At the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the vast number of ordinary people lived in deep water, and Zhu Yuanzhang, who grew up from famine and war, finally overthrew the corrupt Yuan Dynasty and established the powerful Ming Dynasty. According to the assumption of ordinary people, Zhu Yuanzhang can have a good rest after becoming emperor, but Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the whole country to search for an ancient book after the founding of the country, so what kind of book is this, and it is worth Zhu Yuanzhang spending so much effort to find it?
This has to start from an experience in Zhu Yuanzhang's youth. Although Zhu Yuanzhang did not have money to go to a private school when he was a child, he once listened to a lecture by a private school teacher near the private school when he was herding cattle. One day, when Zhu Yuanzhang was resting next to the private school with a cow on a leash, he heard the private school teacher inside mention a "Summary of The Clothing Affairs of Nongsang" that specialized in explaining agricultural production, and the author of this agricultural book was Lu Mingshan of the Yuan Dynasty, as an agronomist who was concerned about the world, Lu Mingshan spent his life and spent decades to write this agricultural book to guide agricultural production.
However, it is regrettable that after the publication of this book, it did not attract the attention of the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty, so the number of publications was very small, but this agricultural book of great significance for agricultural production guidance was firmly remembered by Zhu Yuanzhang. The peasant uprising war at the end of the Yuan Dynasty was a chaotic era, during which many precious books were destroyed in the war, so after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang immediately ordered that the whole country should be rescued by the whole country, which was called "Summary of the Affairs of Nongsang Clothes", and finally published it in its entirety and was found, It is said that after the republishment of this book, Zhu Yuanzhang issued a 7-character sigh with the latest printing and production of this book: "With this book, the world has been decided." ”
So why does Zhu Yuanzhang attach so much importance to a seemingly inconspicuous agricultural book? Because in the early years of Hongwu, Daming's agricultural production had not yet fully recovered, and many farmlands were in a state of desolation, and even the most basic food and clothing were difficult to satisfy, let alone pay taxes for the state. Since the introduction of this book to guide the agricultural production of the Ming Dynasty, the cultivated land area of the Ming Dynasty has developed rapidly, and the output per unit area has also been greatly improved. By the end of Hongwu, the average annual grain income of the Ming Dynasty reached about 32 million catties, which shows the prosperity of the agricultural development of the Ming Dynasty.
Even in the later "Kangqian prosperous" period of the Qing Dynasty, the Kangxi and Qianlong Emperors of the Qing Dynasty failed to surpass the level of agricultural development in the last years of the Ming Dynasty' Hongwu Dynasty, among which the "Summary of the Affairs of Nongsang" made an extremely important contribution, its text was simple and easy to understand, even poorly literate peasants could easily understand its meaning, it was one of the agricultural production instruction manuals that occupied an important position in Chinese history, and made indelible contributions to the development of China's agriculture.