Author: Mrmumumuah

Seven years after the liberation.

The waves caused by the imperial examination are still shaking the Ming Empire.

As for the large-scale industrial production that spread from Guangdong to Liangjiang, the huge productivity burst out by the Industrial Revolution was like a monster, turning the southeastern territory of the Ming Empire into the largest industrial production base in the world.

The Industrial Revolution impacted the crumbling old order.

A new era was quickly dragged out by the roar of steam engines.

Fire splattered everywhere.

This new era is like a newborn baby.

His death will bring new hope and vitality to the Ming Empire and to the entire human history.

But at the same time.

Saying goodbye to the old era is also accompanied by labor pains.

No change can be without costs.

And those who bear the cost of this change are often the lowest and most vulnerable groups.

Landowners cannot take the civil service examination after they turn thirty, but they can still become agricultural capitalists and rely on their own knowledge to learn new things. After all, they are still the group with a relatively comfortable life.

And in fact.

In the midst of this change.

The most painful.

They are the lowest farmers.

While some gentry transformed into industrial capitalists.

This meant that a large number of tenants began to lose their land.

Forced to join the ranks of immigrants to the Northeast, Southeast Asia, and the New World.

Of course, there are also some landless peasants who are unwilling to travel far away. The future waiting for them is to enter the city, become industrial workers, and become the gravediggers of the bourgeoisie of the Ming Empire - members of the proletariat.

These farmers who lost their land flocked to the cities.

Gather in the ghetto.

It became a cheap labor force and further promoted the industrialization process in the southeastern territory of the Ming Dynasty.

in this case.

The population of Shanghai and Guangzhou began to gather.

The prototypes of two super cities located at the Yangtze River Estuary and the Pearl River Estuary have begun to emerge.

Take Shanghai as an example.

Shanghai County of Songjiang Prefecture was upgraded to become a Shanghai municipality directly under the jurisdiction of the Ming Dynasty, with an administrative status comparable to that of a province.

Starting from the third year after the liberation, counties were abolished and cities were promoted.

The population has skyrocketed from a mere 70,000 to 80,000 people.

Until now.

There are more than 600,000 people.

The population is expanding at an alarming rate.

Moreover, a large number of new labor forces are pouring into Shanghai every day.

It is foreseeable that in the next ten years, Shanghai, located at the estuary of the Yangtze River, will inevitably become an unprecedented super city with a population of several million, becoming the most populous city in human history!

And now Shanghai is different from other cities.

There are no city walls.

The city expanded along both sides of the Yangtze River.

The originally low-rise county town of Shanghai has completely disappeared.

Instead.

It is a large number of reinforced concrete buildings.

At the same time, this is also one of the cities with the most developed public transportation in the world - perhaps the one that can be compared with the current Shanghai is Guangzhou, which developed earlier.

But obviously.

Guangzhou's development potential is not as good as Shanghai's.

The contiguous industrial zones here and a large number of factory owners originally based in Guangzhou have chosen to settle in Shanghai.

From the Yangtze River Estuary to Chongqing.

A golden waterway runs through it.

The Wanshi ship can sail all the way from the Yangtze River Estuary to the river port in Chongqing without changing ships.

On both sides of this waterway are the areas with the most dense population and the most concentrated wealth in the Ming Empire.

It is backed by technological progress, population agglomeration, and the three major agricultural provinces of Hunan, Hubei, and Sichuan.

Shanghai, Zhongdu, Wuhan, Chongqing.

Several big cities are connected in series on this waterway.

Turning this place into a large connected market also became one of the driving forces for industrialization.

These days, the time, place, people and people are favorable, and everything is concentrated at the mouth of the Yangtze River, in Shanghai.

The whole of Shanghai is no longer the hundred-mile foreign market in history, and it is a pity that Shanghai style culture and comprador culture have not been nurtured.

Because now the merchant ships and warships of the great powers in Shanghai are no longer coming from afar, laden with industrial products, entering the inland from the Shanghai entrance, and dumping all over China.

Instead there are rows of tall chimneys emitting black smoke.

The industrial products of the Ming Empire would start from here and be sold all over the world.

A large number of chimneys are emitting billowing smoke, polluting the Huangpu River into a black and smelly ditch.

It also demonstrates the magic of the industrial age.

The mass production of machines driven by steam engines increased labor productivity to an unimaginable level.

As the Ming Empire unified the world, especially the southern railway network began to be planned and constructed, railways connecting several major cities have begun to operate. At the same time, a large number of people have poured in and concentrated. In addition, the vassals of the Ming Empire have no influence on the Ming Dynasty.

What is the concept of tariff protection?

Countries such as Japan, North Korea, and the south and north of Annan are all countries with a population of more than 10 million.

There are also countries such as Myanmar and Siam.

and India.

The population of the surrounding markets alone exceeds at least 300 million.

In addition, the Ming Empire has a population of 400 million.

Sixty percent of the world's population is completely open to the industrial products of the Ming Empire.

There are no tariffs, and even the threat of pirates has been reduced to a negligible level due to the continuous raids by the Ming Empire's navy.

Driven by the two big markets at home and abroad, a large number of factories were built on the ground. At the same time, these businessmen and landlords who dared to invest funds in industrial production quickly became rich.

A large number of beautiful villas have been built in the north of Shanghai.

They are the mansions of factory owners, traders, and senior managers.

Railway tracks were laid on the main roads in Shanghai, and horse-drawn trains pulled by horses shuttled through the city.

at the same time.

In the south of Shanghai.

The first generation of industrial workers in the Ming Empire.

But he lives in dire straits.

The closed and narrow slums are located to the south of the factory area. Local landlords have converted farmland into buildings, and the buildings are divided into cubicles. The rent is quite cheap, attracting workers from the factory area to live there.

At this time, to the north of the slums is the industrial area.

Yihehang came to Shanghai to invest and build a factory three years ago.

At this time, Wu Dunyuan, the owner of Yihe Bank, who was obviously more prosperous, was wearing a very fashionable Dao Hua suit and no longer had a haircut on his head - in fact, all the workers in the factory requested not to have a haircut.

Because long hair is too dangerous in large machine production.

The workers don't have special personnel to comb their hair and crowns like the dignitaries, so they can arrange their hair randomly on their heads, in case it gets entangled by the machine.

Many similar incidents have occurred in Guangzhou.

so.
To be continued...