The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 259 New Development

Zhu Jianxuan's attitude and disposal plan were similar for the vassal states that were willing to accept reality and did not directly rebel.

The final arrangement of the Japanese feudal rulers headed by Tokugawa Ienari was to move the people to Africa to open up wasteland.

Like the feudal lords in the Ming Dynasty, these Japanese feudal lords certainly would not want such an ending if they had a choice.

But they also had no choice, so they had to accept it.

Their own families had been separated from the samurai armies they served through a year of major warfare and reorganization.

They have all been sidelined by the Ming Dynasty's garrison in Japan.

Only by accepting this arrangement and reaching the African wilderness could he regain control over some of his subordinates.

The Ming Dynasty court allocated quotas to them according to their ranks.

Now they are just a name of pure short selling.

Zhu Jianxuan ordered the Ministry of Personnel, Ministry of Revenue and other relevant departments to formally establish the Japanese Province and the corresponding three-department agencies.

The Japan Province of the Ming Dynasty includes the three large islands of Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku, as well as the affiliated islands around the large islands.

The current Ryukyu Islands belong to Fujian Province, and Ezo Island (Hokkaido) belongs to the Whale Sea Province.

The Japanese province eventually consisted of nine prefectures and eighty-eight counties.

While dealing with the affairs of the Japanese feudal domains and provinces, Zhu Jianxuan also arranged rewards for the officers who participated in the operation.

Liu Biao was granted the title of Marquis of a county and was appointed as the commander-in-chief of Japan of the Ming Dynasty. Zhou Dahu was granted the title of Earl of a county and was appointed as the deputy commander-in-chief of Japan. Tian Yiming was granted the title of Earl of a state and was also appointed as the deputy commander-in-chief of Japan.

The three men will lead the Ming Dynasty's garrison in Japan and continue to stay in Japan for three to five years to manage the remaining samurai in various Japanese fiefdoms until they are all sent out.

Complete the reconstruction of Japan's local military and civilian institutions, train new Japanese servant divisions, and continue to send immigrants to Africa.

After that, during the end of the year, reports on various aspects of the Ming Dynasty were received one after another.

Wang Lai, who had been out for exploration, also returned to the capital.

The project that Wang Lai was in charge of was extremely large and important. When Zhu Jianxuan heard that he had returned, he asked him to report directly to him.

Zhu Jianxuan was in his office in Wenhua Hall, and Wang Lai first gave Zhu Jianxuan the paper report he had written.

While Zhu Jianxuan was reading the book, he explained the most important content:
"Teacher, after more than a year of measurements at the hydrological station, we have obtained the annual runoff data for the Heilongjiang mainstream and major tributaries.

"The runoff at the end of the Heilongjiang mainstream last year was 350 billion cubic meters.

"The tributaries Songhua River has 77 billion cubic meters, and Wusuli River has 65 billion cubic meters.

“Of course, this is just the flow rate measured last year, and it may increase or decrease next year.

“The hydrological station will continue to observe and obtain the average flow over many years.

“The initial interception of the Heilongjiang mainstream has been completed, and water storage has begun in the Sanjiangze area of ​​the lower reaches of the Heilongjiang River.

“The swamp area should start to be flooded during the flood season next year.

“Further detailed surveys of the Sanjiangze area also confirmed that the Sanjiangze Lake Project itself is feasible.

"The plan of building parallel dams along the foot of the mountain to bring the Heilongjiang water from the Sanjiangze Lake into North China is feasible in most areas.

"According to the current survey, the biggest difficulty lies in the Jizhou area.

"The altitude of the area around Jizhou City varies greatly. Within a short area of ​​two kilometers, the altitude drops from a mountain range of more than 100 meters to a lowland of more than ten meters.

"If we build a canal on the hillside of the mountains north of Jizhou, there is no way to achieve scale.

“If we continue to build at the foot of the mountain, we will not be able to divert water to the capital and North China, and we can only flow directly south to the sea at Jizhou.

“To continue diverting water, the only way is to increase the overall elevation of the dammed canal.

“Let the canal pass through the valley in the middle of the mountains north of Jizhou City, instead of passing through the foot of the mountain and the mountainside as in other areas.

“But this will increase the flooding area of ​​Sanjiangze and the northeast region, and increase the length and height of the levees.

“It will also complicate river engineering in the Hexi Corridor area.”

It is not difficult to intercept the main stream of Heilongjiang River, because there is no need to build a hydroelectric power station there, and there is no need to find a flat river beach as a construction site.

Just find the narrowest part of the valley and use explosives to blast the mountain from the hillside.

Just let the rocks and soil roll into the river channel and block the river channel in the most natural form.

However, the river water will squeeze the rocks and soil outward, penetrate from the inside of the dam, and even cause pipe bursts.

So the initial interception is just the beginning.

This crudest earth-rock dam will continue to be enlarged and reinforced in the future until it becomes as large and solid as the surrounding mountains.

That is a long-term project for the next decade or so.

This project is not difficult, but it takes a long time.

The biggest problem is still water diversion.

It is a dam thousands of kilometers long and must be fixed within a specific altitude range.

If the planned route has places at inappropriate altitudes that cannot be avoided, the cost will skyrocket and may even make the entire project concept meaningless.

Zhu Jianxuan listened to Wang Lai mention the relevant difficulties and turned to the back of the report he gave him:

"Your report says that the idea of ​​bringing water from the Heilongjiang River into Beijing and even into the Yellow River to flush sand is still feasible now?"

Wang Lai immediately said:
“Yes, although it is very difficult, it cannot be achieved overnight.

“However, it will take more than 20 years to store water in Sanjiang Lake, so there is no need to rush the water diversion project.

“We have at least twenty years to continue researching and building.”

Zhu Jianxuan immediately continued to ask:
"What about the cost?"

Wang Lai said very seriously:

"Based on the current data, the cost is not out of control in terms of magnitude and is still within an affordable range."

The Sanjiangze Lake water storage project has begun, but the water diversion and sand flushing project has not yet officially started.

Wang Lai’s main goal now is to persuade Zhu Jianxuan to start the water diversion project.

Zhu Jianxuan flipped through Wang Lai's report on the spot, and after closing it, he looked at Wang Lai and said:
"I'll give you twenty years, no, let's count it as thirty years.

"If you can accomplish this, your reputation will last forever."

Wang Lai immediately said excitedly:
"Students understand that they will focus on this one thing for the rest of their lives and not worry about anything else."

Zhu Jianxuan immediately reminded:
“You can’t just work in vain, you also have to understand the research progress of other students.

"Their inventions may be able to help your project."

After Zhu Jianxuan finished speaking, he simply stood up and took Wang Lai to the Academy of Engineering’s new test site in Xicheng.

This is a large, separately enclosed yard with an outdoor testing area in the middle.

The yard is surrounded by newly built office buildings, factories for manufacturing equipment and indoor testing grounds, as well as several warehouses for storing equipment and supplies.

The craftsmen from the Academy of Engineering came out to greet them, and Zhu Jianxuan took Wang Lai into the noisiest indoor testing field.

In the middle of the spacious factory, several complex machines of various shapes are making harsh and strange roars.

A wheel dump truck, a crawler excavator, a crawler bulldozer, a general-purpose tractor, and several experimental internal combustion engines were placed separately.

Beside each machine, there is a group of craftsmen, observing and recording the situation.

From time to time, a machine would suddenly shut down on its own, while others would be shut down and restarted by craftsmen.

Some machines are directly disassembled by craftsmen to repair or adjust their internal structures.

Zhu Jianxuan's disciple Li Rui first reported the situation to Zhu Jianxuan:
“To be honest, we have already made a functioning internal combustion engine and supporting machinery according to the idea you originally proposed.

“But the structure of the internal combustion engine is still too complex, and the current mechanical failure rate is still too high.

“The machine could stop at any time while it’s running.”

It has only been a year and a half since the internal combustion engine project started.

Craftsmen have already made machines that can barely function and have entered the stage of solving practical problems.

Zhu Jianxuan is actually very satisfied with their current progress.

In history, the internal combustion engine went through half a century of experimentation and exploration before gradually developing the various typical mechanical structures of later generations.

The Ming Dynasty's internal combustion engine was very mature since its birth.

Compared with the development history of internal combustion engines, the speed of Ming Dynasty's research and development is really extremely fast.

Because of the Ming Dynasty's industrial foundation, the Ming Dynasty's production process precision has now reached the standards.

The key is that Zhu Jianxuan knew the right direction and directly skipped the stage of finding a suitable solution and all the trial and error stages.

Only by working in the right direction can we produce a finished product in one and a half years.

Zhu Jianxuan nodded slightly, then looked at Wang Lai on the other side:

“These machines will definitely be of great help to large-scale civil engineering projects.

"Look at this kind of excavator, it uses a machine to drive a hydraulic rod, and the speed of processing earth is dozens of times faster than manual labor.

"There is also this dump truck, which uses an excavator to dig up soil and rocks, loads them onto the truck, and then directly drags them to the designated location to unload them. The speed is dozens of times faster than manual labor.

“When you continue to evaluate the amount of work, you also have to take these machines into account.

"You'll definitely be able to use it in five years."

Wang Lai knew about the machines that were being developed, and could imagine their uses, but he still had some concerns:

“This… the machine looks good, but the quantity won’t increase in the short term, right?
“If a group of machines can work 100 times more efficiently than a person, then 10,000 groups of machines can replace 1 million workers.

