Chapter 44 Set up military industry to seek self-improvement

Like his teacher Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang's Westernization activities also started from the military, and his contribution to the modernization of China's military far surpassed his teacher and other Westernization ministers of his time.On the one hand, this is related to his informal style of handling affairs, and it is also related to the special situation that he was sent to Shanghai occupied by foreign powers as soon as he came out of the mountain to implement the policy of suppressing Huayang.This point was intentionally done by Zeng Guofan again. In 1862, Li Xiucheng led a large army to attack Shanghai. Shanghai sent people to ask Zeng Guofan for emergency help. After careful consideration, Zeng Guofan decided to send Li Hongzhang to Shanghai. Send capable generals to seize this important source of military pay and the bridgehead of Westernization.

After arriving in Shanghai, Li Hongzhang saw that foreign guns had superior performance and strong lethality, while China's own guns were of inferior quality.At the same time, he also discovered that the Taiping Army used foreign guns, especially Li Xiucheng's troops used the most foreign guns.In order to gain the initiative on the battlefield, Li Hongzhang decided to arm the Huai army with new Western weapons. Through his elder brother Li Hanzhang, Li Hongzhang purchased a large number of new western guns in Guangzhou, which were not only used to arm the reorganized Huai army, but also distributed to the Hunan army of Zeng Guofan and Zeng Guoquan.Beginning in June of this year, foreign gun teams also appeared in Li Hongzhang's Huai army.From then on, the Xianghuai army began to equip new weapons. Later, Zeng Guofan said many times that the adoption of foreign guns in Xianghuai was initiated by Li Hongzhang.

In fact it is.Zeng Guofan was not superstitious about foreign guns and cannons.At that time, Zeng Guoquan repeatedly asked Li Hongzhang to buy foreign guns and cannons for him. Zeng Guofan said that the key to winning a battle is training well.Of course, there are certain misunderstandings in this understanding, which is the reason why Zeng Guofan was restricted by conditions.But he was not conservative. Once he discovered the power of foreign guns and cannons, he not only agreed with Li Hongzhang's actions, but also gave him great support.With his active support and guidance, Li Hongzhang embarked on the road of Westernization and strengthening the country.

With Yixin's help, Li Hongzhang's opinion was finally approved by the Empress Dowager Cixi, allowing him to learn how to make arms on the premise of suppressing bandits. Subsequently, Li Hongzhang began to contact British and French military personnel with military experience in order to imitate their production.Due to Li Hongzhang's frequent contacts with foreign armies, he admired the effectiveness of foreign weapons even more. In practice, Li Hongzhang's thought of self-improvement through westernization is also deepening.Soon, he realized that long-term reliance on the purchase of Western arms could only increase his dependence on foreign countries. If he wanted to be self-reliant, he had to learn foreign production technology, establish and develop his own military enterprises, and realize independent production.From then on, he began to contact with experienced foreign military personnel to learn relevant knowledge.After continuous understanding, the determination to produce Western-style weapons was gradually strengthened.

In October 1862, technicians led by Han Dianjia began to produce explosives and detonators with military support from Li Hongzhang. In 1863, Li Hongzhang hired Ma Geli, an Englishman, and together with Liu Zuoyu, the governor of Zhili Prefecture, first set up a foreign artillery bureau in Songjiang, mainly manufacturing military supplies such as shells and copper caps. This was the earliest foreign artillery bureau established in Shanghai. In September of this year, Li Hongzhang transferred Ding Richang to Shanghai and built another bureau, imitating short bombs and various new artillery shells.Three foreign artillery bureaus were established successively, and Li Hongzhang collectively called them the Shanghai Bomb Three Bureaus, which were also called Shanghai Ocean Artillery Bureaus at that time.

Ding Richang, courtesy name Yusheng.Guangdong Fengshun people.He used to be the magistrate of Wan'an County, Jiangxi. At that time, Li Hanzhang was Ding Richang's Gannan Road.Ding Richang was dismissed because of Wan'an's fall, and went to Zeng Guofan's office as an aide.Zeng Guofan admired Ding Richang's talent very much.When Li Hongzhang formed the Huai Army, he wanted Ding Richang to go to Shanghai with him, and Zeng Guoquan proposed that Ding Richang go with him to attack Tianjing.Zeng Guofan didn't give it to anyone, and sent Ding Richang and Li Hanzhang to Guangdong to handle lijin.At that time, Li Hongzhang, who was still looking for talents everywhere, heard that Ding Richang had supervised the production of 36 large and small cannon borons and more than 2,000 bullets in the Guangdong military camp. He was very envious.I thought it would be great if he could preside over the artillery round.So Li Hongzhang chased Zeng Guofan's dignitaries hard, and finally asked the court to approve the transfer of Ding Richang to Shanghai to preside over the artillery bureau.

