Chapter 1598: Andong Grand Development 2

There is no doubt that the population recruited by the Andong Protectorate came basically from the Central Plains and the north; recruiting further south would cost more, and the common people of the south would find it even harder to adapt to the climate of the northeast. Moreover, the common people of the south were rarely willing to leave their warm and comfortable environment in the first place.

Narrowing the scope further, the recruited common people were concentrated in the three circuits of Henan, Hebei, and the Yan Mountains, and among them, Han people from the Henan region made up almost four-tenths of the total.

In particular, the people of Deng, Lai, Qing, and Mi prefectures showed an especially eager and enthusiastic attitude. This was not only because of the tempting conditions offered by the Andong Protectorate, but also because of the rise of maritime shipping in the north in recent years — especially the opening and expansion of trade routes to Goryeo, Japan, and Liaodong — which had increased the local people's knowledge of the outside world.

As one sea merchant after another returned from overseas fully loaded, raking in money hand over fist and coming home in glory, they drew the attention of the local populace. The spread of such wealth-making stories also stirred the pioneering desire in the hearts of the local people. Not everyone could go into trade — it required both capital and luck, and one misstep could mean losing everything.

As for the sons of farmers, all they could rely on was their own strength and their skill in tilling the land. What the Andong Protectorate offered them was a beautiful blueprint and vision: back home, they might only be small farmers with small plots, facing the competitive pressure of dividing land and property among brothers; once in Andong, it was a vast expanse of open ground, and from the very start they would be "landlords" with at least a hundred mu.

This was a direct elevation in class status. Moreover, according to the policies publicized by the Andong Protectorate, there was no limit whatsoever on the amount of farmland in Andong — as long as you had the ability to manage and cultivate it, even ten thousand mu of land would not be suppressed, and even transferring it did not require paying the hefty transaction taxes one would face in the interior.

Such conditions also stimulated the desire and drive of Henan's sons to brave their way to Andong. At the same time, because the court had encouraged the people to bear and raise children in recent years, the sharp increase in population had also led to a surplus of labor among the common folk.

For most farming households, there was no shortage of land to cultivate for the time being, but every family faced one problem: the question of inheritance of property.

It was not only emperors, nobles, and officials who had to face this problem; small farmers and small households faced it too. They might not have as strict an inheritance system as the high and mighty, but favoritism and partiality were unavoidable, with some getting more and others less. Under such circumstances, sending some of their sons to Andong was also a good choice — they could even share in a portion of the settlement allowance, which was paid in gleaming copper coins, saving a good deal of grain that would otherwise have been used to exchange for money to pay taxes.

With the support of multiple factors, the migration to Andong achieved considerable results, completely unlike the situation on the other borders of the Great Han. Of course, this was also due to the special characteristics of the Andong region itself.

At the same time, the migration of over a hundred thousand people over the years had one notable characteristic: they were all armed migrants, holding a blade in one hand and a plow in the other.

Although the Andong Protectorate had a military force of nearly twenty thousand men, such a small army could not cover the vast Andong region. These new migrants mostly had to rely on themselves for protection and had to possess a certain capacity for self-defense. Village stockades and town forts, with militia protecting one another, were the self-defense policy formulated by the Protectorate. Weapons were all provided by the government, and apart from special equipment such as iron armor and heavy crossbows, the migrants' weapons could be called excellent — at the very least, nothing the local barbarians had could compare.

Besides the Han people of the various circuits and prefectures, some non-Han peoples were also included in the recruitment, and with good results — most of them were Xi people from the Northern Yan Mountains Circuit.

The Great Han was vast in territory and numerous in peoples. From south to north, there were certainly stubborn elements who wavered between submission and rebellion and refused to accept the king's civilizing influence, but there were also docile tribal folk. For example, the Qiang people and the Wênmo, and the Tuyuhun — in the early years, Hedong had even maintained a special barbarian army of them, but now they had completely disappeared into the river of history, assimilated into the Han people.

Likewise, the Xi were a relatively docile people. For ten years now, they had been very obedient to the rule of the Great Han, and the Northern Yan Mountains Circuit had not been as turbulent and troublesome as had been anticipated.

To be fair, this had to be credited to the Khitan's domestication of the Xi people — it had been done very thoroughly. Now, they had merely changed masters, to a ruler who appeared gentle on the surface and was shrouded in an aura of "kindliness and virtue."

