The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 379 New Province Planning in the Old World

In the history of the Shenzhou continent, a large number of new administrative divisions were born during the chaotic periods at the end of each dynasty.

Because in the border areas of various separatist forces, there are often two or even more adjacent regimes fighting repeatedly, but in the short term they are unable to occupy a complete traditional state or county.

They are unable to manage the area ruled by their opponents and can only actually rule half of the area or even less.

Some separatist forces will establish a new small state or county in this area, while others will merge it with other neighboring states or counties under their control.

Especially after a long period of warlord separatism, such as the Spring and Autumn Period, the Warring States Period, the Three Kingdoms, the Jin Dynasty, the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, the phenomenon of expansion in the number of administrative divisions was particularly serious.

By the time a new unified dynasty emerges, the world's total population may have been reduced by half, but the number of administrative divisions may have doubled.

After completely controlling the country, many administrative divisions formed during the separatist era were no longer necessary. Continuing to retain so many divisions would lead to an extremely serious problem of redundant officials.

Therefore, after reunifying the country, every dynasty would usually carry out a large-scale administrative division adjustment, which is the so-called "province and merger of prefectures and counties."

Similar things have been done in all dynasties, but sometimes they made reasonable adjustments, and sometimes they were just messing around.

After Emperor Wen of Sui reunified the country, it was right to merge unnecessary and redundant prefectures and counties. However, his intention to merge the three levels of prefectures, counties and counties of the Han Dynasty into two levels of prefectures and counties was an overreaction.

The Yuan Dynasty before the Ming Dynasty made a lot of trouble and added one level to the administrative division level, so Zhu Yuanzhang restored the three-level system after unifying the country.

Zhu Jianxuan now wants to expand the scope of this province and organization to the entire Old Continent.

The New World basically required no adjustments, it was almost like painting on a blank sheet of paper. After the Ming Dynasty conquered America, it had already made plans.

Now Zhu Jianxuan wants to mess with the Old Continent, the basic foundation of human civilization with complex interests and relationships.

Zhu Jianxuan has also completed a comprehensive reorganization of the core areas of Shenzhou.

The main target of this compilation is Central Asia, India, Persia, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans and other places with relatively high levels of civilization outside of the former homeland.

By the way, Siberia should be redivided as well.

The top priority strategy is to rely on mountains and rivers, using rivers as veins and mountains and rivers as bones and muscles.

For all areas along the planned glacial river projects, from the North Sea to the Caspian Sea, they are currently uniformly set up as one glacial province.

The Siberian region east of the Urals, except for the easternmost Lena River basin, is all included in the glacial province, including the Yenisei River basin and the Ob River basin.

To this must be added the Syr Darya and Amu Darya river basins in Central Asia, which flow into the Aral Sea.

Then, based on the rivers and mountains that intersect along the route, areas with distinctly different characteristics are separated and several wide-ranging defense roads are set up.

Most of these areas are wilderness, with very few human populations concentrated in a few spots throughout the region.

Therefore, there were no prefectures under these districts, and prefectures and counties were established directly based on the population situation.

Counties were set up in settlements with smaller populations, and prefectures were set up in settled cities with larger populations. The prefectures after Zhu Jianxuan's reform were actually "large counties" with a status close to that of modern county-level cities.

The actual administrative hierarchy of these places seems to be province-prefecture-state and county, but the middle level uses the prefecture instead of the more typical prefecture.

Because the prefecture is a clearly independent administrative level, its current decision-making power is clearly lower than that of the province.

The Dao was a branch agency of the province, and the emperor could grant special authorization as needed to make the decision-making power of a specific Dao equivalent to that of a province.

In this way, matters that originally needed to be reported to the province for resolution can be decided locally by the district governor.

The situations in different regions of the Glacier Province vary greatly. If the administrative divisions are divided simply according to geographical units, multiple provinces should be established.

However, the Glacier Province is vast and sparsely populated, and the population in each area is very limited. Establishing multiple provinces requires appointing multiple sets of officials, and managing the sparse population is a waste of resources.

Therefore, one province and several sub-prefectures were used to cover the whole process, thus saving the number of officials and improving efficiency.

At the same time, the main task of the Glacier Province when it was first established was to assist in the construction of the Glacier River Project, and managing the original residents along the way was incidental.

For this project, this area should also be listed as a province.

The Glacial Province governed the western part of Central Asia, while the eastern part was formed into a new, larger Western Province.

The eastern end of the Western Regions Province starts from Hami and extends westward and southward to include the Tianshan Mountains, Kunlun Mountains, Pamir Plateau and other areas, as well as the gathering areas at the foot of the mountains and plateaus.

It includes the Ili River Valley, Lake Balkhash and the Seven Rivers Basin, the Fergana Basin to Samarkand, and the Wakhan Corridor to the Kabul Valley.

All traditional semi-agricultural areas in the Western Regions were assigned to the Western Regions Province, and the passages in and out of India and Afghanistan were also to be controlled.

The more populous areas within the Shen'ou Continent are all included in the Western Region Province.

