The room goes through the late Ming Dynasty, and the back door leads to North America at the beginni

In the spring of the ninth year of Qianyuan, the exploration fleet made some deals with the Shimazu family in Japan, and after obtaining a lot of information about Dachu through the Wang family, they went to Dachu with the Wang family's fleet.

At that time, the fleet had two choices in terms of identity.

One is to serve as the Da'ei envoy - anyway, there are scholars from the military system such as Wang Shouzhe, Zheng Zunqian, and Li Xiangen in the fleet. As long as Liu Sheng appoints them remotely through telegrams, there is nothing wrong with them serving as diplomatic envoys.

The other is as an overseas caravan.

The fleet not only carried a lot of "specialties" from Dachu, but also purchased a batch of specialties from Japan. If they were transported to Dachu and resold, they would definitely make a lot of money.

There is no problem in temporarily serving as an overseas merchant ship.

However, Liu Sheng thought over and over again and decided not to attract the attention of the Chu court for the time being, so he asked the fleet to go to Da Chu in the name of an overseas caravan and continue to collect various intelligence about Da Chu.

According to Wang Yuanyang, Da Chu inherited some experience from the Song Dynasty and was relatively conservative in terms of maritime trade.

Mainly, it has established four major port cities: Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Hangzhou, and Tianjin, and established municipal shipping departments in the port cities to collect customs duties.

If people in Dachu want to become maritime merchants, they must report to the Municipal Shipping Department, obtain permission and receive maritime merchant qualifications before they can go to sea to do business.

In addition, Dawei also has certain restrictions on the types of goods operated by various registered maritime merchants in the country.

For example, weapons such as muskets and artillery are not allowed to be sold overseas, and scarce domestic resources such as copper are not allowed to be sold overseas.

For foreign maritime merchants, there are not so many requirements.

Because foreign merchants often come from distant places overseas and do not understand the situation in Dachu, they naturally sell whatever they bring.

However, foreign maritime vessels are allowed to berth in specific areas of the port, and goods can only be sold in specific areas of the port.

Regardless of whether they are domestic maritime merchants or overseas maritime merchants, they will be charged higher commercial taxes by the Dachu Shipping Department.

As far as the feudal dynasty is concerned, Da Chu's maritime trade system is already quite good, even surpassing that of the Qing Dynasty.

However, no matter how good the system is, it must be implemented by people. When there are problems with government administration, many policies will be eroded by corrupt officials, leaving loopholes, and even distorted into policies that harm the people and the country.

For example, Dachu does not allow the trafficking of muskets and artillery overseas, but Japan already has artillery.

In his conversation with Wang Yuanyang, Wang Shouzhe made some insinuations and learned that the generals of the Dachu navy now only know how to make money, and most of them are just fake.

Therefore, the sea ban in Dachu is now relaxed. Not only is smuggling rampant, but there are also countless groups of pirates, large and small, active in the surrounding area.

As early as decades ago, muskets, artillery and other weapons that originally belonged to the Dachu army had spread among domestic bandits and pirates, and were naturally sold to neighboring countries such as Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Seeking huge profits.

As for foreign maritime traders, after arriving in the four major port cities of Dachu, they only need to find a way to bribe the relevant officials of the Municipal Shipping Department to do business outside the specific area.

If you are really traveling in Dachu, you don't even need to bribe officials. You can just find an opportunity to sneak in after landing.

Westerners, Arabs, and people from Nanyang island countries, because of their different looks, are easily noticed by local officials in the mainland of Dachu, and may even be arrested and questioned.

However, the people in Da'ei's exploration fleet look no different from Da Chu people. Once they land ashore, they can be as free as a fish entering the sea. Although Da Chu people need household registration and identity documents to travel in the country, these things are too easy to forge. Local governments can't tell the authenticity at all, and some places don't even require an "ID card" to enter or leave the city or stay overnight.

Therefore, the exploration fleet arrived in Hangzhou with Wang's fleet as a foreign sea trade caravan, and through Wang's connections, it easily obtained the qualification to berth and do business in Hangzhou port.

Of course, in order to get the Wang family to help, the exploration fleet also gave benefits - many glassware and mirrors carried by the fleet were directly traded to the Wang family.

