Text: Xiao Peng's brilliant notes
Editor|Xiao Peng's brilliant pen
[Preface]
The Ming and Qing dynasties were not only an important stage in the process of inlandization of the Guangxi frontier, but also experienced significant changes in the ecological environment of the Guangxi frontier as the economic development activities of immigrants continued to deepen from eastern Guizhou to central and western Guangxi.
Especially in the western Guangxi region, where non-Han ethnic groups live under the traditional Tusi system, the ecological environment has undergone great changes under the institutional changes, immigrants, the introduction of new crops, and technological progress in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The widely distributed original ecological forest landscape has gradually evolved into an agro-ecological landscape and the former "hometown of miasma", so it has become a new living place for immigrants.
What kind of changes have taken place in the forest vegetation reflected by the original ecological miasma environment and forest animals in western Guangxi, and what is the process of transformation from the original ecological forest landscape to the agricultural ecological landscape in this area?
【Agricultural Development and Ecological Environment in Western Guizhou in the Ming Dynasty】
To investigate the process of agricultural development and ecological change in a region in the traditional era, it is necessary to establish the initial interface and restore the original ecological status of the region as the basis for before-and-after comparison.
Before the Ming Dynasty, most places in Guangxi were still in a state of vast land and sparsely populated, and there was still a lot of arable land in the hills and Pingba, not to mention the vigorous development of the mountainous areas of western Guangxi.
In the Song Dynasty, the prevalence of miasma in western Guangxi became a footnote to the lack of development in western Guizhou and the preservation of the original ecological state of the natural environment.
As a historical ecological phenomenon arising from a specific natural environment, miasma is based on mountainous terrain, canopy topography, dense vegetation and hot and humid climate.
Historically, the ethnic areas of western Guangxi are mainly mountainous, known as "Zhangxiang", during the Southern Song Dynasty, Guangxi has miasma in addition to Guilin, and there are miasma in other places, among which the miasma in the left and right rivers of western Guizhou is the heaviest, and there is "no miasma all the time" throughout the year.
In the Song Dynasty, most of the western Guangxi region was under the control of Tusi, the economy was backward and underdeveloped, and the forest was dense and the miasma was pervasive, and the progress was slow compared with the Song Dynasty.
Although the western Guangxi region of the Ming Dynasty was generally underdeveloped, in some areas, the indigenous people also carried out great transformation of the agricultural ecological environment related to their livelihoods, and the construction of some artificial water conservancy facilities is a typical example.
Before the Ming Dynasty, there was a lack of records of water conservancy construction in western Guangxi, but in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, there were already many records in this area in the literature, especially in the Taiping Mansion in southwest Guangxi.
In the late Ming Dynasty, some progress was also made in land development in northwest Guangxi, and under the transformation of human activities, some places showed more significant agricultural ecological landscapes.
【Agricultural Development and Ecological Change in the Western Guizhou Ethnic Region in the Qing Dynasty】
In the early Qing Dynasty, western Guangxi was still a relatively heavy area of miasma, and the mountainous forests were densely vegetated, so that most of the Central Plains people and officers and soldiers stationed in the area fell ill or died due to miasma.
During this period, most of the western Guangxi area was controlled by Tusi or diverted for a long time, the land was vast and sparsely populated, the territory was full of lofty mountains and rocky mountains, the natural conditions were poor, and the land development was relatively lagging behind due to the lack of immigrants.
Compared with the Ming Dynasty, the coverage of forest vegetation has not changed much, and many mountainous areas are still in a relatively primitive state, and the lack of development power in western Guangxi in the early Qing Dynasty is mainly reflected in the following two aspects.
On the one hand, there are few Han immigrants to western Guangxi, and they have not yet formed a strong external driving force, and on the other hand, the non-Han ethnic groups living in mountainous areas are sparsely populated, and their development and utilization of mountainous areas are very limited.
In agriculture, extensive farming methods such as fallow rotation and extensive planting and thin harvest are mostly adopted, and grain crops are mainly miscellaneous grains, and some economic forests are planted, and the impact of this land use mode on the ecological environment is relatively subtle.
Therefore, in the early Qing Dynasty, the relationship between people and land in western Guizhou was relatively relaxed, and the ecological environment was relatively good.
In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the ecological environment of western Guangxi underwent great changes with the reclamation of mountainous areas by immigrants and the sharp increase in people's demand for forest products and firewood.
The original forest system has been destroyed, the forest cover rate has been declining, the forest animal population has decreased, and the mountain ecosystem has undergone drastic changes.
