Chapter 205 Changes in the Ming Dynasty (two in one)
As the sun rises, the shadows on the walls of the Forbidden City are stretched very long.
Zhu Houzhao, with his hands behind his back and accompanied by Liu Jin, was walking in this sharp-edged screen. He couldn't help but look at the blue sky and Liu Jin beside him.
The Ming Dynasty's national power is now booming, and it has officially begun to participate in the Age of Discovery, becoming a trendsetter of its era. The empire is transforming from an agricultural society to a capital and commercial society.
But when such changes are applied to specific people and things, what is shown is that the fate of the characters has changed.
Liu Jin was not executed by himself in the fifth year of Zhengde as in the original history.
In the original history, because King Anhua rebelled in the name of killing Liu Jin, the civil officials even deliberately exaggerated the momentum of King Anhua's rebellion, which made the simple Emperor Zhengde think that the world was really forced by Liu Jin to lose the support of the people, so that When Liu Jin was falsely accused of treason by Zhang Yong and Yang Yiqing, they had no choice but to agree to kill Liu Jin to resolve public grievances.
In this life, although the Anhua King's Rebellion was still deliberately exaggerated by the civil servants, Zhu Houzhao, who was familiar with the historical trend, was no longer frightened by these civil servants as easily as in the original history. He even took advantage of the civil servants who wanted to make trouble. The psychology made Yang Yiqing take the initiative to confess his crime, and at the same time, he did not let the civil servants achieve their purpose of killing reformist officials by taking advantage of King Anhua's rebellion.
The rebellion of King Anhua was still quickly put down, and King Anhua himself was executed, and the entire clan of King Anhua was demoted to common people.
The Ming Dynasty lost one vassal king's lumi expenses, but had many more common people who could pay for the food and work as errands. In any case, this was considered a good thing.
However, Liu Jin did not die, and Ma Wensheng, Jiao Fang, Xu Jin and other reformist officials who were hated by the civil servants also died well.
But what Zhu Houzhao had to admit was that even if people like Liu Jin who offended civil servants did not die, great changes had taken place.
As for Liu Jin.
Because now the emperor has not delegated power to the Supervisor of Liturgy and the Cabinet, Liu Jin, the Supervisor of Liturgy, like the ministers in the cabinet, is not as powerful as in history.
On the contrary, Zhu Houzhao had to admit that he, as an emperor, was increasingly giving people a shrewd impression.
Of course, it is probably because Zhu Houzhao himself is not shrewd but appears shrewd because he knows the direction of history.
In short, Liu Jin and many officials of the Ming Dynasty began to feel that Zhu Houzhao was not an emperor who could be easily deceived. He was cruel and sinister and could predict people's hearts. As a result, Liu Jin became very cautious now and was not as arrogant as in the past. .
In particular, after witnessing that he, the emperor, executed eunuchs such as Wang Yue and Zhang Yong who betrayed the emperor, Zhu Houzhao discovered that even Liu Jin became taciturn in front of him. As long as he did not ask, even if he walked up to For half an hour, Liu Jin didn't make any sound. , as if disappearing out of thin air, and as long as he shouted, he would always appear in time, and he seemed to have figured out his own thoughts. As long as he said something, he could only give him a satisfactory answer, but Zhu Houzhao became more and more It became increasingly difficult to see what he was really thinking when he answered himself.
Not only did Liu Jin seem to have changed a lot from the original historical figure, but the other Eight Tigers were also far less sincere than when they first met Zhu Houzhao. They all wore masks, and on the surface they were even more afraid of Zhu Houzhao than before. But Zhu Houzhao didn't know what they really thought about him as the emperor.
The same was true for other civil and military officials. Zhu Houzhao found that the more military power he had and the imperial power was dictatorial, the less people around him dared to get close to him.
Sure enough, people at the top of the pyramid don't have friends.
Back to the topic, Liu Jin is still alive, which means that the eunuch group has not been completely suppressed by the civil servants, and the balance of the empire is still there. It is precisely because this balance is still there that Zhu Houzhao was able to establish the Ming Dynasty's military industry system to solve the threat of the little prince. , so that the empire can start to get involved in navigation again.
Zhu Houzhao didn't know where he would take the Ming Dynasty next, but he had to admit that even if he was the emperor, he could not fully control the development direction of the entire empire. Sometimes what he did was best choice.
For example, under the deliberate arrangement of the emperor himself, the new Ming Dynasty hand-operated vertical spindle spinning machines and flying shuttle looms manufactured by imitating the spinning jenny have now appeared.
Zhu Houzhao's purpose was naturally to allow Ming Dynasty to enter the era of industrial revolution ahead of schedule and to gradually realize semi-mechanization and even mechanization of agricultural and industrial production in Ming Dynasty.
