Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 2035 Inside and outside the palace (round eight) Spain and I are a match made in heaven
It stands to reason that there should be a grudge between the Spaniard and Gao Yushi. After all, they only fought in Luzon a few years ago.

It was not just a simple battle, but the ownership of 30 square kilometers and more than 7000 islands was transferred from Spain to Gao Yushi because of this battle.

This is 30 square kilometers!You know, the area of ​​Spain [Note: If only Castile and Aragon are counted. ] is only a little over 50 square kilometers, which is two-thirds the size of its mainland.

Of course, Spain in this period does not lack colonies.Its colonies in the Americas are getting bigger, and there are many adjacent areas that can be conquered at will, but it is hard to say how much it really values ​​the Philippines.

However, the Philippines is a hub that it relies on to do transit trade with Ming. Losing the Philippines means that the Spaniards cannot get the goods exported by Ming, which is a "serious loss of major interests".

However, to the surprise of Spain, Gao Yushi did not prohibit the Spaniards from continuing to come to trade after taking Luzon, and even the various trade systems were quite standardized and fair.This time, although the Spaniard was very upset at first, he recognized it later by pinching his nose.

This characteristic of Europeans is quite good, that is, after fighting each other too much, they develop a habit of recognizing reality-commonly known as bullying and fearing toughness.

Although Spain is now at its peak, in any case, they do not have enough manpower, material resources, and financial resources to come to Southeast Asia to fight against high pragmatism, so they chose to accept the reality without any surprise.

Not only to accept, but also because the Spanish government has gone bankrupt several times in Europe these years, so that it has paid more attention to trade with southern Xinjiang.

However, Gao Wuzhen plans to help Spain now, not for the sake of trading partners, but to make Europeans fight each other more vigorously, and spend their energy on colonizing everywhere later, especially "Looking East" .

The era of great voyages has been going on for so many years, and it is no longer possible for Ming Dynasty or China to play by itself behind closed doors.Others may not be aware of this, but he is highly pragmatic and cannot and will not be aware of it, otherwise he might as well find a rope and hang himself to death.

To some extent, the great voyage is the era of globalization.In this era, not to mention that every country can have an impact on other countries, at least every move of the major powers in the world may have a chain reaction, which should be certain.

Then, Gao Pragmatism, who has changed the situation in Ming Dynasty and even the entire East Asia and Southeast Asia a lot, has to think about one thing: If he never asks about world affairs, in what direction will the world develop, and whether it can develop itself to the one he imagined? state?
If not, what else should I do to make the world I imagined at that time appear?
In a broad sense, with Daming himself as a traverser, and perhaps with Southern Border, the future world structure should at least form a confrontation between east and west—or a situation where east and west stand side by side. Otherwise, what is the point of his journeying through a journey?

At least from Gao Yushi's point of view, he has such a responsibility.Of course, if this question was raised to Liu Xin, she might not agree.

Is it enough to change the world just by changing yourself?Perhaps it is possible. After all, Daming is big enough, and with Southern Xinjiang, he should have such abilities, but after all, this is not safe enough.

If you want to be more secure, after you have done what you can, there are not many options left, and you can only find opportunities to cause trouble for the other party.

It seems difficult to cause trouble for the West at this time. After all, the two sides are too far apart.In fact, otherwise, there are ways.

There is a reason why the great powers of later generations like to play first-hand proxy wars the most.The so-called "proxy war" refers to a war launched by a proxy side instigated or supported by some major powers in order to avoid direct involvement in the conflict.Its essence is a strategic tool for great powers to seek hegemony, through which great powers can achieve "maximization of benefits" and "minimization of risks."

According to the theory formed by later generations, the basic motivation for proxy wars is that geopolitical opponents or other actors in world politics (which can be called sponsors) hope or are able to do so without resorting to direct military conflicts between countries. Under the circumstances, through their proxies to protect or achieve their own geopolitical interests, and proxies need to receive a steady stream of military, technical and political support from sponsors to improve the odds of winning the war, at least to ensure that the ground is not lost.

