In March of the fifth year of Shunzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1648), the Nanjing Senate Yuan was officially established. Each province elected 30 people, 15 people in Nanjing, 23 people recommended themselves, and 17 people invited, totaling 230 people.
The first speaker was Huang Zongxi, and Wu Yan, Shi Kefa, Gu Yanwu and others were all elected as the first executive committee members.
At the same time as the Senate was established, the Nanjing government has taken some new measures, mainly three large-scale engineering projects have been launched.
First, Shang Yi ordered the construction of a second arsenal near Nanjing.
The Merchant Army was officially renamed the Chinese Army, divided into two military headquarters and five major military regions, and the number of troops increased by about 30%. In addition, nearly half of the various weapons used by the troops in the early stage also needed to be updated. At present, the Nanjing government has a total of
There are two arsenals, one in Hangzhou and the other in Shandong. The Shandong arsenal can only supply weapons from the Shandong war zone. The other four war zones, including the weapons from the Navy, are all manufactured and supplied by the Hangzhou arsenal, but the current production speed is already
After obviously not keeping up with the expansion of the army.
In addition, the Navy has now become an independent combat force, with two overseas bases, and is expanding further, and the rapid development of shipbuilding is also accelerating. The guns, cannons and weapons used by the Navy and the Army also have them.
There are certain differences. Generally speaking, due to the limited space on the ship, the maximum length of the naval gun cannot exceed two or five meters, and the muskets should be as short as possible. Therefore, the navy's weapons must also be separated from the army.
Therefore, it is urgent to build a second arsenal. Moreover, the location of the new arsenal has been determined, and it is located on Bachuanzhou, about fifteen miles northeast of Nanjing City.
Bachuanzhou is a river continent in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. It covers an area of about 50 square kilometers and is generally a fan-shaped one. It is second only to Chongming Island and Yangzhong Island. It is the third largest river continent in the Yangtze River. And no one has settled on the continent yet.
, because Bachuanzhou is a river island, it can ensure safety and seclusion. At the same time, it can use the Yangtze River waterway to transport iron ore materials and transport finished weapons. It is indeed an ideal place to build an arsenal.
For this reason, Shang Yi also made a special trip to invite Sun Heding, the director of the arsenal from Hangzhou to Nanjing to discuss the construction of a new arsenal factory on Bachuanzhou.
According to Shang Yi's plan, the size of this arsenal should be more than three times that of Hangzhou arsenal. Of course, it took more than two years for the Hangzhou arsenal to be fully built, so it is estimated that this arsenal Yi will take five to six years or more.
It will take a long time to fully build. Perhaps by that time, the Qing court has been completely defeated, but this arsenal can also be used to supply the weapons of the entire southern garrison army. The arsenal in Hangzhou will gradually transform and gradually change to the main
The production of naval weapons makes the army and naval weapons more supportive and more in line with their respective characteristics.
Although Sun Heding is still the director of the Hangzhou Arsenal, he has an administrative position as deputy minister of the Ministry of Industry, which is approximately equivalent to the Ministry of Works of the Ming Dynasty. His position is quite large. Of course, he is actually managing the arsenal.
During the operation, Sun Heding was also very satisfied with the current situation. Based on the drawings and ideas provided by the business, he created several new weapons, and this time he brought them to Nanjing.
But first of all, of course it was the matter of the new arsenal factory. Sun Heding was also very supportive of this, because the arsenal was larger in scale and had a higher sense of accomplishment. Therefore, after a simple collusion with Shang Yi, Sun Heding arrived immediately in person. People hang out on the island, go to the terrain, think about plans to build a factory, etc.
The second project is closely related to the arsenal, which is the shipyard. Shang Yi plans to restore the Longshan Shipyard again.
During the Qing army occupied Nanjing, Longshan Shipyard was used as the Qing army's naval base. At that time, the Yangtze River Fleet of the Merchant Army also launched attacks on Longshan Shipyard many times, destroying Longshan Shipyard a lot. Shang Yi recovered Nanjing Later, the Longshan Shipyard also restored some areas, and now it is used as the base of the Yangtze River Fleet.
During the Yongle period, Longshan Shipyard covered an area of more than 1,000 acres, about 6 and 7 square kilometers, with a total of seven ponds (i.e., docks). All the treasure ships used by Zheng He for his seven voyages to the West were built in Longshan Shipyard. of.
Although in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, Longshan Shipyard had not built large ships with more than 1,000 materials, and the area of the shipyard was less than half of its heyday, it was the place to build big treasure ships after all. Although the size of the big treasure ships has always existed in later generations. Controversy, including in this era, it is impossible to verify how big the largest treasure ship is, but there are about two thousand materials and a large treasure ship with a displacement of about one thousand to one thousand two hundred tons. Therefore, it is very few. Some areas where large sailing boats can be made in rivers, Shang Yi will certainly not let it go.