From a macro-historical perspective, this is undoubtedly a new thing that is conducive to the progress of the Ming Dynasty.
However, because of this high-efficiency semi-mechanized production, family spinning and weaving craftsmen went bankrupt, causing people's income to drop sharply.
What's more, the empire now implements strict examination laws, which makes tax collection very strict, so that tax resistance often occurs, especially in the Jiangnan region where handicraft industry is launched.
Coupled with the instigation of some officials and gentry with ulterior motives, the phenomenon of tax resistance became more and more intense, and various official-civilian conflicts that only appeared in the late Ming Dynasty began to appear in large numbers at this time.
Zhu Houzhao could be cruel to civil servants, but he could not be cruel to the common people, because the common people were the largest group in the empire. Once he could not get the support of the people, even if he was the emperor, he would be easily removed from the throne.
Therefore, Zhu Houzhao now finds that even if he knows that steam engines can change the Ming Dynasty and oil can change the Ming Dynasty, he really does not dare to start the steam industrial revolution directly.
How to make ordinary people truly benefit from the industrialization and capitalization process of the Ming Dynasty is a question that Zhu Houzhao has been thinking about. The only way he can think of now is to plunder and trade with foreign countries, turn a large number of people into workers, and at the same time expand the scale of production and increase Workers earn income and then sell the large quantities of products they produce to earn profits.
After a large number of handicrafts went bankrupt due to the emergence of new spinning machines and looms, Zhu Houzhao directly issued an order to exempt bankrupt handicrafts from taxes. Local governments were no longer allowed to tax bankrupt handicrafts to avoid intensifying conflicts and allowing people with ulterior motives to The officials and gentry lost the opportunity to provoke a popular uprising. At the same time, Zhu Houzhao asked the government-run Weaving Bureau to expand its production scale, recruit more craftsmen into the Weaving Bureau's workshops, and even directly sell new spinning machines and looms to the private sector, so that private weavers would not go bankrupt due to backward production technology. .
Due to the employment problems of a large number of migrant workers who went bankrupt due to the improvement of the production level of the entire weaving industry, Zhu Houzhao spent a lot of money on infrastructure construction. Because new technologies had the greatest impact on the handicraft industry in the Jiangnan region, resulting in more unemployed people in the Jiangnan region, Zhu Houzhao spent money one after another. More than one million taels were given to Yan Song, the governor of Southern Zhili, and ordered him to organize migrant workers to repair the seawall, dredge the river after the seawall was built, and build bridges and dry roads after the river was dredged.
Almost all the large profits earned by the government-run Weaving Bureau due to technological improvements in the early stage were reinvested in this way. Although technological improvements did not cause a large number of people to lose their jobs and reduce their incomes, the empire did have a lot more cloth due to productivity improvements. As a result, cloth prices plummeted and supply exceeded demand.
As a result, the profit margins of the government-run Weaving Bureau and even private weavers have been greatly reduced. Under this situation, Ming Dynasty also needs trade and needs to sell cheap cloth in large quantities at high prices to avoid the domestic weaving industry from being affected. losses and therefore make more profits.
Therefore, unknowingly, Ming Dynasty has become a capital empire, and it is in urgent need of opening up the international market.
Because of this, when Zhu Houzhao opened border trade and allowed Guangdong and Guangxi to open sea, the voice of domestic resistance was not that loud.
A large amount of cheap cloth was sold to the Mongolian tribes in exchange for horses, cattle and sheep, which were scarce in the Central Plains, so that the empire was able to form a more capable and larger cavalry. At the same time, because cattle and sheep entered the interior of the Central Plains in large numbers, the supply of meat for the people in the pass was increased. Increased, so that by the ninth year of Zhengde, the physical health of the people of Ming Dynasty had generally improved.
The Dongchang Statistics Bureau, which now specializes in investigating various statistical data part-time, has conducted a survey. Compared with the Zhengde four years, the heights of the people sampled in the Ming Dynasty in the Zhengde nine years were slightly higher than those in the Zhengde four years.
After the opening of Guangdong and Guangxi to the sea, the sale of a large amount of cheap cloth also made the weavers exporting from Guangdong and Guangxi become wealthy families, so much so that the Bank of Guangdong and Guangxi emerged as a result, and the tariff revenue brought by the Guangdong and Guangxi shipping companies also made the Ministry of Household Affairs The additional silver revenue of more than two million taels has far exceeded the previous salt tax revenue.
The Emperor of the Ming Dynasty began to carry out large-scale construction and public facilities, which allowed a large amount of treasury revenue to return to the people at a high speed. Especially the income of urban people increased significantly. Coupled with the decline in cloth and meat prices, the people of the Ming Dynasty were able to spend sufficient money. Money was used to buy better cloth to make clothes and better meat to nourish the body, which led to an increase in domestic demand.
