In the ancient world, a measure of a country's national strength was often the size of the country's population. Because if the population is large, it means that the central government will also collect more taxes, and the government will have more soldiers. One of the characteristics of any ancient feudal empire is that its population has reached its peak.
From this point of view, which country is the peak of the feudal society on the mainland? To the surprise of many people, it is not the Tang Dynasty or the Ming Dynasty, but the Qing Dynasty that many people have always looked down upon. In the Qing Dynasty, the mainland population increased from 70 million to 400 million, and in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, the mainland claimed to have 40,000 compatriots. Why did the population of the Qing Dynasty explode, from 70 million to 400 million?
Population of the past
According to the analysis of historians, when Qin Shi Huang unified the Central Plains, the population of the mainland at that time was about 20 million, which was already an extremely well-populated feudal empire in that era. This number did not change much for a long time, and in the following hundreds of years, whether it was the powerful Han Empire or the chaotic Three Kingdoms Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties, Chinese mouths have always shown such a law.
If it is the Taiping Dynasty, the population of the continent will often reach the level of early 20 million, if it enters the war and chaos years, it will drop to about 10 million, and the most severe period is the Three Kingdoms period, when the three countries of Wei, Shu and Wu, the total population is only eight or nine million, which is already the lowest valley.
So when did Chinese mouth have a new change, that is, in the Sui and Tang dynasties, in the Sui and Tang dynasties, with the development of Jiangnan, especially the further development of farming technology, the mainland population reached about 60 million during the first year of the Tang Dynasty, which has achieved a qualitative leap.
From the Tang Dynasty to the Song Dynasty, with the development of the southern part of the mainland towards maturity, rice cultivation in the Jiangnan region developed rapidly, the population of the Song Dynasty according to scholars' analysis, can reach about 80 million, after the Song and Yuan Dynasties in the heyday of the Ming Dynasty, it is said that the actual population reached about 100 million, and according to the historical records at that time, it was more than 70 million.
The population data of 70 to 80 million was maintained on the mainland for hundreds of years, until the middle of the Qing Dynasty, when China entered a golden period of population leaps.
According to scholars' statistics, in the early years of Qianlong, the mainland population was about 80 million people, but by the late Daoguang period more than a hundred years later, the mainland population was close to 400 million.
So what happened, and why did the population of the Qing Dynasty grow so explosively and exponentially? This is inseparable from three factors. The great revolution in growing crops, the development of fertilizer technology, and the national policies of the time.
Cause of population explosion in the Qing Dynasty
At the turn of the Ming and Qing dynasties, when the West was the era of colonialization and the opening of new shipping routes, the Western countries conquered North and South America, and they also brought corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes and other crops from the Americas back to the West, which in turn were introduced to China by sea and trade.
Corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, these crops from the perspective of agricultural cultivation, their annual yield is basically several times that of the traditional Chinese crops rice and wheat. Among them, potatoes, in particular, can produce more than ten times that of wheat, which is of great significance for the growth of Chinese.
Although they were introduced to China in the late Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty at that time was facing war and civil strife, and the Ming government did not have the energy to promote the cultivation of these crops, so in the Ming Dynasty, the mainland's grain production did not get a qualitative leap, and the population naturally did not have a qualitative increase.
Later, the Qing Dynasty replaced the Ming Dynasty, and after decades of war, the land of China ushered in an era of peace. At that time, the Qing government also had time to promote the cultivation of these high-yield crops. Since the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, crops such as potatoes and sweet potatoes have been widely cultivated in the land of China, and the population they can feed is also several times that of the original.
Because in ancient society, the quality of life requirements of ordinary farmers are extremely low, for them, being able to have food and clothing is already a beautiful thing in life, they do not pursue the so-called diversity of food sources like modern people, nor will they reject relying on corn and potatoes to maintain food and clothing.
Therefore, the promotion of corn, sweet potatoes, and potatoes did not even need to be advocated by the government in the later period, and farmers spontaneously began to plant. In summary, the great change in crop cultivation can be said to be the most important reason for the population explosion in the Qing Dynasty.
There are two other reasons, one of which is that agricultural production technology in the Qing Dynasty was also improved, and farmers began to master how to use animal manure as fertilizer for crops.
In addition, the Qing Dynasty also changed the previous policy of the feudal imperial court to levy a poll tax on peasants, and the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty proposed a policy called: "Breed people, never increase the endowment." This sentence means: "From now on, even if every household has a new population, the Qing emperor will not collect more poll tax." ”
This greatly reduced the peasant's burden of childbearing, because in the previous feudal society, the more children the peasant had, the more he had to pay the poll tax. And we also know that human growth is quite slow, and before a child is six or seven years old, it is almost impossible for him to do anything for the family, but simply consumes the food of ordinary peasant families.
Therefore, in the countryside of that era, there was a very cruel custom. In order to reduce the collection of poll taxes, they often drown their own children.
From the current point of view, all this is very cruel, but for the farmers at that time, it was a last resort. Therefore, the Qing emperor no longer levied a poll tax, which is a remarkable benevolent government in Chinese history, which is worthy of praise, and the number of people on the mainland has also entered a golden period.
summary
The great increase in the mainland population during the Qing Dynasty was not only conducive to the development of the frontier, but also conducive to the later era of national salvation, China was able to mobilize more troops to defend the country.
He wanted to provide sufficient labor resources for the industrialization of the mainland in the future, and it can be said that the population foundation laid at that time laid the foundation for the so-called Chinese economy today. All this has a very great significance in Chinese history and deserves to be commemorated forever by future generations.
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