The migration of a large number of agricultural migrants stimulated the development of the mountainous areas of western Guangxi, and as a result, a large amount of forest land was reclaimed as cultivated land, and the forest vegetation coverage rate decreased sharply.
In this process, the large-scale introduction of high-yield early crops such as corn has objectively become a booster for the reclamation of mountainous areas in western Guangxi.
It can be said that the middle of the Qing Dynasty was a turning point for major changes in the ecological environment of the ethnic areas of western Guangxi.
【Transformation of the Livelihood Patterns of Ethnic Minorities under the Influence of Migration to the Transformation of the Ecology of the Mountains of Western Guangxi】
In the early Qing Dynasty, the western Guangxi region was still in a relatively closed and sparsely populated state, but with the implementation of the reform and return to the stream during the Yongzheng period of Kangxi and the large number of Han immigrants in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, it played a great role in promoting the land development and agricultural development of the western Guizhou region.
At the same time, it also caused a certain amount of population pressure, and the Zhuang residents acquired advanced agricultural technology in their interactions with Han immigrants, and actively improved the utilization rate of land in the competition for survival.
In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, under the influence of Han agricultural immigrants, the livelihood mode of the Zhuang people in western Guizhou underwent great changes, which were mainly manifested in three aspects.
One is to pay attention to water conservancy construction and improve the multiple planting of paddy fields, the second is to reclaim more mountainous areas and plant more grains, and the third is to introduce and popularize high-yield dryland crops such as corn.
In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, due to the intensification of human development activities in western Guangxi, the original ecological forest system with high canopy density was continuously destroyed, and the miasma of the former "hometown of miasma" gradually dissipated, and the harm of smoke miasma has been greatly reduced.
There was a high positive correlation between the intensity of human activities, the level of forest vegetation coverage, and the severity of tiger infestation, which was vividly illustrated by the evolution of tiger infestation in western Guizhou during the Qing Dynasty.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the mountain reclamation in western Guizhou had great limitations, and the ecological changes caused by mountain reclamation were also not conducive to the sustainable development of human society.
For example, the limestone mountains in western Guizhou are widely spread, the vegetation grows slowly, and the ecological environment is relatively fragile, and once it is cut down and cultivated, it is easy to cause soil erosion and poor soil, making it difficult to cultivate for a long time.
In the face of the deterioration of the ecological environment, human beings also spontaneously carried out ecological reconstruction in the process of developing the mountainous areas of western Guangxi, and the changes of forest vegetation in the mountainous areas of western Guizhou in the Qing Dynasty were not completely one-way, and there was the possibility of two-way evolution in local areas.
Humans often destroy mountain vegetation at one stage of development, but at a later stage it is possible to rebuild a new vegetation, which is of course primarily for human service.
The specific performance is the planting of economic forests such as tung oil, camellia oleifera, star anise, fir wood, pine, etc., and the octagonal planting in the mountains of western Guizhou during the Xuantong period in the late Qing Dynasty is a typical case.
With the prosperity of anise planting, even the barren mountainous land has been planted with anise trees, which has increased the coverage rate of forest vegetation, so that the mountain ecosystem has undergone benign changes and the people's livelihood has also been greatly improved.
According to the statistics of Xuantong in the past three years, there are 5.4 million anise trees of all ages, which is undoubtedly a considerable number, reflecting the results of human beings in combining ecological vegetation reconstruction with their own development.
【Factors of Immigration Development】
In the primitive karst mountainous areas of southwest China, where the population density is small, the forests are dense, and the transportation is inconvenient, the role of human activities in the natural ecosystem is insignificant, and only part of the depressions and valleys have been reclaimed as farmland.
The environmental factors of the agro-ecosystem basically maintained their primitive natural state, and immigrants from other provinces in the Ming Dynasty were concentrated in eastern and southern Guangxi.
Only a small number of military immigrants in the early Ming Dynasty, and some Han Chinese soldiers who fled the war in the late Ming Dynasty came to Guixi, and their role in the economic development of Guixi was limited, let alone the changes in the ecological environment.
In the early Qing Dynasty, some tusi in western Guizhou gradually changed their streams, and there were already small-scale immigrants to western Guangxi, and later with the arrival of a large number of Han immigrants, the cultivation of a single grain crop gradually replaced the original diversified land use methods of the indigenous people in western Guangxi.
This quickly upset the relative balance of the original ecosystem and accelerated the succession process of the surface landscape, and the agricultural landscape and forest landscape of the Guangxi frontier were reshaped by Han immigrants.
