please make me king

Chapter 862 Yangzhou Salt Merchant
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the commodity economy was extremely developed, roughly forming the three most influential merchant groups in Shanshan, Southeast and Haishang.

The object of maritime merchants is foreign trade, not to mention.The most influential merchants from Shanxi and Southeast were the well-known Shanxi merchants and Huizhou merchants.

The reason why these two were able to become existences no less than the maritime merchant group was mainly due to the Ming Dynasty's salt administration.

In the third year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty, due to the lack of military rations in Shanxi and other border areas, the Ming court recruited merchants to transport grain in exchange for salt, and then exchanged salt for salt to sell in designated areas, which was called "opening the Chinese method".

Historical records: The law of Zhongyan, the army guards the border, the people pay, and the salt lives in it, which is the hub, so it is called Kaizhong.

In fact, in addition to the law of salt in grain, the law of salt in banknotes, the law of salt in iron, and the law of salt in Nama have been implemented one after another.

The basic idea is that the court does not spend money, and uses the huge profits from salt in exchange for military supplies in the border areas.

Since Shaanxi and Shanxi are close to nine sides, the freight is much lower than other regions.Therefore, many people from Shaanxi and Shanxi started farming on the spot, which is called Shangtun.

After the grain was harvested, it was brought into the frontier, and then went to the salt farms in Lianghuai and other places to exchange salt for salt, and countless people became wealthy businessmen in a short time.

Since the kitchen households that boiled salt were in the hands of the imperial court at that time, merchants could only exchange salt with the help of salt, and the origin of salt had no right to speak.This led to Shanshan Shanxi merchants firmly occupying the leading position in the Lianghuai salt industry under the "opening Chinese law" system.

However, the good times didn't last long.With the aggravation of border troubles in the north and the sharp increase in the demand for food and other materials, financial constraints have been caused.

On the one hand, the Ming court began to lower the price of buying salt from kitchen households. On the other hand, the merchants continued to pay for military supplies such as grain and iron, which actually caused the court to be unable to pay the full amount of salt.

As a result, the Ming court had to partly let go of its control over salt, allowing salt merchants to use salt to guide kitchen households to buy the salt that became rich after handing it over. Obtain the salt merchants to obtain the hereditary right to buy, transport and sell.

Since then, the discourse power of salt producing areas has increased greatly, and many salt producing areas have produced a large number of "hoarders".

The so-called hoarders mean that after the frontier merchants paid for the grain, they were unable to pay at the transshipment department or the salt production area, so they had to transfer the salt to the hoarders at a low price.

As a result, "together with this piece of paper, the buyers often exceed one or two, and the sellers suffer for less than two dollars, and the profits go to the hoarders."

That is to say, the domestic merchants in the salt producing area colluded with the government and the kitchen households, and did not pay the salt quotations on time, which caused the Shanxi and Shaanxi border merchants to sell the salt quotations at a low price, and instead allowed the "hoarders" to obtain huge profits.

As a result, a large number of wealthy businessmen represented by Huizhou Prefecture emerged in the land of Huaihe River and Huaihe River.

At this point, the dominance of the salt industry changed hands, and the southeast salt merchants overwhelmed the dominant position of Shanxi salt merchants in the Lianghuai salt industry.

It was against this background that the Cheng family of Huai Tang rose up and gradually occupied a place among the Lianghuai salt merchants in the late Ming Dynasty.

As a member of the Cheng family, there were some practitioners of medicine in Cheng Jia's ancestors, as well as those who passed down poetry and prose, but there was never any businessman.

In Cheng Jia's generation, with the help of his fellow salt merchants, he was able to become rich and join the ranks of salt merchants.

This person kept saying that he wanted to make friends with "Brother Li", but he came to visit Zhang Shun's door. One can imagine his intention.

The two exchanged a few polite words, and then Cheng Jia flaunted: "Cheng lives in She County, and is a family member of Tangjiang Village, Huaitang, Xin'an. Fortunately, he was promoted by the same clan, and his salary is a little low. He is now Zheng Shilang, and he has changed to Wenhua. The position of servant of the book processing department in the hall!"

