Chapter 2492
In August 1649, Li Hao, who had been away from his hometown for many years, finally returned to the Korean Peninsula. Accompanied by Haihan officials, he first returned to Seoul, but Li Zhi did not allow him to enter the city to have an audience. Instead, he summoned him in the palace outside the city.
The two brothers had been separated for many years, and now they met again, but there was no sense of closeness at all. Instead, they were both obviously wary. Li Zhi was worried that Haihan's purpose in sending his brother back was to seize power, and Li Hao was also afraid that his brother would regard him as a threat and attack him.
Fortunately, with the mediation of Haihan, the two brothers did not have any conflict. They had a pretend talk, and then Li Xie announced that Li Hao would be granted the title of King of Zhenbei, with the title of Pyongyang City, and command of Ping'an Road and Hamjing in the north. Road area.
Of course, this was not Li Zhi's own intention, but Haihan's request to him. Although he was not willing to be decentralized, it was better than being directly replaced by Li Hao. Sending him to Pyongyang would also prevent him from staying in Seoul to make friends with court ministers. Moreover, Ping'an and Xianjing are adjacent to the Manchu and Qing Dynasties, and the pressure on border defense is not small. If anything goes wrong in the future, it will be easier to control Li Hao then.
And this arrangement is also a good thing for Li Hao. If he stays in Seoul, he will probably be monitored by Li Xie at all times. Sooner or later, he will find a reason to put him under house arrest to avoid threatening the stability of the throne. Leaving Seoul and going to Pyongyang means that he finally has room for him to develop. What he has seen and learned in Haihan Kingdom over the past few years will finally have a chance to be put to use.
Li Hao's jurisdiction is dominated by mountainous terrain, and the area of plain farmland suitable for agricultural development is limited, mainly concentrated in the coastal areas near Pyongyang. But this will not affect the future development of the area under his rule, because most of the natural resources on the Korean Peninsula are also distributed in this area, especially coal and iron deposits, which are almost all concentrated in the northern part of the peninsula. As long as Haihan provides support in the future, the development prospects of the north will not be worse than those of the south.
Of course, the Lee brothers did not realize at this time that the purpose of Haihan's move was to create a situation of dividing North and South Korea, and this situation would exist for a long time until two relatively independent countries gradually formed in later generations. country.
In the next two years, the Executive Committee spent its main energy on digesting and governing the Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian regions, and did not initiate any more external military operations. Large-scale colonial expansion activities also came to an end for the time being.
However, immigration activities in the Haihan Kingdom's ruling areas are still carried out frequently, especially the scale of immigrants sent from the more populous new ruling areas to various overseas colonial areas. The peak once reached the level of nearly 10,000 people per month.
These populations quickly filled the Haihan Colonial Zone, including Taiwan, Jeju Island, Sasebo, Japan, and various places in the South China Sea. According to official statistics only, between 1649 and 1651, at least nearly 200,000 people moved from the mainland. Immigrated to areas under Haihan rule.
These immigrant populations not only greatly alleviated the demand for labor in overseas colonial areas, but also solved the livelihood problems of some poor people in the original Ming rule areas, greatly reducing the social pressure in these areas.
Not all of the immigrants who moved overseas came from areas that had been annexed by Haihan. There were also a large number of people from neighboring Yunnan, Guizhou, Hunan, Jiangxi and other places. During the same period, the Liao-Shandong Colonial Region located in the Yellow and Bohai Sea region also ushered in a wave of population growth. Due to natural disasters and the widening gap between the rich and the poor, a large number of poor people began to actively migrate to the areas ruled by Haihan where life was relatively affluent. At the same time, some people whose hometowns were outside the customs also began to return to the Liaodong area under Haihan's rule.
Of course, the Ming court also noticed this bad trend, but there were really not many measures they could take to deal with it. Once the move was bigger, it might become an excuse for Haihan to annex his own territory. However, he was unwilling to see his opponents poaching his own walls, so Chongzhen issued an order to strengthen the control of floating population in various places, trying to prevent the flow of population to the Haihan area through such restrictions.
However, the effect of this measure is obviously very limited, and Haihan has been prepared for this. After all, the decree issued by Chongzhen is not as effective as the money given by Haihan. In many places, it is a double-edged sword, and the people who flock to Haihan's ruling area are overthrown. Turning a blind eye did not have the effect Chongzhen expected.
During this period, the war between the Ming Dynasty and the Manchu Qing Dynasty still did not end completely, and small-scale sporadic battles continued to occur frequently. However, both sides were afraid of Haihan, an eager bystander, and controlled the scale of the battle with a tacit understanding and no longer easily Invest a large number of troops to avoid being robbed by Haihan if the war goes against our side.
Haihan had basically stopped further offensives against the Manchus during this period, and would not take the initiative to cooperate with the Ming Dynasty in launching military operations against the Manchus. Maintaining the current situation is the most reasonable choice for both Haihan and the Liaolu region in the north.
This would not only allow the Ming Dynasty to continue to focus its military focus on the northern border and have no time to confront Haihan, but also give the Manchu Qing a thought to continue fighting with the Ming Dynasty, while also retaining a large-scale garrison for Haihan in the north. Provide good reasons.
As time entered 1652, Wang Tom voluntarily resigned from the post of naval commander and began to concentrate on preparing for his transoceanic journey. Returning to North America has always been Tom Wang's long-cherished wish, but the Executive Committee did not support Tom Wang's idea, even if the existing navigation technology could support him to establish an ocean route across the Pacific and establish a colony in North America. He will also quickly lose his sense of belonging to Haihan because of the distance. Perhaps in one or two generations, the North American colonies, which lacked restraint, would establish independent states. This was not a development prospect that the Executive Committee was happy to see.
The development route expected by the Executive Committee is to center on the East Asian continent, expand the territory southward and westward along the coastline, and gradually annex the Ming Dynasty's ruling area. However, Tom Wang's goal was too ambitious, and to establish a colony in North America, the funds and materials required were astronomical. The executive committee believed that the cost-effectiveness was too low, and it was not suitable to implement such a plan in this era.
Wang Tom was already in his fifties at this time. He knew that he might not be able to wait until the day when Haihan would shift its expansion direction to the other side of the ocean. At this time, Haihan's navy was already invincible in East Asia. Yan's position as naval commander was no longer challenging, and he became the first senior general of the Haihan Army to voluntarily resign after the founding of the Haihan Army.
(End of chapter)