The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 386 Steel, Military Industry, and Guards
At the Foshan Iron and Steel Plant, Fateh, Bagration and their entourage, led by Ma Weiguo, visited the entire process of joint steel smelting.

The ore is turned into molten iron in a huge blast furnace, then poured into an alkaline air converter to become molten steel, and finally poured into molds to solidify into ingots.

The completely molten iron is swirling in a huge container. The entire process is accompanied by terrifying high temperatures, flames, and even boiling, which can give people an extremely intense visual and sensory impact.

"Rimmed steel" is steel that has not been specifically deoxidized.

When air is blown into the converter, the oxygen in the air reacts with the carbon in the molten iron, suddenly raising the temperature of the molten iron again, creating a boiling-like effect.

While turning molten iron into molten steel or wrought iron, a part of the oxygen also affects the properties of the iron again.

In addition, the "boiling" process itself will cause the texture of the steel ingot to be not particularly uniform, with a relatively dense shell on the outside but a honeycomb structure on the inside.

It is suitable for various products that do not particularly pursue performance, such as the casings of various common machines.

If you are pursuing high performance, you need to go through the deoxidation process to make "calm steel" that does not boil.

But boiling steel has a larger output and uses, and is more visually impactful, so it is suitable for display.

The production process of such a large steel plant is a shocking and spectacular scene even for ordinary people in modern society.

When ordinary people in the agricultural era talked about iron and steelmaking, they would subconsciously think of small furnaces with hand-pulled bellows and blacksmiths hammering in front of the forge.

Fateh and Bagration were both well-informed and knew about blast furnaces and crucible steel in the handicraft era.

But they were still so shocked that they were speechless when they saw the giant blast furnace with a diameter of more than ten meters and a height of more than twenty meters, as well as the thirty-ton converter that was several meters deep.

The containers for pouring water that they had seen before were not necessarily as big as these containers for molten iron and steel.

Because it is simply impossible to do it using human or animal power.

Now these devices are driven by machines and run continuously, producing steel at an astonishing speed.

Bagration watched the steel ingots being formed, and he felt that the total steel production of Russia might not be as much as that of the steel plant in front of him.

Sixty thousand kilograms of molten iron shake in the furnace and turn directly into steel when poured out. This is too much of a shock for people in an agricultural country.

After staying at the steel plant for three days, Fateh, Bagration and others were taken to the seamless steel pipe plant.

When watching huge quantities of steel being produced rapidly, many people around Fateh and Bagration did not directly feel the threat and lethality.

But after visiting the steel pipe factory, many people quickly became tense.

The complete steel pipes were squeezed out of the machine one by one like noodles. This scene had a great impact on the military personnel.

In the handicraft era, it was very difficult to obtain a complete steel pipe.

Craftsmen need to use hammers and other tools to knock it out bit by bit from the iron plate. This process is extremely tedious and slow.

It would be good enough for a skilled craftsman to make a gun in a month.

Moreover, the barrel made in this way is still wrought iron and cannot withstand particularly high impact forces.

On the other hand, in Ming Dynasty now, this is a steel pipe, which can be thrown out like noodles.

After being introduced by the craftsmen at the steel pipe factory, Bagration and others learned that such a rolling mill could produce two kilometers of seamless steel pipes a day.

One meter of seamless steel pipe can make a rifle.

In other words, the output of gun barrels by such a machine in one day is equivalent to the output of two thousand skilled craftsmen working hard for a month.

The use of seamless steel pipes is no longer limited to gun barrels, they are even used as ordinary water pipes and heating pipes.

Of course, the material and performance of this steel pipe are different from those of a gun barrel, and the requirements and indicators in all aspects are lower.

However, this kind of steel pipe is not necessarily worse than the gun barrel hammered out by a craftsman.

Bagration felt that this was completely unreal, but everything he saw before his eyes was so clear.

The red steel pipes were spitting out with a hissing sound, falling to the ground one by one, and soon piled up like a mountain.

"The production speed of this steel pipe factory is probably comparable to that of all the craftsmen in Russia..."

Ma Weiguo took the numb Fateh and Bagration to visit other upstream and downstream factories, allowing them to witness the complete production process of a rifle with their own eyes.

From the initial steel smelting, to the production of steel pipes and forging and cutting of other components, to the final assembly and testing.

In front of the rifle assembly line, Bagration and others watched the Ming workers sitting beside the conveyor belt, assembling rifles at magic speed.

The new rifles were packed into wooden boxes and neatly stacked on pallets at the end of the production line.

As the workers continued to work, the boxes continued to pile up at a rate visible to the naked eye.

Then a motorized hydraulic forklift drove up and carried a whole pallet of rifles into the warehouse, awaiting additional inspection or being sent away directly.

The warehouses of these arsenals are the places that make everyone tremble with fear.

One warehouse was enough to equip an entire troop, and such a warehouse would be filled up quickly, with trucks carrying the produced rifles away every day.

