At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 391: The Han Dynasty’s Complex Financial Situation and the Enlightenment of Luzon

After Xu Fan formulated the strategy that industry is also the foundation of the country, the Han Dynasty entered a period of rapid development. Equal distribution of land made the people wealthy. New blast furnaces, spinning wheels, and textile machines ensured that the world had sufficient goods. The development of the ocean brought millions of gold of wealth to the Han Dynasty every year. On average, every household in the Han Dynasty gained one thousand coins of wealth. The wealth of the entire world was increasing rapidly.

As commodities became more and more prosperous, the Han Dynasty also encountered a problem that feudal countries often encountered, that is, the currency could not keep up with economic development.

In this case, dynasties before the Tang Dynasty used cloth as the equivalent, the Song Dynasty used iron coins called Jiaozi, and the Ming Dynasty used Baochao. In the later period, all the silver in the world flowed to the Ming Dynasty, so silver became the most important currency in the Ming Dynasty.

The Han Dynasty developed at an extremely fast speed, far exceeding the speed of the feudal era and almost comparable to later generations.

The technology level of the Han Dynasty was naturally not as good as that of later generations. However, the per capita resources were abundant, the technology was world-leading, and it occupied the upstream of the industrial chain. The handicraft workshops of the Han Dynasty generally made more than 30% profit, and there were many high-tech industries with doubled profits. Compared with the profit margin of 1% or 3% in the manufacturing industry of later generations, the workshop owners of the Han Dynasty undoubtedly lived in a golden age. As long as they were not particularly incompetent, they could make money by opening a workshop.

The rapid increase in goods made it difficult for the Han Dynasty's dual currency of gold as the upper currency and copper as the lower currency to support the country's economic development. Fortunately, Xu Fan invented paper money in time, which accelerated the circulation of goods and maintained the development of the Han Dynasty's economy.

However, the economy of the Han Dynasty could develop rapidly, but people's concepts were difficult to change quickly. Because they needed to sell goods, the merchant class of the Han Dynasty quickly embraced paper money, a currency that brought them convenience.

But ordinary people in the Han Dynasty did not recognize paper money very much. They would spend the paper money immediately or use it to pay taxes. They trusted copper coins more. Therefore, in the low-level transactions in the Han Dynasty, the use of paper money was very rare.

As a result, the nobles of the Han Dynasty liked to use gold, the merchant class of the Han Dynasty liked to use paper money, and the ordinary people of the Han Dynasty liked to use copper coins for transactions. Three classes and three currencies circulated in the Han Dynasty.

In the past two years, the people of the Han Dynasty have become increasingly wealthy. Xu Fanjured an all-out war against Qi. Although the Mobei War brought tremendous pressure to the Han court, it also brought 200 million gold worth of wealth to the people of the Han Dynasty. All of this wealth circulated to the lowest level of the Han Dynasty.

After the two wars, the Han Dynasty's economy developed rapidly, and the people with money began to improve their living conditions. Like farmers in later generations, they saved money to build new houses for themselves. Now, not only in Guanzhong, but also in the wealthy areas of Central Plains, Hebei, and Jianghuai, farmers have begun to build two-story brick and stone houses.

Therefore, the current situation in the Han Dynasty is not only that the middle and upper classes are wealthy, but the lower-class people have also accumulated some wealth. This has resulted in the original copper coins in the world not only being insufficient for the circulation of merchants' goods, but even the circulation of small-denomination coins among the lower-class people is a bit insufficient.

The abundance of goods and the lack of money naturally led to deflation in the Han Dynasty. Ordinary feudal monarchs would not care about such things, but Xu Fan understood that deflation would cause great harm to the handicraft industry. However, paper money was not recognized by the lower-class people of the Han Dynasty at this time. Therefore, the large copper coins found by Chen Sheng and others solved the urgent needs of the Han Dynasty court. The strategic significance of Luzon to the Han Dynasty was elevated to the same level as the Spice Islands.

After the new immigrants rested for ten days, Yu Ran and his group of craftsmen boarded a horse-drawn carriage and headed for the copper smelting industrial area in Luzon.

The village chief who was protecting these craftsmen said, "There are savages everywhere here. It's best not to act alone. Don't leave the residential area after you go to the mine, otherwise you may lose your life."