Facts have shown that Ding Richang's artillery bureau is the most effective. It can manufacture frog cannons (mortars) and cracking cannons that can fire 80-pound shells.Later, Ding Richang has been Li Hongzhang's right-hand man and became an active implementer of the Westernization Movement. In May 1864, the war with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was drawing to a close.It stands to reason that the manufacture of foreign guns and cannons should also be relaxed. However, Li Hongzhang not only did not relax, but thought that it should be strengthened.On the basis of imitating foreign guns and cannons, he emphasized that it is urgent not only to imitate, but also to gradually learn how to make utensils.It is recommended that the imperial court learn from Japan, master advanced Western technology, strengthen the national defense force, and stand up in the world.

The bomb bureaus presided over by Han Dianjia and Ding Richang did not hire foreign craftsmen, but only Chinese craftsmen, imitating foreign methods, and casting bombs by hand.Most of the cannons made by these three bombing bureaus are limited to portable short bombs, weighing less than 50 catties, and only six to seven are built every month.Bombs can be produced more than 10,000 pieces per month. All kinds of bombs produced by the third bomb bureau were continuously sent to the front line, which provided a strong guarantee for Li Hongzhang to destroy the Taiping Army, and accumulated experience for Li Hongzhang to establish Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau and Jinling Machine Bureau in the future.The Jiangnan General Manufacturing Bureau, also known as the Shanghai Machinery Bureau, was established in September 1867. It mainly produced guns and ammunition. Later, it was able to repair ships and build ships, becoming a comprehensive new military enterprise.The Jinling Manufacturing Bureau was established by relocating the Suzhou Foreign Artillery Bureau, which Ma Geli presided over, to Nanjing.After arriving in Nanjing, the scale has been expanded and the production capacity has also been improved.It mainly produces cannons, shells and bullets of various calibers, as well as other military supplies.Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau and Jinling Manufacturing Bureau are both arsenals that manufacture military equipment.They use steam engines as power and machines as tools to employ a group of workers, which shows that a new social productive force has emerged in China.The funds of these two bureaus came from the financial allocation of the Qing government, and the weapons and ammunition produced were used by the Hunan Army, Huai Army and other provincial troops.They do not participate in market competition and do not generate direct profits.This advanced productivity combined with bureaucratic autocratic management is actually a kind of bureaucratic capital.Some researchers believe that in a special environment where social productivity is extremely low, the intervention of bureaucratic capital is beneficial to economic and social development.

In 1864, when the Huai army captured Suzhou, Li Hongzhang moved the Foreign Artillery Bureau presided over by Ma Geli and Liu Zuoyu to Suzhou and established the Suzhou Foreign Artillery Bureau.The address is located in Nawang Mansion of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which occupies a much larger area than Shanghai.During this period, Ma Geli purchased a batch of machines from foreign countries with the permission of Li Hongzhang. The scale was expanded, and the production was also quite effective. It could produce 1,500 to 2,000 bullets and shells every week, and also manufactured large-scale machines. Different flower bombs.In this regard, Yixin, Minister of State Affairs of the Prime Minister, asked the court for permission in May 1864, and selected eight Wubians and forty soldiers from the firearms battalion defending the palace to study at the Suzhou Foreign Artillery Bureau.So Li Hongzhang became one of the leaders of the Westernization School who made people admire.

In May 1864, when the battle with the Taiping Army was coming to an end, Li Hongzhang once again emphasized that there was no need to delay the control.In his letter to the General Administration, he said: The former British and French countries regard Japan as their foreign government and wantonly punish them. The utensils are made in Japan, and now they can drive ships to make bombs.Last year, the British threatened with false threats and came to them with soldiers. However, what the British relied on as the advantage of attacking and fighting, he was already very good at it.Japan, a small country overseas, can still change in time and know what to do. However, China, which is deeply dimensional and extremely poor, can also change its plan.

