Chapter 6 Section 5 Continued Development under the Pressure of Population Expansion——Agriculture in Ming and Qing Dynasties

The Ming and Qing Dynasties (before the Opium War) were the fourth stage of the development of traditional agriculture in my country, and this was the period of continuous development of intensive farming.During this period, population growth has caused a nationwide shortage of arable land. In order to solve the contradiction between more people and less land, people are committed to increasing the multiple cropping index and expanding the area of ​​arable land. The land utilization rate has reached the highest level of traditional agriculture. There are two kinds of mutually restrictive production in human society: the reproduction of material materials and the reproduction of human beings themselves.The relationship between population and agriculture is essentially the relationship between two kinds of production.On the one hand, the development of agricultural production provides the material basis for population growth and defines its limit.The different types of agricultural economy determine the different laws of population evolution: in agricultural areas where the small-scale agricultural economy dominates, the population tends to grow relatively steadily; in pastoral areas, the population growth is unstable because animal husbandry is greatly affected by changes in natural conditions.On the other hand, in ancient times when production tools were simple, labor was of great significance to agricultural production. Therefore, the growth, transfer, and distribution of population greatly restricted the development of agricultural production, and had a profound impact on the appearance of agricultural production in different times and regions.

The population development in the history of our country has risen in a wavy curve and formed several steps.In the pre-Qin period, the level of productivity was low, the population was still very small, and there was no reliable population record.After the Warring States Period, productivity leaped and population grew rapidly.The Han Dynasty began to have national population statistics. From then to the Five Dynasties, the population fluctuated repeatedly, and the highest population did not exceed 60 million.The large-scale development of the south in the Song Dynasty led to population growth. The highest population in the Song Dynasty exceeded 100 million, and the population in the Ming Dynasty was about 120 million.In the Qing Dynasty, it reached a new level.The population in the early years of Kangxi was only about 90 million. After more than 100 years, the population in the last years of Qianlong had soared to 300 million. By the eve of the Opium War, the population had exceeded 400 million.

There were many reasons for this unprecedented population growth in the Qing Dynasty, and the corresponding development of agricultural production was undoubtedly an important prerequisite.After the Manchus entered the customs and established the Qing Dynasty, they united the inland and the grasslands as one family, ended the long-term military confrontation between the nomads and the farming peoples, suppressed the anti-Qing forces in various places, adjusted class relations and ethnic relations, and achieved unprecedented unity of the country and unprecedented society. This situation is very beneficial to the development of agricultural production.It was the development of agriculture that made population growth possible.However, the unprecedented growth of population has in turn brought severe problems to agricultural production.Before the middle of the Qing Dynasty, although the problem of "not enough land for crops" had occurred in some dynasties, from a national perspective, the land could fully meet the needs of the labor force, and population growth became a necessary condition and driving force for agricultural development.The population surge in the Qing Dynasty led to a nationwide shortage of cultivated land. In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the per capita cultivated land area for grain was only about 70% of an acre. The population growth has become a heavy pressure. Both the government and the opposition are talking about the "increasing population" question.This heavy population pressure, if transferred to any other country, would be enough to crush the agriculture of this country.However, traditional Chinese agriculture has withstood this historical test with its tenacious vitality.What method does it rely on?Nothing more than three.The first is to do everything possible to open up new arable land.The second is the introduction and promotion of new crops.These two are related to each other, and we will talk about them below.The third is to rely on the tradition of intensive farming to increase land utilization and yield per unit area.Multi-crop planting, one of the characteristics of traditional agronomy in our country, had sprouted before the Song Dynasty, and had initial development in the Song Dynasty, but the greater development was still in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.Around multi-cropping planting, a large number of varieties have been bred; the demand for fertilizers is greater, from the application of natural fertilizers and farmyard manures to the application of commercial cake fertilizers; the requirements for farming are higher, and methods such as extra-heavy plows and intertillage have emerged; pest control has received attention ; Cultivation management is also finer.In short, the technical system characterized by "dung Daliqin" has been strengthened.During this period, land use technology (such as low-yield field transformation, etc.) developed again, and a particularly far-reaching breakthrough was that the production mode of comprehensive utilization of dikes and ponds was formed in some southern regions, which became the "three-dimensional agriculture" or "three-dimensional agriculture" advocated today. Pioneer of ecological agriculture".Among the above three items, the third item is more important, and its role is becoming more and more important.In the history of our country, due to the uneven population development and the development of land annexation, since the Warring States period, there have been some areas with relatively more people and less land. Intensive farming technology is generally developed first in these areas.After the population surge in the Ming and Qing Dynasties formed a nationwide pattern of overpopulation and little arable land, intensive farming became an irreversible development trend.

