The continuous disasters made the Ming Dynasty choose to deal with all unnecessary challenges conservatively in the seventeenth and eighteenth years of the well-off.

And after entering the eighteenth year of the well-off, that is, in 1680, because of the catastrophe of the previous two years, the imperial court continued to reduce taxes. It's just that it's not a nationwide tax cut, and it's only for provinces that have been particularly severely affected in the previous two years, and the exemption will continue to be extended for one year. In the less severely affected provinces, grain payments have already been required since the beginning of the year.

However, this did not allow the imperial court treasury to be refilled, and the grain collected was only enough to maintain the expenses of official food, service food, and military food.

It can only be said that after two consecutive years of nationwide disasters, it will take at least two more years of recuperation after the disaster to barely recover.

In 1681, the nineteenth year of the well-off, the whole country finally fully restored normal taxation, and began to increase the inventory of the standing liquidation that had been reduced by more than half in previous years, but it could not be restored to the level before the catastrophe for two consecutive years, and at this time there was not enough military food to launch an expedition of thousands of miles.

In 1682, after 20 years of well-off, he finally encountered a fairly smooth year. The imperial court also took advantage of the rare tendency of "cheap grain hurting peasants" to increase its efforts to purchase surplus grain, and finally restored the regular liquidation to a normal level in one go.

However, the price was that the imperial court spent a lot of gold, silver and copper money, and the balance of gold and silver that was stolen from the Spaniards when they conquered Manila eleven years ago was basically spent in the reconstruction and storage of grain after the national catastrophe.

Of course, such measures to benefit the people and benevolent government are very beneficial to win the hearts of the people, win the centripetal force of the people to the Ming Dynasty, and strengthen the support for the reform of the law from top to bottom.

Although Zhu Shuren's money was spent, the progress of his various legislation and reforms was greatly accelerated, and the legislation of the "Monopoly Law", which he originally thought would take five years, was finally completed within three years. And now in the fifth year, the main body of the "Daming Civil Law" has been almost repaired, three or four years earlier than the original plan.

The support of the people of the world for the Ming army has also increased a lot. The army's sense of honor is also increasing day by day, and the new generation of young soldiers who have grown up because of the end of large-scale warfare for many years do not have the morale, military discipline, and courage of the veterans who licked blood in the war to exterminate the Qing Dynasty.

But now, it's hard to practice the peace of this thing, but the morale and military discipline can at least return to the high state of the Qing War-

If you don't have this morale bonus, it will be difficult to resist in the future when you have a conflict with Galdan. Now the Ming Dynasty is the party that "has been peaceful for a long time, and the soldiers do not know the war", and the Junggar Ministry is "fighting in the east and west every year, and has tempered an elite and strong army in the world for the rest of its life".

After figuring out these conditions, as the 20 years of Xiaokang are about to pass, the top level of the Ming Dynasty finally made up their minds to launch military revenge on the treachery of the Dzungar Ministry and the wanton embezzlement of the Ming Dynasty's vassal states.

The things that were originally planned to be started very early ago were finally delayed for many years for various reasons, and finally the national disaster lasted for two consecutive years, adding up to another four or five years.

……

However, although it was interrupted by a series of disasters for four or five years, the preparation period of these four or five years was not in vain.

In terms of economic construction, although the past four or five years have been stagnant and repeatedly shaken, the total GDP, economic aggregate, population, and total grain have not increased.

However, there have been a lot of improvements in industrial technology and business co-ordination capabilities.

On the one hand, the successive famines caused some of the newly displaced agricultural population to change their nationality to become workers and come to the cities to find industrial and commercial jobs to make a living, when they could not grow food.

On the other hand, the large-scale liquidation of warehouses has repeatedly opened warehouses for disaster relief, collected grain and restored inventories, and also brought huge commercial logistics. In the year of famine, although they cannot grow food, the government will also find ways to "provide relief for work" to farmers who are idle.

At this time, because of the pressure of domestic transportation and the need for large-scale long-distance food allocation, the peasants who are working for relief are responsible for the construction of the country's transportation infrastructure together with the traditional forced labor population, which has become a good outlet for the idle hungry labor.

In the end, hundreds of thousands of peasants who were originally going to starve to death directly surrendered to the imperial court and became forced laborers, and became migrant workers who built bridges and paved roads, and repaired many shipping and transportation facilities in the Ming Dynasty.

One of the most famous projects is the "Han Water North Connection" canal project, which failed in the pre-Song Dynasty and was successful in the modern South-to-North Water Diversion Project.

In the area of Fangcheng Pass in Nanyang, an area of the remaining veins of Tongbai Mountain was dug to connect the Baihe, a tributary of the Han River, with a tributary of Ruying in the north passing through Ye County. In this way, the water volume of some of the tributaries of the Han River, which is a tributary of the Yangtze River, can flow north into the Ruying River system instead of going south, slightly alleviating the water shortage in Henan.

What's more critical is to open up an inland water transport channel, so that Huguang's materials can go directly to Henan by waterway. In the long run, it will definitely save huge costs for the country's large-scale material dispatching and transportation, which is a work that will benefit the future generations.

