New Shun 1730

What did Dashun gain from its conquest and expansion of Ceylon?

From the perspective of commercial capital, it gained the monopoly of cinnamon, the exclusive mining rights of Ceylon pearls, and the gem mining of Ratnapura.

From the perspective of national war power, it naturally gained more.

Whether it is population or strategic location.

But, in fact, the most important thing, which none of the above can compare to, is that Dashun gained a large amount of state-owned land.

The Portuguese came here and forcibly promoted Catholicism.

A large number of Buddhist population and high-caste population fled to the mountains to escape Catholicism, leaving a large amount of vacant land.

The intermittent wars that lasted for two hundred years destroyed Ceylon's water conservancy facilities, causing the agricultural foundation of this country, which had been rich in products and agricultural economy with water conservancy facilities in Chinese history books since the Han and Jin Dynasties, to basically collapse and agricultural degradation occurred.

The collapsed agriculture and the fleeing high castes left a large amount of wasteland.

When the Dutch drove away the Portuguese; when the Ceylon people lamented that they threw away ginger and invited peppers.

The collapse of agriculture and the lack of labor forced the Dutch to choose between Tamil slaves and Chinese slave laborers.

For a long time, this country with abundant resources in Chinese history books had to import rice from India and Southeast Asia due to the collapse of water conservancy facilities.

The Dutch were too commercial and authentic. They could make places like Malacca and Ceylon rely on importing rice from outside. They really valued commerce and suppressed agriculture to the extreme...

When the warships of Dashun defeated the Dutch fleet and the new rulers arrived here, the military nobles of Dashun were jubilant because they got a large amount of state-owned land for cultivation.

The premise of the equal-field system and the fubing system was either the village land ownership or the state-owned land ownership dominated. Private land ownership was not the basis for equal-field, land granting, and fubing systems.

Or, to put it more simply: the premise of farming and warfare was the state ownership of land, the official ownership system, or at least the collective system of the remnants of the village community.

Du Feng was the governor of Ceylon, not the governor of Ceylon. Mi Ziming was the Protector General of Nanyang, not the Governor-General of Nanyang. Ceylon, Malacca, Borneo, these places are called military towns, not provinces.

This is not a simple difference between white horses and black horses, or crickets and grasshoppers.

It is a difference in ownership, land law, household registration law, military service law, and tax law.

There were about 180,000 adult Han people in Ceylon at this time.

Among them, about 50,000 adult Han people, and about 30,000 families to which they belonged - many of them could not marry Han women, and the next generation was basically underage - the land in their hands had neither field skin nor field bones, and was state-owned land that was absolutely prohibited from being bought and sold.

In terms of household registration, they are closer to the four classes of "soldiers" envisioned by the Yanli School, but they are not the quasi-nobles of the good family children in the old camps of Dashun. Good family children can be poor, but they have special courtyards and military district company systems, and special channels for promotion. These soldiers in Ceylon do not have them. They can only get false honors, but not real honors that can be awarded twelve military merits and the special internal school selection education system.

It does not mean that they cannot go to school. In fact, several major military towns of Dashun in Nanyang are based on the battalion and company grassroots system of good family children, and there are actually schools within the battalions and companies.

However, just like the new school in Dengzhou Prefecture also studies the real learning system, from the perspective of knowledge, they can also participate in the examination of Wude Palace, but the reality is that they cannot participate because they are not good family children with a special definition. Although, a long time ago, this word was just a broad synonym, it has a special meaning in Dashun.

Intuitively speaking, the concept of good family children in Dashun is slightly similar to the Prussian "von".

The aristocratic status in the concept of power has nothing to do with whether one is rich or not. This is called the feudal hierarchy. However, this hierarchy was mutated in Dashun and mixed with the variant of the Three-She Law and the strengthening of imperial power. It was not based on land and dependent population as power, but on the emperor's favor and government and military positions.

In other words, they and Dashun's nearly one million students were two sides of Dashun's feudal system. Dashun supported nearly one million students and hundreds of thousands of good families, which was the basis for Dashun to implement reactionary rule.

The feudal privileges of students were preferential exemptions, not bowing to officials, and the cornerstone of local governance.

The feudal privileges of good families were that they could be poor, owe usury and hide everywhere, and even be poor enough to do work for others. But in theory, if they studied hard, they could theoretically become senior military officers or senior civil servants, but those who came from practical studies in Dengzhou Prefecture, before being absorbed into the good family system, could only be company commanders in the army at most, or they would get out and go to technical arms such as the navy and artillery.

There is no reason, because Dashun was a reactionary feudal regime. It had to maintain its rule and understood its armed base and class base, so it was a very terrible reactionary force.

The great uprising at the end of the Ming Dynasty allowed the peasants to win a huge united front value in Dashun. The small farmers in North China were the class base of Dashun's rule.

