On the construction of large-scale public works in ancient times and the rise and fall of empires
Public works in ancient China were vast, among which the more famous ones were
Grand Canal, Great Wall
These projects, these projects can be said to be very exciting, but the construction of these projects is often accompanied by changes in the fate of the entire empire, because the dynastic politics of ancient China is very fragile, and often large-scale projects will affect the financial lifeline of a dynasty, but the rise and fall of specific dynasties can be specifically discussed.
First of all, considering the characteristics of the times,
Qin Dynasty
The number of major projects built can be said to be very large, including
Great Wall, Chi Dao, Straight Road, Afang Palace, Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor
Wait, these big projects were very heavy for the Qin Dynasty, because the Qin Dynasty only had a population of 22 million, but there were more than 2 million people used to build the Great Wall.
More than half of the population in the entire Qin Dynasty period was building projects, it can be said that the pressure on the state finances is huge, and the frequency of the Construction Projects of the Qin Dynasty is also very high, Qin Shi Huang has not stopped the construction of projects for more than thirty years since the unification, especially the Qin Dynasty has frequently and continuously used troops to the outside world, which is even more serious for the oppression of the state finances, leaving a serious historical lesson.
Han dynasty
Drawing lessons from the Qin Dynasty, since Han Gaozu has reduced the frequency of large-scale engineering projects and adopted a policy of light-hearted and thin endowments, but during the Han Dynasty during the Han Dynasty, it should be mentioned that foreign conquest should also be regarded as a large-scale public project.
In fact, it is more destructive and oppressive to the country than public works, because of the external conquest, the people will go into exile in large numbers to avoid military service, in fact, the oppression of the people by the foreign conquest of Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty is far greater than that of his Maoling projects, which also halves the household registration of the people, and the national strength of the Han Dynasty suffers great losses, but for the Han Dynasty, this loss can soon be made up, and the final destruction of the Western Han Dynasty is the extreme expansion of foreign forces.
However, the reappearance of large-scale projects has made China wait for a long time.
Later Zhao Wu Emperor Shi Hu
It is worth mentioning that this project was proposed by his predecessor Shi Le, so he was at best a successor, and Shi Hu's construction of Yecheng was also a great economic blow to Later Zhao.
However, this economic blow was mainly reflected in his extravagant desires, Shi Hu basically cut down the nearby trees in order to build the Yecheng Palace, causing serious ecological damage, and because of his wanton collection of beautiful women to fill the harem, coupled with the conscription of the people's husbands, and even made the Later Zhao people unhappy, and then murong Xianbei in the northeast took advantage of the void, and his grandson Ran Min eventually destroyed Later Zhao.
For these large-scale projects, it was generally rare to carry out in the Southern and Northern Dynasties period, except for the Northern Wei Dynasty, which often built large grottoes, and other dynasties rarely manufactured these projects, on the one hand, financial constraints, on the other hand, it was difficult to control, but the military project Fushanyan carried out by the Southern Liang of the Southern Dynasty was an exception.
Fushanyan was a military project of Emperor Xiao Yan of Liangwu, the purpose of which was to deal with the Northern Wei city of Shouyang, but the effect of this project was very bad, for Emperor Wu of Liang, after the completion of this project, it should be able to completely destroy the City of Shouyang in northern Wei, and use the method of inverted irrigation to turn Shouyang into a vast ocean.
However, what is unexpected is that after the completion of the Fushan Weir, although Shouyang became a vast ocean, it was directly confronted with the river and eventually collapsed into the weir, resulting in serious problems, and the entire Liang Dynasty drowned nearly 200,000 people, which can be said to have suffered tragic casualties and serious damage to the Huai River line.
Actually for the whole
Nanbokucho
For the most part, people were in a state of uncontrollable panic, on the one hand, various natural disasters and engineering projects and wars, on the other hand, uncertainty about the future and fate.
Most of the projects of this period also have such traces, such as the large-scale construction of Buddhist temples in the Southern Dynasty, which is to pray for the protection of the Buddha, and people generally hope to be exempt from taxes as monks, after all, monks are a special group that can be exempted from military service taxes, and for the dynasty, such religious forces are needed to paralyze the people and paralyze the uneasy heart of the entire dynasty.