"But we can find a million workers now. When can we find ten thousand machines?"

Zhu Jianxuan was obviously stunned by Wang Lai's question.

Zhu Jianxuan subconsciously thought that the production difficulty of these engineering vehicles was not fundamentally different from that of early tanks and combat vehicles.

If you can build 10,000 sets of machines, you can build 20,000 chariots, which is enough to destroy a country.

But Wang Lai’s idea is obviously not this.

In the ancient history of Shenzhou, emperors and officials of all dynasties had little interest in various machines, and too many of them was an important reason.

The mobilization capacity of ordinary people is too high. If you want machines to surpass human efficiency, you need a huge technological gap.

Just like now, excavators and trucks driven by internal combustion engines do not seem to have any particular advantages over the vast number of ordinary workers.

Europe, on the other hand, is more short of manpower because of the frequent wars and the need to replace manpower with machines.

But now that I, a time traveler, am here, one of my most important roles is to give high priority to things that will be very important in the future but are not taken seriously by the natives.

Zhu Jianxuan smiled and asked Li Rui:

“Can these machines be mass-produced within five years?”

Li Rui also laughed immediately:
"Teacher, don't worry. There will be no problem within five years. Three years at most. Maybe only two years will be enough.

"Now that the principle and direction have been confirmed to be correct, the future task is to resolve the faults."

Zhu Jianxuan looked at Wang Lai again:
“Is it easier to manage and dispatch 20,000 machines and 20,000 drivers, or 1 million ordinary laborers?
“Even if the theoretical limit efficiency is the same, it is certain that the efficiency of the machine is more likely to approach the limit.

"There are still many projects that cannot be completed by human power, but machines with infinite power can do them directly. Isn't this also efficiency?"

Wang Lai reacted immediately:
"Thank you for your teachings, teacher. I was confused just now."

Zhu Jianxuan took Wang Lai to learn about the internal combustion engine and engineering machinery projects.

Then, accompanied by Li Rui, he toured the entire Academy of Engineering and learned about other research projects.

For example, steam turbines, oil-fired boilers, electrolytic smelting, long-distance radio equipment, etc.

In the afternoon, I went to the Academy of Sciences to see the research progress there.

In the evening, he returned to the South Third House where he lived. After dinner, he looked up the information of his concubines and chose one who was in her fertile period to sleep with him.

The next day, after getting up and having breakfast, I rushed to Wenhua Hall to continue working.

Time passed, the 44th year of Xianning came to an end, and the new year of the 45th year of Xianning arrived.

Zhu Jianxuan celebrated the fifteenth day of the first lunar month and his birthday in Shuntian Prefecture. In early February of the forty-fifth year of Xianning, he bid farewell to his parents and set out on a tour of the country.

Fei Chun, Duan Yucai, Cao Zhendong and Wang Tao, two people in a group, served as representatives of civil and military officials and sailed with the crown prince.

Zhu Jianxuan spent more than half a year preparing for this tour, and the scale of the fleet on tour is also huge.

Leading the way were four 6,000-ton Australian-modified warships, followed by twenty 2,000-ton Northern River-modified steel warships.

There were also eighty old steam-paddle-wheel warships of over one thousand tons, and three hundred steam-paddle-wheel armed transport ships of over one thousand tons.

All the old ships have also been replaced with new breech-loading rifled guns.

This huge cruise fleet can face off against the main naval fleet of any country at that time.

All of these warships and transport ships carried 100,000 main forces of the Ming Dynasty.

The new army, which uses all new bolt-action rifles and is equipped with a small number of machine guns, rocket launchers, and picric acid grenades, can compete head-on with the main army of any country.

If Zhu Jianxuan was simply traveling to inspect the local area, he certainly didn't need to bring such a large armed force with him.

Zhu Jianxuan was taking a group of main forces to Europe while on inspection.

Zhu Jianxuan knew better than anyone that Europe was about to experience unprecedented upheavals, and revolutionary France was capable of doing anything.

Ming's cities and immigrants in Europe must be protected as much as possible.

In the future, at least 100,000 Japanese samurai divisions will continue to be sent to Ming Dynasty's strongholds around Europe to further strengthen the combat effectiveness of each stronghold.

Zhu Jianxuan was not prepared to confront the army of revolutionary France head-on for the time being.

It is still necessary to let the European countries take over first. When the fighting among them is almost over and France’s power has been almost released, the main force of the Ming Dynasty can then take action to clear the situation.

That may be a few years or even a dozen years later.

So the current legitimate king of France, Louis Joseph, did not accompany him and was left in Shuntian Prefecture by Zhu Jianxuan.

There was no use in taking him back to France now.

(End of this chapter)