In china's ancient feudal society, population has always been an important factor in measuring the comprehensive strength of the country, and it is also the area that rulers attach the most importance to. According to historical records, there was always a bottleneck in the size of the population before the Ming Dynasty, even if the population of the Han Dynasty under the rule of Wen Jingzhi and the Tang Dynasty under the Kaiyuan Dynasty was still about 60 million, and it did not exceed this value for a long time. After the Ming Dynasty, the country was unified, the society was stable, the sea was peaceful, and the population surged, reaching more than 100 million at its peak. However, compared with the Qing Dynasty, the population size of the Ming Dynasty was still very limited.
According to the Ming Shilu, there were 51655459 people in the Ming Dynasty in the third year of the Apocalypse (1623), and after chongzhen's reign, the population continued to decline sharply with successive years of wars and natural and man-made disasters. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, many people rose up to avoid heavy taxes or uncovered poles, or went into the mountains and forests, and were not recorded in the household register, so the population at the end of the Ming Dynasty may be more than 50 million. However, under the circumstances at that time, the sharp decline in population was inevitable, and the scholar Yi Zhongtian believed that the population at the end of the Ming Dynasty was about 60 million, and most scholars generally believed that the actual population at the end of the Ming Dynasty would not exceed 100 million. However, after the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, the population size surged rapidly, exceeding 400 million in the fourteenth year of Daoguang (1834), which was less than two hundred years before the end of the Ming Dynasty. From less than 100 million to more than 400 million, what was the reason for the rapid population growth of the Qing Dynasty?
The introduction of high-yield crops was the realistic basis for the population surge in the Qing Dynasty. With the advent of the Age of Discovery, the world became more and more connected, and the high-yield crop of the Americas, corn, entered Chinese land through Southeast Asian merchants. At the same time, many crops such as potatoes and sweet potatoes came to China and were widely planted throughout China. These crops were easy to grow, and even on barren land there were still considerable harvests, and the harvest on fertile land was several times that of ordinary crops, which provided food security for the population growth of the Qing Dynasty.
In addition to the introduction of high-yield crops such as corn and potatoes, the expansion of the population of the Qing Dynasty also benefited from the unity of the country and the stability of society. In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the world was in chaos, smoke was everywhere, the population was sharply reduced, and after the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, many people died in wars and massacres, and the population size was further reduced. However, after the Qing Dynasty passed through the early period, there were basically no large-scale wars. Even though the Qing Dynasty used troops in the north for many years, the battlefield was mainly located in the northern grasslands, and the central plains were not affected by the war. Moreover, after the war, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Mongolian Plateau and other places became the territory of the Qing Dynasty.
In dealing with the relations between ethnic minorities, the Qing Dynasty implemented the "land reform and return to the stream", alleviating the contradiction between the central government and the southwest toastmaster, and further expanding the area where the population can move. In remote areas such as the northwest, the Qing Dynasty first carried out large-scale migration, and after the land area became increasingly tight, the Qing Dynasty continued to reclaim wasteland. After the settlement of the Taiwan issue, the Qing Dynasty reused the coastal areas, encircled the sea to build land, and increased the area of cultivated land. Although these policies to expand arable land have drawbacks from the point of view of the scientific concept of development, they play an important role in expanding the size of the population.
The progress of science and technology and medicine during the Qing Dynasty was also an important guarantee for the expansion of the population. In ancient times, contagious diseases often meant disaster. During the Three Kingdoms period, plagues were frequent, and Cao Zhi described it in "Saying epidemic qi": "Twenty-two years after Jian'an, the furuncle was epidemic, there was the pain of zombies in the family, and there was a cry in the room. Or close the door and die, or overthrow the family and die. "Book of Jin. The Chronicle of Food and Goods records: "During the Yongjia period, east of Yongzhou, many people were hungry and hungry, and they sold each other, rushing and moving, and countless. And great disease, and famine,...... The rivers are full of corpses, and the white bones are hidden in the wilderness. During the Ming Dynasty, the epidemic situation was even more serious, especially after Chongzhen succeeded to the throne, plagues occurred frequently, and it is recorded in the "Ming History Chronicle" that "in August of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, the heavens fell into disaster, and the plague epidemic was prevalent, and from August to the present (September 15), the infection was at its peak. There are those who die one or two days, there are those who die day and night, there are no less than hundreds of people every day, and even those who do not leave a single person in the whole family, row by door, and none of them are preserved. ”
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the epidemic was still serious, but with the arrival of Western missionaries in China and the introduction of Western medicine, the epidemic was gradually brought under control. For example, during the Longqing period, the Qing Dynasty discovered a human pox vaccination method that could resist smallpox, and began to spread it on a large scale, and the number of people who died under infectious diseases such as smallpox dropped sharply.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Xiaoice River period came, and the whole world fell into severe cold. At the same time, there was a food crisis in Europe, there were constant civil unrest in Japan, and the Ming Dynasty had frequent natural disasters, and the world's population was sharply reduced during this period. However, after the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, the Xiaoice River Era ended, and everything began to recover, the land was fertile, the climate was warm, and it was extremely suitable for agriculture. The rulers of the Qing Dynasty also seized the opportunity to reform the tax system during this period, first inheriting the Ming Dynasty's "one whip law", and then Kangxi declared that "the holy world is never given". The Yongzheng Qing government adopted the methods of "dividing the land into acres" and "combining the land and the land into one", and collected them as a whole, abolishing the previous poll tax. The tax reform of the Qing Dynasty reduced the burden on the peasants with less land, inhibited land annexation, and liberated the productive forces. Under such circumstances, the people naturally dare to have more children, and they also have the ability to have more children, so the population continues to expand.
At the same time, the Qing Dynasty also implemented a policy of racial segregation and strengthened local control. The Qing Dynasty implemented the Baojia Law, extending its power to the countryside. In terms of ethnic policy, the rulers practiced apartheid, set up Manchu and Han settlements, implemented the alliance flag system in Mongolia, implemented the "land reform and return to the stream" in the southwest region, and implemented the sea ban in the southeast coastal area. From a long-term point of view, these policies are infinitely harmful, but objectively they are conducive to reducing war, maintaining social order, and ensuring the growth of population.
The expansion of the population scale of the Qing Dynasty benefited from the appropriate policies of the Qing government and the background of the times, and it was under the joint action of many factors that the demographic miracle of the Qing Dynasty was born. The Qing Dynasty's population policy and population size had a profound impact on future generations, laying the foundation for China's huge population size.
Resources:
"Speaking of Epidemic Qi" Cao Zhi
Book of Jin. Food Chronicles》
"The End of the Ming Chronicle" Gu Yingtai