This terrifying production speed alone is far beyond the reach of all traditional European manual factories.

The key is that the performance of the rifles produced is equally powerful.

Bagration and others visited the testing site and watched the craftsmen on site test-fire rifles continuously to confirm the rifle's dispersion data between one hundred meters and one thousand meters.

Most firearms still have certain combat capabilities at a distance of one thousand meters.

Rifles with particularly high accuracy will be specially selected, installed with special scopes, and used with selected bullets as sniper rifles.

Sniper rifles can fire bursts of fire at enemies at distances of more than one kilometer.

When Bagration ended his visit, he reviewed the entire production process he had seen in his mind and recalled the previous Russian rifle production process.

"When the Russians were facing the Ming Dynasty, they still wanted to come up with some strategies and tactics, just like primitive people who were threatening riflemen by roaring and waving sticks.

"If His Majesty Tsar Alexander saw all this, he would never have any idea of ​​confronting the Ming Dynasty, and would never consider an alliance with Shun State and the Ottoman Empire."

As Bagration muttered this in his mind, all his energy and spirit had completely disappeared.

The Tsar himself, whom Bagration was talking about, was also facing an industrial shock of a higher level and larger scale in the north of the Ming Dynasty.

Although Russia itself has completely collapsed, the Ming Dynasty has basically occupied Russia's native land, and it will be difficult for Russia to have a chance to recover in the future.

The former Russian Tsar will probably be the last Tsar, and there is a high probability that he will not have the opportunity to restore his country in the future.

However, the Russian royal family, nobility and high-ranking officials, including Tsar Alexander, are not completely useless now.

After Russia is conquered by the Ming Dynasty, the Russians will definitely not surrender completely. Even if they obey verbally now, they may engage in sabotage activities in the future.

There must have been many Russians loyal to the Romanov dynasty who would have taken it for granted that Alexander was their leader.

When they want to cause trouble in the future, they will naturally seek cooperation from Alexander, or the Romanov family and other nobles.

If Alexander did not cooperate, they could also use Alexander's name or find other members of the royal family to gather people and increase their influence.

If the Russian nobles headed by Alexander are still dissatisfied with the Ming Dynasty, they may try every means to cooperate with these people to cause trouble in the future.

There are so many Russian royal families and nobles that it is difficult for the Ming Dynasty to strictly control them all.

If the Ming Dynasty directly executed Alexander and others, then Alexander and his gang would become martyrs of Russia, which might inspire those Russians who were loyal to the Romanov dynasty.

In the future, when conflicts arise between the Russians and the Ming people and they want to fight against the Ming court, they will most likely use Alexander as a banner.

Therefore, the most appropriate way to deal with this is to make Alexander and others convinced and lie down.

People like Alexander will no longer have any appeal, and even the appeal of the Romanov dynasty will decline.

Alexander and others might ignore or even report those who wanted to cooperate with them in causing trouble. Therefore, although the Russian nobles and high-ranking officials headed by Alexander have now become civilians in theory, they have received special arrangements in the official Shuntian Prefecture.

They were taken by Wang Yinzhi, who had arrived in Shuntian Prefecture with them, to visit the industrial and agricultural construction of the Ming Dynasty around Shuntian Prefecture.

The first place Alexander visited was the farms around Shuntian Prefecture.

The most obvious difference between the area around Shuntian Prefecture and that around Guangzhou Prefecture in the south is the ownership of land.

Guangzhou Prefecture was originally the former territory of the Ming Dynasty and has always been an area directly under the jurisdiction of the imperial court.

Therefore, neither the Northern Expedition to destroy the Qing Dynasty nor the later reduction of the feudal system and relocation of the capital had any direct relationship with Guangzhou.

There were no large-scale changes in land ownership in Guangzhou Prefecture.

It was only after the establishment of the Southern Agricultural Company that private land transactions became one-way. Land could no longer flow freely among the people but could only flow to the Southern Agricultural Company.

But land is the most important asset in an agricultural society. Unless they encounter force majeure, most ordinary people will not sell their land.

So although there are large intensive farms in the South, their number and density are not high.

But the situation in Shuntian Prefecture was completely different.

The lands around Shuntian Prefecture originally belonged to the princes and nobles of the Qing Dynasty, and the lands in the northern part of Northern Zhili were basically owned by the local Manchu bannermen.

After Zhu Jianxuan's Northern Expedition to conquer the Qing Dynasty, the Qing royal family nobles and bannermen were driven away, and all these lands were taken over by the king.

Then, under Zhu Jianxuan's arrangement, instead of distributing land to the original tenant farmers and serfs in these places, a large number of military settlements and garrisons were built.

Although the work of the people in the garrison did not change when it was established, they continued to farm in the original place.

But their identities at that time had been transformed into hired workers with "shares".

At that time, the income from the military farms in the north was distributed in the following way: 20% was submitted to the court, 30% was distributed to all residents of the garrison, and 50% was used for garrison expenses.

