Chapter 1051: Beware! Capitalism in the Countryside (Please Subscribe)

In Shandong Province, the Eastern Depot Prefecture, Liaocheng County. A group of people in narrow-sleeved military dress stood on the embankment of the Grand Canal, which had resumed navigation, gazing at the near-ripe wheat sea already turned golden. It was a wheat sea because the fields had not been cut into small plots by ridges—countless mu had been joined into one vast expanse!

A tall young woman, plainly dressed as a man and visibly pregnant, said with animated delight, "Such an expanse of wheat—I never saw the like even beyond the passes. If I'm not mistaken, this field must be plowed by horses, and most likely under crop rotation. There should be pastureland nearby."

Beside the young woman stood a middle-aged man of commanding presence and striking handsomeness. He nodded and said, "Dry fields suit horse plowing. The yield per mu is lower, but it takes far less labor. Add crop rotation, and the land is even enriched, with harvests better assured."

"I never imagined the Em—" The young woman seemed to catch herself and hastily swallowed the rest. "—the Master would know about farming!"

The two in conversation were none other than the Son of Heaven of the Great Ming, Zhu Cilang, and Empress Wu Sanmei. The half-court they led had already made its way to Liaocheng in grand procession. Although it was publicly announced as the Emperor personally leading a campaign, the accompanying troops were not many—the Liaodong-pacifying army had not first concentrated at Yingtian Prefecture and then marched north with the Zhu Emperor. Instead, it had set out from various regions in succession, hurrying to designated launch positions for the offensive.

Zhu Cilang, for his part, brought only a little over five thousand palace guards, the accompanying women of the rear palace, and a portion of officials from the two capitals, advancing north at a leisurely pace.

They first traveled by land to Xuzhou. Xuzhou was now the starting point of the shortened north-south Grand Canal—after the completion of the Yellow-Huai Canal project, the canal could no longer pass through the new Yellow River sea channel, so it could only begin at Xuzhou and end at Tongzhou near Beijing. Through this newly renovated north-south canal, the Si River, Yi River, Daqing River, Tongji Canal, Sha River, Tu River, Hutuo River, Wei River (Hai River), and many other inland waterways of Shandong and Hebei were linked together, forming a new canal system for the Central Plain (excluding Henan).

To inspect the results of the great north-south canal project, the Zhu Emperor switched to the water route after reaching Xuzhou and proceeded north slowly, inspecting the prefectures and departments along both banks as he went.

Although Zhu Cilang's court took the four rivers region of Huguang, Fujian, and Guangdong as its foundation, that did not mean it had no wish to develop the Central Plain well. Quite the contrary—to revive the Central Plain, which had been devastated by years of war, they had racked their brains and spared no effort.

The vexing question was how to find a suitable development path for the entire Central Plain, especially the North China Plain.

A smallholder peasant economy was absolutely out of the question!

Because the southeast—the four rivers region of Huguang, Fujian, and Guangdong—had already boarded the express lane of capitalism. If the Central Plain remained smallholder-based, it would sooner or later be battered into yet another peasant uprising.

Moreover, capitalism was not merely an urban affair, nor confined to industry and commerce—it could succeed in the countryside as well!

In the seventeenth century, a countryside of ruined, broken smallholder farming could not sustain the early stage of capitalism!

Because the early stage of capitalism required not only rural markets but also large quantities of grain and raw materials from the countryside. In truth, many factors determined rural purchasing power, and social equity was certainly one very important factor! But how much produce the countryside itself could supply was also a critical factor.

If the countryside itself could not supply enough produce to support a relatively high urbanization rate, then where would peasant purchasing power come from? The foundation of the rural market was, after all, exchanging agricultural products for handicraft goods (industrial goods)!

If the countryside could not supply enough produce, then no matter what system was implemented, a large market could never form. Without produce, there was nothing to exchange for money, and without money, where was the market? You couldn't just give things away for free!

And getting the countryside to supply enough produce and getting the countryside to produce enough produce were not actually the same thing. There was a question of labor productivity involved.

Because peasants themselves also consumed agricultural products, when labor productivity was too low—say, one hundred million agricultural population supporting ten million urban population—then the rural market could at most absorb most of the handicraft goods produced by those ten million urban dwellers.

