Xinshun 1730

Chapter 984 Decisive Victory Thousands of Miles Away ([-])

This matter requires both the promotion of influence within the court and the need to convince the emperor.

What is needed is to take advantage of this general trend of capital flow.

Today's Dashun has a total of four major capital groups, and behind each capital group are different forces.

Now the capital strength is the strongest, but the foundation is the weakest, which is the Songjiang Prefecture chaebol group with the emperor, Liu Yu, and all the old brothers and nobles of Dashun standing behind them.

Through the monopoly integration of the shareholding system and the administrative intervention of the imperial court to relocate the business houses of various countries to Songjiang Prefecture, this capital group has sprung up within 20 years.

Using the court power of the feudal dynasty, he killed the Guangdong comprador group with the weakest power behind it.It forced the comprador groups that originally relied on Macau and Guangzhou to either switch to opium smuggling, or go north to Songjiang Prefecture to "surrender", and by the way forced a Lingnan Dayuling uprising that could break out at any time.

In addition, there are three capital groups.

With the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River as the background force; the clan relationship, teacher-student relationship, and guest-guest system as the pillars; the Lianghuai capital group that holds the two cash cows of salt and the canal in its hands.

Born out of the Lianghuai Salt Industry, the loser in the commercial competition in the Jiangnan area, relying on the Dashun War against Junggar and emigrating to the Western Regions, made a comeback. Behind it stood the Shaanxi capital group, which was an upstart in military exploits in the Northwest, a returnee from the Southwest, and an upstart in military exploits in Tibet.

Born out of the Lianghuai salt industry in the former dynasty, the fish that slipped through the old Shanxi Merchants Group that was purged after the victory of the Dashun founding tug-of-war. The rising Shanxi Gyeonggi Capital Group is backed by Shanxi people and Gyeonggi dignitaries.

Now these four major capital groups have created the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Jin and Beijing Capital Group watched the whole show.

Anyway, their main business is Mongolian leather goods, salt, alkali, rhubarb and tea sold to Raksha country, loan sharks to Mongolian nobles, and sell tobacco and spirits.

The center of gravity of their domestic influence is Shanxi and Mongolia; the center of gravity of their foreign influence is St. Petersburg; the important trading ports are the Selenga River and the Baikal area.

They neither want to intervene nor have the ability to intervene in the affairs of the south.The strong dragon is not overpowering the local snake, and the raptor is not crossing the river. Besides, what kind of raptor are they if they go south.

The remaining three are very interesting.

Dashun's strategic focus in the future will be going south.

This is an unprecedented strategic change, with flintlocks equipped with bayonets and bastions, so that the subconscious threat from the north has actually disappeared.

Even if the Raksha people have been herbivores since ancient times, they cannot cross Siberia with a population of 5000. That would be a miracle that can only be achieved by moss-eating peoples.

Taking history as a mirror, Dashun, which has institutionalized thinking, has vaguely felt this change, but it is difficult to complete the readjustment of the strategic focus so quickly.

Changes in the entire strategic layout, including canals and salt administration, must be matched with this grand strategy.

The south of the south is the south with the capital as the center point.

Including Tibet, Burma, Southwest Reformation, Southeast Asia, India and other directions.

The rise of the Shaanxi Capital Group is directly related to Dashun's conquest of Junggar, immigration to the Western Regions, and the construction of bastions on the Mongolian plateau.

After the end of the Northern War, Dashun began to strengthen the intensity of land reform in the southwest, began to garrison the snow-capped mountains, and began to encircle and suppress the western Sichuan plateau.

The main force mobilized must still be the Xijing Army.

The relationship between the Northwest Frontier Army and the Shaanxi Capital Group is self-evident. With the intensification of the policy of land reform in the Southwest, Shaanxi Capital began to enter Sichuan on a large scale based on their familiarity with logistics.

The upstarts in the military behind them have a good relationship with Liu Yu.

On the one hand, there are many old men from the Qingzhou Army in the Northwest Frontier Army. On the other hand, the military reform presided over by Liu Yu gave them such an easy opportunity to make meritorious service.

Liu Yu is not a minister of power, the emperor let him die, he will die unless he runs away early, at most he can be regarded as a loyal dog who looks very honest.

But not being a powerful minister does not mean that he has no prestige and influence in the northwest.He definitely can't mobilize the army, and it's easy to write a letter to ask someone to do a favor.

Looking at the situation in the south now, it is very clear.

From the perspective of capital, it is the Songjiang Prefecture Consortium and the Shaanxi Consortium who want to join forces to kill the Lianghuai Consortium.

The Shaanxi capital group really wants the two big markets of Hunan and Chu, and Henan cannot occupy them, but the population of Hunan and Chu is enough to make a fortune selling salt.

