Volume 4 is in the ascendant Chapter 521: The Southern Barbarian Rebellion
In the fifth year of the Chu calendar, news of the chaos overseas spread back to the Chu State, causing waves of disturbances in the Chu state itself.
After some commotion, the Chu court reached a consensus and targeted the culprit - the Marquis of Shu!
The Wancheng Division, which was originally preparing to withdraw from Yizhou, made a surprise counterattack and sent an envoy to Chu State without waiting for the envoy from Shu State to inquire. The visitor was none other than Deng Zhi, who had performed outstandingly in the simulated mission during the first imperial examination and was valued by the Ministry of Rites for his eloquence.
However, the level of the envoy also shows how much the Chu State values him - no matter how outstanding Deng Zhi is, he is only a young man in his twenties...
Although Liu Zhang was angry that Chu broke the agreement, he still "warmly" received Deng Zhi in Chengdu.
This time, even Zhang Song, Zheng Du and other wise ministers from Xichuan did not raise any dissenting opinions about Liu Zhang's cowardice.
After all, the current situation in Shuhou Mansion, or Xichuan, is indeed not good...
In the southern part of Yizhou, the Nanzhong barbarians went north to cause chaos. Even if there was no attack from the Chu State, the Duke of Shu was already in a state of panic.
As for the sudden invasion of the barbarians in the south, it was not because of anything else, but because the "education" of Chen Gong and Gao Shun in the past two years, as well as the export of the Chu State to the Shuhou Mansion in the past two years , had achieved results...
Chen Gong and Gao Shun, together with the great leader of the Wuxi barbarians, Shamoke, who is now the commander of the Wuxi Independent Division, traveled from the southern part of Jingzhou to the southern part of Yizhou to spread Chu learning.
The situation in southern Yizhou is similar to that in southern Jingzhou, with Han and barbarian people living together. Many large Han ethnic groups are also half barbarian and half Han. If there is any difference... it is that the Nanzhong region is deeper and the barbarian forces are more complicated.
Because there is no unity, “big” does not mean “strong”, it just means “complex”.
But just like in Jingnan, every time there was a so-called rebellion of the Southern Barbarians, there was no simple ethnic conflict. It was basically the big clans in southern Yizhou who took the lead in causing trouble!
This time, the scale of the Nanman Rebellion was quite large, but the situation was somewhat different...
The reason for the chaos was actually indirectly due to the actions of the Wuxi Independent Division of the Chu State, which squeezed the living space of some barbarians!
Wherever Chu School crossed to the west, simple cities were built. There were no tall city walls, but only residential areas were demarcated. Where traffic allowed, workshops were even opened...
However, it cannot be said to be smooth!
Just a "traffic permit" is already a very strict requirement in Nanzhong.
There are reasons why the South Central region has not been able to completely merge with the Central Plains culture for thousands of years...
According to the census information sent back by Chen Gong, 85% of the entire Nanzhong region is mountainous, and the remaining 10% is plateaus and hills. It is definitely the case that "there are people living deep in the mountains."
Not only are the fields that can be reclaimed scattered, but many of them are sloping fields, making it difficult to develop animal-powered farming or Qi-powered farming...
Moreover, due to the complex terrain, the climate is also complex and changeable, which can be described as "four seasons in one mountain, and different weather in ten miles."
The land that is often killed by drought or floods has very low "qualification" for agricultural development.
If you depend on transportation?
Unfortunately, the road was not easy to build. Even in later times, mountainous areas were not easy to build roads. Moreover, the white map only pointed out cement, and there was no oil for refining asphalt...
This also makes the urbanization of Nanzhong more difficult than imagined - after all, it is impossible to be self-sufficient in agriculture, or to easily obtain food shipped from outside. If one only relies on "gifts from nature", the scale of settlement cannot be too large!
Bai Tu's hard drive is not omnipotent. Faced with this situation, the only thing on the hard drive that can be of some help is an article about the ranking and distribution of crops in Caiyunzhinan Province.
When it was discovered that the crops grown in the south of the colorful clouds, corn, potatoes, and rubber trees accounted for a large proportion...but these could not be relied upon for the time being .
The others are japonica rice and rapeseed...or Brassica rapa (tai).
Brassica rapa was not popular in the Eastern Han Dynasty and was called "Hucai". It was generally grown in Youzhou, Bingzhou Hetao, and even Hexi, areas where the Qiang, Di, and Xianbei peoples lived.
For the sake of dietary nutrition for the Chu people, Bai Tu ordered the Ministry of Works to study which areas are suitable for growing various vegetables, and then the Ministry of Civil Affairs was responsible for popularizing them. Now there have been some successful results, so there are also many places in the Chu State that grow rapeseed in the time when the land was originally fallow.
In addition, cash crops are more popular, such as sugarcane, tea, traditional Chinese medicine, wild mushrooms, and tobacco, which is also not available now.
And in terms of minerals, Nanzhong is undoubtedly a very superior region in Chinese civilization.
During the Three Kingdoms period in history, Nanzhong was a land rich in gold and silver...
In general, Nanzhong is not suitable for agricultural civilization, especially small peasant economy - if you want to be self-sufficient, the cost-effectiveness of cash crops will be reduced to an extremely low level, and the planting efficiency of self-sufficient series of rice, wheat, mulberry and hemp... in Nanzhong is very touching.
Therefore, if cash crops and mineral development are to be pursued in Nanzhong, there is still a way out . However, if one wants to transform this place into a small peasant economy, that is not something that the essence of Shennong can solve. This is why, although the Nanzhong region has been influenced by Chinese culture for a long time, it has never been completely integrated.
The Chu State had one more advantage over the Han Dynasty in solving this problem, which was that it had basically , it only needed to build roads and improve the cost-effectiveness of cash crop output in Nanzhong, as well as superior mineral resources. It could completely rely on trade to "attract" daily needs here.
Compared with later industrialization, the biggest advantage of the Chu State now... is naturally its population!
The entire Chu State had a population of just over 10 million, and in the South Central region, the Han and Yi people were no more than one million. Therefore, it was entirely possible to concentrate the limited population in a few rare areas with "relatively" convenient transportation and "relatively" suitable land for farming, without having to contend with remote or deep mountains.
Otherwise, if the population is ten or a hundred times larger, it will be even more difficult to transform!
However, even so, there were many people who did not buy into "Chu Learning". Even though Chen Gong, Gao Shun and Shamoke had strong fists, many tribes continued to migrate northward with the attitude of "if you can't afford to provoke me, you can afford to avoid me".
This is also the secondary (gen) (ben) reason for the "Southern Barbarian Rebellion" in Yizhou this time...
As for the main reason, it was that many big families in southern Yizhou took the opportunity to fan the flames and even raised the banner of rebellion.
Because "Chu goods" have been pouring in over the past two years, and the Shu Marquis was found as the "distributor", the Shu brocade and well salt industries, which are the foundation of the Yizhou clans, have suffered a great setback!
Even if Liu Zhang accepted Zhang Song's advice and shared this part of the profits, but...
These big families are not small shops - the skewers next door are cheaper, so we just go there to buy them? What about the skewers threading workers?
Small shops can fire the stringers, but these big families have so many mouths to feed, and it’s not something that can be compensated by sheer “commercial benefits”!
Therefore, even if the State of Chu does not take any action now, Liu Zhang is already in a state of panic.
Since I can't be tough, I can only welcome Deng Zhi with kindness...