Due to the vast area and the dispersed population, the Western Regions also need to set up sub-provinces to manage the affairs of an isolated area. At the same time, each isolated area is a place with a large population in Central Asia, but it is also a sparsely populated place compared to the Ming mainland.

Therefore, there were no prefectures under these districts, and the districts directly managed the subordinate prefectures and counties.

Then there is the snowy plateau area. If it is also directly assigned to the Western Region Province, the scale of the Western Region Province will be really too large.

However, if the plateau area is to be established as an independent province, the local population is too sparse.

At the same time, the importance of the Snowy Plateau in modern history is mainly due to its location in the frontier area and the natural geographical boundary of Shenzhou.

However, if this area is no longer located on the border between Shenzhou and the Celestial Empire, and if the area beyond this geographical boundary also belongs to the Celestial Empire, then the importance of the existing political power in the Snow Region will naturally be greatly reduced.

This is also why, when Shun Kingdom surrendered to the Ming Dynasty, the tribes on the snowy plateau did not have any special reaction and directly obeyed the order.

If you want to better control an area, there are actually two ways, positive and negative. One is to split and dismember it.

The other is the "subsidy plan", which adds more external forces to dilute the original local forces to a larger scope.

Now Zhu Jianxuan is preparing to do the opposite and include other areas around the plateau, including the Kham region, the Nepal region, the Bangladesh region, and the area between Myanmar and Bangladesh, using these areas to sandwich the plateau and the mountains to form a larger frontier province.

This area extends from the plateau to the Bay of Bengal, and the Plateau Province also has its own estuary and plains areas.

Later, some industries will be developed in Bangladesh.

The population on the plateau of this province will naturally move to the plains and coastal areas with better conditions, and eventually the plateau may become an uninhabited area inland.

The population carrying capacity of the Bangladesh region is among the best in the world and is sufficient to fully absorb the existing population on the plateau.

Such plateau provinces are also large in scale, with sparsely populated inland areas and obvious regional characteristics, so several branch districts are set up to govern them.

Next, the remaining Indian regions will be divided into a separate Indian province.

The southern and coastal areas of the Indian province were directly under the jurisdiction of the imperial court, while the inland areas were divided among the royal families of vassal states and meritorious generals who participated in the war.

India has a large population. Even after a round of plague, the remaining population will definitely be in the tens of millions, at least the size of a populous province.

Therefore, normal prefectures, states, and counties were set up in the areas directly under the imperial court, and sub-prefectures were set up in the areas under the fiefdoms of generals and vassal states to coordinate with them.

The highland inland areas west of India, including Persia and surrounding areas, and the highland areas west of Afghanistan were placed under the jurisdiction of the existing Asiatic Province.

It is relatively easy to decide whether these sparsely populated areas should be directly governed by the imperial court, or whether these large population areas should be allocated to meritorious officials and vassal kings.

The most complicated situation is in places where there are already large foreign populations and which are yet to be placed under the direct jurisdiction of the imperial court, especially in places where the level of civilization is already relatively high.

For example, western and southern Russia, the Anatolian Plateau, and Greece, where the situation is most serious.

Only normal provinces can be established on a normal scale.

Then, through immigration sponsored by the imperial court, the proportion of Ming people in these places would be increased.

At the same time, develop local industry and incorporate it into the industrial system of the Ming Dynasty.

The original traditional agricultural production and lifestyle were destroyed, and the local people were turned into Ming people in the process of industrialization.

A Roman province was established around Constantinople and the Sea of ​​Marmara, the Romanian and Bulgarian regions south of the Carpathian Mountains, plus the Greek regions and the western part of the Anatolian Plateau, that is, the area around the Aegean Sea.

A Turkic province was established in the central and eastern Anatolian Plateau, south of the Caucasus Mountains, west of the border of the Persian Empire, and north of the Mesopotamian Basin.

A Trans-Maritime Province was established north of the Caucasus Mountains, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and including the lower Volga River region.

A separate Black Sea Province was established in the plain area north and west of the Black Sea, east of the Carpathian Mountains, eastern Bulgaria and Romania, central and eastern Ukraine, and the Crimean Peninsula, surrounding the north and west of the Black Sea.

A Ural Province was established on the west side of the Ural Mountains, in the basin of the Kama River, a tributary of the upper Volga River.

The Roman Province, the Turkic Province, the Ural Province, the Transmarine Province and the Polish State encircled the middle area, which included the Moscow region, the St. Petersburg region, and Karelia and Murmansk in the far north, and established a Rus Province.

These new provinces in Europe and Asia were still large in size, most being the size of Europe's largest countries.

However, Zhu Jianxuan would, based on these provinces, split out some areas from within the provinces and distribute them to the heroes and vassal states that participated in the war in accordance with pre-war promises.

There was also Bagration from Russia, who, after returning to Georgia, organized the local Georgians and surrendered to the Ming Dynasty alone before Russia.

Therefore, Zhu Jianxuan granted the western region of Georgia to the Bagration family for continued rule.

(End of this chapter)