prosperous age

“There are mines.”

Li Rubai's eyes lit up as he said, "Brother has said so much, and he is not a fool, so he will naturally think of it."

"Ha ha."

Li Rusong laughed and nodded, and continued: "This time when you go out, check where gemstones are produced nearby and take control of those mines as soon as possible.

You have to know that all the mines in the Ming Dynasty belonged to the imperial court. Mining was allowed only because of need, and most of the output was used by the imperial court itself.

No one has ever heard of a gem mine.

As long as we can seize Burma's gem mines and those mines that produce gold and silver first, we will have a steady stream of wealth coming in."

"Yes, yes, yes, it's really the eldest brother who has foresight. I'll take my men out and occupy the mine right now.

Who knows how many people are eyeing these mines. There are many businessmen from Yunnan who come here several times a year. I'm afraid they have been eyeing these mines for a long time."

Li Rubai was getting a little anxious at this moment. The local residents in Yunnan had probably been jealous of Myanmar's resources for a long time, but because Myanmar had its own dynasty, they could not get their hands on it.

In the future, this place will become the land of the Ming Dynasty, and those people will definitely try to get help from Prince Mu’s Mansion and come here to mine.

Anyone who wants to have the best food for himself can definitely go around Yunnan’s local tyrant, the Mu family.

Even though the Li family has become the local emperor of Myanmar, they cannot cause too much trouble with the Mu Palace.

The only way is to get these mines before the Mu family.

This is the truth: those who strike first gain the strength, and those who strike last suffer.

Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the overall policy on mining has been to ban mining, because in Zhu Yuanzhang's view, the profits from mining are much higher than those from farming.

If private mines were to be operated, everyone would rush to mine for profit. Who would be able to farm peacefully?

Moreover, mining ore often damages farmland, which goes against his basic philosophy.

The Ming Dynasty was, after all, an agricultural-based country.

At least, that's what Zhu Yuanzhang thought, so his policies on industry and commerce, like the mining ban policy, tended to be conservative.

Except for the brief period of support during the founding of the country due to the need for commodity circulation, after that, large-scale restrictions were imposed on the grounds of household registration.

It's just a restriction, not a complete ban.

Because the imperial court also needed merchants to communicate with the market and transport goods to meet the basic needs of the people.

When it comes to mining, the imperial court is generally the dominant force. They mine whatever the imperial court needs, and profit is not the main purpose.

Most of the mining done by the private sector is done on iron ore and used to produce agricultural tools, which has many restrictions.

Of course, although the imperial court prohibited private mining by the public, faced with the violence in the mines, local governments often chose to disobey the orders and secretly mine in private.

The subsequent Ming Dynasty courts also mostly supported Zhu Yuanzhang's ideas, especially the fear that the gathering of miners would cause trouble.

The biggest difference between the mining industry during the Ming Dynasty and today's mining industry is that the safety level was very low and the risk of mining accidents was much higher than it is today, so people engaged in mining at that time were generally regarded as desperate criminals who were willing to risk their lives.

For example, when chaos broke out in Liaodong in the late Ming Dynasty, the governor Xiong Tingbi was very opposed to recruiting miners.

He believed that the miners were extremely vicious and profit-driven, difficult to tame and manage as an army, and prone to causing trouble.

This is completely contrary to Qi Jiguang's philosophy.

Qi Jiguang valued the miners' fierce temperament and their mutual coordination, which enabled the military formations he designed to operate in coordination with each other and cause maximum lethality.

It can be said that everyone has their own opinion on this.

Qi Jiguang knew that the miners were fierce, but they were all after money, so he tempted them with benefits.

Xiong Tingbi, on the other hand, only saw that the miners were unruly and difficult to tame, so he completely rejected them.

In his eyes, such people would inevitably gather together to resist the court's management and bans in order to protect their interests, and become a destabilizing factor in society.

In history, from the beginning to the end of the Ming Dynasty, miners' unrest continued despite repeated bans. For example, the Ye Zongliu and Deng Maoqi uprisings that broke out during the Zhengtong period were miners' unrest caused by the court's opening of mines to solve financial problems.

It was reopened during the Chenghua and Jiajing dynasties to solve financial difficulties, but was banned again due to harassment by miners.

Therefore, during the Wanli Dynasty, officials were still generally opposed to mining. After all, in their eyes, mining was a place that could easily cause incidents, and such incidents could be avoided if mining was banned.

With this kind of thinking, it is not difficult to understand why they oppose mining.

As for the private mining in some places below, in fact, most of them have little to do with the ministers in the court, and are mostly done by the people below.

Of course, there is another sensitive issue when they ban mining, and that is the mining tax, which is also an industrial and commercial tax of the Ming Dynasty.

