Disaster is like a knife, holding the hilt of the knife can serve us, holding the blade will cut the hand - Lowell
Nowadays, it is often said: "My fate is up to me, not by heaven", this is the thinking of modern people, but in ancient times, many people could not change their fate, and often sighed that "life and death have a destiny, and wealth is in heaven". Why in ancient times, there were many such negative feelings, because many people can't change their fate in their lifetime, especially in the face of war and natural disasters, it is more difficult to control their own life and death.
The only things that can cause a sharp decline in population are wars and natural disasters. Zhang Yanghao, who was born in 1270 AD, once said: "Sadly, the Qin and Han dynasties have done the soil; xing, the people suffer; death, the people suffer." "Wars are often a contest between rulers, but it is the people who suffer in the end. In addition to war, natural disasters are also the most feared by the people, in the Ming Dynasty, there was a natural disaster, but also the most serious one in China's historical record, the loss of hundreds of millions of people, if there is no disaster, Chinese mouth may now exceed 2 billion.
Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty in 1368, which was also the last unified dynasty ruled by the Han people in history, in history, people may think that the Han and Tang Dynasties were the peak of the development of the feudal dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty was actually a golden period after the development of the Han and Tang Dynasties. It has no foreign relatives of the Han Dynasty, no feudal towns of the Tang Dynasty, and no annual coins of the Song Dynasty, and it has truly realized: the Son of Heaven guards the gate of the country, and the king dies in sheji.
Scholar Cao Shuji believes that the peak population of the Ming Dynasty reached 192.51 million people, Ge Jianxiong also believes that the population reached 197 million people at that time, and formed a merchant gang such as Huishang, Jinshang, Fujian, Cantonese and so on, and many peasants have begun to turn into merchants, whether it is shipbuilding, construction, silk, textile... To be far ahead of the world, if this momentum continues to develop, the Ming Dynasty will surely grow step by step.
However, between 1580 and 1644, a rare natural disaster that occurred once in a thousand years, during the Xiaoice River period, this disaster was also ranked second in 10,000 years. However, it is the most serious and coldest bad that human civilization has encountered since the time of human civilization.
This weather began to have its signs in 1500, and since then the winter seems to be colder than usual, but these periods can still survive, and by 1580, the cold of winter is more pronounced, and people have to wear a little more than usual when they dress.
The lowest temperature was from 1600 to 1644, when the cooling process was very obvious, not only the winter was cold, but also the summer drought, especially in the northern region of China, the temperature was unusually cold, the river surface could freeze, the precipitation gradually moved south, the nomadic people and fishermen in the north could hardly survive, the weather was too bad, the cattle and sheep did not eat grass, and many livestock were even frozen alive.
In the summer, there was drought and other situations, like Shaanxi Gansu, some people did not harvest grain for a year, in 1628, when the Chongzhen Emperor succeeded to the throne, it coincided with the coldest year, of which many people froze to death, and many people died of starvation because of no harvest. At this time, the national treasury was also empty, and coupled with the subsequent Liaodong War, the imperial court had to increase taxes on the people.
Serious natural disasters also caused the plague, when the plague broke out on a large scale, especially in the capital, there were many patients infected with plague, not only that, natural disasters and man-made disasters appeared together, the people could not get the government to help, can only save themselves, so many people went to the road of uprising, and these people went to a place, they will loot the local area, and will set fire to the village, under this natural disaster, Chinese mouth losses are serious, in so many years of disasters, people continue to die of cold and hunger, Hundreds of millions of them died.
By the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, according to statistics, there were only 10 million to 30 million people. It is said that the Anshi Rebellion of the Tang Dynasty led to a sharp decline in population, and this time it was a natural disaster that was several times more serious than the Anshi Rebellion, and if it were not for this natural disaster, the population of China might have exceeded 2 billion now.