Zhang Shun was a little confused when he heard this. What are you, an official from the Ming Dynasty, doing in my territory as a "rebellious official and thief", are you planning to "suppress the bandits" or are you being "suppressed by the bandits"?
Fortunately, Li Baihu also knew that there were too many twists and turns, and Zhang Shun might not understand it.

He quickly interjected: "Huizhou Prefecture was called Xin'an in ancient times, and the Cheng family is the head of the Xin'an family. They all take Huai Tang as their ancestors. They are divided into 'nine sects and thirteen sects'. They are a large family of salt merchants."

"His clan has traveled all over Huizhou, Hangzhou, Yangzhou, and Huai'an. He has been in politics and business twice, and he is a famous and famous family in Xin'an."

"Brother Cheng started from scratch again, with a fortune of tens of thousands. He is currently promoted from the seventh rank to a casual official, and has the title of servant of the processing department."

Oh, it turned out to be the case!
Only then did Zhang Shun realize that this "Huai Tang" was the hall name of the Cheng clan, which was divided into "Nine Schools and Thirteen Schools".

This Cheng Jia belonged to the Jiangcun School among the "Nine Schools and Thirteen Schools".

First, with the help of his clan, he became a wealthy businessman and owned a fortune.Then he spent money to buy a false title as an official to enhance his status.

The so-called "Zheng Shi Lang" is promoted from the seventh rank to a scattered official.

Distributed officials in the Ming Dynasty were divided into initial conferment and promotion, and the first conferment was called initial conferment.From the beginning of the seventh rank, the scattered officials are congshilang, and when they are sealed again, it is called promotion.This Zheng Shilang is the promoted version of Cong Shilang.

Cheng Jia's official position is all false titles, and he does not have actual positions. It is just that when dealing with the government, he will not be bullied by his status.

Zhang Shun understood the joints, and clasped his hands in response: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't expect Cheng Shilang to have such abilities!"

"Where, where!" Cheng Jia also knew what was going on with his official status, so of course he would not act arrogantly.

Seeing that the heat was almost ready, Cheng Jia smiled and said, "To tell you the truth, His Majesty King Shun, Cheng Mou came here this time to talk about the salt industry under the rule of the Rebel Army. I wonder what King Shun wants?"

Originally, Luoyang’s salt was obtained by King Fu, and its salt also came from Lianghuai, which is far away.

After Zhang Shun took over Luoyang and even Henan Province, he took advantage of Li Baihu's relationship to import salt from the east of Shanxi Province for sale, which greatly reduced the market for Huaiyan salt in Henan.

Along with Zhang Shun's successive battles and victories, he defeated Fu Zonglong, Governor of Henan, Tang Hui, Governor of Huguang, and Zhu Dadian, Governor of Water Transport and Governor of Fengyang, etc. Cheng Jia was keenly aware that this was a rapidly expanding "emerging market".

If he could get on the line with "Shun Thief", then how big "Shun Thief"'s territory would be, the sales market of his Huaiyan would be as big.

So this time, after he hooked up with Li Baihu, he came to visit Zhang Shun in person, just for the salt market under his rule.

Hearing this, Zhang Shun couldn't help laughing and said: "This is a petite man with a small ear. I will discuss it with Li Baihu and Sihu Zhang Shenyan when I turn around. Why do I have to do it?"

"If Mr. Cheng is a big deal guy, I would have a lot of business deals with you!"

When Cheng Jia heard Zhang Shun's words, he was quite disappointed at first, and told Zhang Shun to point himself.When I heard the following words, I was both happy and surprised, and I couldn't help asking: "I don't know what kind of business King Shun has to do? As long as Cheng can eat it, he will definitely not give it to others!"

"Food, no matter rice, wheat, soybeans or millet, I'll eat as much as you can!" Zhang Shuntu said with a wave of his hand.

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(End of this chapter)