Chapter 1272: It's easy to do

It was already the hour of You when he saw Wang Yinglin away, but Zhao Bing was sleepless and walked out of the tent. At this time, the night wind dispelled the white-hot heat, and the bonfires in the camp area were like stars in the sky, making people feel that time and space were reversed. The night in the wilderness was extremely quiet, the sound of night patrols, the sound of war horses chewing forages and the sound of night insects were clearly audible, making people easily enter the ethereal world.

Zhao Bing walked slowly in the camp aimlessly, and was still thinking about what happened today in his mind. Several personal guards knew that he was thinking about things. The vanguard replied to the correct order early, asking the patrol team to lightly walk and not disturb the emperor. There were only two guards following behind him, and the others were either scattered around or hanging from wherever they looked.

The assimilation power of one nation is, in short, the cultural influence and cultural conquest of this nation over another nation. As a descendant of later generations, Zhao Bing knew the assimilation power of the Han people. The ethnic minorities that entered the Central Plains were assimilated by the powerful Han culture without exception. From the initial Xianbei, Khitan and other ethnic minorities to the later Yuan and Qing dynasties that established a unified empire, they had to use the Han culture to rule after conquering the Han people by force.

So in modern times, every successful invasion of alien races would have to be a short-lived dynasty if it was not assimilated by Han culture. The 100-year rule of the Mongol Yuan was considered a fortune, but it eventually disappeared. The Qing Dynasty entered the pass and actively became a Chinese, and the integration with the Han people was the most. The official title system, laws, and even the harem hierarchy system were all referenced to previous Han dynasties, so it also made it ranked higher in the ranking of Chinese feudal dynasties with its nearly three hundred years of longevity. However, the end result was that even the Manchu language disappeared without a trace, and the Manchus and Han people were basically unable to distinguish.

In modern times, many ethnic groups in China have been submerged in the long river of history, and there are only a handful of ethnic groups with over one million. Later, in order to be needed, even inhabitants of a certain area collectively changed their ethnic groups. Of course, there are many Han people among them, just to avoid them from disappearing. As for many ethnic groups, there are also many phenomena that have lost their own language, and their own unique cultural traditions.

Zhao Bing naturally knew that the reason why a nation could assimilate other nations must be advanced first. The geographical location of the original Han culture of Chinese civilization was more closed than that of the West. The unique geographical environment caused that there could only be one dominant civilization within this range. It just so happened that this civilization was Han civilization, and the surrounding small ethnic groups did not even have any writing. How to inherit their own civilization had to be a whole pot. Therefore, before modern times, the melting power of Han culture to surrounding ethnic minorities was indeed rare in the world.

This closedness makes the surrounding uncivilized areas lack comparable objects, and the surrounding civilizations are too weak. The Chinese Xiongnu, Xianbei, Jie, Di, and Qiang have long been part of the Han civilization, and the Han civilization itself is constantly absorbing the surrounding civilizations, including Hu clothing, riding and shooting, Buddhism from India, and although there are few, some religions from Central Asia, which can fully and even show the advanced nature of Han culture. It is this difference that makes Han culture highly radiant and cohesive.

Secondly, relying on the large number of people and powerful forces, the Han civilization has never been too weak. Although there were the Five Barbarians invading China, fortunately the land was vast and the people were sparse. The Han civilization was able to continue to travel south and preserve the seeds of civilization. Most of the time it was just a civil strife. After the Mongols occupied the Central Plains, the Han civilization did not interrupt it for decades, but accumulated energy. It drove the Mongols back to the north of the Mobei decades later. When the Qing people entered the pass, there were only hundreds of thousands of people. Compared with the tens of millions of Han people, it was just a military victory, and it was impossible for culture 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 the situation after the barbarians invaded Rome, because the barbarians from the north finally accepted Greek and Roman civilization and even converted to the Roman state religion at that time. The Mongols believed in the religion of Lama and used their own writing. The Mongols were not assimilated, and they did not assimilate the Han people. Therefore, the so-called "there is no China after Yashan and no Huaxia after the Ming Dynasty" is actually nonsense.

In contrast, the expansion of the Chinese nation is characterized by immigrant nature, because in the Chinese feudal society under the Chinese civilization, wealth and interests are mainly concentrated in the Central Plains, expanding the borders outside is not worth the loss, not interested in barbarian land, and even attacks are mostly defensive. Moreover, due to the vast and sparse population in ancient times, the locals were backward in economic and cultural areas, and they would not use land resources at all. A large number of wastelands were in an undeveloped state. After the arrival of the Chinese, it was basically not developed under violent plunder.