Wang can make a lot of money if he sells it.

Therefore, in order to win over this Da'ei caravan that had traveled thousands of miles, the Wang family spared no effort in building relationships for the exploration fleet.

While the fleet was doing business at the port of Hangzhou, it also sent accompanying Xunfeng Guards, who were divided into groups and entered the interior of Dachu to further collect various intelligence. For more than a year, the exploration fleet has sent telegrams to Nanjing at least once a month, and each telegram contains a lot of content.

Through this information, Liu Sheng finally had a better and deeper understanding of Da Chu.

Indeed, as Wang Yuanyang said, in the nearly two hundred years since the founding of the Chu State, the official system had become quite corrupt.

Although there are not as many refugees in the country as there were in the late Ming Dynasty, there are still many thieves who have taken over the mountains and become kings, blocking roads and robbing.

Local officials are also greedy and ignorant. Most of them only know how to make money. Honest officials and officials who work seriously are in the minority.

Therefore, although Da Chu has not reached the point where the people are in dire straits, the people's life is definitely not easy, and it is far worse than what it is now in Da Wei.

In addition, Dachu did not have overseas high-yielding crops such as corn, sweet potatoes, and potatoes. The farming technology of traditional crops such as rice and wheat was only slightly better than that of the Song Dynasty, and slightly worse than that of the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, according to estimates by Xunfengwei spies, the current total population of Dachu should be only more than 1.5 million, with a high probability of not exceeding million.

As for Da Chu's current military system, it is somewhat similar to that of the late Ming Dynasty, with recruitment as the main focus and guard troops as the supplement.

It can be said that the appearance of Wei Suozhi almost convinced Liu Sheng that Xiong Mingyuan probably traveled through time in the late Ming Dynasty.

When the Ming Dynasty was founded, apart from the emperor's personal troops, the rest were almost all garrison troops.

The Da Chu army was divided into three sequences: the Forbidden Army, the Border Army, and the Guard Army from the beginning.

The generals of the Guard Army are responsible for garrisoning domestic areas, own military fields, and belong to the field soldiers.

The border troops were responsible for garrisoning the border areas, and would also follow the orders of the Ministry of War of the Chu Dynasty to deploy troops. They were recruiting troops.

As for the Forbidden Army, it is composed of elites selected by the royal family from the guard army and the border army.

This mature military system initially allowed Chu to conquer Mongolia in the north and attack Dali and Vietnam in the south. The military power shocked all parties.

But it was still the same problem. As time passed, various problems appeared in the Dachu army.

The generals of the border army did not care about the overall situation in order to strive for merit, and deceived the superiors and subordinates in order to seek personal power. It has become commonplace to live on empty wages to support family members, and some are even brave enough to kill good people and take credit for their merits.

Of course, Da Chu has not yet been corrupted to the extent that it was in the late Ming Dynasty, so a few generals who killed good people and took credit were punished by the Da Chu court after the incident.

The guard troops in the mainland were so well-armed that the soldiers were basically reduced to mere farmers, or even tenant farmers of the generals. It is said that in order to prevent this phenomenon, Xiong Mingyuan, Taizu of Chu, established an extremely strict guard inspection system.

Ran and egg.

The Chu Guard system was still corrupted, but I didn’t expect the Ming Guard system to be corrupted so quickly and completely.

Nowadays, the generals of the local guards are all focused on making money or living a landlord-like life.

Some even collude with local bandits to support themselves.

In short, Da Chu is now full of shortcomings in both military and political affairs.

After Liu Sheng learned about these situations, he felt that Da Chu was like a mirror, allowing him to see how an empire's various good systems eventually deteriorated as time passed.

Therefore, if you want to govern the country well, it is necessary to rectify the administration of officials from time to time...
Upon hearing this, Yu Chenglong took out a telegram and sent it to Liu Sheng's case, saying: "Reporting to your Majesty, this is the telegram that was just sent an hour ago, about the Great Mongolia."

"Oh?" Liu Sheng's eyes lit up after hearing this, "It seems that the Xunfeng Guards of the Exploration Fleet are very capable. Have they detected the information about the Great Mongolia?"

As he spoke, Liu Sheng picked up the telegram and read it. (End of chapter)