Therefore, equal division of land would not necessarily create a vast rural market. Equal division of land was in fact a policy of "raising population," which would cause population to grow too quickly and thereby consume the agricultural products that could otherwise have been supplied to the cities.

For this reason, Zhu Cilang had from the very start been unwilling to divide land equally, and unwilling to restore the military household system or establish the fubing system—the essence of such land-for-military-service systems was likewise to divide land into small plots to raise people (raise soldiers).

The first generation of military households and fubing soldiers occupied a relatively large living space, but being tied to the land with idle time on their hands, they would certainly bear and raise many children. After a few generations, the originally ample land would inevitably become extremely tight, and the fubing and military households would lose the "surplus agricultural products" needed to support military service.

Of course, the encroachment on military fields by the upper ranks of military households and by military-register scholar-officials accelerated the collapse of the military household system. But even without those parasites, the "surplus agricultural products" that military households used to support military service would inevitably have been eaten up by their excessive descendants.

In the original history, the military household system had lost most of its combat effectiveness by the reign of Emperor Yingzong at the latest, so it could never have been maintained until the Chongzhen period.

Although the land-grant system had played a great role in the early days when Zhu Cilang built the new army, after the northern expedition recovered the Central Plain, land grants were converted into transferable land certificates. At the same time, Zhu Cilang did everything he could to concentrate meritorious officials and officers who had received larger land grants in Yingtian Prefecture, and to provide their descendants with better education and more channels for advancement.

His approach was not only to consolidate a group of military aristocrats to defend the court, but also to promote the appropriate concentration of land in North China, which was suited to large-scale agriculture.

"Manager Zhu, I am Zhang Guanghui."

In Anping Town near Liaocheng, under the borrowed identity of a certain Manager Zhu of the Royal Commercial Association, Zhu Cilang met Zhang Guanghui, the largest farm owner in the Liaocheng area.

He was a middle-aged man in his thirties, tall and robust. Even after sitting down, he kept his back ramrod straight, exuding a sharp, vigorous air.

"Did Squire Zhang come from the ranks of the military?" Zhu Cilang took a sip of the green tea served by the Zhang family servant, then asked with a smile.

"I did indeed serve in the army," Zhang Guanghui said with a smile. "I followed Governor Gao and Governor Zuo, and I even hold the title of Meritorious Servant in Overcoming Hardship. But my aged father had only me as his son, and in his old age there was no one to care for him. So after the northern expedition returned in triumph, I retired with the rank of Vice Chiliarch and returned home to farm."

"Oh, so you're a filial son! And all ten thousand mu of your family's fine fields—you built that up as a mere Vice Chiliarch?" Wu Sanmei asked curiously.

"How much profit could a Vice Chiliarch have?" Zhang Guanghui laughed. "This is all the family estate my father accumulated. My father was originally in trade. After the chaos began, he went to Dengzhou and followed Minister Shen, so he had some savings. Later, when land certificates began to be bought and sold, the old man showed great foresight and bought up over ten thousand mu at low prices. That is how we came by this bit of family property."

So he's a rich second generation too.

Zhu Cilang smiled. "With so much land, do you farm it yourself or rent it out?"

"Renting out isn't worthwhile," Zhang Guanghui said. "And I can't farm it all myself either, so I hire laborers. Five thousand mu for wheat, five thousand mu for grass to raise horses and mules—rotating between the two."

"Horse-mules?"

"That's the offspring of a mare and a jack donkey. They're stronger than horses, hardy and long-lived—best suited for plowing." Zhang Guanghui smiled. "Nearly all the large farms here in Shandong raise horse-mules. They can plow fields and also be sold at a good price. If Manager Zhu intends to run a farm in Liaodong, you'll certainly need horse-mules. Why not order a few dozen from me?"

"Can running a farm make money?" Wu Sanmei asked.

"I'm not sure how to answer the lady's question. Farming, of course, has its losses and its gains."

Zhang Guanghui glanced at Wu Sanmei. He had long since seen that she was a woman, and moreover a woman from a Liaodong military family—tall, fair-skinned, and a bit naive, surely a young lady from a military household. That was why he assumed Zhu Cilang must be planning to buy up newly issued land certificates and then go farm in Liaodong.

(End of Chapter)