Haisheng Mingdi

Chapter 768

Wang Sangyu leaned against the stove to read a book, and there was still a kettle on the stove to boil water.

When Zhu Yihai opened the curtain and came in, she smiled in surprise, "Where has the master of Zhuangzi gone, even the doorkeeper is gone, and no one has informed me so that I can go to the door to meet him. "

"It's windy and snowy today, but Zhuangshang's disciples are very dedicated to guarding. I told them not to report." He straightly took off his sable fur robe, hat and gloves, and sat down by the stove.

"What book do you read?"

Wang Sangyu flipped the cover of the book, "Fengtian Publishing Co., Ltd.'s latest set of "Pictures of Haiguo" is a very interesting book. You can know the world without going out."

Of course Zhu Yihai knew about this book, and it was he who asked Donggong to take the lead, and the crown prince compiled the book under his name. In order to enlighten the people and increase the crown prince's reputation, Zhu Yihai spent a large sum of money, selected many officials and literati, and started the East Palace to compile the book.

However, unlike Zhu Di’s compilation of the Yongle Canon, Donggong’s book compilation plan includes Shaotian Zhengyin, Qianmingshu, Shaotian Dictionary, Shaotian Almanac, etc., as well as astronomy and geography books such as Haiguo Illustrated Wait.

This set of sea country charts has a total of [-] volumes and is planned to have a million characters. There are also a large number of maps, illustrations, and even prefaces written by the emperor and the prince. A brief introduction to the history of each country.

It not only explains the customs, but also adds a lot of Western skills, etc., and has a good introduction to their science and technology, culture and art.

The idea of ​​the whole set of books is still relatively pertinent to introduce countries, instead of simply calling them Siyi, but to look at the world with an open attitude and encourage the people of Ming Dynasty to embrace the world.

"I used to hear that Zheng He made seven voyages to the West, but I didn't know much about it. After reading this set of books, with maps, routes and text, I realized that he was so amazing. More than 200 years ago, my Ming Dynasty was able to sail to the West. Even in the Yuan Dynasty, there were officials and envoys who went to Africa by boat.

Portugal and Spain were originally so small, but they were able to discover the new world and the new continent, where they dug up countless gold and silver, and they were able to sail to the east and colonize here, which is really amazing. "

"Well, don't underestimate it. It's not okay to be arrogant blindly, and it's also not okay to be complacent. As the times move forward, we must also adapt to development. Closed doors, sooner or later we will be abandoned and backward."

Wang Sangyu got up and poured a cup of tea for his lover.

A cup of black tea, a cup of warm black tea in winter is really heart-warming.

"I brought you a few pieces of cloth, all of which were tributes from the British envoys."

The British envoy was actually a representative of the British business group, the most important of which was the representative of the East India Company. Although the British East India Company was not as famous as the Dutch East India Company, its development in Nanyang was frustrated a few years ago, and it returned to India for development, but it developed instead. Get up fast.

At the beginning, the British actually wanted to gain a foothold in the Far East. Not only did they want to establish a long-term business house in Japan, they also wanted to occupy a piece of land in Daming, and they also wanted to have a foot in the spice production and trade in Nanyang. Unfortunately, they did not It went well, and then I simply concentrated on developing in India, but it became a rumor.

They are also the only one over there. With the strengthening of Ming's foreign trade, especially Zhu Yihai's intention to trade and cooperate with other countries instead of letting the Netherlands be the only one, so the UK was actively attracted by Daming, and it hit it off.

Now the British East India Company only takes a huge profit of 350 million pounds every year from the export of tea from Ming Dynasty.

The weakening of Portugal has made the British fill their seats. They occupy an important position in the Indian Ocean. Even the Dutch, who have a dominant position in the South China Sea, cannot suppress them. Spain has also weakened and only guards the Luzon Islands in the South China Sea. , their Pacific America route, because of the domestic legal control, the trade volume of the route has been greatly reduced.

"This is the red flower gorilla felt on the white ground, do you like it?"

Orangutan felt, also known as woolen wool, is a cashmere and woolen textile. This is also the main product of imported Western goods in recent years. Ming people commonly call it wool, and it is mainly used for winter clothing.Commonly imported woolen fabrics include doro, orangutan felt, feather satin, feather yarn, serge satin, and velvet.

The orangutan felt that Zhu Yihai gave to Mrs. Wang is actually red doro, which is of better quality.Zhu Yihai also brought some feather quilting today. Feather quilting is also called feather yarn, but it is not made of feathers. It was first made of camel hair, and later it was mainly made of goat hair and silk, or goat hair and cotton.