And such a project was built in four years from the 17th to the 20th year of the well-off, relying on hundreds of thousands of new people who wanted to be forced servants to eat public food, plus the original siege troops of the Ming Dynasty. During this period, he also overcame the problem of expansive land quality at Fangcheng Pass, dug a lot of earthwork, and did this work.

There is far more than one such example, so in the past four years, the transportation scheduling and road conditions within the Ming Dynasty have really been upgraded like a big step, and the cost has been reduced for the subsequent centralized transportation of military rations to the northwest front.

After all, under the original circumstances, if the grain from Sichuan and Huguang was to be transported to Shaanxi and Gansu for the Northwest Army to fight, it had to go east along the Han River and the Yangtze River, and then it could be transferred to the Huai River in Hefei and then transferred to the Yellow River by using the Grand Canal system. (It is impossible for Sichuan to directly take the land plank road to cross the Qinling Mountains, Zhuge Liang has tried that road, but the loss is too great.) The cost of 10,000 miles of water transportation is not as great as the loss of hundreds of miles over the Qinling Mountains)

Now, the grain from Sichuan and Huguang can save more than 1,000 miles of waterway from Xiangyang to Hefei, and the return to Hefei can be doubled, and 2,800 miles of water transportation can be saved, which is all cost.

……

In addition to the progress of these transportation infrastructure, Daming has also made a lot of progress in other fields of science and education in the past five years.

The development of science and technology will not be delayed because of natural disasters, scientific research has its own rhythm, as long as the basic funds are sufficient, scientists are idle, and they always have to get something.

And in the past five years, Robert. Although Hooke failed to improve the "Watt steam engine", it was still too far off. But there are many other small inventions around the world - of course, it is the result of the joint efforts of the Daming Academy of Sciences, major research institutes, and many scholars at NTU, and it is not Hook alone.

Including the navigation clock invented by the British in 1735 in history, it was finally invented by the Ming Dynasty 55 years in advance, and it also carried out miniaturization experiments at the same time, and used standardized springs and standardized gears to make the escapement, so that the "anti-turbulence marine clock" can be miniaturized into pocket watches in the following years.

As soon as this thing appeared, the Ming Dynasty's navigation industry would definitely flourish further, because it was finally possible to use the modern "Precise Longitude Navigation Method".

Before the voyage clock, which was not accurately timed and could not be tossed by the waves, it was illegal for human navigation to accurately determine the longitude of one's position. As a result, many voyages can only be navigated by latitude, sailing along a latitude due east and west to avoid yaw.

With the longitude navigation method, seagoing ships can sail more precise routes to the destination at sea, and on average, they can save one to two percent of the sailing mileage, and they can reduce the sailing time and navigation transportation cost by one or two percent on the original basis. It can also be more convenient for blowout geographical discovery and more accurate mapping of coastline maps.

In addition to the nautical clock, Anthony Hook's assistant. Leeuwenhoek, not surprisingly, with the financial support of the Ming Ministry of Internal Affairs, invented the world's first microscope, and discovered bacteria and other microorganisms for the first time-

This is not surprising, since the world's first microscope was originally invented by Leeuwenhoek. It's just that in the original history, when he was in the Netherlands, he didn't have so many people to support him, and he had to spend his own money on research, so he was slower. Now in Daming, all kinds of optical polishing consumables and optical glass base materials can be used as much as he wants, and the natural progress is rapid.

The emergence of microscopes and the discovery of microorganisms, of course, will soon usher in a new wave of blowouts in the field of Daming biochemical ring materials. For example, some people have begun to conduct comparative research on the historical "Pap antivirus".

Anyway, now that there is a microscope, you can see the life and death of microorganisms, so you can accurately observe the bactericidal effect of various drugs and sanitary means, which is definitely a qualitative change.

In the past two or three years, the comparative research on the preservation technology of various food and military rations has brought the stability of the logistical support of the expedition of the Ming Dynasty to a new level.

Some small measures and regulations that benefit but do not cost money, as well as a bunch of technical means for pretreatment, have significantly reduced the probability of the army's military rations spoiling and eating bad stomachs.

In addition, small scientific discoveries and inventions that are lower than marine clocks and microscopes have accumulated at least a dozen in the past five years.

What reflective telescopes, periscopes, 80 spindles Xiaowan spinning machine, cotton smashing machine, improved hand-cranked sewing machine, the first generation of foot sewing machine...... Zhu Shuren can't even count them.

After seeing the hope of "rejuvenating the country through science and education", the Ming court also became more supportive of Nanjing University and the Daming Academy of Sciences, and at the same time began to ponder two other major events that would benefit the future in the present era.

That is, it is prepared to allow each province to raise its own funds and set up a science and engineering university in each province as appropriate, just like the way NTU.

Therefore, in the past three years, Daming has made a lot of efforts to investigate and warm up in the preparation of science and education in various provinces, and to reserve talents.

Unfortunately, because the absolute number of science and engineering talents is still insufficient, it can only be postponed in the end, and it is divided into several small steps.