Geopolitical opponents fight each other through proxies on the territory of a third country, which generally has multiple purposes: not only to weaken the military strength of the geopolitical enemy militarily, but also to drain its national power economically, while also seeking to create internal problems for it , and even shake its ruling foundation and damage its international reputation.

Obviously, what Gao Wuzhen wants to do now is to support the Spanish Empire's endless wars in Europe, so as to drag down the whole of Europe, or at least most of the major European countries.

Can this be done?Very likely.

The previous article specifically talked about the ambitions of King Philip II of Spain. "The world is not enough for me" is clearly written on the Spanish commemorative silver coins. There is no need to doubt this.

But there is a small problem here...Philip II should have just died last year.If there is no accident, it should be his only surviving son Philip III who should succeed him now.

The good news is that this small problem is not a big deal to Gao Yushi, because Philip III's ruling ideas are basically the same as his father's - because he has huge ambitions in all aspects and directions, so that he resorted to military action.

All in all, since Philip III's grandfather Charles V came to power, Spain has been at war or supporting wars almost all the time for about 80 years.

In the previous article, some data were cited to prove that although Spain made rapid progress in the early colonial era and seemed to be blessed by gods, the country's foundation is actually not that strong.

This led to bad results, and it suffered continuous setbacks in several directions, especially after completely losing the seven provinces in the northern Netherlands, Spain became weaker and weaker in Vietnam.After the Thirty Years' War, the former European overlord player basically went offline, and almost only Hui remained in the empire, and the sun belonging to Spain never rose again.

However, Gao Yushi thinks that Spain's militarism is too good!In particular, it is keen on fighting for hegemony in the European continent, which perfectly fits its own vision of Europe!
After the Second World War, the primary reason why proxy wars flourished for so long was that the emergence of nuclear weapons made the consequences of direct conflicts between major powers too terrifying, and some kind of peace under nuclear weapons was reached, but the reason is after all There are more than one, but there are several main reasons, and almost all of these points are in line with Gao Pragmatism's thoughts at this time.

First, proxy wars are relatively cheap, with low costs and high efficiency at the same time.

Proxy wars, according to later theories, appear to be a cheap and virtually cost-free way of waging wars, with "proxy" making it possible to intervene at minimal cost.

For example, Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th president of Midi, once praised proxy wars in a speech as "the cheapest way to achieve national goals" and "the cheapest insurance."This means that compared with direct military intervention, this method can not only reduce fiscal expenditures, but also control political risks.

As a war strategy that can obtain higher returns with lower investment, proxy war has become a preferred tool for major powers to play strategic games and intervene in regional affairs.

It is a bit difficult to persuade the Ming court to intervene in Spain or Europe thousands of miles away, but if it only intervenes with the power of southern Xinjiang, it will be no problem.In fact, the so-called "power of southern Xinjiang" actually contained a lot of power of Ming Dynasty - after all, the trade between Ming Dynasty and Spain was basically under the control of high pragmatism.

Second, in proxy wars, military expenditures and personnel losses are small.The cost of direct military confrontation between countries or direct military intervention in other countries' or internal conflicts is often very high, so it is naturally a wise choice to adopt a proxy war strategy.

Philip Bobbitt, a famous American political scientist and jurist, once said: "In the future, local armed forces will increasingly become agents of global and regional powers instigating armed conflicts. Army, an efficient alternative to paying large military expenditures. For the United States, launching a proxy war can not only save money, but also avoid sacrificing rice soldiers, including Army service personnel.”

Similarly, Gao Pragmatically supports Spain without losing a single soldier of his own, as long as he further strengthens trade with the Spaniards, commonly known as blood transfusion.

The reason why militaristic Spain could no longer fight was because of too many financial bankruptcies, and in the end it was really unable to afford military expenditures to continue the war.

There is another point that is very critical, that is, the money that Spain originally used to support the war was really just currency, not productivity.To be precise, its military expenditure came almost entirely from the enormous amount of gold and silver in the Americas.

