Chapter 78 This is too difficult
When it comes to the prohibition of the sea in the Ming Dynasty, many people in later generations like to blame the emperor Zhu Yuanzhang's imperial edict of "No one is allowed to enter the sea."
Although there is a problem with Zhu Yuanzhang, the move to ban the sea during Zhu Yuanzhang's period was also out of necessity.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, people's hearts were not attached to them. Overseas hostile forces often took advantage of the vastness of the sea to harass the Ming Dynasty's coastal areas, causing great problems to the security of the coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty. A big burden.
Comrade Lao Zhu was also worried that the people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, as well as the foreign business groups living in Quanzhou at that time, would continue to support the remnants of Zhang Shicheng, Fang Guozhen and others and compete with them for the world. This also made Lao Zhu fearful of the power of the sea, so he repeatedly reiterated the policy of banning the sea.
Comrade Lao Zhu, who was born as a farmer, experienced the tragic turmoil at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, and also saw how big businessmen who were unkind to their wealth oppressed good people.
So classmate Lao Zhu hates those businessmen who like to "speculate" and engage in smuggling trade at sea.
In addition, since the Tang, Song and Yuan Dynasties, the imperial court has implemented a policy of tributary trade controlled and managed. Due to rampant smuggling, the tributary trade has led to continuous losses, resulting in "empty treasury", and it is necessary to crack down on these smuggling This behavior was also a heavy financial burden for the newly established Ming Dynasty.
Finally, based on his many years of practical knowledge, Lao Zhu believed that the foundation of the Ming Dynasty lay in agriculture, and everything produced by agriculture was enough to feed the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, the ban on the sea was banned in Lao Zhu’s thirties when he was in power. For many years, there was a taboo that no one could touch.
In order to strengthen this taboo and strengthen control over the people in the inland and coastal areas, Zhu Yuanzhang used the Hu Weiyong case to concoct a major political case of "Hu Weiyong's treason with the Japanese", which made everyone who had ideas about opening up the sea They were all as silent as a cicada, not daring to say another word.
During the Yongle period, the national power increased greatly, and the imperial court also built huge warships that could travel thousands of miles across the ocean, and also carried out a series of vigorous voyages to the West. However, with the death of the Yongle Emperor himself, and Zheng He who carried out the mission to the West, passed away.
This great feat carried out by the emperor's will came to an end.
Later emperors either lacked courage, or were born and raised in a deep palace since childhood, and received traditional Confucian education, which engraved the class ideology of "scholars, farmers, industry and merchants" into their bones, and they were not interested in the outside world. The world lacks enough understanding, so even if you want to open the sea.
However, under the repeated intimidation of the southern gentry who had already taken advantage of maritime smuggling and the oppression of the so-called ancestral system, the emperor who wanted to open the sea also put away his thoughts of opening the sea again and went to the West. The Ming Dynasty, which had thousands of miles of coastline, turned into an extremely conservative landlocked country.
The two most famous examples are during the Yingzong period. Baozong, who had just ascended the throne, was only an eight-year-old child. When he didn't understand anything, he was fooled into thinking "Stop all pretense." "The edict banned the "voyage to the West" activities that began during the Yongle period.
Of course, this wave of bans was not only because the emperor was young and ignorant, but the biggest reason was that during the previous voyages to the West, only the emperor and a few dignitaries benefited, while the cost of the voyages had to be borne by the court.
With such an unhealthy financial model, it would be damned if the civil servant group responsible for management is willing to continue.
After all, they had to spend a lot of money and effort to help the emperor govern the world. As a result, the emperor got all the benefits of the Western voyages. , it would be evil if this pattern could continue.
So, the Yingzong Dynasty’s ban on the sea was not unjust at all. The blame was that the emperor ate too much on his own, so these civil servants seized the opportunity when the emperor was young, and Emperor Taizu had issued many edicts banning the sea as a reason to directly stop the voyages to the West. The emperor stopped thinking about continuing to use the court's subsidies to make money for his own small treasury.