This expansion of immigration characteristics is a period of frequent wars, which is precisely the period of accelerated ethnic integration. The Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties were the period of gradual formation of the Han ethnic group, and from this beginning, the entanglement between the Han ethnic group and the northern ethnic minorities had already begun. The famous beacon and the princes were related to the ethnic minority Quanrong, and it was this nation that led to the demise of the Western Zhou Dynasty. The Eastern Zhou Dynasty was divided into two parts: the Spring, Autumn and Warring States Period. This was a period of heroes competing for the Central Plains. Between the expansion of territory, the annexation and conquest, the flow of people in different regions was large, which gave rise to the development and integration of the nation.

Then there was the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. At that time, the two Han dynasties of China were disintegrated and entered a period of division again. The ethnic minorities in the north took the opportunity to invade the south and even enter the Central Plains. The Five Barbarians invaded China as the representative, and they continued to invade the Central Plains and established regimes to oppose the Han regime in the south. The result of the Five Barbarians invading China was that a large number of people in the Central Plains continued to migrate south to avoid war.

This is the first large-scale population migration in Chinese history. In ancient times, when transportation was underdeveloped, those who could migrate at home were not something ordinary people could do. Therefore, the gentry class moved south in large numbers, and in ancient times farmers were not qualified to bring their crowns. Therefore, the migration of this south was called Yiguan Nanshi. Yiguan Nanshi promoted the spread of civilized culture in the Central Plains region in the south and promoted the development of the southern region. On the other hand, the south was relatively stable. A large number of gentry moved south, causing the economic center to continue to move south, reaching a peak in the Southern Song Dynasty.

Of course, Zhao Bing also did not deny that it was not always gentle in cultural assimilation, but also full of bloody violence and forceful conquest. In the expansion of Central Plains civilization to the south was due to the Central Plains people moving southward, their land was occupied by foreign races, and during the migration southward, they also occupied other people's land to compete for the resources of the indigenous people. The two sides would inevitably have conflicts with the locals, and the war of conquest was inevitable.

The unification of the six kingdoms of Qin was regarded as the true unity of the Chinese nation. It was precisely because Qin Shihuang's carriages and books and writings that gave the Chinese nation a unified text and thus achieved cultural unity. However, in the unity of the system, it was achieved by force and coercion, and how many people fell under the unified swords and guns. If there was no strong unified culture, when the regime was destroyed, the weak culture would be replaced by the new ruling culture. It was also the conquest at that time that gave our culture a strong assimilation ability, and our culture could be well passed on when we were invaded by foreign races.

Therefore, Zhao Bing thought that the current Mongol invasion could actually be regarded as a promotion of the integration of civilization. After the establishment of the Song Dynasty, it failed to complete the conquest of the Western Regions like the Han and Tang Dynasties, especially after the Jurchen invasion south, and the Silk Road on the Land was cut off. In addition, in the annexation war between Asia Minor and West Asia at the same time, the rise of Ottoman Turkey blocked the East-West trade route, and the exchange between the East and the West was cut off. Even the ties with Central Asia were cut off because the Ming Dynasty did not manage the Western Regions. In this way, civilization lacked external stimulation and began to reproduce itself within the Confucian system, and had already gone to closure and stagnation.

However, the violent conquest of the Mongols disrupted the world pattern, but also broke the closure and reopened the channel for exchanges between China and the world. Moreover, because the Mongols did not have much culture, they didn't know anything, so they mixed things from various regions they conquered. In fact, this period was a cultural integration, and a large number of cultures and technologies passed down from Europe and Arab countries entered the Central Plains, which promoted another improvement of China's cultural technology and brought opportunities for China's development again.

However, Zhao Bing also understood that it was the various civilizations brought by the Mongolian Yuan that brought shocks to Chinese traditional culture and caused chaos, especially the conflicts with the Confucian culture in Jiangnan that had been in a closed state, which would affect the assimilation of the nation. To achieve national integration, he knew that this was different from the major event such as the new system replacing the old system, which occurred in an extremely eye-catching way, and was not as dazzling as moving trees at the gate, burning their boats, expeditions to Egypt, and publishing the Civil Code.

In fact, major changes are never possible by promulgating the decree of the gate, nor can it be achieved by violent conquests, eradicating old forces and destroying the old system. Zhao Bing also knew that this kind of work was not accomplished by King Hui and his successors who broke up the chariots of Shang Yang. Because the power of the old forces could forge the prosperous era of Meiji Restoration, but it was absolutely impossible to get rid of the established inertia. Instead, it must be a person from the new world, such as Pei Gong, or MacArthur who occupied Japan after World War II.

Now history has chosen him now, but Zhao Bing understands that while he is realizing unification and embarking on the road of national rejuvenation, he is just a sacrifice to the new world and is destined to prepare to declare to the world with his own sacrifice...
Chapter completed!