How to objectively and fairly evaluate the prosperous times of Kangxi and Qianlong?

As the last dynasty in China's feudal history, the Qing Dynasty carried out massacres in the first two decades of its campaign, further intensifying ethnic conflicts and attracting countless criticisms from later generations. , coupled with the two hundred and ninety-six years from the founding of the Qing Dynasty to its collapse, ethnic conflicts have always existed.

Nowadays, many people will inevitably make some fierce and biased remarks when evaluating the Qing Dynasty. Among them, many netizens are talking about the prosperous age of Kangxi and Qianlong.

In the eyes of these people, although the prosperous age of Kangxi and Qianlong has the word "prosperous age", it is actually incomparable to the Wenjing rule of the Western Han Dynasty and the Kaiyuan and Zhenguan rule of the Tang Dynasty. Others regarded the prosperous period of Kangxi and Qianlong as a big joke and lie by listing data and documents, and some people agreed. And because the Kangxi and Qianlong dynasties appeared in the middle of the Qing Dynasty's rule, it was regarded as the transitional period at the last moment of the feudal dynasty. After the end of the Kangxi and Qianlong dynasties, the Qing Dynasty's national power declined sharply, and the imperial government became increasingly dim. However, it was not until the Opium War that The Qing Dynasty finally recognized this fact.

However, according to the opinion of Mr. Dai Yi, a historian who specializes in the Qing Dynasty, if the dynasties of the feudal period are viewed using modern standards for judging prosperous times, then no feudal dynasty will have such a prosperous age. It can be said that at best it can only be regarded as great governance for the world. The so-called "Great Governance", to put it bluntly, means that the ruler is relatively clear in his administration, most of the people can have enough to eat, and the high-ranking officials and nobles who have enough to eat can do elegant things, there are no major battles inside and outside the court, and there are no major battles inside and outside the court. Make pilgrimages to China and so on.

In addition, some people who regard the Kangxi and Qianlong dynasties as lies often like to point out the negative impacts and limitations it brings, thus suppressing the achievements of the Kangxi and Qianlong dynasties. So, although we cannot deny that there were indeed major limitations and negative aspects in the Kangxi and Qianlong dynasties, we also cannot choose to ignore the major achievements made in the Kangxi and Qianlong dynasties. So how should we evaluate the history of the prosperous period of Kangxi and Qianlong from an objective perspective?

First, let us take a look at the achievements made during the prosperous ages of Kangxi and Qianlong. Let’s start from the economic point of view. Due to the emergence of capitalism in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and the fact that the court’s restrictions on business were not too strict compared to the past, some problems occurred in agricultural production in the late Ming Dynasty, and the national industrial structure also changed. There is a slight imbalance. To give the simplest example, according to records in the "History of the Ming Dynasty", during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, people did not even need to show directions when going to various places, and the trend of population mobility also increased significantly.

However, for a large agricultural country, the floating population is a more difficult problem for agricultural development. This is why rulers of all dynasties have paid more attention to restricting the interaction between people in various places. population flow between regions, thereby maintaining the stable development of agriculture. Therefore, after the founding of the Qing Dynasty, the rulers saw the shortcomings of agricultural production in the Ming Dynasty, further restricted population mobility, and vigorously encouraged the people to reclaim wasteland. Even the troops guarding the border were also able to reclaim wasteland on their own, that is, during the Qing Dynasty ?Military settlement?policy.

It was precisely because the imperial court attached so much importance to agricultural development that in 1800, the cultivated land of the Qing Dynasty reached 1.007 billion acres, and the population reached 300 million. Although the per capita share of grain was relatively small, The Ming Dynasty was slightly less, but it still reached a major economic standard for evaluating prosperous times in ancient times.

Then there are the political and cultural aspects. What we cannot deny is that since the Qing Dynasty entered the customs and until Emperor Shunzhi ascended the throne, the Qing Dynasty's ethnic discrimination policy was still relatively serious. Fortunately, Emperor Kangxi himself was a Sinologist, so after he ascended the throne, he also to a certain extent It alleviated the acute ethnic conflicts in the country, and in the 30th year of Kangxi's reign, the policy of "China and foreign countries should be treated equally" was put forward, which greatly weakened the view of the distinction between Chinese and foreigners at home and abroad. It can also be regarded as a relatively equal ethnic policy.

In addition, driven by the idea of ??great unification, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty learned the lessons of the collapse of the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty, a regime also established by foreigners, and regarded Confucian culture as the mainstream thought. Through the Yongzheng Dynasty? Wenzhi? The excess of ideas, by the time Qianlong ascended the throne, although there were still ideological constraints, it was still innovating and developing in the general direction. By the way, the territories that had been divided since the Ming and Qing Dynasties were also unified during the heyday of Kangxi and Qianlong, although this cost the court a great price.

Looking at the world, until the early 19th century, there were only ten cities with a population of more than half a million in the world, and China during the heyday of Kangxi and Qianlong accounted for six of them. This is why Voltaire, the famous French ideological enlightenment thinker, left such a passage when evaluating the Qing Dynasty: the most beautiful, the largest, the oldest, the most populous, and the best governed country. ?

So from the above aspects, the achievements made during the prosperous ages of Kangxi and Qianlong are still very eye-catching. So for some rumors circulating on the Internet that during the heyday of Kangxi and Qianlong, the people could not even solve the problem of food and clothing, and even starved to death in the countryside, and even people in the capital often died of starvation. Is this a myth? In fact, this is not the case. These things exist in the same way as the achievements listed above.

Why is this? Aren't the two contradictory things?

In fact, the prosperous age of Kangxi and Qianlong did not end at the same time. I wonder if you have noticed a problem, that is, most of the achievements listed above were concentrated in the early days of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong dynasties. . Yes, the problem appeared in the middle and late periods of Qianlong's reign.