweet potato pavilion to commend the achievements of sweet potato importer Chen Zhenlong and promoter Jin.
At the end of Ming Dynasty, sweet potato was widely planted in the south of China, and gradually spread to the north. However, due to the war in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, sweet potato cultivation techniques spread slowly, and it was not until the Kangxi period that sweet potato cultivation techniques spread all over the country.
The influence of sweet potato on China can be understood from the following two aspects.
According to statistics, the area of cultivated land in the Qing Dynasty was four times that of the previous generation. Some people attribute this to the policy of encouraging reclamation in Qing Dynasty. If so, we can almost draw the conclusion that before the Qing Dynasty, China people were the laziest people in the world, and there were so many undeveloped lands.
On this issue, we should recognize the concept of "arable land area". The area of cultivated land is not only related to the texture of the land itself, but also depends on the crops planted. This is a kind of sweet potato with strong adaptability, which can be planted in mountainous areas where rice and wheat cannot be planted, thus turning the original large uncultivated land into arable land. As a result, the area of cultivated land in China has more than quadrupled.
At the same time, the cultivation of sweet potatoes has in turn improved the soil quality of the land, making the originally barren land become arable land for planting wheat and rice. This has increased the planting area of rice and wheat to some extent.
As an agricultural society, land is the basis for farmers to survive. Therefore, as long as there is cultivated land, there must be people grabbing it. A good example is China people crossing to Kanto. In order to benefit the Eight Banners of Manchu Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty ordered in the seventh year of Kangxi that "Liaodong should recruit people to grant officials and stop forever" and implemented the policy of banning the Northeast. Wicker walls have been planted in Shanhaiguan area, and the middle is connected with ropes. Manchu soldiers were stationed there, closely guarding the pass and not allowed to enter it. Even if this policy does not prevent * * * from going to Kanto, "carrying a basket, supporting the elderly and carrying the young, or going to Guan Yu in the east, or crossing the Bohai Sea in the east, ants are swarming." Why, * * * will leave their homes and come to the barren land of Kanto regardless of the pursuit of * * *? Because there is land there. Therefore, as long as there is arable land, industrious China people will "rob" it, which does not need the encouragement of wise leaders. Therefore, regardless of the Qing Dynasty's policy of forbidding the Northeast, the Qing Dynasty's policy of encouraging land reclamation has limited significance to China's cultivated land.
The increase of grain yield per mu and the introduction of sweet potato can not only develop new cultivated land. It can also be mixed with wheat, corn and other crops and planted at intervals, which enriches the content of China's farming system, improves the land utilization rate and increases the grain yield per mu.
In ancient China, there were several ways to improve the land utilization rate, such as multiple cropping system, rotation multiple cropping system, intercropping and interplanting system, and mixed cropping system. Multiple cropping system refers to harvesting two and three crops a year in the same field, which has been established in China since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Rotation refers to the agricultural system of planting different crops in a planned way, which is different from the continuous cropping system of planting the same crop. Before Wei and Jin Dynasties, the soybean-grain rotation system was widely established in China. Intercropping and interplanting refers to the cultivation method of sowing two crops at intervals or replanting crops in reserved blank rows during the growth period of a certain crop, which was founded in China as early as the Han Dynasty. Mixed cropping refers to the planting system of sowing multiple crops on the same land at the same time. Farmers in China have long recognized that these farming systems have many advantages: they can make full use of light and heat, water and soil resources, and improve the utilization rate and output rate of land; A certain combination can increase soil fertility and ensure the sustainability of agricultural production; A certain combination is helpful to eliminate weeds, reduce pests and diseases, and ensure stable and high yield of agriculture.
The introduction of sweet potato and corn enriches the content of multi-cropping system and intercropping and interplanting in China, and can realize double cropping and triple cropping in one place without occupying the agriculture of rice and corn production.
Judging from these two characteristics of sweet potato cultivation, it is not surprising that the cultivated land area and population increased by four times in Qing Dynasty. And even if there were wars and famines in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the population of China could be maintained at 300-400 million. Do people who put forward the prosperous time of Kang Gan also think that the late Qing Dynasty is also a prosperous time? It's a pity that the history of China has always been the history of the rulers, and it has never paid attention to the farmers, let alone the introduction of sweet potatoes.
However, we should also see that sweet potato has brought China a rich population, but it has not made China a powerful country. Although the population of China has increased by 400 million, the social development of China has stagnated due to the closed-door policy of the Qing Dynasty and the destruction of science, technology and culture. The backwardness of the Qing dynasty was formed in this prosperous time. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, China kept pace with the West in science and technology and economy, and could also compete with the West militarily. After this period of prosperity, China lags far behind the West. In the eyes of western colonialists, China was just a black Africa rich in tea during the prosperous period of Kanggan.