During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, why did there rarely appear a str

The reason why there were few powerful countries in Jiangnan in ancient times was mainly related to its agricultural situation, and at the same time, it was also very closely related to its customs and habits. <>

1. The development of agriculture.

As the saying goes, soldiers and horses go first before grain and grass, which can be seen that the most needed for fighting a war in ancient times is the support of reserve forces, because in a war people can be constantly replenished, because people's mobility is very large, but the demand for grain and grass is related to the number of people at the same time, which is why the importance of food in ancient wars is concerned by people, for example, in the war between Cao Cao and Yuan Shao, that is, we know the battle of Guandu, After Cao Cao killed Yuan Shao's grain and grass storehouse, Yuan Shao could only retreat without a fight, this is the importance of grain and grass for people, as the saying goes, people are iron rice is steel, if you don't eat a meal, if a person has no food to eat for a long time, then he will gradually need, which is fatal to the army, so in ancient wars on the one hand, fighting is a competition for the number of people, and on the other hand, it is more adequate than whose armament. At that time, the development of agriculture in Jiangnan was very slow, because the land in Jiangnan was not reclaimed in large quantities, compared with the land in the north at that time, the land in the north was more fertile, so the economic development in the north was faster, which led to the fact that there was no strong country in Jiangnan. <>

2. Customs.

We all know that the customs and habits of Jiangnan are very special, and it is said that the women of Jiangnan are gentle as water, which also indirectly shows that the customs of Jiangnan are very soft, and the people of Jiangnan are actually softer to others, and their temperament is more easy-going, which also leads to their attack power is particularly weak, we all know that people with violent personalities and people with docile personalities have different combat effectiveness, just like the difference between men in the north and women in the south. <>

To sum up, in ancient times, the reason why there were few powerful countries in the Jiangnan region was mainly because of the lack of customs and customs.

Because in the Spring and Autumn Period of more than 2,000 years, the population of the Wu region was very small at that time, so it was difficult to develop into a large country.

Because most of the people in Jiangnan are relatively selfish, they rarely appear united, so there is rarely a strong state.

Because during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the southern places were called barbarian lands, and the economy was far more backward than that of the Central Plains.

In the areas of Huguang, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, the area is vast and sparsely populated, and (the people there) mostly use rice for cooking, and fish for soup, (although it is so rich), (the people there) still use the most primitive burning forests for planting, and engage in primitive rice farming techniques; [And they] don't know how to accumulate surplus crops to cope with disaster years, so they are all poor."

This sentence is from Sima Qian's "Historical Records" of the Han Dynasty.

The Records of the Historians is listed as the first of the "Twenty-four Histories of Weiqiao", and together with the Book of Han, the Book of the Later Han Dynasty, and the Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms, it is called the "First Four History", which has had a profound impact on the development of historiography and literature in later generations.

The method of compiling history in the form of chronicles pioneered by him has been inherited by the "official history" of later dynasties. "Historical Records" is also considered to be an excellent literary work, has an important position in the history of Chinese literature, and was praised by Lu Xun as "the swan song of historians, the "Lisao" without rhyme", and has high literary value. Liu Xiang and others believe that this book is "good at order and reason, argument but not flashy, quality but not slang".

The Wu-Yue struggle for hegemony refers to a period of mutual conquest between Wu and Yue during the Spring and Autumn Period in history.

In the first year of King Jing of Zhou (544 B.C.), the prisoners of war captured during Wu's invasion of Vietnam were killed by King Wu. In the tenth year of King Jing of Zhou (510 years ago), before Wu attacked Chu, in order to relieve his worries, he attacked Yue and occupied Li (now south of Jiaxing, Zhejiang).

In the fifteenth year, when the main force of the Wu army was in the capital of Chu, the more they took the opportunity to invade the Wu realm, the more the contradictions between the two sides intensified. Geographically, if Wu wants to dominate the Central Plains, he must first conquer Yue to remove the threat from his rear; If the Yue State wanted to enter the Central Plains in the north, it must first conquer the Wu State before it could open up the passage to the Central Plains in the north, which caused the Wu-Yue War that lasted for more than 20 years.