In 1865, Li Hongzhang succeeded Zeng Guofan as acting governor of Liangjiang.He saw that the three foreign artillery bureaus originally established were not fully equipped, so with the support of Zeng Guofan, he bought a Qiji iron factory owned by an American in Hongkou, Shanghai, and merged it with the two foreign artillery bureaus originally established in Shanghai. , expanded to Jiangnan Manufacturing General Administration.The Jiangnan Manufacturing General Bureau is very large. The bureau uses 20% of the foreign tax of the Liangjiang Customs as its annual funds, mainly manufacturing ordnance.In addition, the Jiangnan Manufacturing General Administration also has a translation book office, which specializes in translating foreign language scientific and technological books. The Bureau adhered to the principle of self-reliance and self-improvement. Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan had to intervene in issues such as fund raising, purchase of machinery and equipment, appointment of management personnel, employment of foreign craftsmen, and establishment of institutions, which can be described as exhausting.In the summer of 1867, the Jiangnan General Manufacturing Bureau moved from the Hongkou area to Gaochangmiao, and the scale was expanded.After continuous expansion and addition of equipment, by the first half of the 1880s, it had more than ten factories of various kinds and one dock.In 1867, using the original purchased equipment and building some machines, it was able to produce 15 Mausers and 100 rounds of 12-pound shells per day; Eight doors.During the twenty-seven years from 1867 to 1894, the Bureau produced a total of more than 50,000 guns, 585 cannons, 563 mines, and more than 120,000 shells. .In addition to supplying the Huai Army, these weapons and ammunition are also supplied to the Nanyang system and various local forts, warships, and armies in the areas under the jurisdiction of the governors.These military products are uniformly allocated by the Qing government and do not have the nature of commodities. In addition to manufacturing guns, the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau also produced utensils, that is, manufacturing machinery.At the same time, a branch factory for manufacturing ships was also set up.Both Li and Zeng clearly realized that to deal with the Western powers and achieve self-improvement, the key to the competition for sea areas is to build more ships and defend all important coastal ports.In order to achieve this goal, Zeng Guofan asked to allocate another 20% of the foreign tax from the Liangjiang Customs, of which 10% was used for the shipbuilding expenses of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau.In the seventh year of Tongzhi (1868), the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau finally produced the first large new type of military ship.China's modern shipbuilding industry also began to lift anchor. It can be seen from the establishment of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau that self-reliance and self-improvement are the main purpose of Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang. From the appointment of management personnel to the employment of foreign craftsmen and the establishment of institutions, they all have to take care of them. This has enabled Jiangnan Manufacturing General Bureau to have strong human and material support from the beginning and achieved greater development. In November 1863, Zeng Guofan was promoted from the governor of Liangjiang to the front line of Xuzhou as an imperial envoy, fully presiding over the affairs of suppressing twisters, and Li Hongzhang also moved to Nanjing.In this way, the Suzhou Foreign Artillery Bureau moved to Nanjing and was renamed the Jinling Machinery Bureau, also known as the Jinling Manufacturing Bureau.The site of the Bureau was located in Cita Mountain outside the Zhonghua Gate in Nanjing. The scale was expanded and the equipment improved. Rocket bureau, foreign drug bureau, mine bureau, etc.; can manufacture gun emplacement door fire, wheel frame, sub-medicine box, flowering shells, foreign guns, carrying guns, copper caps, cannons, mines, etc. In 1870, Li Hongzhang was transferred to the governorship of Zhili, and took over the Tianjin Machinery Bureau run by Chonghou and expanded it.Under the management of Li Hongzhang, the Tianjin Machinery Bureau was divided into two bureaus, the east and the west. The scale was much larger than before. It mainly produced gunpowder, bullets, shells, mines, etc., supplemented by shipbuilding and so on.The products mainly supply the weapons and equipment of the Huai Army and the Beiyang Navy. The manufacturing bureaus founded and taken over by Li Hongzhang, together with the Fujian Shipping Bureau founded by Zuo Zongtang in 1866, became the backbone of China's early military industry.In a few years, the manufacture of bureau-scale rough tools laid the foundation for China's military modernization.Under the leadership of Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan, many provinces successively set up arms factories in the name of machine bureaus and manufacturing bureaus.Although there are some shortcomings in it, after all, the introduction of modern production technology has made a fundamental difference from the original government-run workshops and handicrafts, and it has been branded as a capitalist enterprise.After several years of hard