New Shun 1730

The young prospecting team members are responsible for surveying and mapping.

Generally speaking, those who study surveying and mapping in the Dashun New School are children from poor families.

Because this job... Anyway, in a good place like the capital, there are few places that can be surveyed and mapped.

But even though a child from a poor family has been admitted to a "technical secondary school", it can be regarded as a class leap. At least he no longer has to face the loess and starve.

However, after all, there is still a lack of life, and the imagination of digging for gold is mostly romantic.

The heartfelt words of people who have experienced it are just a story to young people.

Smiling faintly, while checking the various tools in the luggage on the horse, the star charts for checking tables, etc., he said: "I heard that the imperial court is asking officials to supervise the business affairs this time? It seems that they want to start from the Daqing River. Immigrants, come here to dig for gold. Then you will be paid, and it won’t be whoever digs it, so it should be better, right?”

The middle-aged man with bad teeth smiled and said: "What a fart. Who can look at gold and not be tempted? If you are tempted even a little bit, someone will die. How can you look at a big golden nugget and not be tempted, just hand it over?"

"The Tao is one foot high, and the devil is ten feet high. As long as you are tempted, you will be injured or killed. Those who can secretly bring out the gold must be people with great ability. Let's put it this way, such a person, whether it is courage, His vision, martial arts, and mind are all top-notch. How many can do that?"

"Gong Xingguo wants to torment the Yellow River, and the people who want to move here... You have to know that Liangshanbo is the place where bandits have gathered since ancient times. Just watch, when the time comes to dig for gold, hey, one day if It would be strange if three or five people died."

"Even if Shandong people are honest, no matter how honest they are, if they really hold the golden nugget with their own hands, they will not be honest."

"Nowadays, many people in Shandong are eager to dig up the ancestral grave of Duke Xingguo. The Yellow River is a catastrophic star. Whichever province it passes through will suffer. It has been difficult to leave Shandong for hundreds of years, and Duke Xingguo has to dig it back again... ugh , there will definitely be trouble."

But the young man said in a standard and the most popular language within the new society: "This is also a price that has to be paid for the sake of the country, the country, the country and the people. The Yellow River has been flowing south for hundreds of years, getting higher and higher, and sooner or later it will come back." If we don’t work hard in advance, when the flood comes, hundreds of states and counties will be affected.”

"Things like this can only be done in a prosperous age, and the court must have the means to do it when it can do it. Now that we are in a prosperous age, we have to pay some price and get things done."

Young people talk freely, and when they talk about "price", middle-aged people can't help but want to laugh, and think to themselves, if you pay this price, will you do it? The truth is the truth, and the work is the work. That's not the same.

However, he did not argue with this statement, and only said: "It is a good thing to say so, and you are right. If we really break up, it will be a mess."

The young man said: "To be honest, I just hope that there will be a gold mine here and move people here little by little. My family is also farming. Look at this place. If we farmed 300 acres for a family, what would we be able to do?" What kind of day?”

"But then again, if the court pays for immigration, the court pays for the boat trip, etc., and when you get here, you will be given land, seeds, cattle and horses... Do you think this kind of good thing will get the turn of the poor?"

"How many good sons of the imperial court also have children. If the imperial court really uses the national treasury to provide this money, everything is prepared. How can they not move their bastards?"

"There are also soldiers, not to mention."

"In the final analysis, I think Duke Xingguo's approach is right. The only way to deal with this matter is to dig for gold and transport people from both sides of the Yellow River."

"Even if we can't cover a county's river section in one year or three years in one county, it will take ten, twenty, thirty years to complete this matter..."

"So I'm looking forward to a big gold mine."

"If we can go partly to Guandong and partly to come here, I think it can be done. Dead people... are going to die, but if we do it, thirty to fifty thousand, or even one hundred thousand, will die, which will be terrible. If we don't, When the Yellow River opens its mouth and flows northward to flood, I am afraid that if there is a green forest uprising due to hunger, disease, epidemic, and floods, more than three to five million people will die. "

Speaking of this, the young man could not help but think of some radical ideas circulating in the new school of thought.

In particular, the infiltration of some ideas of the Yan-Li School, or the infiltration of traditional ideas of equalizing land: instead of equalizing land in the world and collecting taxes, the imperial court concentrated its efforts on large-scale immigration and occupied all the reclaimable land in the world. Yes, although it cannot reach the 100 acres of land for a family of five mentioned by the great sages of the pre-Qin Dynasty, it is still possible for a family of five to have 300 to 50 acres.

At that time, if the imperial court can equalize the land in the world and take eleven of the world's land, it will work hard to build ships and move them to places where there are many people and little land. When a family of five has an equal land of 50 or 80 acres, then there will be no need to worry about failure to achieve great things. The country is not solid?

Now, instead of going around outside and conquering the east and west, it would be better for the court to be ruthless and implement the law of equalizing the land. If we can equalize the land and collect taxes, why bother to conquer the land in exchange for some gold and silver?

That gold and silver, you may or may not want them. When the time comes to rely on the court to collect taxes and concentrate on building ships, do we have to give out gold and silver? Distributing grain and cash is not the same?

There are billions of acres of land in the world, including all parts of Guanxi and Southeast Asia. With one tax per acre, 100 million stones, grains and rice can be put into the warehouse. Apart from raising troops and controlling floods, the rest can be used to build ships. It is not difficult to build ten thousand large ships.

When the time comes to immigrate to Fusang, why not 3 to 5 million a year?

This kind of radical thought has been widely circulated among people from the lower classes of the new school in recent years. It can be said to be extremely attractive.

The economic factors behind this spread are those from the lower class of the New School, who are basically not landlords.

And what is hidden behind this set of things is that if the emperor does not reuse them and make all the scholar-officials and local gentry who came from the imperial examination, what is the use?

People from the new school filled the army, officialdom, and officials, evened out the land, and focused on immigration in order to achieve a truly prosperous age of "a family of five and a hundred acres of land."

Even some ideas have been circulated in the army, and some young officers believe deeply.

Although these radical ideas have been circulated, within the new school of thought, on the whole, they are not very radical, and most still support the status quo.

Including this time of prospecting and immigration on the west coast of Fuso and dredging rivers in Shandong, they also supported unconventional policies.

It should be said that the contradiction has not intensified to that extent.

It's just that people from the new school are literate.

Therefore, some pamphlets can easily spread quickly through printing among these people who are literate but marginalized by mainstream literati, but who actually have advanced productivity and technology.

However, the main literate population in Dashun's external expansion were from the New School, or the Real School.

They traveled south and north, and really saw the vast land of North America, thousands of miles of grasslands in Oceania, and experienced the bitter cold and mosquitoes in the Northeast. They also knew arithmetic.

Therefore, they believe that their dream of a family of five and a hundred acres of land can be realized.

However, the difference between them and the Confucian retro-reformers is that they still believe in the bright future described by Liu Yu, which is not inconsistent with the development of industry in the future.

The difference is that, for example, when Liu Yu was engaged in land enclosure and salt reclamation in northern Jiangsu, they felt that this could be done more beautifully and more gently.

For example, if the imperial court really had an income of 100 million taels as they imagined, they could build ships without considering profit, and instead send these people to Fuso to reclaim wasteland in the Southern Ocean.

In fact... there is no need to repeat the brutal suppression of canal water workers, porters on Wuling trade routes, Yangzhou salt workers, and salt households in northern Jiangsu.

Moreover, many people are quite critical of these things. For example, in their view, the Wuling porters' uprising was caused by the transfer of the trade center from Guangdong to Songsu, so the big businessmen who had benefited from Songsu should pay for it and resettle these people to reclaim wasteland. yes.

In fact, this is the enlightenment movement of Dashun.

However, because Dashun's demands for anti-church, anti-religion, anti-feudal inheritance law, and anti-nobility are not so strong, there is no such strong demand.

Therefore, the form of expression is mainly based on the budding idea of ​​"the unity of rights and obligations."

A typical example of this kind of thinking is the debate surrounding whether those who benefited from the transfer of the trade center that could not be circumvented by the Dashun Reform should pay to resettle the unemployed people on the old trade road.

It seems that Dashun's participation in the First World War brought peace and vitality inside.

Europe was badly beaten, and even the east coast of North America was not spared. Only Dashun was quiet.

In fact, the impact of World War I on Dashun was no less than the impact of hundreds of thousands of troops directly arrayed on bombing.

Within the Practical School, a very radical trend of thought began to emerge - what should we do after the First World War? What are we going to do?

Because, from the very beginning, Dashun's various reforms to the present, anyone with a discerning eye feels that all of them are preparations for this world war. Well, now that this world war is about to end, Xing Guogong and other people of that generation are already old. Even now, they don't care about too many things and just squat in Shandong digging the Yellow River and building roads.

Many people in the Practical School fell into an indescribable confusion - everything before was understood, and it was for a battle, but what happens next?

If we say that the legal revolution in history was due to the failure of the "World War I", that is, the Seven Years' War, it finally broke out.

At this time, Dashun fell into a kind of confusion because the "World War I" was about to be won, but what to do after winning.

Dashun, since ancient times, has not been very fond of talking about such things, especially drastic changes.

Whether Wang Mang or An Shi, radical change requires concrete things: land, taxes, laws, money, and politics. These are practical things, not empty talk.

Including people from the Yan-Li school in history, what they wrote never focused on "classics", but on "art" - officialdom, taxation, land, schools, talent selection, military system, and so on.

Classically, what we do is right, and the focus is on proving "right".

This is how we should do art, and the focus is on "doing".

Because from the beginning to the end, the attitude of "right" is basically the same starting from the various schools of thought. What is right? The country is safe and healthy, the people are stable, and have food and clothing.

The three prominent schools of thought at that time, Confucianism, Mohism, and Yang, were all discussing this, and they had great differences on the question of "what to do."

The greatest significance of the existence of the new school is to subtly instill some methodologies to solve the "how" and "how" issues of "we should do this".

Therefore, the Enlightenment movement in Dashun is completely different in appearance from that in Europe... Because Dashun generally does not believe in religion, it is impossible to develop the relationship between man and God derived from scholastic philosophy. A bunch of "self-evident" and "self-evident" things.