Another example is the "Battle for Tribute" that occurred in the second year of Jiajing. Therefore, the occurrence of this incident not only caused the people of Ningbo to suffer unreasonable disasters, but also trapped Liu Jin, the commander of the Japanese capital, and Zhang Bor of Qianhu, who tried to stop the fight. He died in the battle inside, which caused a great earthquake in central Zhejiang at that time!
Afterwards, Xia Yan, who was still a seventh-rank Zhima official at the time, went to court to report that the Japanese disaster originated from Shibo, and requested the imperial court to abolish the only remaining Shibo Division. Finally, after a series of interest games, After that, the imperial court abolished the Fujian and Zhejiang Ship Divisions, leaving only one in Guangdong.
At this point, the Ming Dynasty's thousands of miles of coastline only left one official official entrance and exit in Guangdong. As for other places, naturally due to the lack of power of the imperial court, they became the back gardens of smugglers.
However, smugglers only seek immediate profits and cannot establish a system and a violent law enforcement team to maintain the system like the imperial court. Therefore, gradually, in addition to constant smuggling, there are countless pirates in the Zhejiang and Fujian regions. , and the endless Japanese pirates.
Now the Southeast is gradually being abandoned due to the imperial maritime affairs. Four brothers, Guangtou Li, a Fujian businessman, and Xu Dong, a Huizhou businessman, began to take control of the Shuangyu Port area and began the smuggling trade, and established order, making Shuangyu Port gradually become the largest in East Asia. The smuggling trade port flourished for a while.
However, this information is not what Gao Gong can know now. The sea stories he told Zhu Zaijing are from Taizu's implementation of a sea ban, Chengzu's dispatch of Zheng He to the Western Seas, and the suspension of Western affairs during the Yingzong period, and the second year of Jiajing. The "battle for tribute" that took place.
But after listening to these stories, Zhu Zaijing had a general understanding of the history of the Forbidden Sea in the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Zaijing sighed: "My Ming Dynasty has thousands of miles of coastline, and now there is only one shipping company in Guangdong. How can we manage these thousands of miles of coastline? Maybe the sea is now densely populated by bandits. , fighting for their own advantage. If the court cannot re-examine its maritime policy, a big thief from the south may appear in the southeast sea in the near future."
"And if it cannot take a good look! If we try to appease and deal with this big pirate, it may lead to a group of thieves wreaking havoc and harming the people on our southeast coast."
Zhu Zaijing's sigh sounded like thunder in Gao Gong's ears. , he never expected that the Prince of Ming Dynasty, who was born in a deep palace with a silver spoon in his mouth, would be so bottom-lined. Is this God-given wisdom?
Gao Gong said softly: "Why does the prince think so?"
Zhu Zaijing said indifferently: "Isn't this the truth in the world? When your power withdraws from a certain place, this place Naturally, new forces will invade. If this new force is not stable enough, it will become the worst hidden danger. By then, Ming Southeast may not have a stable life."
"The imperial court not only has to face the intrusion of Anda in the north, but also has to clean up the chaos in the southeast. Thinking about it is a headache. But this matter is not something that sir and I can worry about. Your Majesty and the elders of the cabinet should take care of themselves. There should be countermeasures. "
Zhu Zaijing's words suddenly made Gao Gong feel heavy. The emperor was addicted to Xuanxuan and asked, how could he see this if the cabinet is all selfish and self-interested people? Simple truth?
Gao Gong couldn't help but feel ashamed when he thought of this. If it weren't for Zhu Zaijing's words, he wouldn't have been able to see through these problems until now.
So at this moment, Gao Gong really hoped that the emperor could let go of the knot of "the two dragons don't meet each other" and have a good chat with Prince Yu about the affairs of the court. Maybe there would be a way to break this crisis.
Unfortunately this is too difficult.
(End of this chapter)