The first step is to immediately carry out a new round of enrollment expansion of Nanjing University, which began in the 18th year of Xiaokang and the 11th year of the establishment of Nanjing University. Since then, the annual number of students admitted to NTU has been further expanded from 600 per year to 1,500 at one time.

However, after the expansion, there is also a reduction in salary, that is, in the future, graduates of NTU will no longer be candidates for appointment according to the treatment of people.

In other words, the treatment of "having the opportunity to become an official after studying at NTU" will not have such a good thing until the 10th class of students at NTU.

After the expansion of enrollment, the gold content of students will usher in the first decline, but more talents can be obtained, and they will come to the local area to carry out scientific basic education work, and turn mathematics, physics and chemistry education into a spark that can start a prairie fire.

Even among the 900 students who have expanded from 600 to 1,500, half of them have the lowest admission scores, and they will be trained directly according to "normal students" in the future, and they must be sent to local areas to teach.

At present, although it is not yet possible to establish universities in the provinces, it is possible to at least establish new schools at the secondary school level.

At present, it is first necessary to ensure that there is a science and engineering middle school in the provincial capital of each province, which teaches basic mathematics, physics and chemistry knowledge before entering university, as well as traditional literature and philosophy.

The final graduation teaching level is roughly equivalent to the mathematics and physics level of the second year of junior high school in later generations, plus some general knowledge of chemistry and biology.

And this work, starting from the 18th year of the well-off to the 20th year of the well-off, has been preliminarily completed. This year, the provincial capitals of Daming provinces have established at least one comprehensive middle school, with an enrollment scale of about several hundred.

Among them, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanchang and Wuchang are the fastest places in the country to build middle schools, and by the time they are well-off for 20 years, they already have students in the third grade.

These provinces originally attached the most importance to culture and education, and after the imperial court gave the policy, the local gentry responded frantically and actively in the first year, and they enthusiastically donated money to build a middle school.

Guangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Beijing, Kaifeng, Jinan, and Fuzhou are slightly later, and they are the first comprehensive middle schools built in the 19th year of Xiaokang, and now have second-grade students.

The rest of the other relatively remote or impoverished provincial capitals finally rushed to meet the deadline of the 20-year imperial court and hastily established middle schools.

Even if there is little money and no one donates it, solve the problem of whether there is or not, and reduce the enrollment scale first. If you can't allocate enough teachers, you will reduce some classes first.

During the final inspection, the Ministry of Culture and Culture of the Imperial Court also confirmed that there were already middle schools in each province that taught mathematics, physics and chemistry, and they were quite satisfied with this result. It's just that during the inspection, it was also found that some poor provinces were indeed not good at hardware and teachers, and they also reported to the imperial court for this matter.

After discussions with officials of the Ministry of Chinese, the Cabinet consulted the Cabinet, and finally the Cabinet made a decision to recommend that each province establish a "library" at the prefectural level in addition to the first general science middle school.

Within one year, it is required to ensure that a library can be set up in all provincial cities for students to read at home. However, due to the limited technical management level of the times, it is definitely not allowed to borrow books, you can only come to the library to read them on the spot, you can't take the books home, and you have to be searched when you enter and leave the library to avoid stealing books.

As for the full set of basic mathematics, physics and chemistry textbooks that must be provided in the library, the Ministry of Culture and Culture will distribute them to all provinces. Anyway, now engraving printing and movable type printing are very mature, and the imperial court engraving and printing books are not expensive. It's no problem to print tens of thousands of copies at a time.

Eventually, the imperial court would award books according to the standard of about 30,000 sets. The provincial libraries of each province will be equipped with at least 1,000 sets of general mathematics, physics and chemistry textbooks, and of course, the traditional textbooks of the Four Books and the Five Classics will also be distributed for free borrowing.

In the next three to five years, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, and Culture will also order all provinces to have a public free library in each prefecture within three years, and the books needed can be divided into a part of the quota originally received by the provincial libraries.

Within five years, each county town should have a public free library, and the source of books could also be divided from the 1,000 sets in the province, and at the same time, the local squires could donate some of the money themselves. All the restaurants are open to the door, but they are not allowed to be borrowed.

The imperial court only provided the original teaching materials, and the funds for construction and daily operation were raised by the local gentry themselves, and the imperial court did not give a budget. However, it is possible to make a monument of merit to the person who donated money at the entrance of the library, and write each person's contribution. If the contribution reaches a certain amount, the children can give priority to the national prison in the future.

With more basic facilities such as secondary schools and libraries, I believe that Daming's plan to build a university in all provinces and provincial capitals should be hopeful in the next few years.

Although this kind of university is destined to be simplified and abridged by one version than NTU, graduates cannot enjoy the treatment of administrative level. But it's better than nothing, and it can also enrich the team of scientific and educational talents in Daming.

——

PS: The new book has been opened, and this one needs to be accelerated to finish, and today's second update, almost 10,000 words. Maybe there will be more in the afternoon, but not necessarily, don't wait.

(End of chapter)