The Songjiang Prefecture Capital Group is very supportive of the abandoned canal, and also very much wants a large amount of capital inflow so that they can expand abroad and seize the world market.If you want a large amount of capital inflow, you have to kill a group of people and eat their flesh and blood. Who are you doing?

Anyway, it's impossible to be the group of people who don't communicate with each other and watch the excitement all the time in Mongolia, lending money to sell tea in Rakshasa.

It is also impossible to drink those Shaanxi capital groups that are eight feet away and obviously not full. Naturally, they can only think about eating Lianghuai capital groups.

From the perspective of the forces and line struggles within the imperial court.

The old brothers and nobles in Yulin and Yan'an have now found a new way to make a fortune, that is, overseas expansion.

And in the past few years, the meritorious group of the new army that has been recruited, the Southwest has been reformed and returned to Tibet, and the new army has risen in Tibet. They are extremely eager for war. Fighting in the border area all day is good for military exploits-the court and the central government are calling for the commander of the Jinghai Navy in the four counties of Hansi County to coerce Myanmar and other people with the loudest slogans.

Southwest and Tibet, Sichuan are the best bases.Then, they will definitely support Sichuan's development and the fact that Sichuan's salt can receive money to facilitate the turnover of military expenditures.

This is the question of line struggle.

The old honorable group headed by Liu Yu, and the new military aristocratic group that has climbed up from the wars of the past few years strongly demand external expansion.

The premise of external expansion is internal stability, the money that can be collected internally, and the internal money should not be spent on expensive canal construction and relief of Hongze Lake's annual floods.

The money should be spent on building warships, building cannons, buying military uniforms, and paying military salaries.

This group of people is the throttle.

And the gentry group based on the Lianghuai salt industry and canal trade, they are the brakes of the empire.

They are conservative because their wealth comes from land rent, and they don't see the benefits of external expansion. They only see that after Liu Yu conquered Nanyang and a large amount of rice entered the country, the goddamn rent that originally sold for one tael of silver can only be sold for eight now. money and silver.

Abstractly speaking, external expansion is good for the empire.

But the particularity of Dashun must be considered.

British conservatives, including land aristocracy and country gentry groups, supported foreign expansion.

Because their land rent is closely related to the export of British woolen cloth: woolen cloth is not a British specialty, and the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Prussia, and Austria can all make woolen cloth.

If you don't advance, you will retreat.There is no way out.

The conservatives in Dashun, especially the gentry groups and landowners, why do they support external expansion?How can it support external expansion?

Silk is raw silk, not woolen wool.

I'm sorry, the best products in the world are right here, buy them or not.

Not buying?If you don’t buy it, learn from France and engage in domestic substitution, which almost caused the high-end silk weaving industry to collapse within three years. Lyon’s high-end silk craftsmen scolded Colbert’s “legacy”; Sericulture in Stockholm, near the Arctic Circle.

The emperor's daughter is not worried about marrying, and the raw silk in Jiangnan is not worried about selling.Even in the era when the Pacific Railway was repaired, raw silk from ports on the west coast was an important cargo to the east coast.

You can collect money while sitting at home, and you can also collect money when you shoot out with a gun, and the two collect the same amount of money. Who has a sick mind to shoot out?

Even if it was the Songjiang Mansion Group, it was the progress that Liu Yu whipped with a whip and tied a carrot to the stick by the way.In fact, the cost-benefit ratio of going to the Atlantic Ocean to seize the dominance of Eastern trade is really not very high now, if the market issues of the Industrial Revolution are not considered in advance.

After all, how comfortable it is to be a comprador and make money while lying down. Doesn’t the British East India Company also want to make money while lying down and sell oriental cotton cloth?

It's just that the wool landlord class in the country is very powerful, and they are not allowed to lie down and earn money. They have been taught and taught with the feudal iron fist covered with parliamentary skin, so that they understand who is the real ruling class.

Besides, external expansion requires taxation, and whose benefit is the tax change?The rice from Nanyang Products is shipped to China like crazy, and the price of domestic rice is stabilized. Whose interest is it moving?
What's more, Liu Yu integrated the power of foreign trade and used various means to quickly complete the monopoly. What is the consequence?

As a result, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, the United Kingdom, France, Prussia, and Austria all came to buy goods.Whoever pays the most will sell to whoever——the most prosperous three to five years of the tea industry was when the Ostend Company was not dissolved, and the trade war in Guangzhou was about to break the monopoly of Anglo-Dutch tea.

now what?Now it is the Songjiang Prefecture Capital Group that has obtained the pricing power, and will give a similar price, whether to sell it or not.

If you are capable, you can send them to Calcutta and Mumbai for smuggling.