After the middle of the Qianlong period, a large number of immigrants from other provinces promoted the reclamation of mountainous areas in western Guangxi, and the rapid increase in people's demand for forest products and charcoal made the phenomenon of deforestation widespread.
As a result, the forest vegetation coverage rate has been decreasing, and the original ecological forest system has been destroyed, so that the miasma of the Central Plains people have gradually dissipated, the animal population has decreased, and the once fierce tiger plague has also been greatly reduced.
【Factors of Institutional Change】
In the early years of the Yongzheng Dynasty, most of the Tusi in western Guizhou had not yet been changed to the soil, and the reclamation activities carried out by the Qing Dynasty in Guangxi at this time did not involve the Tusi area.
In the early Qing Dynasty, the implementation of land reform and reintegration in the Tusi area of western Guizhou created conditions for Han immigrants to develop the western Guizhou region, and the restrictions on immigration to the Tusi area were relaxed in the middle of the Qing Dynasty.
It further promoted the development process of immigrants to western Guangxi, which was manifested in the gradual reclamation of mountainous areas, the deepening of mountain forests, and the gradual reduction of miasma.
With the advancement of land reform and repatriation, the feudal land ownership system faded into the traditional Tusi area of western Guangxi, and the land in the fringe area of Guangxi, which was more ecologically fragile, was also reclaimed, and the change of the system accelerated the development process of the diversion area.
【Introduction of new crops】
In the changes of the agricultural ecological environment, the introduction and popularization of new crop varieties and the adjustment of crop planting structure are undoubtedly important contents.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, especially after the Qing Dynasty, the composition of Guangxi's main grain crops underwent great changes, and rice was the main grain crop in Guangxi before the Qing Dynasty.
With the introduction and gradual promotion of corn and sweet potato in Guangxi in the Qing Dynasty, the main grain in Guangxi has changed from the original rice-based to a new combination of rice, corn and sweet potato.
The introduction and promotion of maize has become an important driving factor for changing the agricultural ecological environment of western Guangxi.
In the Yongzheng period, corn was planted in Guangxi, but it was not until the Qianjiadao period that the planting range of corn continued to expand, among which the western Guangxi region planted more and the eastern region was relatively less.
As a high-yield early crop, corn has the advantages of early tolerance, cold tolerance, barrenness resistance, high yield, fewer pests and diseases, and suitable for planting in mountainous areas.
It has become a powerful tool for the development of mountainous areas in western Guangxi, and has played an important role in promoting the development of mountainous areas in western Guizhou and the changes of the mountainous ecological environment.
It should be pointed out that as the two major cereal crops introduced in Guangxi in the Qing Dynasty, sweet potatoes were planted in Guangxi in the early Kangxi period, but the cultivation of sweet potatoes in western Guangxi in the late Qing Dynasty was not common.
The reason for this is related to the natural environment, the relationship between man and land, and the planting tradition in the western part of Guangxi, which is mostly lofty mountains and mountains, and there are large areas of rocky mountains.
The cultivated land is mainly livestock land, with large slope, shallow soil and poor water retention performance, and it is relatively suitable for planting corn, although sweet potatoes can also be planted in sloping land, but because they are solid in the soil, the requirements for soil are relatively high.
In addition, the local potatoes in the west are relatively developed, and the yield is not low, which inhibits the introduction of sweet potatoes to a certain extent.
Technology is key to determining whether land can be used, for example, steep slopes can be cultivated with techniques such as terraces, and drylands can be effectively used with irrigation techniques and the introduction of suitable dryland crops.
After the emergence of terrace construction and farming technology in the Ming Dynasty, it was further promoted in the western Guangxi region in the Qing Dynasty, which promoted the effective development of the mountainous areas in western Guizhou and made significant changes in the ecological landscape of the mountainous areas.
【Harmonious development of human-land relationship】
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the mountain reclamation in western Guizhou had great limitations, and the ecological changes caused by mountain reclamation were also not conducive to the sustainable development of human society.
Planting trees can reconstruct forest vegetation to a certain extent, reflecting the reverse evolution of the ecological environment in western Guizhou in the Qing Dynasty.
The path of ecological environment change in the western Guangxi ethnic region during the Ming and Qing dynasties shows that the transformation and utilization of the ecological environment by human beings need to adapt to the carrying capacity of the environment.
At the same time, the organic unity of its own development and the maintenance of the ecological environment can realize the harmonious development of the relationship between man and land.