Of course, the fundamental reason lay in the strength of the Great Han, the majesty of the court, and the fact that the Xi people, who had suffered greatly from the wars during the Han–Liao struggle for supremacy, also needed to recuperate. The tribal folk wanted to live a stable and peaceful life for a while, and the rule of the Great Han, apart from being tighter and more forceful in control, was on the whole relatively mild.

Moreover, the original Xi nobles and tribal chiefs and leaders, headed by Xi King Chouning, had also been tamed into complete submission by the court. Apart from having their governing authority stripped away, they retained all their other rights. Most of them could still live lives above the common people in the Great Han, and those who performed well could become officials or generals, or even sit for the imperial examinations.

Take Xi King Chouning, for example — he now lived a life of ease and comfort in Kaifeng, peacefully enjoying his retirement, dressed in fine clothes and eating delicacies every day, and even meeting Emperor Liu was not difficult for him. Nor could Chouning be called "Xi King" any longer, for in the eleventh year of Kaibao, Emperor Liu had re-enfeoffed him as the Commandery Duke of Shunhua — a clear departure from the Great Han's usual rules for naming titles, but deeply significant politically.

As a result, nearly ten thousand Xi people, recruited by the Andong Protectorate, went to Andong to settle and cultivate the land, enjoying the same treatment. This point also received the support of the central government.

And besides attracting ordinary farming and herding folk from various places, there were also some people who became powerful assistants in the development — one might even say the main force.

That was a group made up mainly of the sons of meritorious nobles and bureaucrats. Of course, getting these sons of noble houses to go to Andong to make a living was something few were willing to do — some even felt resistant.

But there was no help for it. With Emperor Liu's injunction in place, the nobles and bureaucrats of the Great Han had to show something, if only to cater to the Emperor. They had no choice but to invest money and grain and send members of their families on the long journey to Andong.

Emperor Liu had a saying that left no room for argument: "My own sons are all striving at the frontier, serving the country. Are the sons of meritorious nobles and officials more precious than them?"

These words were blunt, and people had no choice but to heed His Majesty's call. Of course, among those noble and bureaucratic sons who went to Andong, some went to serve as officials, some to join the military, and some to enclose land and establish estates.

There had always been an unspoken rule in the court: those with more varied experience in their résumés had more opportunities for promotion. For those with ambitions for an official career, Andong was also a good place to go — after all, it was special, and it drew the attention of those in power at court.

The young men of great families sent to Andong, even if most were from concubine branches or collateral lines, could bring with them resources that ordinary farmers and herders obviously could not hope to match.

Small-scale dabbling was not their style. Their pioneering efforts also carried certain political goals. When they enclosed land, they typically did so in plots of several thousand to ten thousand mu — after all, they had money and people. And with the land, forests, mineral deposits, furs, medicinal herbs, and other resources of the northeast, combined with Andong's lenient policies, there was indeed profit to be made.

Of course, the land of Andong was not given away freely. Liu Xu had made a rule: however much land you were given, you had to cultivate it — the fields had to have crops, and the land had to produce yields.

But this brought another problem: a shortage of labor. However, they had their ways — either spending money to recruit from the interior, or, for those who found the cost too high, simply engaging in business with no capital at all: capturing farm slaves, forcing the native barbarians who lived by fishing and hunting to work the land.

Thus, the "slave-catching trade" gradually rose in Andong. Slave-catching bands organized by noble sons even coordinated with the Andong army in suppressing local unrest. But such behavior provoked considerable backlash and became one of the sources of instability in the Andong region.

Yet even so, there was still a shortage of people, and farming required technical skill and experience — it was not as if just anyone could pick up a hoe and carve out a fine field.

Later, some even set their sights on the natives of Annam and regions beyond, spending money to buy people from the south. Of course, the court explicitly forbade keeping private slaves and the buying and selling of people, so such activities were all carried out under the guise of "employment."

These acts filled with violence, coercion, and exploitation could only be carried out so brazenly and with such justification in the Andong region.

Therefore, by the seventeenth year of Kaibao, the newly added immigrant population in Andong had already exceeded two hundred thousand. Of course, besides the above, there was one more group of people who also played a role in promoting Andong's development, and that was the merchants.