The expenses of the garrison included three meals a day during the busy farming season, as well as all the costs of farm tools, seeds, oxen, and warehouses.

Therefore, the 30% of the profits distributed to the residents of the garrison are net income.

After the invention of agricultural machinery, it was first promoted and used in the northern garrisons, resulting in a large number of garrison residents no longer having to participate in agricultural labor.

These garrisons began to transform under Zhu Jianxuan's instructions.

Families that did not continue to participate in local agricultural labor either split up and immigrate to the New World to receive 100 acres of land, or arrange for one worker to work in a factory.

Working in the factory can earn normal wages, and your family can continue to receive a share of the health center's profits.

If you go overseas, as long as your children get married, they can get 100 acres of land.

If you work in a factory, although the job has changed and is harder than working on a farm, the original income is still there, plus you get an extra income.

If you continue to work on the farm, your income will not decrease and may even increase due to the use of fertilizers.

However, compared with the other two options, the expected future income makes it the lowest option.

So the transformation went quite smoothly, and fewer and fewer people were willing to stay on the farm.

The Weisuo Farm had to pay extra wages to increase the income of the farmers who stayed behind in order to stabilize the situation.

In addition, the north is originally a dry land, which is most suitable for intensive management, so the mechanized transformation was completed quickly.

The large amount of extra labor also prompted the court to continue building new factories.

Based on his previous life experience, Zhu Jianxuan specially constructed this system to promote the transformation from an agricultural society to an industrial society.

As a result, the speed of industrialization and urbanization in the northern region continues to soar.

In recent years, the urban areas in the northern region have continued to grow rapidly, and almost all farms outside the cities have become large-scale mechanized farms.

Alexander and the surrendered Russian high-ranking officials came here and directly entered the vortex of industrial society.

Alexander and his generals looked at the cities and farms and wanted to curse:

"Is this what the Ming Dynasty is like? If I had known that the Ming Dynasty was like this, why would Russia have fought against it?"

After they finished looking at the Ming Dynasty's rifle and artillery production lines, Alexander and the Russian top leaders were also completely drained of their energy and spirit.

Wang Yinzhi, who accompanied Alexander and others on the tour, looked at them with a smile and asked:
"How do you feel now?"

Alexander said with a sad face:

"If I had come here to take a look before the war, I would never have become an enemy of the Ming Dynasty. I would have directly paid tribute to Your Majesty."

Wang Yinzhi immediately smiled and asked back:

"But I remember that the Honglu Temple seemed to have sent you an invitation?"

When Alexander heard this question, he immediately became extremely annoyed and muttered:

"I was so self-righteous at the time that I didn't dare come to Shuntian Prefecture at all. I thought the Ming Emperor might detain me.

“But now I think that the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty would never resort to such means. Once I have seen the cities and villages of the Ming Dynasty, I will be convinced of the Ming Dynasty.

"But it's a pity... I didn't have the chance to see all of this before the show really and completely failed."

Wang Yinzhi was quite satisfied, and then continued to attack Alexander:

"Russia should have intelligence personnel who have conducted special investigations into Ming's industrial and agricultural production capacity, right? Didn't you get a more accurate report?"

Alexander was so frustrated that he almost beat his chest:

“Yes, there are indeed intelligence personnel who reported to me the so-called industrial capacity of the Ming Dynasty and explained to me the terrifying efficiency of the Ming Dynasty’s military industry.

“But I don’t believe it… People cannot imagine things they don’t understand at all.

"What I could imagine at the time was that Ming was definitely stronger than Russia.

“But the concept of that kind of power is that Russia had 100,000 musketeers, while the Ming Dynasty had 200,000 musketeers.

"I was self-righteous at the time and thought the intelligence officers had exaggerated everything about the Ming Dynasty.

"In fact, their description is quite accurate..."

Wang Yinzhi smiled and nodded:

“I can understand this, it’s very normal.

"Even I, a Ming Dynasty person who has nothing to do with military production, could not imagine all this before I actually saw such an arsenal.

“Not to mention you, a white European.

"But these don't matter now. What are your plans for the future?"

Alexander was stunned for a moment:
"What will happen to me in the future... This is not something I can decide, right? What does the Emperor of Ming want me to do? What else can I do? What use am I?"

Wang Yinzhi regained his serious expression:
"If in the future, the remnants of the Romanov dynasty in Russia contact you privately or publicly, what should you do?"

Alexander opened his mouth subconsciously, but for a moment he didn't know where to start:

"I will definitely report this to the imperial court... or warn them not to rebel and become good citizens of the Ming Dynasty?
"But... is this correct? Please tell me, sir. What does Your Majesty want me to do?
"I will do whatever you ask me to do. I will never have second thoughts."

The other members of the Russian royal family, major Russian nobles and generals around them also nodded in agreement.

They are now really depressed by the reality and have no other ideas at all.

(End of this chapter)