The Confucian scholars in the middle and late Ming Dynasty were talking nonsense, so the imperial power of Dashun had to maintain a military aristocratic base to achieve balance.

Or: In the Tang Dynasty, the so-called "Guanlong Group" was too strong, so the imperial examination system was needed.

In the Dashun period, the so-called "civilian group" was too strong, so a new group of so-called "Guanlong Group" had to be created.

The political reactionary nature of Liu Yu's military reform, or the power that made his reform successful, did not come from the progressives of Dashun, but actually relied on the power of conservatives or reactionaries - conservatives and reactionaries in political power, not necessarily conservatives in technology.

His military reform in the era of flintlock rifles enabled the good family and noble groups to regain power when they were about to decline.

Because the standard tactics of the flintlock era no longer relied on personal ability to a greater extent.

In other words, the broken battles and enemies around Dashun were far from the level of tactical geniuses like Napoleon and Xiang Yu.

A group of average people could still serve as officers and achieve excellent results by relying on standardized tactics, artillery advantages and the size of Dashun.

A good family officer who graduated from Wude Palace and worked from company commander to battalion commander could easily achieve an efficient battle loss ratio when facing the siege of thousands of rebels in the Western Regions with Dashun's standardized battalion and company tactics and training system, even if he followed the rigid formation of the standard textbook.

Middle and high-level military officers can be monopolized by the reactionary forces of Dashun, so the power that Liu Yu relied on for the military reform was the reactionary aristocracy of Dashun.

At the same time, because the textbookization of military books replaced the family monopoly of the past family experience, and the internal three-house method of Dashun, which was derived from Wang Anshi at the beginning, could strengthen the control of the imperial power over the army.

Liu Yu is an example. The decisive factor that determines Liu Yu's status does not depend on whether Liu Yu's father is a duke, but on the personal preference of the emperor.

Wude Palace has a certain number of external quotas, but it should be noted that the admission rate and even the difficulty of the questions are different from those of the good family children, which is much lower than the admission rate of the imperial examination, and there is a very strict age limit.

This also makes the best talents in the practical learning system still have the ability to "learn civil and martial arts and sell them to the emperor's family", and because the selection difficulty is too high, it makes it easy for them to enter the staff headquarters of the Privy Council.

Before Liu Yu's reform, it can be said that the aristocratic power of Dashun was already in danger. They faced a serious problem, that is, according to the probability, the possibility of them producing top talents was too low, and the population base was there.

After Liu Yu's reform, it can be said that the military aristocracy of Dashun has been consolidated again.

They don't need to produce top talents. They only need to follow textbooks and standardized tactics to pull out an army of the current world's excellent level in this era of great struggle where "conscripts, picking up drunkards in taverns, spending money to buy officials, finding human traffickers to buy soldiers, deceiving on board, and father-death succession" are the mainstream.

Because of Dashun's size and geographical environment, after the military reform, Dashun's court does not need geniuses.

On the contrary, rebels, uprisings, vassal states, and neighboring countries need tactical geniuses like Napoleon, Huo Qubing, Yue Fei, Xiang Yu, and Hannibal.

Why can Liu Yu's military reform be promoted and supported by the noble group? Because the conservative and reactionary noble group needs to maintain the political status quo and position, and has to take a step forward in technology.

The final result is that the nobles and the good family aristocrats have re-consolidated their political status.

They did not go to the dilemma of the story of "Dream of Red Mansions" where they transformed from farming to studying and taking the imperial examination.

The nobles still rely on bloodline.

The good family group has essentially turned into a "technical middle class" and quickly slid into the "middle class" or petty bourgeoisie in ideology - my technology and skills are the foundation of my livelihood, and the embodiment of my dignity or human value, and they quickly "guilded" - the good family group can be seen as a variant of the "military organization technology guild", and the guild is exclusive.

Just like excellent weaving and embroidery craftsmen, when faced with industrialization, there are two kinds of crying.

One is a simple economic cry: their profession is destroyed by industrial production.

The other is a spiritual cry: their value and dignity are reflected through their own handmade products. When the handmade products disappear, what do they rely on to reflect their value and dignity, and how can they be human?

The power that can destroy this military organization technology guild can only be the power of the industrial age. That is, a brand new, brand new, industrial-era organizational technology that crushes the old era. What to do specifically? There is a book in later generations called "What to do?"

But obviously, the material foundation of the world at this time was not enough.

Therefore, Dashun's organizational model is still very advantageous in this world where major "powerful countries" compete to see who is worse, and it is also very suitable for Dashun's social environment where everyone is competing to be the best.

Since they are all the best, those who get on the bus will naturally close the door.

So from the perspective of economy and land ownership alone, the Guiyi Army in Ceylon seems to be similar to good families.

They are all based on the number of people in the family, with one thousand households as a Zhechongfu, or called a camp, and there are multiple companies under it, which is actually a large village community.

