Chapter 1272 - Easier Said Than Done

It was already a unitary time to send Wang Yinglin away, but Zhao Hao was not sleepy and walked out of the tent. At this time, the night breeze dispels the white-hot heat, and the campfire in the middle of the camp reflects the stars in the sky, giving people a sense of time and space being reversed. The night in the wilderness is unusually quiet, and the sound of the night watch, the sound of horses chewing hay, and the chirping of night insects can be heard clearly, making it easy to enter the ethereal world.

Zhao Yu walked slowly in the camp aimlessly, and his mind was still thinking about what happened today, a few personal guards knew that he was thinking about things, and the avant-garde answered the right order early, asking the patrol to slow down and not disturb the emperor, only two guards followed behind him, and the others were either scattered left and right, or hung in the sight.

The assimilation power of a nation, in short, is the cultural edification and cultural conquest of another nation by that nation. Zhao Hao, as a later generation, is well aware of the assimilation ability of the Han nation, and the ethnic minorities who entered the Central Plains have all been assimilated by the powerful Han culture without exception, from the initial Xianbei, Khitan and other ethnic minorities, to the later Yuan and Qing minorities who established a unified empire, they only adopted the culture of the Han people to rule after conquering the Han people by force.

So much so that before modern times, every successful invasion of foreign races, if it was not assimilated by Han culture, it could only be a short-lived dynasty, and the reign of Meng Yuan for a hundred years was already considered a fate, but in the end it disappeared; The Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, actively sinicized, and the integration with the Han nationality is the most, its official title system, laws, and even the harem hierarchy are all referring to the previous Han dynasties, so it also makes it nearly 300 years of longevity in the ranking of China's feudal dynasties relatively high, but the final result is that even the Manchu language has disappeared without a trace, and the Manchus and the Han people are basically indistinguishable.

In modern times, many ethnic groups in China have been submerged in the long river of history, and more than a million ethnic groups can be said to be only a handful, and later for the needs of even the residents of a certain area have collectively changed ethnic groups, of course, there are many Han people, just to avoid their disappearance. It is not uncommon for many nationalities to lose their own language, script, and their own unique cultural traditions.

Zhao Yu also naturally knew that the reason why a nation can assimilate other nationalities must first be advanced. The geographical location of the original Han culture of Chinese civilization is more closed than that of the West, and the unique geographical environment has caused that there can only be one dominant civilization within this range, and it happens that this civilization is the Han civilization, and the surrounding small ethnic groups do not even have writing. Therefore, before modern times, the melting power of Han culture on the surrounding ethnic minorities was indeed rare in the world.

China's Xiongnu, Xianbei, Xia, Di, and Qiang, both cultures and bloodlines have long been part of the Han civilization, and the Han civilization itself is constantly absorbing the surrounding civilizations, including Hufu cavalry, including Buddhism from India, and some religions from Central Asia, which are few but still have some religions from Central Asia, so that they can fully and even uniquely show the advanced nature of Han culture. It is this difference that makes Han culture highly radiant and cohesive.

The second is to rely on the strength of the people, and the Han civilization has never been too weak. Although there are five chaotic China, but fortunately, the land is vast and sparsely populated, and the Han civilization can continue to cross south and preserve the seeds of civilization, more often than not, it is just its own internal strife. After the Mongols occupied the Central Plains, the Han civilization was not interrupted for a few decades, but it was just a matter of accumulating energy, and the Mongols were driven back to Mobei a few decades later; When the Qing people entered the customs, there were only a few hundred thousand people, which was only a military victory compared to tens of millions of Han people, and it was impossible for the culture not to surrender.

Of course, there are also those who refuse to accept the Han civilization. After the Mongols destroyed the Song Dynasty, the influence of Han civilization on the Mongols was even lower than after the barbarian invasion of Rome, because the barbarians from the north eventually accepted the Greco-Roman civilization and even converted to the Roman state religion at that time. The Mongols, on the other hand, believe in lamas as a religion and use their own writing. The Mongols were not assimilated, and they did not assimilate the Han Chinese, so the so-called "no China after Yashan, no China after the Ming Dynasty" is actually.

In contrast, the expansion of the Chinese nation is characterized by the nature of immigration, because for the Chinese feudal society under the Chinese civilization, the wealth interests are mainly concentrated in the Central Plains, and the external expansion of the borders outweighs the losses, and the barbarian land is not interested, and even the attack is mostly defensive. And because the remote areas in ancient times were vast and sparsely populated, and the local people were economically and culturally backward, they did not know how to use land resources at all. A large amount of wasteland is left undeveloped. After the arrival of the Chinese people, it was basically not exploitation under violent plunder.