On the contrary, because the Dashun people generally did not believe in religion, the enlightenment movement on the Dashun side revolved around things like "the unity of rights and obligations", "whether land ownership is state-owned or private", and "whether merchants should be restricted from buying land".

This is also related to the official ideology of the Dashun side, because in fact, the official ideology of the Dashun side in theory, the set of Chen Liang, Ye Shi and others, is also "cultivating oneself with art, art is greater than classics" from the inside out.

Of course, it is the core.

It is precisely because of this, the core from the outside to the inside, that the idea of ​​Ye Shi and others is to fully restore the rituals, and to achieve the true Confucianism from the outside to the inside with all aspects of the system.

This set of cores is like this, including Yan Li and others, in fact, the core is also like this: if you want to be a true Confucian, then learn the art of a gentleman, experience the true meaning of Confucianism in practice, from the outside to the inside, integrate and understand, and finally achieve great enlightenment. Therefore, one of the reasons why opponents blasted them as heretics is that "If a person wants to go somewhere, he must first know where he wants to go, and then he can know whether to go south or north. You are so good, you don't learn where to go first, but squat there to build cars and raise horses, and then say that as long as the cars are built and the horses are raised, it will be fine. So what is your purpose? Is it to go to that place? Or is your purpose to build cars and raise horses?"

For this reason, under the influence of the official ideology of Dashun, this kind of outside-in flavor is still very strong.

Because...the practical learning group does not study the classics, so their purpose has never been to restore the rituals, or to take the restoration of rituals as the ultimate ideal.

So this kind of somewhat weird Enlightenment movement appeared, the focus of the discussion was not people, heaven, Lord, God, talent, freedom and other things, but ownership, tax system, official system, military system, industry and commerce and other things.

Although different, it is actually the same thing.

For Europe, "daring to resist" and "resisting with reason" are very important. This gives legitimacy to the resistance, because for believers, "legality" and "conformity with the classics" are the only way. You know, the burning and killing of heretics in North America ended only a few years ago.

As for Dashun, Li Zicheng obviously didn't know "natural rights". He should have the right to life, which was not given by others, but by nature... But did this prevent him from rising up to resist for his right to life?

One is "self-evident without argument", proving that it is reasonable.

The other is "what's the use of arguing about the bird scripture, isn't this a matter of course", which does not need to be proved.

Does the Enlightenment necessarily have a standard form? In other words, the focus is different.

In North America, the manifestation of the Enlightenment is the so-called "First Great Awakening", which was carried out in the form of a resurgence of religious morality. A large number of missionaries rushed to North America to preach and try to make people return to faith. The focus is on religious freedom, and no more church-church integration and heresy trials.

In France, the manifestation of the Enlightenment, on the contrary, was carried out in an extreme anti-religious and anti-church way. The focus is on property rights. The French bourgeoisie does not want to pay taxes to the king at will.

But beyond the appearance, there is one thing that is the same, that is, "land reform".

North America was completed by scalping and confiscating the property of the royalists.

France is needless to mention.

So, since Dashun has also produced a unique enlightenment movement, can Dashun "escape" this problem?

In fact, whether it is the idea of ​​equal distribution of land by Yan Li and others, or the idea of ​​centralized shipbuilding and immigration that is popular in the new school, the internal driving economic factor is still the land contradiction.

This contradiction became more and more obvious with the confusion of "what to do in the future" as the First World War was about to end.

Liu Yu measured the river in Shandong and tried to rely on the gold mine immigration plan, but it did not solve the biggest contradiction of Dashun, but made this contradiction completely intensified.

Because, with the settlement of immigrants on the west coast of North America and the participation of more and more people in this matter, many people inevitably have questions: Why not concentrate their forces and build ships and immigrate like crazy? On one side, there are floods, droughts, uprisings, thousands of miles of barren land, and cannibalism; on the other side, there is a temperate climate with maple trees all over the ground, plains and rivers, and fertile soil for thousands of years. Our navigation and shipbuilding techniques have reached the standard, so why not do it?

In Dashun, how to concentrate power has always had a clear answer since ancient times: equal distribution of land is the first benevolent policy, eliminating the middlemen to make a profit.

The intensification of this contradiction has only transformed the past "purpose" into a "means" - for the radicals of the new school, it seems that equal distribution of land is not a purpose, but a means to concentrate resources. The real purpose is immigration, industry, or to alleviate the pain of industrialization.

And it is a special version of Dashun. Dashun does not lack labor force, but lacks resources that reduce the pain of small farmers in the process, land.

Industrialization naturally impacts small farmers, but impact is impact and uprising is uprising.

Will impact necessarily lead to uprising?

The reason why industrialization causes small farmers to uprising is that small farmers cannot support themselves with land, and there is too little land. If there were 300 mu of land and the daughter-in-law's spinning wheel was blown up by the textile factory, there would be no need to revolt. But if there were only 3 mu of land and the daughter-in-law's spinning wheel was blown up by the textile factory, and she couldn't even buy salt or make cotton trousers in winter, then she had to revolt.