The Historical Background of Great Immigrants in Ming Dynasty

Although the Yuan Dynasty ruled China for only 89 years, the disasters it brought to the people of China, especially those in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, were unmatched by other dynasties. At that time, there was a song circulating on both sides of the Yellow River: "The one-eyed stone man provoked the Yellow River to rebel against the world."

The Yellow River was allowed to flood for more than 20 years in Yuan Dynasty, resulting in a large area of land in the middle and lower reaches becoming a swamp. People were driven by the flood to flee everywhere and had nowhere to live. Many places are extinct. After the Yellow River, bodies were everywhere, cottages became ruins, fertile fields silted up into beaches, and the remaining residents often died of plague.

According to Wang Xingzhi's History of the Yuan Dynasty, from the end of the Yuan Dynasty to the first year of Zheng Zheng to 26 years, there were catastrophic floods almost every year. In the fourth year of Zheng Zheng (1344), the Yellow River was executed three times in Cao Zhou and Bianliang, and 458,000 people emigrated. Yan, Zhao, Qi, Lu, northern Jiangsu and northern Anhui are desolate. In May of the same year, crops cannibalized people in Jining, Yanzhou, Bianliang, Yanling, Tongxu, Bai Chen and Linying counties. In the first month of the eighth year of Zheng Zhi, he decided Jining Road. In July 23, the river decided to abandon Dongcheng, keep Zhang, have no walls, float houses and drown all beings. In February 2006, the Yellow River moved northward and reached Dongming, Cao Zhou, Puyang and Jining. The West Yellow River in Feicheng and Jining Road were flooded, and there were no houses, more than 100 miles, and more than 70 miles in Dezhou and Qihe. Because the Yellow River and Huaihe River burst many times at that time, the land of the Central Plains flooded many cities and villages, leaving no houses, and countless people died, and many villages and towns became waste markets. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, politics was dark, the government imposed exorbitant taxes, and the people were miserable. The main battlefield of the peasant war at the end of Yuan Dynasty, which lasted for 17 years, was in the lower reaches of the Yellow River and Huanghuai Plain, which made the Shandong area "white bones exposed in the wild, and there was no cock crow for thousands of miles". In Leling County, there are only over 400 households left. Wei county's surname is Li and Jin ... even the emperor Zhu Yuanzhang had to admit: "In the Central Plains, the Yuan Dynasty was the most war-torn and had few residents."

At the same time, after the war in Jingnan, Emperor Yongle won the battle and entered Nanjing. Due to years of war in Hebei, people were killed and plundered, and servants were poor. The man who tossed about died, died and escaped. There is no one on this great plain in Hebei. After Yongle ascended the throne, he began to do two major things: the first is to build Beijing for moving the capital in the future; The second thing is a large number of immigrants to this uncultivated land near Beijing. One hundred thousand troops were sent to supervise the migration, and many people in Shanxi were ordered to move to sparsely populated places such as Hebei. It was during the famine and war in the Central Plains. Shanxi Jinnan area is another scene. Because there are mountains all around, it is easy to defend but difficult to attack. The rebels attacked Shanxi many times, but because of the dangerous terrain, they could not attack it. On the other hand, due to geographical and environmental factors, it happened that the weather was favorable, the crops were abundant, and the people had ample food and clothing and lived and worked in peace. People in the central plains heard that there was money here and they didn't fight, so they fled there one after another. As a result, compared with the sparsely populated areas in the Central Plains, Shanxi is overcrowded. According to Ming Taizu, in the 13th year of Ming Hongwu (138 1), the total population of China was 59,873,305, while the population of Shaanxi reached 4103,450. Therefore, it is imperative to immigrate in the Ming Dynasty.