work, China began to have its own ability to produce new weapons, which fundamentally changed the backwardness of the Qing army and embarked on the road of modernization of national defense. Looking at the process of Li Hongzhang’s establishment of modern military industry in order to achieve self-improvement, from the purchase of ship guns to the manufacture of imitations, was the nature of the establishment to suppress domestic people’s resistance or to resist foreign aggression for self-improvement?From the following aspects we can see that the latter is the main aspect. First, the construction and expansion of the Jinling General Manufacturing Bureau, the Jiangnan Manufacturing General Bureau, and the Tianjin Machinery Bureau were all under the circumstances of the defeat of the peasant uprisings such as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Nian Army. Therefore, if Li Hongzhang made guns to deal with peasant uprisings , is not much necessary.On the contrary, judging from the above-mentioned reasons that prompted Li Hongzhang to set up a factory to make utensils, the purpose of self-strengthening and resisting barbarians was the mainstream. Second, the move of Li Hongzhang and others from purchasing ship cannons to making them by themselves brought a real new productive force to modern Chinese society and opened up a new trend for the emergence of modern Chinese industry. At the beginning of the Jiangnan Manufacturing General Administration, various committee members criticized the illustrations, using the method of dots, lines, and surfaces to find the square, round, and straight; Seat facts. Although this advanced manufacturing tool was introduced by ship cannons and was copied in the process of producing ship cannons, once it appeared, it would accumulate in quantity and move according to its own laws, breaking through sooner or later. Advocates narrow expectations.This is a major contribution made by Li Hongzhang and others to the development of China's modern industry in theory and practice. Thirdly, the emergence of various specialized technical industries for manufacturing ship guns and serving them played a certain positive role in promoting the disintegration of China's feudal natural economy and the emergence and development of a new modern economy.After the 1860s, the major western capitalist countries completed the industrial revolution one after another, the capitalist productive forces developed tremendously, and began to transition to the imperialist stage.However, China's social productivity was quite low at that time. Although some industrial and mining enterprises had appeared in the 1850s, they were basically founded by the comprador bourgeoisie and were small in scale. There is a huge gap, and we can only learn from Western capitalism.It is undeniable that the guns and guns produced in the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau founded by Li Hongzhang were of course mainly shipped to the front line to deal with the peasant uprising army at the beginning; but the main purpose of these factories was to manufacture warships for the purpose of defending Haikou for self-improvement against barbarians.In addition, these factories are owned by the Chinese and built and managed by themselves. Therefore, although these factories belong to the military industry, they have the nature of resisting insults and laid the initial foundation for China's modern industry. In short, at the end of the nineteenth century, although China's modern industry developed slowly, had a weak foundation, and relied to a certain extent on foreign capitalism, which was somewhat comprador, the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau and other enterprises under the leadership of Li Hongzhang Under the advocacy, support and influence of Li Hongzhang, China's modern industry has been born and is advancing slowly and hard, so Li Hongzhang's achievements in setting up factories and making instruments cannot be erased. Fourth, although these military industrial enterprises played an extremely bad role in calming the inside, they also had very obvious effects in protecting the outside world. We cannot regard the military industry established by Li Hongzhang as an absolute bad thing.But we should also see its positive effect.For example, the Tianjin Machinery Bureau, which was taken over and expanded by Li Hongzhang in 1870, initially manufactured arms to suppress peasant uprisings. However, as ethnic conflicts rose, the guns and ammunition manufactured by these military industries were used to strengthen border defenses and resist foreign aggression. played a role in.Another example is the ship factory specially set up in the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, which played a role that cannot be underestimated in the construction of China's modern coastal defense and navy. Although Li Hongzhang first set up factories to suppress peasant uprisings such as the Taiping Army and the Nian Army, his thinking on Westernization continued to deepen.His later activities showed that the main purpose of his factory was to resist foreign aggression, to strengthen himself against barbarians, to maintain the rule of the Qing Dynasty and the security of the country, that is, to realize what Zeng Guofan called self-improvement.On this point, not only did Li Hongzhang not betray Zeng Guofan, but he went further than Zeng Guofan and made greater contributions.