Increases in population have usually been accompanied (indeed facilitated) by an increase in trade. In the Western experience, commerce provided the conditions that allowed industrialization to get started, which in turn led to growth in science, technology, industry, transport, communications, social change, and the like that we group under the broad term of “development.”
- condition 条件
- communications 通信
- group 分类;归类
- broad term 广义的术语
However, the massive increase in population that in Europe was at first attributed to industrialization starting in the eighteenth century occurred also and at the same period in China, even though there was no comparable industrialization.
- attribute 认为...是;把...归于
- comparable 可比的
It is estimated that the Chinese population by 1600 was close to 150 million. The transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties (the seventeenth century) may have seen a decline, but from 1741 to 1851 the annual figures rose steadily and spectacularly, perhaps beginning with 143 million and ending with 432 million.
- transition 过渡时期
- spectacularly 壮观地
If we accept these totals, we are confronted with a situation in which the Chinese population doubled in the 50 years from 1790 to 1840. If, with greater caution, we assume lower totals in the early eighteenth century and only 400 million in 1850, we still face a startling fact: something like a doubling of the vast Chinese population in the century before Western contact, foreign trade, and industrialization could have had much effect.
- starting 瞠目结舌的;令人吃惊的
- could have had much effect 本应有很大的影响
To explain this sudden increase we cannot point to factors constant in Chinese society but must find conditions or a combination of factors that were newly effective in this period.
- constant 恒定的;根深蒂固的;
- point to 指向;参考
Among these is the almost complete internal peace maintained under Manchu rule during the eighteenth century. There was also an increase in foreign trade through Guangzhou (southern China) and some improvement of transportation within the empire. Control of disease, like the checking of smallpox by variolation may have been important. But of most critical importance was the food supply.
- smallpox 天花
- variolation 人豆接种
- critical 关键的;严重的
Confronted with a multitude of unreliable figures, economists have compared the population records with the aggregate data for cultivated land area and grain production in the six centuries since 1368.
- multitude 大量
- aggregate 总计的
- cultivated land 耕地
Assuming that China’s population in 1400 was about 80 million, the economist Dwight Perkins concludes that its growth to 700 million or more in the 1960s was made possible by a steady increase in the grain supply, which evidently grew five or six times between 1400 and 1800 and rose another 50 percent between 1800 and 1965. This increase of food supply was due perhaps half to the increase of cultivated area, particularly by migration and settlement in the central and western provinces, and half to greater productivity—the farmers’ success in raising more crops per unit of land.
- crops 收成
This technological advance took many forms:
这样的技术的发展进步呈现出许多形式:
- advance 进步;发展
- form 形式
one was the continual introduction from the south of earlier-ripening varieties of rice, which made possible double-cropping (the production of two harvests per year from one field). New crops such as corn (maize) and sweet potatoes as well as peanuts and tobacco were introduced from the Americas.
- varieties n. 品种
- corn 谷物;玉米
- maize 玉米
- sweet potato 红薯;山芋
Corn, for instance, can be grown on the dry soil and marginal hill land of North China, where it is used for food, fuel, and fodder and provides something like one-seventh of the food energy available in the area. The sweet potato, growing in sandy soil and providing more food energy per unit of land than other crops, became the main food of the poor in much of the South China rice area.
成为华南地区穷人们的主要食物
- fodder 饲料
- sandy 沙质的
Productivity in agriculture was also improved by capital investments, first of all in irrigation.
- productivity 生产力
- capital investment 资本投入
From 1400 to 1900 the total of irrigated land seems to have increased almost three times.
- irrigated 灌溉的
There was also a gain in farm tools, draft animals, and fertilizer, to say nothing of the population growth itself, which increased half again as fast as cultivated land area and so increased the ratio of human hands available per unit of land. Thus the rising population was fed by a more intensive agriculture, applying more labor and fertilizer to the land.
- to say nothing of 更不用说...
- ratio 比率
- intensive 密集的;加强的
网友评论