Chapter 1057 Half a hundred million people and nine hundred million fields
The land is not only the lifeblood of the people, but also the lifeblood of the dynasty.
The people did not have land, and in the classical agrarian society, it would be very difficult. As for the dynasty, if it can't control the land, it will inevitably have the fate of a cycle of two or three hundred years.
Wang Mang, who is known as a traverser in history, has also faced such a serious problem.
At the end of the Western Han Dynasty, the Central Plains Dynasty, which had experienced a history of more than 200 years, faced an extremely grim situation, with serious land annexation, and most of the land fell into the hands of aristocratic and powerful officials, and many people became landless peasants, and even became slaves of others in the end.
Wang Mang, who was once regarded as a saint by the Western Han Dynasty, became the emperor of the new dynasty under the crowding of the people of the whole country. Wang Mang is very talented, but in the face of the tattered belongings left by the Western Han Dynasty, he is also at a loss.
The biggest difference between him and the other founding emperors was that he accepted the Zen concession, and when he received the Zen, the whole country, especially the nobles, scholars, and officials, almost completely agreed. This means that Wang Mang actually inherited these upper classes of the Western Han Dynasty in its entirety, and the world really just changed an emperor, and nothing has changed.
Wang Mang wants to reform, but he has nowhere to start, and wherever he starts, he has to touch the interests of those old interest groups. In the end, he could only reform the system.
But Wang Mang was originally the new representative of those interest groups, but in the end he wanted to oppose these interest groups, nationalize the land, and prohibit slavery, who would be willing to do this?
In the end, Wang Mang could only think of another way, that is, to actively open up foreign wars, and try to rob the Qiang people and the Huns when he could not move the meat on the plate of the existing interest groups.
So there was Xihai County, Xihai County was ostensibly because Wang Mang said that there were East China Sea and Haihai Beihai County in the world, but there was only one Xihai County, so he asked the Qiang people in Qinghai to donate land and set up a new Xihai County.
But the essence is that the land contradiction in the Central Plains cannot be solved, so they find a way to open up to the outside world.
Wang Mang reigned for only a dozen years, and he continued to use troops abroad, not because he was belligerent, but because he hoped to be able to compete for land with foreign countries, so as to colonize and resettle those landless peasants in the Central Plains and ease some social contradictions.
However, Wang Mang made various reforms and tossed everywhere, but nothing was accomplished, and in the end he not only angered the old interest groups, but also annoyed the people, so everyone took him down again.
Compared with Wang Mang, Luo Cheng's situation is better.
He fought the world with a knife and a shot, and he went from being a general in the border area to basically pacifying the world in the end, all along the way.
Therefore, whether Luo Cheng was fighting the old nobles of Guanlong or suppressing the Kwantung clans, he was fearless, and no one could resist, because the emperor's power came from his military group, and that group of people basically had little to do with the old nobles and the old scholars.
But there is still a very real problem in front of the emperor.
The amount of arable land per capita is too low.
Now Great Qin basically unifies the world, and even the three feudal domains in the south of the Yangtze River call themselves vassal vassals.
At present, the latest census data in the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the Great Qin Imperial Court shows that Daqin has more than 9 million hectares of land, more than 900 million mu of land, and the population is more than 8 million households, with a population of more than 50 million.
After the implementation of the two-tax system in Daqin, there was basically no tax, and officials and nobles also had to levy two taxes per mu, and only the government soldiers could be exempted from the two taxes.
Through wars, the Great Qin destroyed several countries, seized a large number of registered population and land, and through the strategy of exempting Han slaves and immigrating to the border gates, a large number of slaves who were not in the household registration during the Sui Dynasty were converted into the registered population of the imperial court.
At the same time, the reform of the control of Buddhism and Taoism also transformed a large number of pure slaves of monks and Buddhist temples and Taoist temples.
The increase in the country's population is a good thing, which means that the country's strength has increased, but it can be considered from the other side, but it is different.
The country has a total of just over 900 million acres of land, but its population has reached more than 50 million. If calculated on average, each mouth can occupy 18 acres of land, which seems to be a lot.
But in fact, the government, officials, nobles, and landlords occupied a large amount of land, and the land granted by the government soldiers was much higher than that of the common people.
Therefore, the vast majority of the people actually cannot reach the average of 18 acres.
Not to mention, there are good and bad land, a few acres of land in the frontier may not be as fertile and productive as one acre of the Central Plains, even if it is the same land in the Central Plains, there are irrigated land, slope land, dry land, mountainous land, and so on.
This is not counting the acre of land in the Qin Dynasty, the area is much smaller than the acre of land in later generations, only 500 square meters.
From here alone, it can be seen that the Juntian system since the Western Wei Dynasty actually has many loopholes. The uniform land system grants 100 acres of land to one ding, and even cattle and slaves can grant land, but that is only when wars are frequent, there is a large amount of ownerless land and newly seized land that can be used to grant land.
But now, the land has an owner.
Simply calculated, there are only hundreds of millions of acres of land, but there are more than 50 million people.
Even if it is only counted in terms of households, the average household is only 100 acres of land, but the princes alone can own tens of thousands of acres of land, and the aristocratic officials, who account for a very small number of the population, occupy a large part of the land.
The people of the Central Plains can get thirty or forty acres of land per household, which is very good, and it has to include mulberry fields and forest land.
Why did Luo Cheng set up a forbidden army, not all government soldiers?
It is because the demand for fields is great for the government soldiers, after each battle, the imperial court has to take out a lot of fields to reward their military merits, but after the unification of the country, the fields are solidified, and it is difficult for the imperial court to continuously change the fields.
In history, why did the Tang Dynasty soldiers collapse when they opened the Yuan Dynasty?
Or because of the Xuanzong Dynasty, the frontier was at war everywhere, and the war continued, but the imperial court had no land to reward the government soldiers, so no one wanted to be the government soldiers anymore, and the government soldiers could not win the battle, and the natural government army system collapsed, so the recruitment system was changed, and in order to meet the needs of the border war, the festival envoys began to be set up, and the Long March athletes were recruited, so that they could bring their families to Tuntian for a long time.
Although this new system changed the situation that there were no soldiers available after the collapse of the government military system, it was followed by the heavy troops of the Jiedu outside, which began to threaten the Central Plains Imperial Court and defend the outside and the inside, which eventually led to the Anshi Rebellion.
From the perspective of Luo Cheng's understanding of history, there are only two ways to resolve this fundamental contradiction. The first is to continue to limit land, and at the same time increase the intensity of foreign conquest, seize more land and then colonize.
The second is to vigorously develop the industrial and commercial and handicraft manufacturing industries, develop foreign trade, and let more landless peasants move into the cities and become handicraft workers, no longer dependent on the land, but become industrial workers. In fact, this appeared in the late Ming Dynasty.
No, in terms of stability, the first one is undoubtedly higher, but it is also more difficult.
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