These kinds of woolen fabrics are made of wool, cashmere, silk or cotton, some are plain, and some have patterns, so there are many categories. Among the commodities exported by the UK to Ming Dynasty, cotton is the most important. The first major product is cotton yarn and cotton cloth, and then this woolen fabric.

In the past, Britain also exported clocks, glasses, telescopes, glass mirrors, glass, etc. to Daming, but now these products have their own factories under the supervision of the Royal Shaofu, and the output, quality and price are far better than those of Westerners such as Britain. Instead started exporting to them.

"This stuff is pretty good. It's warm and doesn't wrinkle. It's especially good against rain and snow. I bought some from my village a few years ago. It's not cheap. Orangutan felt costs one silver dollar per foot. This feather forging It also costs five qian per foot, a set of orangutan felt clothes costs tens of taels of silver, and feather satin covers also cost sixteen or seven taels of silver.”

"Nowadays, a piece of ordinary cotton cloth used by ordinary people to make clothes in the market is only three coins and silver. This set of feather and satin materials is enough for a family's annual expenses."

Zhu Yihai smiled and said, "The orangutan felt and feather satin I gave you are still top grade, and the price has to be doubled."

"How could Your Majesty let this British man earn money from our Daming, and not allow the Shaofu Supervisor to study and set up some woolen workshops?" She said with a smile.

"This is natural. The Shaofu Supervisor has already started a woolen textile project. Although we have few sheep in the Central Plains, there are many sheep in the Northwest, Yandai, and Saishang. We are not short of goat wool. Why bother?" Imported a large amount from abroad every year,

But this British guy refuses to sell our woolen weaving machines, and now he mainly relies on stealing imitations. He quietly started a Hanzhong Weaving Bureau in Hanzhong last year, but at the beginning, the progress was not smooth. The raw wool imported is coarse and fine, and the current machine is suitable for fine and soft wool, and people have to be hired to sort out the fine wool from the coarse wool collected. Forty people can only sort two catties a day, and the harvest is one hundred. Only ten catties of wool can be woven into fine wool, and the rest can only be woven into coarse woolen blankets, which is quite expensive.

In addition, the place where the factory is selected has insufficient water and high salt content, which affects the quality of bleaching and dyeing. The factory is newly built, and there are not enough craftsmen and workers. In short, there are still many problems.

Up to now, only eight horses can be produced a day, and the workshop reports that the annual output does not exceed [-] horses, and the cost is higher than imported ones, and the quality is worse. "

Wang Sangyu didn't think it was strange to hear that, when the emperor had every opportunity to control the military and state affairs, he always took some time to pay attention to some other things that others seemed to be a little bit undue.

From minting coins to mining, from opening banks to issuing vouchers, from building weaving bureaus to shipyards, from artillery factories to boiler factories, from watch factories to woolen weaving factories.

"Your Majesty won't just admit defeat like this?"

"That's impossible. If there are not enough craftsmen, they will dig with high salaries. If the machines are outdated, they will find a way to buy or steal new and better machines. If the location of the factory is not good, they will change places. The second wool weaving bureau has been built in Zhangjiakou, Xuanhua. As long as you are willing to invest in the early stage, are you afraid that you will not get anything in the later stage? We have such a big market in Daming, so many pastures and nomadic tribes in the surrounding southwest, northwest, and north, and there are so many wools. There is no shortage of raw materials and no shortage of markets. Give up the big market to the British, and import a lot from them every year?"

At the very least, after Daming has a wool weaving industry, even if it imports in the future, the pricing power is still in Daming's hands.

"Your Majesty doesn't want to give foreigners a chance to make money. Aren't you afraid that foreigners will be angry?"

"What are you afraid of? For business, you have to compete. This business is not only an exchange of needs, but also a competition for technology. When there is no technological advantage, it can only be sheared and reduced to a raw material supplier. If our wool Let’s get up, foreigners will not be able to sell it so expensively, and they will not even be able to compare with our cost in the future, so he can only sell wool and cashmere to us.”

"In fact, foreigners are also like this. Our silk used to be soft gold in the eyes of Europeans, but in the Tang Dynasty, the Persians had already started to raise silkworms and weave silk. A few years ago, because of the Ming silk shipped to America by Luzon Good quality and low price, the king of Spain did not order to prohibit Luzon from transporting Daming silk to America, limit the number of merchant ships coming to Luzon, and limit the silver transported from America to Luzon. They only let Luzon transport Daming raw silk to America, not silk. Weaving products, isn't it because they are afraid of impacting their domestic silk industry in Spain and taking away their American market?
And those British, who earn millions of pounds a year from this tea trade, and levy a huge tea tax, are still not satisfied. They have started to secretly steal tea trees from my Daming, and began to secretly try planting them in India. For tea, I want to grow my own tea in the future and no longer buy tea from us. "

This is the inevitability of capital, which naturally seeks profit.