And this expansion of the characteristics of immigrants is a period of frequent wars, which is precisely a period of accelerated national integration. The third dynasty of the Xia and Shang dynasties was a period of gradual formation of the Han nation, and from this time the entanglement between the Han nation and the ethnic minorities in the north had begun. The famous princes of the Beacon Fire Opera were related to the minority dog Rong, and it was this ethnic group that eventually led to the demise of the Western Zhou Dynasty. The Eastern Zhou Dynasty was divided into two parts, the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, which was a period of competition for the Central Plains.

Then there is the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties period. At that time, it was the disintegration of the two Han dynasties of China, and once again entered a period of division, and the ethnic minorities in the north took the opportunity to continue to invade the south and even enter the Central Plains. This is represented by the Wuhu Chaohua, who constantly invaded the Central Plains and established political power in opposition to the Han regime in the south. As a result of the Wuhu Rebellion, a large number of people in the Central Plains continued to move south to escape the war.

This was the first large-scale southward migration in Chinese history, and in ancient times, when transportation was not developed, people who could move at home were not able to do it. Therefore, a large number of people who moved south were the scholar class, and in ancient times, peasants were not qualified to wear crowns. Therefore, it is called the southward migration of Yiguan Nandu. On the one hand, the southern crossing promoted the spread of civilization and culture in the Central Plains and promoted the development of the southern region, on the other hand, the south was relatively stable, and a large number of scholars moved southward, so that the economic center of gravity began to move southward, reaching a peak in the Southern Song Dynasty.

Of course, Zhao Hao does not deny that cultural assimilation is not always gentle, and it is also full of bloody violence and military conquest. In the southward expansion of the Central Plains civilization, the Central Plains peoples moved southward, and their land was invaded by foreign races, and in the same process of moving south, they also invaded the land of others, competing for the resources of the aborigines, and the two sides would inevitably clash with the locals, and wars of conquest were inevitable.

Qin's unification of the six countries is regarded as the true unification of the Chinese nation, and it is precisely because Qin Shi Huang's cars are on the same track and books are on the same text, so that the Chinese nation has a unified script, and then realizes the unification of culture. However, in the unification of the system, it is also achieved by force and coercion, and how many people have fallen under the unified sword and gun. And without a strong unified culture, when the regime is destroyed, the weak culture will be replaced by a new ruling culture. It was also the conquest at that time that made our culture have a strong ability to assimilate, and our culture could be passed down well when we were invaded by foreign races.

Therefore, Zhao Hao thinks that the current Mongol invasion can actually be regarded as a promotion of the integration of civilizations. After the establishment of the Song Dynasty, due to the failure to complete the conquest of the Western Regions as the Han and Tang Dynasties, especially after the Jurchen invasion of the south, the land Silk Road was cut off in a corner of the southern part of the Yangtze River. In addition, in the annexation wars of Asia Minor and West Asia during the same period, the rise of Ottoman Turkey blocked the trade routes between the East and the West, the exchanges between the East and the West were severed, and even the connection with Central Asia was severed because the Ming Dynasty did not pass through the Western Regions, so that the civilization lacked external stimulus and began to reproduce itself within the Confucian system, and had moved towards closure and stagnation.

However, the violent conquest of the Mongols disrupted the world pattern, but also broke the isolation and reopened the channel of communication between China and the world. And because the Mongols themselves were not cultured, they did not know much about anything, so they mixed things together from all the regions they conquered. In fact, this period was a cultural integration, and a large number of culture and technology from Europe and Arab countries entered the Central Plains, which contributed to another upgrade of China's culture and technology, and brought opportunities for China's development again.

However, Zhao Yu also understood that it was the various civilizations brought by the Mengyuan Dynasty that had an impact on the traditional Chinese culture and caused chaos, especially with the Confucian culture in Jiangnan, which had always been in a closed state, and then affected the assimilation of the nation. And to achieve national integration, he knew that this was different from such a major event as the replacement of the old system by the new system, and it happened in an extremely conspicuous way, and it was not as dazzling as the migration of trees, the destruction of ships, the expedition to Egypt, and the promulgation of the Civil Code.

In fact, major changes can never be achieved by decrees, nor only by violent conquest and the eradication of old forces and the destruction of old institutions. Zhao Yu also knew that this kind of work could not be done by King Hui and his successors of the Che Split Shang Dynasty. Because the power of the old forces can forge the prosperity of the Meiji Restoration, but it is absolutely impossible to escape the track of established inertia. It had to be someone from the New World, like Pei Gong, or MacArthur, who occupied Japan after World War II.

Now history has chosen him, but Zhao Yu understands that while he is realizing unification and embarking on the road of national rejuvenation, he is only a sacrifice to the new world, and he is destined to be ready to declare to the world with his own sacrifice......

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