Tuntian

The tuntian , or duntian , or you ouen-IEN (zh-Hant 屯田, túntián ) was a Chinese agrarian policy. The most known example is that founded by the lord of war CAD CAD starting from 196.

History

Although the system of the tuntian was made famous for CAD CAD, its own writings reveal that it had been institutionalized as of the time of the Western Han under the reign of the emperor Wudi. The soldiers sent for remote forwardings had as an order to cultivate the conquered grounds. This not only made it possible to provide vivres to the army, but also to convert these areas into centering them on agriculture. It was thus also about an economic conquest. However, with died of the Wudi emperor, the system is used only very seldom, which decreased its effectiveness.

The system of CAD CAD

Context

The last years of the Eastern Han were particularly hard: several famines burst: according to annals of the time (Chroniques of the Three Kingdoms), in 194 the invasions of grasshoppers returned food a food product so invaluable that the hundred liters of millet were negotiated to more than one half-million of monetary units of the time and that the people were constrained to resort to the cannibalism. the ceaseless civil wars, in particular the revolts of the Yellow Turbans (184 - 196) disturbed the agricultural production and created waves of exodus of the population fleeing the important zones of war. On the recommendation of its advisers Zao Zhi and Han Hao, CAD CAD decided to impose the policy of the tuntian .

System

The peasants without ground, the refugees and the soldiers receive small holdings which they can cultivate, and the material (plow, oxen…) is provided by the government at low prices. In exchange, the peasants must provide to the government half of their harvests.

At the end of the Han dynasty, they was mainly the soldiers who cultivated these farms on order of the government, and it is all the harvest which was to be used for the army. The innovation of CAD CAD was to reform the system by including the civilians there. By doing this, it solved two of the major economic problems of its government: the great number of refugees, and treatment of the many grounds devastated by the war.

The Chinese make the distinction between the military tuntian and the civil tuntian (respectively zh-Hant 軍屯, jūntún and zh-Hant 民屯, míntún ) to make the distinction between the system of Wudi and the innovations of the government of CAD CAD.

Results

The tuntian was of great importance in the recovery of the Chinese economy at the time of the period of the Three Kingdoms of China. When the system was effective, CAD CAD systematically made it apply to all the areas under its control. On the long run, the tuntian was one of the instrument by which it reunified the north of China (Royaume of Wei). On the short term, the tuntian was the military key to success of the CAD CAD campaigns which often implied to make remote attacks. The agrarian policy of the tuntian made it possible to enormously simplify the problems of logistics and provisioning of the troops, thus enabling him to carry out to increase the duration of its campaigns. The system of the tuntian will be also taken again by its adversaries, as the strategist Zhuge Liang who used it in 234 at the time of a campaign against Sima Yi.

See too

Agriculture of China

Random links: