Research On "Burning Wasteland" In Ming Dynasty

"Burning waste",as early as the Warring States,Qin and Han periods,has appeared.It has gradually become a common way to resist the northern ethnic groups later.In autumn and winter when the grass withered,Ming Dynasty would send people to the outer edge of the Great Wall,and take "burning waste" to make this area of grass and trees burned out in defense of the northern nations,especially Mongolia.On the one hand,to facilitate the Ming Army look out alert;on the other hand,it can also achieve the goal of cutting off Mongolian cavalry grass to resist its south.During the Hongwu period,the residual forces were not enough to pose a real threat to the Ming Dynasty,and the Ming Dynasty was sufficient to control the situation,so the final Hongwu generation did not take the "burning" way to build a line of defense.In The Yongle period,although Zhudi five north march,but did not fixed control of the Mongolian grassland,the line of defense is further indented.As a result of the general's military capability during this period,greatly reduced,Ming army then adopted the defense strategy.In order to set up obstacles to Mongolia's south,"burning waste" happened.Since then,the Ming Dynasty continued the "burning" policy and it became an important measure to defend Mongolia.This paper tries to make a comprehensive combing of the development process of the Ming Dynasty's "burning waste" system from the perspective of ecological history and system history interaction,and systematically analyzes the problems encountered in the process of "burning waste",pointing out that "burning waste" is a kind of ecological warfare mode under the defense strategy of the northern frontier of the Ming Dynasty and the essence is a kind of war strategy of the Ming Dynasty to control the war situation by controlling ecological resources.