Why did Europe use horses to plow the land instead of cows?

Generally speaking, both oxen and horses can be used to plow the land, and either one will do. When analyzed, there are differences between plowing with oxen and plowing with horses. Horse plowing is faster than oxen plowing, and it is suitable for large areas of rough land. But plowing with oxen is deeper than plowing with horses, and it is suitable for small areas of finely cultivated land.

When there is a lot of land and a lot of people, when there is a lot of planting and a lot of harvesting and when there is a lot of work to do, it is more cost-effective to use horses to plow the land. When there is little land and many people, fine cultivation, and enough manpower, it is more cost-effective to use oxen to plow the land.

Europe is more sparsely populated than China, so it is more common to use horses to plow the land. However, the situation in Europe is not the same everywhere, and it can vary from country to country. For example, France is the main planting area in Europe, and the situation is different in different parts of France. Northeast France is close to the continent, the temperature is a little lower, the land harvest is a little worse, planting oats and other crops, not much need for intensive cultivation, coupled with the small number of people and land, so the use of horses to plow the land a little more.

Western and southern France, by the sea, had warmer temperatures, better land harvests, and could grow other crops, which were more productive than oats, and could feed more people, hence less land and more people. In turn, a larger population also favored intensive farming and the use of oxen to increase production.

Cattle and horses did not adapt to temperatures in the same way, with horses having difficulty with hot, humid climates.

Hot and humid climates make horses less productive, more sick and less fertile. Therefore, cooler areas such as the north or the highlands are more suitable for horses than hot and humid areas in the south.

In China, too, it's a little easier to raise horses in the north, where more land is plowed with horses than in the south. In Europe, summers are much cooler than in China, which makes it easier to raise horses, and therefore more land is plowed with horses. Northeast China is cooler in the summer with quite a bit lower temperatures and humidity than Guannai. Moreover, the land was so vast and sparsely populated that it was difficult to farm intensively, so relatively more land was plowed with horses. In southern China, even the yellow oxen are not adapted to the hot climate and have to be replaced by buffaloes.

Another important reason is because in ancient China, horses were an important military material.

Warfare in ancient times relied heavily on cavalry, and maintaining a cavalry force required a large number of horses. A cavalryman rode on more than one horse because it needed to be rotated in order to maintain speed. In addition to the horses the cavalry rode on, there had to be a large number of pack horses for transporting grain and grass in the cavalry unit. Because of the importance of winning and losing wars, the "horse policy" has been extremely important throughout the ages.

In addition to the official horse farms, the government also purchased a large number of horses from the private sector. However, most of the good horse farms were in the north, and the number of qualified horses was always insufficient. Therefore to guarantee the supply of military horses, the use of horses by the common people to plow the land had to be strictly limited.

However, even so, most of the time the number and quality of official military horses were still insufficient, and they had to be purchased from the north or southwestern ethnic minority areas, such as the Southern Song Dynasty, which had lost its good horse-breeding land. As a result, successive governments introduced various policies in the hope of encouraging private horse breeding.

However, very often governments were not willing to subsidize the people's horse breeding at their own expense. Sometimes they forcibly requisitioned the people's horses, and sometimes they bought the people's horses at low prices. Thus, many times the people would rather not keep horses than be exploited by the government. As a result, many times the people had to use oxen to plow the land instead of using horses.

To summarize, the above three reasons make Europe plow more land with horses than China.