Moreover, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River have become Shang Yi's inland rivers and are also an important waterway for the Nanjing government. However, the upper reaches of the Yangtze River are Wu Sangui of Sichuan, so maintaining the water surface advantage of the Yangtze River is also a crucial matter. And the battle of the Fubo Army is now Ships are basically designed according to naval combat standards and are not very suitable for combat in the Yangtze River. Therefore, a batch of warships specially designed for river combat are also needed. Of course, a new shipyard is needed to be built along the Yangtze River.
The location of Longshan Shipyard is crisscrossing rivers, with a wide terrain and direct access to the Yangtze River. Although it was severely damaged during the war, the foundation is still there. Since it has seven ponds, three are still preserved and can be used as usual. In addition, There are two that have not been used for a long time and are accumulated in mud and silt, and only a little practice can be used. Such good geographical conditions are indeed rare, and it would be a pity if they are not good at using them.
Therefore, it is completely necessary to restart the Longshan Shipyard. In Shang Yi's plan, after completion, the Longshan Shipyard can not only build river ships, but also build some sea ships, and still have a naval base. The function is that the navy stationed here can be very effective in the Nanjing Duanjiang River.
The task of rebuilding the Longshan Shipyard naturally fell on Hu Jiangbin, the director of the shipyard.
The third project is the steel plant, which is different from the Xinang Factory and Longshan Shipyard. This project is not located near Nanjing, but is arranged in Hubei Province.
Whether in ancient times or modern times, iron smelting and steelmaking are important basic industries of the country. Although ancient China did not pay attention to production technology, there are two exceptions, agriculture and iron smelting industry. Shang Yi also established an iron smelting industry in Zhejiang. The factory, which referenced some advanced iron and steelmaking technology, achieved very good results. A batch of guns and cannons produced during the campaign to recover Nanjing were made of high-quality steel, so the service life was long, ensuring that There was no lack of guns and cannons throughout the battle.
However, the scale of this steel plant is not large. On the one hand, it is because of the short construction time, and on the other hand, it is limited by objective reasons. Iron and steelmaking requires two important conditions: one is iron ore resources and the other is coal mine resources. Without iron ore, there is no way to start with iron and steel making. Coal mines are the main fuel for iron and steel making, so they are indispensable. Unfortunately, Zhejiang has poor resources, although there are certain iron ore. There are not many resources, and it is difficult to start mining, while there are basically no coal mines.
Now half of the iron ore of the steel mill is mined and half is imported, while most of the coal mines are transported from Taiwan. Because of these two factors, the scale of the steel mill cannot be expanded. Moreover, iron smelting and steel making is smelting. The cost is also very high and the output is not large. Now all the steel refined can only be used in the arsenal. Other industries cannot use this high-quality steel at all.
This problem does not exist in Wuchang, because Hubei has abundant coal and iron resources and the history of mining was very early. More than 200 years later, Zhang Zhidong carried out the Westernization Movement here and claimed to be the largest in Asia. After the establishment of the Tian Dynasty, the famous Wuhan Iron and Steel Industry Department, namely Wuhan Iron and Steel Group, was built here because of the superior natural resource conditions in the Wuchang area.
The steel plant that Shang Yi planned to build is the address of Wuhan Iron and Steel Corporation, the Qingshan area in the northeast of Wuchang City, Hubei Province. Moreover, the location here is also advantageous, which is that the transportation is convenient, and the refined steel can be loaded directly on the ship. The Yangtze River drifted down and sent to the shipyard and arsenal. It also saved a lot of transportation costs. Of course, the person in charge of the steel plant was Song Yingxing.
The coal-iron-iron composite industry is also an important pillar condition for the early development of capitalism. Britain was able to become the first successful capitalist country in modern times and led the first industrial revolution because it owned a large amount of coal-iron ore and vigorously Develop coal-iron composite industry. Now Shang Yi is also leading China to this path.
Now the Nanjing government's large-scale industrial projects are basically concentrated in Zhejiang Province. This is because Shangyi only had Zhejiang in the early days, so all factory projects could only be settled in Zhejiang.
However, Zhejiang has always been a commercial area in China, foreign trade area and small handicraft manufacturing area, and is not suitable for large-scale industrial projects, because Zhejiang has few metal minerals, because it lacks iron and copper needed to develop industry. Minerals and coal mines, and now Shangyi’s place is bigger, most of the large-scale industrial projects should be transferred to suitable places, and Zhejiang will also return to its due function. On the other hand, this is not just about looking at the front of you. , and also focus on future standardization.
Of course, the re-arranged large-scale industrial projects will be distributed along the Yangtze River coast. This can give full play to the role of the Yangtze River waterway. Of course, doing so will cause certain pollution to the environment, but at this stage, this problem can basically be ignored. Now China The need is the industrial revolution, what is needed is machines, large factories, and large cigarettes emitting black smoke.