For the ancient Chinese dynasties, most of the engineering projects of the period were carried out in a relatively peaceful environment, for example
The city of Beijing in the Ming Dynasty
of construction,
Zhu Di
It was completed on the premise of basically eliminating the Jianwen forces and ascending to the emperor's throne, in fact, this kind of construction project had little impact on the dynasty.
Moreover, after the Song Dynasty, the large-scale projects of the empire can generally be built smoothly, because the population has increased sharply, and the population of the Song Dynasty has basically exceeded 100 million, while the Ming and Qing dynasties have reached more than 200 million people, which can be said to be the key factor supporting national strength.
And because of the development of trade in the Jiangnan region, in fact, for the entire empire, the economic scale of the entire Jiangnan region determined the final commercial height of the empire, and also determined whether the economic situation of the empire could support the economic support for large-scale public works.
about
Qing Dynasty
and
Ming dynasty
For example, the premise of the Ming Dynasty rebuilding the Three Great Halls is to be able to continue this project only after collecting enough money and grain in the Jiangnan region, in fact, if the Ming Dynasty cannot collect 5.7 million taels in Jiangnan, then the Three Great Halls cannot be rebuilt.
Because the silver of each province is from the Jiangnan region, the overseas trade of the Ming and Qing dynasties has become a key role in this regard, and due to the prosperity of overseas trade, silver has become the main circulating currency, replacing the original copper coins that are easy to counterfeit and becoming the general equivalent of the empire, which has also become the foundation of the Ming and Qing silver empires.
The circulation of silver in the Ming and Qing dynasties directly determined the superiority of the basic survival mode of the two dynasties, and had more typical and clear economic replacement means and economic supplementation means than ordinary dynasties.
The most typical is the Ming Dynasty
A whiplash
and implemented in the Qing Dynasty
Spread out into acres
In fact, silver as a foreign currency directly turned the treasury revenue of the Qing Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty into a system of dependence and maintenance on foreign currencies, which also led to a sharp increase in corruption in various large-scale projects.
For example, most of the silver income in the middle and late Ming Dynasty was corrupted by officials, and the income problem in the middle and late Ming Dynasty was a very strange problem, on the one hand, the people everywhere rose up, on the other hand, the life of officials in various places was superior, because the problems of buying and selling officials at that time were very serious.
The Qing Dynasty was also like this, at that time the Qing court's fattest shortage was the Shaanxi Grain Road, which seemed to have no oil and water, because they could master the military salary, they could drink the blood of the soldiers arbitrarily and fill their own pockets, and the Shaanxi Grain Road at that time could earn 80,000 taels of silver a year, equivalent to more than 80 million yuan today, which can be said to be very terrible.
For the position of Shaanxi Grain Road, people at that time were also eager, but it was difficult to get, and formed a circle with Taiyuan Xi'an and other places as the core, once out of the capital officials will be rampant corruption, do not care about any laws of the imperial court, in fact, most of the construction of large projects are corrupted by officials.
Therefore, the governance of the Yellow River in the Ming and Qing Dynasties has been difficult to implement, often repaired less than a year will break the embankment, the problem of the Yangtze River is more serious, basically the number of floods of the Yangtze River is flooded every year, for China, the Yangtze River and the Yellow River Grand Canal are very important, directly determine the stability of the central government, but due to the influence of the silver economy, the solution of this problem in the Ming and Qing Dynasties has been showing a very complicated trend, until the final dynasty perished.
For China, large-scale projects are often connected with the emperor's will, if the emperor does not decide to build then there will often be no such large-scale projects, so often the emperor's heroic talent and construction project combined, can give birth to large-scale magnificent projects, but this kind of heroism will often make the empire into a situation of not being able to make ends meet, in fact, the life and death of the empire is often roughly linked to this kind of heroism, the final result of the emperor's mountain and river dreams, often is also a mountain of bones, which may be the fate of the emperor.