While agricultural technology continued to develop in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, farm tools were less improved.The Ming and Qing Dynasties basically followed the agricultural tools of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and most of the innovations were small agricultural tools suitable for small-scale operations of individual farmers, such as small hand-operated waterwheels-pullers, and shovels and knives for regulating paddy fields and ridges in the hilly and mountainous areas of the north and south. , the creeper [gun roll] used for planting double-cropping rice for soil preparation, the rice bed for rice threshing, the hoe for inter-cultivation in the northern dry land, and the tackle for catching armyworms, etc.Wind-powered waterwheels appeared in some places in the Ming Dynasty, but they were not popularized.Even some large-scale and high-efficiency agricultural tools that were recorded in Wang Zhen's "Nong Shu" were rare in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.Due to the lack of ox power, some places were returned to human farming.In the Ming Dynasty, there are also sporadic records of using the "wooden ox" that appeared in the Tang Dynasty, that is, the human-powered farming frame (Figure 17). Although this is an ingenious creation, it cannot be said to be an improvement in the use of power, and its use is not widespread. .In short, the Ming and Qing dynasties have lost the vigorous development of the Han or Tang and Song dynasties.On the one hand, this is because the development of traditional agricultural tools has approached the limit that the small-scale peasant economy can accommodate, and at the same time, the surplus of labor hinders people's efforts to improve agricultural tools and increase efficiency.In connection with this, while the output per unit area continued to increase in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the grain produced by each agricultural labor force decreased significantly.For example, according to Wu Hui's "Research on Grain Yield per Mu in Past Dynasties in China", it is estimated that in the late Western Han Dynasty, the grain yield per mu was equivalent to 264 catties per mu, and each labor force produced 3574 catties of raw grain.In the Qing Dynasty, the grain yield per mu increased to 367 jin, and the grain production per labor force dropped to 2,262 jin.The main and most direct reason is that the average grain arable land per person has decreased from 3.76 mu to 1.7 mu.The above are the shortcomings of Ming and Qing agriculture, reflecting the constraints of excessive population growth on agricultural development.

Since the emergence of agriculture, the movement of reclaiming soil and land has never been interrupted.In the Qin and Han Dynasties, the Yellow River Basin was basically reclaimed. In the Tang, Song and Yuan Dynasties, with the further development of the south, the land suitable for agriculture in the vast interior has been completely reclaimed.The surge in population during the Ming and Qing Dynasties led to an unprecedented increase in the demand for arable land. When people reclaimed the land abandoned by wars during the transition of dynasties, they had to move to land with more difficult conditions and more remote areas.Peasants who lost their land due to population surge and land annexation quickly flowed to all places that could provide new arable land like a flood, and became the main force in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The government also organized military and civilian settlements in various places. and Shangtun.

Tidal flats and barren hills were one of the key points of reclamation during this period.The Dongting Lake area, the Shatian area of ​​the Pearl River Delta, the beach along the rivers and the beach in the southeast have all been developed.For example, the Dongting Lake area in Hunan and Hubei provinces had sporadic reclamation as early as the Song Dynasty, but the large-scale development activities of "turning abandoned land into fat" occurred after Ming Chenghua (1465-1487 A.D.).People built dikes in Dongting Hubei to block the water of rivers, and built polder dikes in Dongting Hunan to reclaim the fields in the lake, which are called embankments locally.It develops from north to south. There were more than 100 fields built in the Ming Dynasty, and the number increased to four to five hundred in the Qing Dynasty, covering an area of ​​5 million mu.Due to the development of the Dongting Lake area, the largest lake in the Yangtze River Basin, the two lakes have become my country's new granary, and the folk proverb "cooking in Suhu, the world is full" has been replaced by "cooking in Huguang, the world is full" since the middle and late Ming Dynasty.During the Ming and Qing dynasties, people continued to cultivate in the Tianjin area, transforming large areas of coastal saline-alkali land into fertile fields rich in rice.Many mountainous areas in the interior that were previously inaccessible were gradually reclaimed at this time.Farmers who go deep into the mountains, live in simple huts, and overcome obstacles to make a living. They are called "shack people".For example, after the mid-Ming Dynasty, a large number of refugees broke through the government's ban and entered the Jingxiang Mountains, making the former high mountains look like "living in huts facing each other, along the rice fields along the rivers and down the scales" (Volume 1).Another example is the Qing Dynasty, when hundreds of bankrupt peasants entered the border areas of Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Chu successively, and the population here once reached several million.After several generations of hard work, the deep mountains and old forests here have been developed.