The question is a group of Bible readers, do you know where Mumbai is?Do you know what monsoon is, what is ocean current, what is Indian Ocean storm season?
The past few years have been better, that is, Liu Yu insists on exchanging banknotes to control silver, otherwise, with the silver in the hands of maritime merchants, he can kill those producers: control the fluctuation of silver-to-money prices, harvesting is counted as copper coins, and selling goods is counted as silver .Banknote issuing banks can do whatever they want.

As the opposite of these conservative groups, or the division of the old ruling group due to the emergence of maritime trade—in the UK, the development of maritime trade has brought the old ruling group and the emerging class together, expanding outward to maintain land rent; in Dashun, The development of maritime trade led to divisions within the old ruling group.

The nobles and gentry were originally the landlord class.

Just like the squires in England, they were originally landlords.

However, with the development of maritime trade, in the UK, some gentry still lived on land rent, while the other part of the country gentry invested land rent income in maritime trade to earn dividends.

In Dashun, the squires are still squires, and the old nobles in Dashun have no chance of promotion, so they can only focus on money like the former nobles.

The previous dynasty had no choice but to merge the land; this dynasty has sea trade, so it naturally invests in sea trade.It's not that the previous dynasty didn't have a sense of maritime trade, it's just that Emperor Yongle insisted on eating alone, the royal monopoly on the spice trade, and the use of land rights and coastlines were too long, resulting in a special version of the "Navigation Regulations" and "Monopoly Authorization Law".And the food is too fast, if you eat alone, you can be the chairman and others will work part-time, and you have to give them the opportunity to be shareholders.Besides, learn from the Dutch, use the thinking of pouring milk, and burn a lot of spices to increase the price. As a result, the price of spices collapsed in a few years.

The root of this division in Dashun can be traced back to the history of the founding of Dashun.

When the system was established, the emperor did not have too many estates, and he did not have a wide range of heirs.A group of nobles squatted in the capital, went out to lead troops when they were fighting, and "spent in prison" in the capital when they were not fighting, and the land acquisition was extremely strict because of the memory of Dashun's founding of the country.

Some "veteran soldiers" and "old five battalion" "good family sons" are directly under the control of the emperor, and their land cannot be moved. It is an optimized version of the military household system that was promoted from serf to minor noble.

There is no way to over-merge. Once the opening of overseas trade is opened, it will naturally squeeze in frantically.

And the military meritorious service that has emerged in the past few years...it's even simpler.

You Liu Yu was able to fight all the way from a guard to a duke by fighting, why can't we?
After your promotion, it is said that the lone Han died by force, and we must prevent over-expansion and self-initiated border provocations. When you are not a knight, you are more happy than us in making troubles on the border.

Now after the military reform, it is much easier to earn military merits. If you don't take advantage of this opportunity to seek a title and squeeze into the upper circle of nobles, what are you waiting for?

If you don't fight, how can you be knighted?If you don't fight, how can you get promoted and get rich?Without fighting, how could one's own son be born with an iron rice bowl like a shadowy Xunwei Sanqi Sheren?

The noble circle is so big, even if there is no chance to get mixed up now, the opening is "When my grandfather followed Emperor Taizu to kill that donkey surnamed Ai"; or "My grandfather followed Emperor Taizong Sejong in Tianbao Mansion With thousands of partial divisions, Azig and Wu Sangui's "circle in a few months" was defeated, but now the rising channel of foreign wars has the opportunity to make children and grandchildren chat and laugh with people in that circle.

Are there any contradictions between the old and the new nobles?
Yes, it is the difference between strong first and then weak, or weak first and then strong.

Is it to first go west to India to seize the right to trade in the Atlantic Ocean, and then slowly integrate the tributary circle?
Or should I eat the meat around my mouth to clean up the tribute circle before beating it out?

But this is a non-antagonistic contradiction.

On the major contradiction of "external expansion" or "conservative and closed", the interests of the old and new military aristocrats are the same.

Great truths dominate small ones; big contradictions overwhelm small ones.

The two major capital groups of Shaanxi and Song Dynasty want to kill Lianghuai Capital Group. Except for Lianghuai Capital, the starving two major capital groups can't find better blood food.

The meritorious new army and the old army should take the opportunity to suppress the voice of the gentry, reform the internal tax system, adjust the strategic center, and prepare for the transformation of external expansion.

Under such a general background, before meeting with these smuggled salt smugglers, Liu Yu gave the emperor the third and fourth memorials on the reform of the salt administration in succession.

And the crowbar and fulcrum for elevating this "tactical reform" to a "strategic reform" are these few seemingly inconspicuous private salt dealers in front of them.

(End of this chapter)