Daming currently exports a huge amount of tea, and the price is still high. It has the right to set prices, black tea is 26 taels per load, and green tea is 24 taels per load.

Now the Ming Dynasty has formed several major tea export centers. Green tea from Huizhou is concentrated in Tunxi, which is transported from Xin'an River to Shanghai via Hangzhou, and Keemun black tea is also transported to Shanghai via Tunxi or Jiujiang.

Zhedong Pingshui tea is shipped from Shaoxing to Shanghai via Hangzhou.

Wuyishan tea is shipped to Fuzhou port for export.

And Wuhan also became an important tea port, and tea bricks transported and sold in Mongolia, Qinghai, and the Western Regions were also exported from Hankou.

Last year alone, Shanghai Port exported more than 60 tons of tea, Fuzhou exported more than 60 tons of tea, Hankou exported more than 20 tons of tea, and Guangzhou and other ports exported more than [-] tons of tea sporadically.

The Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company have almost monopolized these foreign trade teas of the Ming Dynasty. Britain also takes the lead by virtue of its advantages in the Indian Ocean, making a profit of more than 300 million pounds a year. It has increased sharply, reaching an astonishing amount of more than 20 tons last year.

Last year, the export value of exported tea reached an astonishing 4000 million taels, and the tea tax collected more than 400 million. Exported tea has been equal to domestic tea.

Regardless of the small pile of tea, the entire southern province is now a key industry, and countless people benefit from it. The tea growers, the tea producers, the tea collectors, and the tea sellers, and the common people help to pick tea and take care of the tea mountains can also increase their income. From the local government to the central government, a large amount of tax revenue has been obtained.

From the emperors and aristocrats to the peddlers, tea is popular. From expensive famous tea, to ordinary ration tea, brick tea favored by nomads, to exported black tea and green tea, the tea industry has basically taken shape.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was basically no tea tax, but now there are millions of tea taxes a year.

The British want to grow tea in India, the Dutch also want to grow tea in Nanyang, the Spaniards also want to grow tea in Luzon, and even the Japanese and Koreans want to grow high-grade tea by themselves in order to realize the freedom of tea, but until now So far, even if they planted tea trees and were able to produce tea, they did not believe that they were far inferior to Daming in terms of scale or quality, and could not pose a threat to Daming's tea at all. Daming firmly controlled the trading volume and pricing power of tea.

"The tax revenue from tobacco, alcohol, salt and tea mines is now enough to cover Ming's annual military expenditure, and even with the recovery of customs, there is a surplus."

Even Wang Sangyu, who doesn't know much about national finance, can hear how amazing it is from these words. In the past, the Chongzhen Dynasty imposed various levies, and three levies were levied. silver.

But even if only part of the three rates were levied, the world would still be forced to rebel.

But now the emperor can support the world's soldiers and horses with only a few miscellaneous items that he could not receive in the Chongzhen Dynasty, and there is still a surplus.

She is very clear that Daming's army is treated well now, and some officials even criticize it as redundant troops. She has led the rebel army before and knows the difficulty of raising troops.

"It's ridiculous that there are still people who always sneer at His Majesty for being idle and greedy for money, but they don't know what His Majesty is capable of. If they don't apportion a penny to the people, the five special taxes on salt, tea, tobacco, alcohol and mines will cover military expenditures. It is really rare to be able to give generous pay and preferential treatment to soldiers.”

Zhu Yihai doesn't think it's an exaggeration. Thinking about later generations, a Chinese tobacco pays more than 1 trillion yuan in taxes a year, which is [-] billion more than the country's military expenditure.Therefore, if the items of salt, tea, tobacco, alcohol and mines are developed well, they will definitely far exceed the agricultural tax.

"After the prince's wedding, I will go on a west tour, you can go with me." Zhu Yihai said.

Wang Sangyu looked at the emperor, "Your Majesty is going west, shouldn't you bring those Mongolian women with you?"

"Anu and the others are going too, I want you to go too."

"Since Your Majesty doesn't dislike it, I'll go west and have a look." Wang Sangyu agreed.

"Your Majesty is really relieved to let the prince stay to supervise the country?"

"With the support of the officials, there is nothing to worry about."

Wang Sangyu asked again, "Your Majesty will only go as far as Dunhuang this time, right?"

"Ah."

"It won't be all the way to the city of Yarkand, or even to the Moscow of Tsarist Russia?"

"That's too far away."

"Ha ha!"

(End of this chapter)