Another focus of reclamation and expansion in the Ming and Qing Dynasties was the frontier areas.During this period, a large number of farmers successively entered the traditional pastoral and semi-pastoral areas of Inner Mongolia and Northeast China north of the Great Wall, which greatly increased the area of ​​farmland there.Especially in the Qing Dynasty, farmers of the Han nationality in Shandong, Hebei, and Henan broke through the blockade of the Qing government and entered the Northeast (commonly known as the Guandong) continuously. Together with the local Mongolian and Manchu people, they developed the Northeast into an important agricultural area rich in soybeans and sorghum in modern my country.In Xinjiang, especially after the Qing Dynasty established a province here, it made great efforts to cultivate fields and build water conservancy projects. Thanks to the efforts of the local Uyghur, Han, and Mongolian people, agricultural production has achieved great development.Yunnan and Guizhou in the southwestern region were called Southwestern Yi in ancient times. In the Han Dynasty, the "indigenous people" mainly engaged in farming and the "traveling states" mainly focused on nomadic coexistence.Afterwards, the scope of farming culture continued to expand, while the scope of nomadic culture continued to shrink, and it transformed into settled grazing.During the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the central government made great efforts to farm here, and a large number of Han, Hui and other people entered the area. The advanced production technology in the interior was rapidly promoted, and farmland water conservancy was also developed. The reclamation activities gradually developed from flat dams to mountainous and border areas.The reclamation of coastal islands is also accelerating.People from southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong set off a wave of crossing the sea and emigrating to Taiwan several times in the Qing Dynasty, which greatly accelerated the development of Taiwan Island.

The reclamation of tidal flats, barren mountains and frontiers has greatly increased the area of ​​cultivated land in our country compared with the previous generation.Some people estimate that the area of ​​cultivated land in the Ming Dynasty increased by 40% compared with the Song Dynasty, that is, from 560 million mu to 784 million mu; in the Qing Dynasty, it increased to 1.1-1.2 billion mu, which was 50% larger than that in the Ming Dynasty.This was an important factor in the growth of the total grain output in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and played a great role in alleviating the people's food problem.Among the newly increased cultivated land, many are "barren sand hills" and "precipitous land", which are regarded by foreigners as "marginal land" with no use value.In the process of reclamation and utilization of these lands, land use technologies such as the improvement of low-yield fields (such as saline-alkali land, cold soaking fields, etc.) have been developed.After some mountain lands were reclaimed, they were used to plant indigo, shiitake mushrooms, hemp, tobacco, tea, lacquer, fruit trees, etc., which promoted the development of commodity economy.The reclamation activities in the frontier not only expanded the farming culture area, but also spread the intensive farming techniques in the Central Plains.

However, the reclamation activities in the Ming and Qing Dynasties were carried out spontaneously under the pressure of population expansion. It was impossible to make a reasonable plan under the feudal system. The destruction of natural resources, water resources, etc., causes water and soil erosion, water surface shrinkage, water storage capacity reduction and other ills, thus aggravating floods and droughts.my country was originally a country with severe natural conditions and frequent natural disasters. This situation developed again in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.In connection with this, people paid more and more attention to preparing for famine and relief from famine, and the utilization of wild plants and technologies such as pest control and locust control were developed, which was also one of the distinctive features of Ming and Qing agriculture.

Another negative consequence of the reclamation activities in the Ming and Qing Dynasties was the reduction of barren beaches and grassy hills suitable for grazing in the interior, and large areas of traditional pastoral areas and semi-agricultural and semi-pastoral areas were converted from pastoral to agricultural, which led to an increase in the proportion of planting and a decrease in the proportion of animal husbandry nationwide. , forming a situation in which the relationship between agriculture and animal husbandry is too heavy, too light, and the proportion is out of balance.Insufficient farm animals and fragmented operations have even caused some areas to return from cattle farming to human farming.