However, the increase in domestic demand only returned the cheap products produced by the Ming Dynasty's own people to the hands of the people. If the entire empire wanted to truly increase and accumulate wealth, it still had to rely on foreign trade and expansion.
It is for this reason that Zhu Houzhao first established the Daming Sea Trading Company and asked Zhang Yanling to be responsible for the shipping of the Ming Sea Trading Company as his uncle. This not only trained Zhang Yanling's navigation skills, but also showed the world the royal background of the Daming Sea Trading Company. .
This time, the Daming Sea Trading Company followed Pires to Folangji, bringing with them twenty armed merchant ships filled with cheap and exquisite cloth from the Ming Dynasty. The purpose was to sell it along the South Ocean, Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. At the same time, Establish a base and take back control of the route to the Atlantic Ocean, leaving it under Ming's own control.
The first key control point of this route was Manlajia, and Manlajia was directly captured by the Ming Dynasty and Guangdong Navy.
In order to meet the purpose of foreign trade and expansion, Zhu Houzhao also forced Manlajia to agree to borrow 20 million taels of silver from the Ming Dynasty to pay for the military expenses of Manlajia when the Ming Dynasty sent troops. Half of this military expenditure plus interest could be paid by Manlajia for fifty years. The tariff revenue is compensated, and the other half plus interest will require the future king of Manlajia to find a way to collect it from his own people.
Moreover, Zhu Houzhao also said that if Manlajia was unwilling to pay the military expenditure, the Ming Empire would not send troops for it. Even if it sent troops, it would only regard Manlajia as a seizure and bring it under the Ming Dynasty's own rule. If the ruler of Manlajia still wants to have the power to rule Manlajia, he must agree to pay the military expenditure of the Ming Dynasty.
The rulers of Manlajia did not refuse in the end. There was no way. Rulers were all selfish. In order for them to continue to have the power to enslave their own people, they would sell anything, let alone pay tens of millions of taels of military expenses. After all, it will only be the people of Manlajia who will repay this military expenditure.
Zhu Houzhao also knew that this method of plundering was the best way, because in this way he could not only get a lot of benefits from Manchuria, but also avoid direct plundering that would cause resentment and large-scale resistance among the local people of Manchuria. The people of Manchuria will only blame the rulers of Manchuria for their hatred of being exploited.
The Ming Dynasty could even express its sympathy for the people of Manchuria and criticize the greedy rulers of Manchuria like a white lotus, so as to gain the favor of the ordinary people of Manchuria towards the Ming Dynasty.
And if the Manchurian rulers increase the burden on the Manchurian people in order to pay for the Ming Dynasty's military expenses and a war breaks out, the Ming Dynasty can also take this opportunity to split the Manchurians, causing continuous wars between the Manchurians and the Manchurians. Ming Dynasty's weapons can also get a wider sales market.
Not only targeting Managa, the people of the Daming Sea Trading Company who followed Pires to the west were also looking for national heroes who fought against the Franconian colonists in various places, and looked for opportunities to target these fighters who resisted the Franconian colonial aggression. Sell some weapons to destroy Folangji's colonial base, thereby returning control of the route to the Ming Dynasty.
"Your Majesty! Cining Palace has arrived!"
When Zhu Houzhao was thinking about whether it was time to cancel the road guide system in name only, to allow more rural people to enter the city, and whether it was time to fully open the sea to further the Ming Dynasty's maritime strategy, Liu Jin suddenly reminded Zhu Houzhao to reply. Into reality.
"I understand, you can go back to the Supervisor of Ceremonies," Zhu Houzhao said before entering the Cining Palace.
At this time, Liu Jin also hurriedly excused himself and retreated respectfully.
Because the Ming Dynasty was a prosperous country, Zhu Houzhao had no need to improve the quality of life of his royal family, so he decreed to select a group of palace ladies to join the palace and serve as royal service personnel on an employment basis.
Therefore, there are now many palace maids with excellent temperament and beauty near Cining Palace. When Zhu Houzhao appeared here, there were already countless colorful embroidered clouds and clothes saluting him. Zhu Houzhao had to avoid them one by one, and then Only then did they meet the Queen Mother Zhang, the charming Queen Xia who was in her twenties, the noble concubine Liu Shi Su, and of course the four little princes.
Zhu Houzhao still lets his royal family eat with him at the same table, which can be regarded as maintaining a close relationship. However, when he comes to Cining Palace, he feels as if he has returned home in his previous life. He just smiles and touches The little prince Zhu Zailei's little face began to sit in the center and said with a smile: "What delicious food did the imperial kitchen make today?"
Many thanks to the book friend I would rather bear the world than the Qing for the reward of 300 book coins. Thank you to the book friend for the reward of 100 starting coins...
(End of chapter)