Great time travel

Chapter 148, The Aftermath Strategy of Liaodong Theater
Through exchanges with some climatology experts in the modern world, Huangshi now has a very clear understanding.As of now, the Little Ice Age in the entire Northeast region has lasted for almost 50 years, and it will continue to suffer for more than ten years before it passes.According to historical records, during this long period of disasters, the grain output of farmlands in various parts of Liaodong will drop to a very deplorable level.

Therefore, during the Apocalypse period, the soldiers and civilians of Dongjiang Town in the Ming Dynasty under Mao Wenlong seemed to occupy a large area from the map, but their rations were always extremely dependent on the shipping support from Shandong, and they had to shamelessly go to North Korea to blackmail and fight the autumn wind.Unfortunately, the soldiers and civilians in Dongjiang Town are still starving to death every year.After Yuan Chonghuan ordered the closure of the port and the lack of food, Dongjiang Town, which seemed to be strong and strong, starved to the ground.

As for the Eight Banners, theoretically it would be even worse.In fact, as early as the early years of Chongzhen, the famine brought by the Little Ice Age had completely collapsed the entire Liaodong agriculture.At that time, the Jurchen Eight Banners’ ruling area was massacred by Nurhaci and there were only 70 Han people left at one time. However, due to the failure of most of the crops, the remaining people still traded for food. The price of rice was as high as 80 taels a stone, and the price of cloth It also rose to 20 taels a horse.

Thanks to the traitorous Shanxi merchant group attached to the Jurchen regime, Huang Taiji was able to resell the property, antiques, gold and silver looted from the Central Plains back to the customs, and turned them into daily necessities such as food and cloth to feed the Jurchen Eight Banners and Millions of people who were taken captive.

During the Ming and Qing wars in these years, the Shanxi Merchants Group provided all the gunpowder, [-]% of the food and more than [-]% of the metal to the Eight Banners Army. It was almost the general logistics department of the Jurchens!Once they lose the assistance of the Shanxi Merchants Group and cannot re-sell these trophies stained with the blood of the Han people to the Han people, the seemingly majestic soldiers of the Eight Banners will quickly degenerate into the state of bone arrows and animal skin clothes.

And the Shanxi Merchants Group, which has made a fortune in the country, has naturally benefited a lot from it. According to historical records, as early as 15 years in Chongzhen, the eight families of Shanxi Merchants had already hoarded tens of millions of silver taels. The status of imperial merchants bestowed by the Qing Dynasty created an immortal legend of the eight Shanxi merchants who became rich and powerful for more than 270 years. It was not until modern times that they gradually declined with the rise of maritime trade.

However, with the change of ownership in the entire Liaodong, Shanxi Shanxi Merchants, the lifeline that once maintained the Jurchen Eight Banners regime, will naturally be broken.

Although Huang Shi didn't think that these Shanxi traitorous and profiteering groups, after burying tens of millions of Han compatriots with their own hands without changing their expressions and heartbeats, would actually have iron-like loyalty and an incredible sense of identity with Huang Taiji, and their morals were so outrageous that they would rather Bankruptcy and bankruptcy, but also to live and die with the Jurchen Eight Banners.

However, even these poor Shanxi merchants would not mind selling the Qing again after selling the Ming Dynasty, and continued to do business with the Huameng who occupied Liaodong.And the traversers with strong productivity can also come up with enough trading products, but if Huangshi wants to reconnect with them to reach a deal, let Shanxi merchants in the pass start supplying goods again, and reach a suitable price agreement, it will take a long time. time.During this period, it is obviously not enough to rely on the grain in Vladivostok alone to meet the consumption of the entire Liaodong. Is it necessary to rely on [Random Gate] to allocate rations from the Americas?After absorbing millions of immigrants in the Americas, can they still get so much food?And is there willing to give out so much food for free to feed millions of Liao people?

Fortunately, after consulting the central think tank expert group through video conference calls, Huang Shi found that he seemed to be thinking too pessimistically.For Huameng, which has modern technology, the anomalous climate of the Little Ice Age did not hit food production so seriously—in other words, he somewhat underestimated the huge role of science and technology, and did not know the importance of modern agriculture in resisting natural disasters. The ability has already far surpassed the ancients.

The so-called Little Ice Age refers to the sharp drop in global temperature, resulting in generally abnormal climate everywhere.On the grassland, it manifests as frequent outbreaks of white disasters, resulting in the death of a large number of livestock, forcing the nomads to plunder the living materials to the south; while in the Northeast and Central China, the precipitation belt moves southward, leading to severe droughts in the original main agricultural areas, causing severe drought. Food production plummeted, eventually causing mass starvation.

At first glance, this appears to be a rather terrifying sight.

But let's not talk about cooling down.Is the drought in the eyes of the ancients really the same as the drought in the imagination of modern people?
Specifically, although there is still a drought in Liaodong this year, in the eyes of all the travelers who have been on the scene, the water of the Liaohe River at this time is still vast and mighty. It is clear.As for the scenes of cracked land and withered vegetation, at least along the Liaohe River, they are basically invisible—it’s just that there is less rain, so this is considered a severe drought?
But the problem is that the ability of the ancients to resist natural disasters was really so weak!
First of all, the seeds sown by ancient farmers are not the high-quality seeds carefully developed by modern seed companies, but the original versions that are much worse in all aspects. It is a green and pollution-free first-class product.But in fact, these ancient "green crops" not only have very low yields, but also are neither drought nor cold resistant, and they will experience reduced yields and no harvests at every turn.

