Raising troops from the south, cutting off the heroes, the Northern Expedition swept the Yuan Dynasty, and completed the Song Dynasty's unfulfilled dream of 300 years to recover the sixteen states of Yanyun, why did the Ming Dynasty, which "expelled Hu Lu and restore China", chose to lie flat after sweeping away the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty and had no interest in territorial expansion?
You must know that the recognized weak Song Dynasty has not stopped its territorial expansion for more than a century and a half from the founding of the Northern Song Dynasty to its demise, and has been working hard to recover the old frontier.
The Ming Dynasty, which was more powerful in military power, did not even recover the Western Regions, the homeland of the Han and Tang Dynasties, you must know that this period was the time when the khanates of the Great Mongol Empire all over the Eurasian continent were declining and collapsing, the Yuan Dynasty was still defeated by the Ming Dynasty, and the Eastern Chagatai Khanate entrenched in the Western Regions was even more unlikely to be the opponent of the Ming Dynasty, but the Ming Dynasty was not only indifferent to the Western Regions throughout the dynasty, but even lost Hamiwei and retreated to Jiayuguan.
The Ming Dynasty was not only not interested in the Western Regions, but also not interested in Mongolia, and many northern expeditions were just to fight the Northern Yuan Dynasty but did not occupy land to establish effective rule, and Zhu Yuanzhang also directly set the surrounding Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Southeast Asia in the form of ancestral training A total of 15 countries are not conscripted, which is equivalent to setting the tone of no further expansion abroad.
And not only that, the Ming Dynasty is not only not interested in the surrounding countries, but also in the part of the area that has been conquered, Ming Chengzu Zhu Di destroyed the Annam Kingdom in northern Vietnam after it was included in the territory of the Ming Dynasty, only 21 years by Ming Xuanzong abandoned.
Many people think that the actual territory of the Ming Dynasty is not large, in fact, compared with the Yuan Dynasty, the territory of the Ming Dynasty only lacks the barren land of the Mongolian steppe and Lingbei Province, but there are more "three Xuanfu and six comforts" set up in the Yunnan border and Southeast Asia, the three Xuandian Xuanfu Division, Ganya Xuanfu Division, Longchuan Xuanfu Division, and the six Xuanfu Divisions refer to the Cheli Xuanfu Division, the Myanmar Xuanwei Division, the Mubang Xuanwei Division, the Eight Hundred Dadian Xuanwei Division, the Mengyang Xuanwei Division, and the Laos Xuanfu Division. Its jurisdiction encompassed the area of present-day Burma, Laos, Thailand, and the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean.
These places were the same as the Nuer Gandusi in the northeast, because they were too remote, so the Ming Dynasty ruled these areas differently from the Han land, and the degree of control was even less than that of the Han land, and they did not pay attention to it, so after the middle and late Ming Dynasty, these areas were either abandoned or annexed by the surrounding countries.
Judging from the map alone, although the Ming Dynasty also laid a huge territory, it did not achieve the ideal territory in our hearts.
In the feudal era, the will of the king will directly affect the country's hunger and thirst for territory, it is precisely the emperor of the Ming Dynasty that Zhu Yuanzhang is the emperor of the lowest background, a poor peasant through and through, self-sufficient and short-sighted small peasantism is vividly embodied in him, Zhu Yuanzhang attaches great importance to agriculture, and the degree of heavy agriculture and suppression of business is very large, and heavy agriculture will only be interested in "useful" arable land, not "useless" land, so this affects his national policy formulation.
The expansion of the Ming Dynasty has also reached the limit of the natural geography of the farming people, with the sea in the east, the grassland in the north, the desert in the west, and the jungle in the south.
In fact, not only the Ming Dynasty, all dynasties have a dispute about whether to expand or not in the court, and the basic point of view against expansion is based on farming, that the land of the four Yi is a wild land, and they use troops to go deep into the barren land, and the land cannot be cultivated, and the people are not enough to increase the endowment, and it is difficult to control and difficult to educate, so the best way is to "punish and control it when you come, and prepare for it when you go." ”
Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang set the ancestral motto: "All the four sides are limited to mountains and seas, and they are isolated in a corner, and the land is not enough to supply, and the people are not enough to make orders." If they do not think about it and come to disturb our side, then they are ominous, or they are not troubled by China, and it is also ominous if I raise troops and attack lightly. I am afraid that future generations will rely on China's prosperity and strength, be greedy for temporary military achievements, and raise troops for no reason, causing injuries to people's lives. However, Hu Rong (i.e., Northern Yuan-Mongolia) and the northwest frontier are close to each other, and they must choose generals to train their troops in wars, and be careful when they are prepared. ”
He thought that he already had the best land, those barbarian lands were useless, and the southeast, north, and west of the territory were already natural and natural hazards, enough to defend the mountains and rivers, and there was no need to continue to expand.
Moreover, the expedition of laborers to conquer those useless places, whether they win or not, is a waste of national strength and people's strength, and in the long run, it will only exhaust China but have no profits, and it will be very uneconomical to invest in large returns or even lose money, and it will be very uneconomical in economic accounts, and there will be no motivation for expansion.
For the Ming Dynasty, Kublai Khan of the Yuan Dynasty was the best example from the past, two cross-sea expeditions to Japan, cross-sea expeditions to Java, expeditions to Burma, Vietnam, etc., were all losses and losses of national strength but little gain.
is also opening up new routes, why the West can hold on, but the huge scale of Zheng He's voyage to the West has been stopped, is because the investment and income are not cost-effective.
When Emperor Xuanzong of the Ming Dynasty "abandoned Jiaozhi" and threw Vietnam out of the Ming Dynasty, it was also because it was not cost-effective, "the land was not enough to supply, and the people were not enough to make orders", and rebellions were frequent, spending a lot of financial, material and manpower resources, but there was no return.
For these reasons, the Ming Dynasty was not interested in expansion.