Whether it was the Chenghua Dynasty or the Jiajing Dynasty, or even the Wanli Dynasty which later caused a huge disturbance, the court officials, especially those in the south, were most sensitive about the fact that they were worried that the court and the emperor would target the industrial and commercial sectors because of the mining tax and levy industrial and commercial taxes.

The scholars in the north were slightly better off, but the gentry in the south were fond of doing business. If the court collected taxes strictly, it would seriously damage their interests.

Anyway, this was the situation in the Ming Dynasty at that time. Both the imperial court and the people mined some mines, but the total amount was limited and could only meet their own needs. There was no large-scale exploitation of various natural resources.

Wei Guangde certainly knew that industrial development was inseparable from mining, but what he did more was to communicate business and make money through trade.

At present, the domestic mineral resources can still maintain a balance between supply and demand, so he has never thought about opening a mine.

After all, he was well aware of the environmental pollution caused by mining in the future and the safety of mines, so he was not very enthusiastic about mining.

He had heard of the legend about the coal boss, but that was just a product of a specific period.

In the following years, not many people paid attention to this group, as most of them gradually disappeared for various reasons.

This time, it was Feng Bao's suggestion to pay a little attention to Myanmar.

In his usual way of thinking, they recruit people from abroad to mine, and as for pollution and safety, what does it have to do with him.

Li Rusong knew the court's policy on mines, which was to create a fait accompli.

The mines have always existed, and even if the Ming Dynasty manages this area, it cannot be stopped or banned at will.

Therefore, he was confident that these mines in Myanmar could continue to be mined and earn a steady stream of wealth for their Li family.

The Li family is here, and with the support of the capital, they are not afraid of the Mu family in Yunnan at all.

At worst, they can share some of the profits with people in Beijing. The Li family will still make a profit anyway.

"Bring more servants with you. When the time comes, let the servants lead people to guard the mine. No matter who it is, you don't have to worry about it."

Li Rusong continued to give instructions to his brothers.

If the Li family wants to survive in the Ming Dynasty in the future, the tributes from the capital will have to increase, and they can use the output of these mines to pay for it.

Li Rusong was not afraid of death in battle, but he was quite smart, otherwise he would not have been able to lead the Ming army to so many victories, especially the subsequent war against Japan in Korea.

In that war, the Ming army did not have an advantage in terms of manpower, but their powerful firearms and elite cavalry that Japan did not have allowed the Ming army to use more tactics against the Japanese.

"Brother, I'll go mobilize the troops right away." Now that he had a way to make money, Li Rubai couldn't wait any longer and wanted to set off immediately.

He is not a fool. Given the current situation in Myanmar, if he does not take control of these mines as soon as possible, not to mention the losses caused by others' illegal mining, there will always be some inventory in the mines.

It is hard to say whether those in charge will become greedy and embezzle money when seeing the chaos in Myanmar.

"Be careful when you go out. The remnants of the defeated Burmese army have not yet surrendered."

Seeing his younger brother eager to try, Li Rusong still reminded him.

Making money is important, but the lives of your brothers are more important.

He didn't want to put his brothers in danger just for some material things.

Of course, the most fundamental reason for sending Li Rubai away was that they did not want to keep him in Toungoo City, thinking about the tribute all day long.

Sooner or later something is going to happen.

Watching Li Rubai leave, Li Rusong counted on his fingers and thought that the list should have reached his father. He wondered if his father would be as jealous as his brother when he saw the things on the list.

6◇9◇Book◇Bar

Come to think of it, I don't think that would be the case. My dad does have some vision. He knows very well which money can be taken and which cannot.

Just as he thought, a few days after the document from the capital was sent out, he received the first list of seized treasures.

More than ten boxes of gems and jade, hundreds of thousands of taels of gold and silver, in addition to a large number of exquisite objects made of gold, silver and brass had to be handed over to the capital.

When Li Chengliang saw the list, he couldn't take his eyes off it.

This wealth is too great.

Even those more than ten boxes of gems and jades are worth at least tens or even hundreds of thousands of taels of silver, and nearly five hundred thousand taels of gold and silver. How much money that would be.

As an official who has risen to the rank of general, he handles a lot of silver every year, but not this much.

"Boom."

Li Chengliang's hand slammed hard on the table, making a dull sound.

There were so many treasures left in the city of Toungoo, it was hard to believe how much wealth the navy took away from the city.

Judging from the account books of the Toungoo Dynasty of Burma that were sent together, the treasury did not harvest much, and there were not many gold and silver reserves. Burma mainly collected taxes in kind, and large amounts of grain were piled up in many warehouses in the south.

But he doesn't like that thing. He still thinks white and golden things are cuter.