The two countries fought each other for many years until after the Battle of Kasawa, the balance of power between Wu and Yue changed fundamentally, and Yue had an absolute advantage. In the first year of King Yuan of Zhou (475 BC), Yue attacked Wu again. The Wu army was unable to meet the battle and defended the capital.

Yue built a city in the southwest suburbs of Wudu and planned a long-term siege. Wu sent envoys to ask for peace several times, but Yue refused. In three years, the city was broken, Wu Wangfu committed suicide, and the state of Wu perished.

Through this annexation of Wu, the national strength of the Yue State increased greatly, and Goujian, the king of Yue, also became the last overlord of the Spring and Autumn Period.

Since the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, Wu has two provinces of Jiangsu and Anhui, the Poyang Lake Plain of Jiangxi and the first line of Huzhou and Jiaxing in Zhejiang. It reached its peak after the Battle of Houfucha Ailing. At this time, in addition to the original territory, Wu occupied the south and southeast of Henan, the south of Taishan in Shandong to the south of Linyi, the eastern part of Hubei Province, all the areas north of Ji'an in Jiangxi, and the area from Hangzhou to the north of Quzhou in Zhejiang.

The largest wars of the Spring and Autumn Period were fought by the state of Wu. (Battle of Ailing: 100,000 Wulu coalition troops annihilated 100,000 Qi troops.) Broke Chu in five battles and won five victories, and annihilated more than 100,000 Chu troops) ......The country of Vietnam is mainly in Zhejiang Province.

In the early period, the Wu Kingdom was mainly distributed in the Anhui region, and then developed eastward to the Suzhou-Xichang region, and at the peak of the late period, it crossed the Yangtze River and went north to compete for hegemony.

It is now Jiangsu Province, Zhejiang Province, and the eastern part of Anhui Province.

The border of Wu is located in the southern part of the Yangtze River in present-day Jiangsu and Anhui provinces and the northern part of Zhejiang around Taihu Lake, and the Taihu Lake basin is the core of Wu. Later, it annexed small states such as Huaiyi and Xuyi and expanded to the entire territory of present-day Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, central and northern Zhejiang, and northeastern Jiangxi. The capital was located in Meili (now Meicun, Wuxi) in the early period and Wu (now Suzhou, Jiangsu) in the later period, and was one of the most powerful vassal states in the middle and late Spring and Autumn Period.

The core ruling areas of the early Yue Kingdom were mainly in the surrounding areas of Zhuji, Dongyang, Yiwu and Shaoxing in present-day Zhejiang Province, and its early capital was moved in this area, and the capital was Ji (Shaoxing). In 473 B.C., after the destruction of Wu by Yue, the sphere of influence once reached Jiangsu in the north, central Fujian in the south, the East China Sea in the east, southern Anhui and eastern Jiangxi in the west, and dominated the southeast.

The border of Wu has been adjusted many times, and the main scope in the early days was in the area of Nanjing and Yangzhou in the south-central part of today's Jiangsu Province. In the later period of King Wu, the center expanded to the area of Suzhou, and Suzhou became the capital of the late Wu Kingdom, so that Suzhou was called Gongwu in ancient times.

The specific range of Yue Guo is roughly the junction of Jiangsu Province and Shandong Province in the north, from the middle reaches of the Huai River to the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in the west, that is, east of the vertical line from Hefei to Poyang Lake in Jiangxi. It is bordered by the sea in the east, and the southern Xinjiang is basically unchanged.

"Jiangnan" has always been a constantly changing, flexible regional concept, in the narrow sense of Jiangnan mostly refers to Suzhou, Wuxi and other regions in southern Jiangsu, Huzhou, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Ningbo, Jiaxing, Jinhua and other regions in Zhejiang, as well as part of the Yangtze River Delta formed by Shanghai.

The Jiangnan region includes Nanyuan Gaoquejing, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Zhenjiang, Huzhou, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Jiaxing, Shanghai, Ningbo, Yangzhou, Nantong, Wuhu, Xuancheng, Huangshan, Ma'anshan, Chizhou, Tongling, Anqing, Jiujiang, Shangrao, Jingdezhen, etc.