Chapter 18 Section 1 Agricultural Development

Agricultural development is the primary material basis of food culture.As early as in the primitive society, our ancestors had opened up wasteland everywhere in China.The agricultural development discussed here refers to the land development after the emergence of the state.China has been founded on agriculture since ancient times. Before modern times, the main content of land development was agricultural development. Land development in each era reflects the historical trend of my country's social and economic development.Xia, Shang, and Zhou took the Loess Plateau and the Central Plains as the center of development. With the development of the economy, the breadth and depth of land development have been continuously developed.Due to the unbalanced regional development and the ethnic relations in the class society, military operations were often used to open the way in history. For example, Yin Zhou conquered the Dongyi area, which was very large in scale and paid a high price. Finally opened the door to develop the Huanghuai River Basin.King Xuan of Zhou sent 3,000 military vehicles and 300,000 soldiers to conquer the south, which can be compared with the scale of King Wu's conquest of Zhou and the Duke of Zhou's eastward expedition. After such a large-scale military operation, more than 20 small states were conquered, which made a great contribution to the development of the Jianghan River Basin. , opened the channel.Then, Chu State successively merged forty or fifty small states of Jiang, Huai, He, and Han, ending the fragmented and isolated state of the primitive society in this area. In the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, conditions were prepared for Qin Shihuang to unify the whole country in the future.Ba and Shu in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, Wu and Yue in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, from Shang and Zhou to the Spring and Autumn Period, are the main force for the development of this area.By the time of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the development of the Yangtze River Basin had caught up with that of the Yellow River Basin.At the same time as Wu and Yue, Yan and Qi also developed the Liaodong Peninsula.

The Xia, Shang, and Wednesday dynasties were the period when the Chinese nation centered on the Yellow River Basin, gradually developed the Yangtze River Basin and the Liao River Basin, and prepared conditions for the future development of Lingnan, Northwest and Southwest. During the Spring and Autumn Period, ironware and ox farming were gradually popularized, individual productivity increased, and the feudal tenancy system gradually became the mainstream. The production and life of the people in the Central Plains entered a new historical period. From the Warring States period to the Han Dynasty, large-scale water conservancy projects blossomed everywhere. The famous ones were the chasm dug by the Wei State, the Dujiangyan and Lingqu Canals dug by the Qin State, the Zhengbai Canal dug successively by the Qin and Han Dynasties, and the Shaopi Canal built by the Chu State in the Spring and Autumn Period. County), continued to dig irrigation canals between the Han River and Yunmengze (now Dongting Lake), and built the Jinghu water storage irrigation project in East China during the Eastern Han Dynasty.The stable and high-yield fields in Xia, Shang and Zhou periods were limited to the Loess Plateau.During the five to six hundred years from the Warring States Period to the Western Han Dynasty, with the progress of water conservancy projects, China opened up five new stable and high-yield fields in the Huanghuai Plain, Guanzhong Plain, Western Sichuan Plain, Yunmeng Plain and Hangjiahu Plain.At that time, the national average yield per mu was about one and a half stones, and the highest yield of these grain bases once reached one bell per mu (six dendrobiums and four buckets are one bell, and dendrobium is stone).

Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, the trend of national land development has gradually shifted to the vast areas south of the Qinling Mountains, mainly using water conservancy projects as a lever to vigorously develop agricultural areas.A number of water conservancy projects have been developed across the country to varying degrees in successive dynasties.After the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the development of small and medium-sized water conservancy projects was particularly emphasized. Many original large-scale water conservancy projects (such as Dujiangyan, Lingqu, Liufuqu, etc.) and Pitang Lake Weir have also been rehabilitated to varying degrees. Setbacks, but in general, development is intermittent, so food production continues to increase (of course, food production increases, in addition to water conservancy, there are corresponding improvements in soil improvement, seed selection, fertilization, insect control, and farming techniques).In the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties, China formed nine major grain-producing areas. To the north of the Qinling Mountains, the relevant Central Plains (namely the Eight Hundred Li Qinchuan), the North China Plain (namely the Huanghuaihai Plain) and the Songliao Plain (from the north) The middle reaches of the Nenjiang River, south to Liaodong Bay); in the south of the Qinling Mountains, there are Huainan, Jiangnan, Lingnan, Hubei (ie Yunmeng Plain), Shaanxi (ie Hanzhong Basin), Jiannan (south of Jiange, ie Sichuan Basin) six regions.There are also two small plains of Dianchi Lake and Erhai Lake in Yunnan.

With the increase of grain production, other food crops such as beans, potatoes, vegetables, fruits, tea, spices, etc., as well as the amount of poultry and livestock have been continuously developed, which provides a stable material for the development of Chinese food culture. Base.