A Study On The Elites And Agricultural Modernization In Jiangsu From Lake Qing Dynasty To Before The Sino-Japaneswe War

China is a large agricultural nation. Agriculture have been Chinese basic livelihood and economy and lifestyle soul for thousands of years. Most Chinese are farmers. Most of the gross national product are also from agriculture. This is the essence of Chinese life. Only rural developed, the ultimate realization of China's modernization is hopeful. So, agricultural development problem basically is a problem how to realize modernization in agricultural China. Many forces can promote agricultural modernization in China, and the gentlemen is one important force of them. They organize and lead agricultural improvements, promote agricultural modernization. This is the inevitable result of social development and also their burden given by the history.Jiangsu is the typical representative of intensive cultivation agriculture in South China, and it is successful that transformation from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture. At the same time, it is also the famous land of fish and rice in the history.It has good agricultural resources and endowment, its traditional agriculture relatively developed. It is one of the areas of high degree of the agricultural commercialization, agricultural capitalist producing earlier, and biggest influenced by the economic invasion of foreign capitalist. In addition, Jiangsu is an important port of western academic ideas spread to China. The gentlemen earlier influence by the western agriculture, and it is obviously higher than domestic other provinces on the enlightened degree and ability of accepting the new things. It can play a certain historical reference and enlightenment significance for agricultural modernization in Jiangsu or Cnina that studying the influences on the gentlemen and agricultural modernization in Jiangsu.This paper as a perspective of the elites and modern agricultural technology dissemination and promotion of the main line for the study, explores that traditional agriculture in Jiangsu how to decline since modern times, the elites in Jiangsu how to influence by Western agriculture, the city elites in Jiangsu how to preliminarily spread modern agricultural knowledge, the grassroots elites how to popularize the knowledge of modern agricultural science and technology, and then it studys how the elites in Jiangsu practice the modern agricultural technology, then it evaluates that the elites popularize the modern agricultural science and technology. Guided by the dialectical materialism and historical materialism, methods empoyed in the paper including analysis, empirical research and deduction in history become the basic tools of explaining the subject and history, supplemented by a combination of micro and macro research methods. At the same time, the method of historical documents has become the most basic research method because this paper studys modern gentlemen and agriculture. It will as accurately as possible restore the role of the gentlemen in the agricultural modernization by studying the files, monographs, journals, newspapers and other historical documents about modern gentlemen and agriculture in Jiangsu. This is the academic value of the selected topic, which also seeks to reach the academic target of this paper.China is a long history of large agricultural country and it is the world's leading centers of origin of cultivated crops. Chinese traditional agricultural production technology mature early, level is high, once in a thousand years is the world's leading. But since Ming and qing dynasties, no large agricultural production tools improvement, agricultural technology in the original basis more precise and perfect improvement. By the late Qing Dynasty, the Western modernization of mechanical, electrical, chemical and other development to a higher level, on this basis, the West had to mechanization, electrification and the use of chemical fertilizers as the main characteristics of modern agriculture, and there has been a corresponding Agriculture to adapt to the modern education system, coupled with the population, farmland, and many other problems began to haunt the agriculture, so the late Qing period, China's traditional agriculture is facing severe challenges. During this period, the traditional agricultural production technology has gone downhill, and The cultivation technology, sericulture technology, fishing technology, agro-processing technologies and production tools, have lagged behind Western countries and Japan. The traditional agricultural product processing industry lack the money, their production spread, their technology is backward, their product quality is poor, their production costs is high and can not compete with foreign goods, so whether it is in the international market, or in the domestic market, the decline of trade in agricultural products has emerged. In addition, because the traditional agricultural education lagges behind, the farmers generally cultural knowledge level is very low, so that it is continuously filled with superstition in agricultural production, and they lack of awareness and skills of improving traditional agriculture, which hinder the agricultural modernization in Jiangsu and become a "bottleneck".Many elites in Jiangsu firstly embark on a a journey of going abroad in Late Qing Dynasty. Although their original intention is not to investigate the Western modern agriculture, they marvel at the Western advanced agricultural science and technology when travelling. They firstly feel the gap in the agricultural technology between China and the West. They are a group of people who are enlightened by the modern agriculture at the earliest. The experiences of going abroad provide a wealth of materials for writing books later. They introduce to the world of the Western modernization of agricultural machinery, animal husbandry, agricultural researches, horticulture and agricultural education by writing books. A group of the gentlemen actively advocate the development of agriculture after the Sino. They recognize that the Western and Japanese agriculture develop rapidly because of using agricultural knowledge and modern science. They begin to reflect Chinese traditional agriculture, and advocate the introduction of the western modern agricultural technology to transform the backwardness of agriculture in China. So, they make a series of ideas of modern agriculture.Agricultural technology cannot leave the experiment. The progress and basic step of promoting new agricultural technologies is to establish agricultural experiment stations. After modern agricultural science and technology is introduced into China, the elites in Jiangsu assist the local governments to build agricultural experiment stations, or fund the agricultural experiment stations, or set up different levels and sizes experiment stations, which greatly promote the development of agricultural research. In addition, the Chinese tradition of small-scale peasant mode of operation, is a household family production, lack of cooperation and communication, thereby affecting the improvement of agricultural technology. As for western countries the elites of agricultural management method known unceasingly thorough, plus China smallholder production challenges, they begin to imitate western and Japanese cdfis, create agricultural companies, establishe scale management and implementation. Whether agricultural modernization can realize, depends largely on the farmer's quality and ability, and master agriculture science and technology knowledge is to improve farmers'sci-tech and cultural qualities of premise. Therefore, the development of modernization of elites in Jiangsu of agricultural education, spread and popularization of agricultural science and technology knowledge, modern take very seriously. They not only establish various modernizing agriculture schools, also attach great importance to the social education, organizing agricultural expositions. The farm organizations also play educational function and play a role in the promotion of agricultural science and technology.In modern period, Chinese traditional agricultural develop slowly, and the gap between western countries is increasing large. To achieve economic modernization is necessary to transform the traditional agriculture. Scientific experiments in agriculture, changes in agricultural business management, dissemination and promotion of modern agricultural technology knowledge, this is only the first step,but also the basic steps, that the elites seek to transform traditional agriculture in Jiangsu. And to realize the transformation of traditional agriculture in Jiangsu and make it onto the road of modernization, it must use the modern agricultural technology into production. So, the elites in Jiangsu promote modern agricultural technology and look forward to realize modern agriculture early.In the period of late Qing dynasty and the Republic of China, the elites in Jiangsu conduct a series of modern agricultural practices. They want commitment to the promotion of modern agriculture, mainly due to the promotion of the following factors:First, the Government's policy support, and second, after the abolition of the gentry in the imperial occupation, knowledge structure, both living space and a shift in values the third is the traditional function of the gentry can be extended in modern times, fourth, local self-government powers under the continuous expansion of the gentry. These create the conditions for disseminating and promoting modern agriculture for the elites. The elites promoting modern agriculture has made notable achievements. On the one hand, newly sprouted things appear in the process of promoting modern agriculture. On the other hand, the traditional farming issues also gained new development. Their agricultural practices promote the transformation of the traditional agriculture to modern agriculture in Jiangsu. Of course, for the relatively rural areas in Jiangsu, their agricultural activities are not enough to make the agriculture in Jiangsu run into the way of early modernization. They make their all efforts to develop modern agriculture. However, the significance of enlightenment is more important than that of economic development. Review and summarize the lessons of the elites promoting modern agriculture can provide valuable historical enlightenments for today's emerging elites.