The Spanish Empire used these precious metals to purchase almost all the materials needed for combat in the entire European market, but it failed to cultivate its own advantageous industries other than shipbuilding. Therefore, once the supply in the Americas was insufficient, Spain would immediately go bankrupt.

But is there not enough gold and silver in America?In fact, no, not only is there no shortage of gold and silver in America now, but it will still be able to provide them smoothly for many years to come.So why is Spain running out of money?Because of inflation.

Spain imported too much gold and silver to Europe!In the absence of explosive development of European productivity, the result of the rapid increase of these gold and silver is that the purchasing power of equivalent gold and silver is continuously diluted, and eventually depreciated sharply.

This is the so-called "price revolution" in Europe in history.

Similarly, this is another important reason why Gao Pragmatism took aim at Spain—it doesn’t matter if there is too much gold and silver in Europe, your trouble is inflation, and my Ming’s trouble has always been deflation!You think there is too much gold and silver on the market, and I, Daming, think that there is too little gold and silver on the market. Is this a coincidence?This is a match made in heaven!
Moreover, there are deeper industrial development issues here.

Let’s start with Spain. In the early part of this century, although Spain’s domestic social economy once showed a prosperous situation, and capitalist relations in industry and commerce also grew, the feudal structure was still quite tenacious.Facing the soaring price of agricultural products, the feudal nobles just blindly strengthened feudal exploitation, and the guilds in the cities continued to control the handicraft production.

This made it difficult to develop domestic industrial and agricultural production in Spain, and the food produced was not enough to feed its residents. The wool produced was still exported to the Netherlands and Italy in large quantities, and the prices of industrial and agricultural products were even higher than those of the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands. The product lost its competitiveness in the market.

In addition, the Spanish Habsburg dynasty pursued a policy of dominating Europe, using huge wealth for military and political activities; the Spanish nobles spent a lot of money in pursuit of a luxurious life, which caused the gold and silver brought back from the American colonies to be transferred to other countries soon. The situation in the hands of the country's suppliers and creditors.

Therefore, the colonial activities carried out by Spain were to a large extent just making wedding clothes for others.The colonial market it opened up was quickly occupied by commodities from Britain, France and other countries; the wealth it plundered from the colonies was not absorbed by its own domestic industry, agriculture and commerce, but was transformed into capital after flowing into Britain, France and other countries.

According to the statistics of later generations of scholars, during the period of about 100 years, the total value of gold and silver shipped back from Spain from the Americas was about 40 billion pesetas, of which only 2 million pesetas were left in the country at most, accounting for only 5.00%.

In other words, Spain has launched so many wars, in essence, it has lost itself and fattened other suppliers of industrial products.

That being the case, instead of fattening them, why not fatten Daming and Nanjiang?

The current industrial level of those European countries is not very good. Which one can they produce? My Ming Dynasty or southern Xinjiang can't?Even excluding the freight, I can still make a steady profit by producing these things in the seaport city.

Although it must be cheaper and earn less than in Europe, but considering the inflation on the one hand and deflation on the other, as long as Spanish gold and silver can be used to cultivate stronger productivity and at the same time activate the economic vitality in the East Asian circle of influence, It doesn't matter if you earn a little less in front of you!

Under the grand goal of keeping things side by side, earning more and earning less is not so important, and the ups and downs are the last word.

"Zhi Ting, after you return to southern Xinjiang this time, help me deliver a personal letter to the Governor of Goa, saying that I wrote it to the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Spain, Francisco de Sandoval-Roja, Duke of Lerma. St, ask the Governor of Goa to see to it that this letter reaches the duke himself."

Huang Zhiting was taken aback for a moment: "Is this person important?"

"Of course." Gao Wushi said with a smile: "His position in Philip III's government...is as important as mine in Daming. At the same time, Philip III will not doubt him yet."
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PS: I didn’t update it yesterday, I was really stunned by the Argentine team, and I went to sleep directly after watching it.

(End of this chapter)