In the grain production of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the introduction and promotion of corn, sweet potatoes and potatoes was a major event with far-reaching influence.They adapted to the population surge at that time, and made great contributions to our people's conquest of barren mountainous areas and alpine areas, alleviating the food problem of the people.Without their promotion, the expansion of cultivated land and the improvement of yields in the Ming and Qing Dynasties would have been limited. According to the people of the Ming Dynasty, corn originated in the "Xifan" area and was called "Yu Mai" because it was enjoyed by the emperor.Early corn was mostly called Yumai, probably a corruption of Yumai.In addition, corn has dozens of different names such as corn and maize.In the past, it was generally believed that corn originated in the Americas, and it spread to Eurasia and my country after Columbus discovered the New World in 1492.Recent research has shaken this conclusion.Because decades before Columbus discovered the New World, there were clear records about corn in the book "Southern Yunnan Materia Medica".Maize was planted quite early in ethnic minority areas in Southwest my country.Therefore, the origin of corn and how it was introduced into the interior still needs to be further studied.However, in the Ming Dynasty, there were very few corns grown in the interior, and the inland people were not very familiar with the shape and habits of corn, so that Li Shizhen also drew the image of corn wrongly in the novel.In the Qing Dynasty, the population increased sharply, people's food was in short supply, and corn began to be valued.Because this kind of crop does not have high requirements on soil and climate conditions, it is convenient to plant and harvest, saves labor, has high yield and is resistant to hunger, and can eat food even before it is fully mature.Initially, corn was rapidly promoted mainly in the mountainous areas of various places, and a situation of "all over the mountains and valleys are filled with corn" appeared, replacing the original status of millet. After the 19th century, a large number of corns began to be planted in plain areas such as North China and Northeast China, and corn developed into an important national food crop. Both root crops, sweet potatoes and potatoes, are native to the Americas.The root and tuber food crops originally produced in my country are mainly yam (yam) and taro, which were later transformed into vegetables.Another root crop, also known as sweet potato or sweet potato, belongs to the Dioscoreaceae family. It has been planted in Hainan and other places no later than the Han Dynasty. It is a traditional crop of the Li people.The sweet potato native to America belongs to Convolvulaceae, also known as sweet potato.During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty (the end of the 16th century), it was introduced into my country. The introduction route was first introduced from Luzon (Philippines) to Fujian, and the other was introduced from Vietnam to Guangdong and Guangxi.They were all overseas Chinese who took risks and broke through the local blockade to bring potato seeds back to China. There are many touching stories among them.After the introduction of sweet potatoes, there was a famine in Fujian due to typhoon disasters. Sweet potatoes were planted as famine relief crops. There were countless people alive, and people began to look at it with admiration.In the late Ming Dynasty, in order to solve the famine in the south of the Yangtze River, Xu Guangqi introduced sweet potatoes from Fujian many times, studied the method of overwintering sweet potatoes locally, and summarized the "thirteen wins" of sweet potatoes, including high yield, convenient eating, easy reproduction, and simple planting , drought and barren resistance, not afraid of locusts and so on.Since the mid-Qing Dynasty, with the population surge and the migration of poor farmers in search of new arable land, the spread of sweet potato to the north has been accelerated, and it has been rapidly promoted in the Yangtze River Basin, the Yellow River Basin and other places.Potatoes, also known as potatoes, yams, etc., were introduced into my country around the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. They were first planted in Taiwan and then entered the mainland; they were also introduced from Russia to northern my country.Potatoes have a short growth period and strong adaptability. They can be grown even in cold climate areas, new land or barren mountainous areas, and become an important food for people in bitter cold mountainous areas. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, rice cultivation developed further.Among the 13 provinces in the north, rice is grown except Heilongjiang.The northern line of rice distribution in the late Qing Dynasty was Yili, Xinjiang, along the Hexi Corridor, Hetao to the Liaohe River Basin in the northeast.In the south, double-cropping rice developed from Lingnan to the Yangtze River Basin.The status of millet and sorghum in the north was weakened by the spread of corn and sweet potatoes.The current main food crops in my country are rice, wheat, corn, sorghum, millet, sweet potato and potato.This is the result of long-term historical development, and this pattern of food crops has basically formed in the Qing Dynasty. In terms of fiber production, although cotton was introduced to the Yangtze River Basin during the Song and Yuan Dynasties, it was really popularized throughout the country in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.At the beginning