On October 2, 1623, in the auditorium of the Faculty of Political Science and Economics of the University of Krasbourg, the first "Far Eastern Forum" was held.

Facing the crowd in front of the crowd, Roland took to the podium to harshly criticize the radical reforms of the Assanian Empire.

"Imperial farm workers were nominally paid monthly wages, but after deducting the ransom debts that were repaid in installments, they had to be deducted by the 'foreman' and 'manager' and the like, and there were not a few copper plates left. The so-called 'state-owned farms' of the Yashan Empire are in vain, and compared with the old-style serf plantations, how can there be a significant increase in agricultural labor productivity? ”

"The Imperial Government freed the serfs from the estates of their original owners, turned them back into collective farms, and the poor people, who had just been freed from serfdom, before they had time to celebrate their freedom, became debt slaves again, but with a more cruel and impersonal master."

"From the point of view of the serfs, they were in even worse condition than they were before they were 'emancipated'. The abolitionist reforms gave them nothing but legal rights that remained on paper, but took much from them—rights that they had agreed to for thousands of years, though not guaranteed by written statutes: the right to ask their masters for help in the event of a bad harvest and rinderpest; the right to collect or buy cheap fuel in the owner's forest, the right to graze livestock; the right to ask for the owner's help in the construction of the house; the right to ask the master for food when he is destitute; The right to request the owner to hire a doctor or give alms in case of illness ......"

"Now that the serfs have been emancipated, their masters have changed from concrete landlords, nobles, and clergy to abstract 'Leviathans', from living beings of good and bad, flesh and blood, and feelings, to cold state apparatus, and all these unwritten rights have been abolished, and now they have nothing but freedom."

"It was not only the serfs who suffered from the reforms, but also their former masters. State-owned farms are like huge sponges, frantically absorbing serfs, the main force that originally supported agricultural production, which leads to higher wages for private farmers to hire helpers, and in addition, state-owned farms do not need to pay land rent taxes, which has an innate competitive advantage over private farms, further compressing the living space of small and medium-sized landowners. ”

With the emancipation of serfs and the formation of a free land market, the small and medium-sized landlords who originally owned only a small number of serfs and had to work in the land themselves also came to an end. The government forcibly bought serfs from the landlords for a small amount of money, or very suspicious paper money, leaving them with a dilemma: for their own working people, the land they owned was too large to cultivate on their own; If you want to rent the land to someone else for cultivation, the land is too small to support the family with the net income left after paying the land rent tax...... These families, who were struggling in the tide of reform, eventually had to sell the land on which they depended for their livelihood to seek a living in the cities or leave their homes to earn a living. ”

In this way, the serfs were emancipated, the landlords went bankrupt one after another, the traditional rural society of the Assanian Empire collapsed under the impact of radical reforms, countless families went bankrupt due to the reforms, leaving ruins everywhere, and a kind of "freedom" left nothing, many serfs were burdened with debts for this illusory freedom, the state-owned farms were like a big prison, and the indebted serfs were forced to work under the whip of the overseers, and their lives were more miserable than before the "liberation", and this situation continued. The Reformation of the Empire is like a sailboat lost in a storm, which sooner or later will run aground and sink! ”

Roland's criticism of the radical reforms of the Assanian Empire was harsh, but the reality was more grim than his predictions.

Fast forward to the end of October, nearly half a year after the imperial authorities implemented the reforms, and now it is time for the autumn harvest to test the results of the reforms.

The imperial authorities had high hopes for hastily formed state farms, hoping to replicate the agricultural miracle of the Far East. As a result, reformers such as Frank were disappointed – the grain yield per acre of state-owned farms was far lower than expected, let alone compared with the Far East, and there was no obvious advantage over the privately cultivated fields.

Disillusioned by the setback of the agricultural reform, Frank summoned all the managers of the state-owned farms to Beijing to inquire about the root causes of the low grain yield per acre.

All the managers, as if they had been consulted beforehand, blamed the grain failures on the ungrateful emanence of the emancipated serfs, accusing them of being lazy and unwilling to work for the state on the state-owned farms.

Frank was so disappointed that he had to accept the unanimous advice of the managers to pass on the poor grain harvest to the farm workers and convert it into their debt.

In this way, the serfs who were forced to be emancipated were saddled with an even heavier debt before they could pay off their ransoms. In the long run, not only will they have to work on the farm until they die, but even their children and grandchildren will inherit debts and become slaves for generations.

Serfs are also human beings, and they can think, and anyone with a little brain will have doubts: what is the difference between their situation and that before they were emancipated? It's not even as good as it used to be!

Where there is oppression, there is resistance. The phenomenon of flight, which was common in the slave era, is now also intensifying in the land of the empire bathed in the spring breeze of reform. The emancipated serfs suffered so much that they fled from the state farms one after another. Following in the footsteps of the bankrupt landlords, they migrated to the seashore in droves, aboard a ship that was about to set sail, and fled across the ocean to find a way to survive.

……

At the end of 1623, the "wave of desertion" of serfs caused by the radical reforms of the Yashan Empire also caused considerable pressure on the surrounding countries.

Thousands of families bankrupt by the reform of the empire, serfs who fled from the farms, could not live in the land where they were raised, and had to flee overseas through various channels to earn a living.

Looking at the future from the perspective of a refugee, of course, there is a desire to go to a country where society is more stable and life is more affluent. In the entire world of Vares, there are not many countries that are more stable and wealthy than the Yashan Empire, none other than the three old powerhouses of Feizhen, Hailan and Canaan.

Migration flows to these three countries first. The fugitives are understandably eager to share the dividends of the powerful country, but the aborigines of the three great powers are in a different mood!

Although the standard of living in the three countries of Fizhen, Hailan and Canaan is relatively rich, their populations are also swelling severely! In particular, Feizhen, an old power that took the lead in Vares to start magic industrialization, is just a small island with poor arable land resources, but it is crowded with 22 million residents, and the population density is frighteningly large.

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