The land belongs to the state and cannot be bought and sold. Each household is granted 50 mu of land, and there are 20 mu of public land in the village community. These public lands in the village community are generally operated as plantations, planting coconuts or coffee, and tea is not allowed. Violators will be exiled for 3,000 miles and punished together.

Because of the special climate of Ceylon, a large number of hired workers must be employed in both the farming season and the harvesting season. With the development of plantations, Ceylon also has a large number of "idle people" similar to those picking cotton in northern Jiangsu, so agricultural production is not a problem.

But the subsequent military system and promotion paths are different.

When men of the Guiyi Army come of age, they must prepare some things on their own and participate in military training. The court will equip them with war horses, muskets, gunpowder, military uniforms, lead bullets, cannons, etc. However, they still have to prepare dry food bags, their own snacks, pocket money, etc., and there will be inspections during the military training. For example, dry food bags must be standard and sewn by their own women.

The Zhechou Duwei who is responsible for training them is sent by the court, not a local.

They don’t actually need to be transferred at ordinary times. To be precise, they are more like reserve forces, reserve conscripts with land as an allowance.

The court does not pay these people military pay at all.

In theory, Dashun has only four battalions of regular field troops in Ceylon, or regular field troops with silver military pay.

A Marine Corps infantry battalion is stationed in Gaolangbu. These are standard volunteers with very long service years.

The three combat engineer battalions, according to the division of light and heavy infantry, belong to heavy infantry.

Similar to the heavy armored vanguard and grenadiers, it is to prevent the situation that Britain and France in India can't take down a castle for three to five months.

Combat engineers have always been the elite of Dashun's southern border area, because the form of war is destined to be: naval decisive battle, heavy combat engineers to capture the castle, and the line soldiers who are pulled up to go through the motions.

Artillery is basically trained in Malacca, not in Ceylon.

Cavalry is also in Malacca. In fact, there are grasslands in the Nanyang region, and there are quite good grasslands.

This group of people in the Guiyi Army do not take military pay, but pay blood taxes for their own land.

Like the internal Dashun, the training lieutenant only trains soldiers, not commanding them, and professionally trains soldiers.

Therefore, Dupleix asked Du Feng how many soldiers Dashun had in Ceylon.

The soldiers he said refer to soldiers who can fight.

Because he has theoretically controlled 30,000 to 40,000 "troops", that is, the soldiers of Indian princes, but... it is really hard to say whether they are "soldiers".

As for these Guiyi Army, whether they are self-employed farmers or small landlords is also quite interesting. The storms in the Indian Ocean will have a dry season of dozens of days of sunny weather in February and August, which happens to be the season for rice to mature, coconuts to be picked, and coffee to be collected.

The storms will also stop, and every year a large number of Tamils ​​will come from India by boat to work in these two months.

Cutting rice, planting rice, picking coconuts... The Guiyi Army will greet the people of the "Yahang" according to the village community, or company, and they will hire a group of Tamils ​​to work.

As for why the Dashun people are not used, it is because the boat ticket is expensive.

Most of the Han people who are not Guiyi Army are contracted long-term workers of the "labor dispatch company" and do not work short-term.

Mainly because Dashun has a monopoly on cinnamon and gems, and requires that Dashun people must be used. It is mandatory by law, otherwise no one will use the Chinese whose freight is more expensive than that of Tamils.

Plantations and the like, because of the special circumstances - long-term workers are Chinese, and short-term workers during the picking season are mostly Tamils ​​to save costs.

Of course, Quan Zheshen is unlikely to understand these things. He doesn't know about soldiers, but he sees this system similar to the Fubing and Junhu system, which is in line with his fantasy of "the ancient benevolent monarchs and farmers and soldiers are one."

As for whether these reserve forces can fight, he actually doesn't understand war, but relying on his beautiful fantasy of the ancient times, he thinks these people can definitely fight. Isn't the ancient benevolent monarch like this? Isn't the reform envisioned by his teacher a bit similar to this?

Even the beautiful system envisioned by their school is exactly similar to this official field, farmer and soldier system where land cannot be bought and sold.

However, an idea slowly emerged in Quan Zheshen's mind.

Dashun relied on defeating the Dutch, so it owned a large amount of state-owned land.

A large amount of land in the Kingdom of Joseon was occupied by the nobles and royal relatives. It was impossible for the Kingdom of Joseon to expand abroad like the Kingdom of Dashun, because it was next to the Kingdom of Dashun and Japan. The only country it could defeat was Ryukyu. Even if the Kingdom of Dashun did not intervene and let it fight, it would be useless... So what should it do?

The Kingdom of Dashun could expand abroad to solve the problem of insufficient state-owned land, but what should the Kingdom of Joseon do? Indistinctly, Quan Zheshen seemed to understand the problem.