Secondly, in the absence of farmland water conservancy facilities, farmers in ancient times basically depended on the sky for food. Once the heavens did not rain a few times, the harvest of this crop would have a bad trend.After all, no one has the strength, not only to fetch water from distant rivers and lakes with wooden barrels, but also to irrigate tens of acres of crops by hand.Even those fields where irrigation canals were dug had no modern water pumps to aid them.Once the water level of the rivers and lakes drops slightly, causing the river water to fail to flow into the irrigation channels, the farmland will still have reduced or even no harvest.

Finally, in the face of drought, the modern Chinese government will organize various "drought resistance and harvest" actions, while the ancient landlords, gentry and officials would just hide in the county town with their stored grain and money, watching the peasants Slowly starve to death outside the city, and then carve up the land they left behind. The drought is not only a disaster for them, but a delicious feast to expand their own land.

Under the backwardness of technical conditions and the deliberate indifference of the ruling class, the despair of ancient farmers in the face of natural disasters is naturally conceivable.

On the contrary, the various travelers who came to this time and space did not ignore the ravages of natural disasters and sit back and watch the people starve to death, but were very active in fighting disasters to save their income.Then, in the area under the rule of the traversers, all kinds of basic crops have used modern high-quality varieties.In America and Vladivostok, where the land is sparsely populated, farmlands have been planned, leveled, and transformed on a large scale. There are also supporting cement ditches and small reservoirs, plus windmills or steam-powered water pumping stations.Those droughts that were enough to cause ancient farmers to hang themselves or flee from famine were nothing more than a small matter of running the steam pump for a while for the traversers.As long as the drought is not so severe that even the groundwater dries up, there will be no tragic situation of large-scale crop failure.

In addition to the drought, the global cooling during the so-called Little Ice Age also only made the ancients with backward productivity feel desperate.If it is placed in front of modern agricultural technology, it is far from being terrible.After all, although Liaodong is a place of bitter cold in the eyes of the Han people in the Central Plains, it is already a "warm south" in the eyes of the Russians!Since the Soviets in the [-]th century could grow a large number of potatoes and cabbage in the Kamchatka Peninsula, and the descendants of the Vikings grew oats and radishes in Iceland, then how could the farmland along the Liao River fail to grow food?Even if Liaodong was colder during the Little Ice Age at the end of the Ming Dynasty, could it be colder than the Kamchatka Peninsula and Iceland in the modern world?

Therefore, since the Far East Company, whose main body is the veterans of the People’s Liberation Army, traveled through the plane through a wormhole and established a base in Vladivostok in this time and space, it has not felt much about the drought and cold wave that have been raging for years. On the contrary, it has easily reclaimed a large area of ​​farmland. And pasture, the yield is also good.

It can be seen that, at least along the Liaohe River where the water source is guaranteed, Huangshi can completely copy the reclamation experience of the Far East Company in Vladivostok and build a large area of ​​modern farms.There is no need to worry about burning coal. Liaoning Province is a major coal-producing province in China, otherwise it will not be able to support the coal-steel complex of later generations.And the arable land in the Liaohe River Basin alone is enough to accommodate the 300 million people outside Shanhaiguan.

Of course, if you want to build in the Northeast with peace of mind, you must at least have a relatively peaceful external environment... Thinking about this, Huangshi grabbed the wireless phone and connected to the Jinzhou frontline headquarters.Then, according to the list of high-ranking captives reported there, Huang Shi found a historical celebrity who was very influential in modern media and was also a very suitable candidate for his plan.

"...Wu Sangui? Is that the guy who was so angry that he became a beauty? He was caught in Jinzhou this time?"

Wang Qiu, who followed Huangshi in the airship to watch the battle, couldn't help but his eyes lit up when he heard the news, "...Then is Chen Yuanyuan also there?"

"...Please, Wu Sangui is probably not as old as you now! In terms of seniority, you still have to call me uncle or uncle. As for Chen Yuanyuan, he is probably not as old as the two Romanian silver-haired lolitas in your family collection. It’s hard to tell if it’s sold in a brothel.”

Huang Shi rolled his eyes and replied, and Wang Qiu immediately became less interested, "...So, what are you going to do with this little brother Wu Sangui? Use him to persuade the Guan Ning Army to surrender? Or do you want to recruit this guy directly? , to work under your hand?"

"...No, no, I just plan to give them the Wu family a big fortune for the sake of friendship in the past!" Huang Shi showed a meaningful smile, "...to send the territory of Beijing and the Central Plains Give it to Guan Ningjun, let them enjoy being kings! What's the idea?"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

PS: Since 2011, about one-fifth of the western United States has been in a terrible drought. Numerous lakes and reservoirs have dried up one after another, and inland shipping has also collapsed.Judging from the documentary filmed on the spot, the water level of many lakes and rivers has dropped by more than 30 meters, and various situations of cut-offs abound. The severity is definitely no less than that of the Chongzhen drought in the Ming Dynasty in Chinese history.

But despite this, large-scale famine and refugees did not appear in the United States because of this, and the huge US military continued to fight endlessly around the world.It can be seen that the impact of this severe drought on American society is very limited, and it is not even as good as the previous economic crisis.The reason is nothing more than centuries of scientific and technological progress, which has greatly enhanced the ability of human beings to resist natural disasters-the so-called "conquest of nature" is not empty talk!
For example, in California, where there has been a severe drought for five consecutive years, not only have all rivers and lakes bottomed out, but the authorities have even drained the groundwater. green paint.At the same time, various extremely water-consuming golf courses were forcibly closed.Although the common people in California complained about this, they never thought that they would starve to death because of it...

If the same drought were put in the feudal era, the Californian side would have started cannibalism as early as three years ago!