of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, there were rigid regulations on the production of kapok by private households, and cotton was quickly spread in the Yellow River Basin.Xu Guangqi said at the end of the Ming Dynasty: "(Cotton) began to enter the south of the Yangtze River at the end of the Song Dynasty, and now it has spread to Jiangbei and Zhongzhou." In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, cotton was not only the most important raw material for clothing and quilts in China, but also cotton and cotton cloth were sold abroad.The development of cotton led to the decline of hemp cultivation, and hemp was almost replaced by cotton.From the end of the Song Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, with the prosperity of the cotton industry, the sericulture industry tended to shrink in many places, but in some areas in the south, especially the Jiahu area, the sericulture industry flourished further in the Qing Dynasty, stimulated by the export of silk, and made it Adjacent areas and the Pearl River Delta have also developed into important sericulture producing areas.The production of tussah silk also developed greatly in Ming and Qing Dynasties.The first to harvest and utilize tussah silk was the "Laiyi" in the Shandong Peninsula in the pre-Qin period.After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, tussah silkworm breeding became a sideline of farmers in Shandong, and a relatively complete set of techniques was formed, which was spread from the origin of Shandong to the lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin, Liaoning in the northeast, and Sichuan and Guizhou in the southwest. Peanut and tobacco are important economic crops introduced in my country during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.According to reports, Neolithic peanut remains have been unearthed in Qianshanyang, Wuxing, Zhejiang, and Paomaling, Xiushui, Jiangxi.However, in the long years to come, peanuts were not found in the literature, which has become an unsolved mystery in the study of agricultural history.Before Jiajing and Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, peanuts native to Brazil were introduced into my country, and they were called "fragrant taro".At the beginning of the sea route to Minguang, and then from Minguang to Jiangsu and Zhejiang, it expanded to the north of Huanghuai in the early Qing Dynasty. In the 19th century, large peanuts were introduced, and Shandong became an important production base of peanuts.Peanut has a high oil content and is a good raw material for oil extraction. After being introduced, it has developed rapidly and has been planted several times throughout the country, becoming the most important oil crop.Tobacco originated in the Americas and was introduced from Luzon to Fujian and Guangdong during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty.It quickly spread throughout the north and south of the river, inside and outside the Great Wall, and became an important economic crop in the Qing Dynasty. Sugarcane production also developed in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the output was dominated by Fujian and Guangzhou.Taiwan is an emerging sugarcane area, and it is rapidly surpassing the mainland.Indigo is also an important economic crop, and Fujian and Jiangxi have become special production areas for indigo.Tea production continued to develop, and the traditional official or semi-official tea-horse trade was replaced by wider non-governmental trade. At the same time, tea became one of the most important materials for foreign trade. Among the vegetables of Ming and Qing Dynasties, the traditional sunflowers and manjing were worth less and less, while cabbage and radish played the leading roles.Their variety is constantly increasing.Especially in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, headed Chinese cabbage, which is different from the original loose-leaf type, was cultivated, that is, today's Chinese cabbage.It is not only loved by our people, but also widely introduced by countries all over the world.The vegetables introduced during this period include peppers, tomatoes, kidney beans, pumpkins, kohlrabi and head cabbage, which are native to the Americas. They have been improved by the Chinese people and have greatly developed.For example, our country now has the most abundant pepper varieties in the world, including various types of sweet peppers, and has become an exporter of pepper varieties. The bell peppers from Beijing were introduced to the United States, and they are called "Chinese giants". During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the varieties of original cultivated fruit trees in my country increased significantly, and fruit trees such as mango, pineapple, papaya, and custard apple were introduced from abroad.Western apples and Western pears, the main cultivated fruit trees in northern my country, were introduced from North America in the late Qing Dynasty. Due to the reclamation of traditional pastures and the deterioration of inland grazing conditions, the animal husbandry industry in this period declined, but the breeding of pigs, sheep and other poultry continued to develop.The artificial breeding of shellfish in my country was first seen in the literature of the Song Dynasty, and further developed in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The main production areas are along the coasts of Fujian and Guangdong.During the Ming and Qing dynasties, people along the coast and in Taiwan dug ponds or built dikes on sea flats to raise fish, which further expanded the scope of artificial fish farming.