Li Chengliang also read his son's letter, so he immediately wrote a letter himself, asking his son to send someone to escort the sixteen boxes of treasures and hundreds of thousands of taels of gold and silver to Ava City first, and then transport them back to the country as soon as possible by land.

As for the things in the warehouse, it was too troublesome to transport them by land, so Li Chengliang preferred to take the sea route.

However, it is better to report to the capital and let the decision be made there.

"800,000 kilograms of copper. Wow, how can there be so much Burmese copper?"

Looking at the seemingly worthless things at the end of the list, Li Chengliang saw a huge fortune.

Unfortunately, everything had already been counted by the navy and listed on the cargo manifest, so there was nothing he could do.

Well, the main production area of ​​copper in the Ming Dynasty was Yunnan, and the annual output was no more than 150,000 kilograms. Yu Dayou directly seized 800,000 kilograms of copper in Toungoo City, which was worth nearly 200,000 taels of silver.

This is just a city, although it is the royal city of Myanmar.

Along the way, Li Chengliang also plundered a lot of money from the cities in Myanmar, including gold, silver, and many brass utensils.

The Ming Dynasty was short of copper, so it started official copper mining in Yunnan. That is, the government mined copper in Yunnan to meet the court's demand for copper.

It seems that Myanmar, like Yunnan, is rich in this thing.

Li Chengliang would not set his sights on the treasures on the list, but he was very interested in the mines that could mine them.

If you take one, you can lay golden eggs for a long time.

While Li Chengliang was thinking about this matter, Mu Changzuo was also busy sending his men to seize the large mines in Myanmar that he knew about.

But unlike Li Chengliang, Li Rusong and others, Mu Changzuo's goal was much clearer, and he also had merchants to lead the way.

Myanmar's silver and copper mines are mainly concentrated in the lead-zinc-silver mining belt on the eastern plateau of Shan State in northern Myanmar. The mining belt extends northward to Yunnan Province, China, and southward to Thailand. It is more than 2000 kilometers long and is Myanmar's most important mining belt.

The Burmese jade mines that became famous in later generations are also mainly found in the Pagan area of ​​Kachin State in northern Myanmar.

Myanmar's gold mines are located in central Myanmar. For example, the Sagaing area in the north-central part is Myanmar's main gold mining area.

In addition, Myanmar's gem mines are also mostly found in the Mogok area in central Myanmar and the Mengxiu area in the east.

However, Mu Changzuo knew that the gold mines and gem mines were still under the control of the remaining Burmese troops and he could not reach out to them for the time being, so he was now mainly focusing on the silver mines and jade mines in northern Myanmar.

As for copper mines, although they are also valuable, they are not as valuable as jade after all.

Moreover, the silver standard system was to be adopted after the Ming Dynasty, and this had actually begun to be reflected in official documents.

All localities reported to the government treasury in silver instead of using the unit of "guan", which was very telling.

Therefore, Li Chengliang and Mu Changzuo began to mobilize the main force of the Ming army to continuously attack central Myanmar in order to completely eliminate the remaining Burmese troops. On the other hand, the Left General Li Chengliang and the Duke of Qian Mu Changzuo also began to fight openly and secretly over the Myanmar mines.

Mu Changzuo's advantage lies in his well-informedness, and he is often one step ahead of Li Chengliang.

Li Chengliang had the advantage of greater power. Even if he was a little slower, as long as he forced it, Mu Changzuo would often be in a passive position.

Although Mu Changzuo recruited many people from the Duke of Qian's Mansion to guard the mine, Li Chengliang did not abide by the ethics of war. He directly used military orders and forcibly occupied the mine in the name of rotation of defense.

This trick made Mu Changzuo very uncomfortable.

If they refused, Li Chengliang would send troops to encircle and suppress them in the name of disobeying military orders.

After all, many of the soldiers under Li Chengliang at this moment came from Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi, but they were not the Yunnan soldiers under Mu Changzuo.

They just had that attitude towards the Duke of Qian's Mansion and didn't really take it seriously.

The fight over several mines soon made these military leaders realize that it was the two commanders who were fighting for resources.

In this regard, these military leaders can do nothing but watch with envy, as they are not even qualified to get a share of the pie.

Fortunately, Li Chengliang was very generous to them. He generously gave them a share of the wealth and property he had confiscated and even the minerals he had seized from the mines.

But that's all there is to it. If you want mines, that's impossible.

In just less than ten days, the "good cooperative" relationship between Li Chengliang and Mu Changzuo fell apart.

Li Chengliang only employed generals from other southwestern provinces, and left the Yunnan generals to Mu Changzuo himself since he had no power to command them anyway.

As long as Mu Changzuo doesn't hinder him, Li Chengliang will not care about him. (End of this chapter)