Yu Ran was surprised and asked, "How come there are still wild people?"

The other craftsmen also had looks of panic on their faces. They lived in the peaceful and comfortable heartland of the Han Dynasty, and suddenly heard that there were dangerous savages around them, which made them scared.

The captain said calmly, "This is their territory, so how could there be no savages here? However, their strength is very weak. As long as you stay calm, a dagger can kill them. So you'd better practice martial arts more in Luzon, and it's best to keep weapons with you when you go out. Although we will go to rescue you, if you don't have the ability to protect yourself and are eaten by the savages, we can only bring back your corpses."

"The savages here eat people!" This is even more frightening.

"What's the use of being afraid? This is your future life. You'd better face it sooner rather than later. Otherwise, you will really die in this wild land."

At present, the development focus of Luzon is in the south and the north.

The north refers to the dock area and residential area. Most of the population of Luzon is here, and Chen Sheng and his men mainly developed this area. They built cities, reclaimed land, built canals, and built stone docks. This place was the only way for Luzon to communicate with the Han Dynasty.

The south refers to the copper mining area where Yu Ran and his team are now going. The copper mining area is 60 miles away from the dock area. In order to facilitate production at the copper smelting plant, Chen Sheng and his team built a blast furnace nearby, as well as a series of other supporting workshops, such as coal, brick kilns, and wood processing plants, so that this wild land has a little trace of civilization. Later, a simple dirt road was used to connect the two areas.

But also because this place is deep inside the interior of Luzon Island, the surrounding savages also hate the Kingdom of Luzon. They think that Chen Sheng and his men are cutting down trees indiscriminately and destroying their hunting grounds, so the savages want to drive Chen Sheng and his men away.

Naturally, Chen Sheng could not give up the copper mining area, so there were many conflicts between the two sides. Of course, the Luzon side won every time.

But this led to extremely bad relations between the two sides. In addition, Chen Sheng and his people were a minority after all, and savages often came to harass the copper mining area.

In order to protect the safety of the mining area, Chen Sheng fortified the mining area, built a wooden wall to surround the copper mining area, and set up defensive outposts in strategic locations. There were also 100 fully armed soldiers in the mining area, enough for them to repel the enemy with one against ten. But Chen Sheng still felt unsafe, so he got 5 artillery pieces and 10 mortars, all of which were now transported to the mining area.

The team marched for half a day, and all they could see was endless tropical rainforest and all kinds of birds and animals they had never seen before. The craftsmen all looked grim, as they found it hard to believe that such a place was inhabited.

"We're here!" the village chief shouted.

It was only at this time that Yu Ran saw the chimney towering into the clouds. This was the blast furnace of the copper smelter, and also the most technologically advanced building in the entire Luzon. It could be said that all the supporting facilities in this industrial zone were built for this blast furnace.

They soon saw a city wall made of wood. They entered the city and found that the facilities inside were not bad, with flat residential areas, workshop areas, warehouse areas, military areas, and wide streets. There were wells, warehouses, arsenals, and they even saw bathhouses, canteens, and taverns. The infrastructure was complete. It was a small but exquisite city.

Soon Yu Ran and his colleagues were assigned to work in the workshop area. He saw a small blast furnace with hot steam coming out of it.

A master craftsman walked up to Yu Ran and the others and asked, "Do you know how to operate a blast furnace?"

Yu Ran frowned and said, "I interned at the Chang'an Iron and Steel Plant for three months, but the master craftsmen I followed were all operating 10-jin blast furnaces. These 1-jin blast furnaces have been eliminated within the Han Dynasty because of their high pollution and low efficiency."

The master carpenter looked at Yu Ran in surprise. It was not easy to get an internship at Chang'an Iron and Steel Plant. He asked, "Which college did you go to?"

"Mozi Academy!"

The master craftsman was even more surprised and said, "The higher-ups are so generous that they actually sent a scholar like you to such a wild place."

Yu Ran had a gloomy look on his face. His father was a minor official in Handan, a mediocre Han official who did not have much talent and only knew how to go with the flow.

Wu Pan was corrupt and accepted bribes in Handan. In order to prevent local Han officials from reporting him, he tried his best to win over local Han officials and to exclude and suppress those Han officials who did not accept his winning. Under such circumstances, he could only follow the crowd and join Wu Pan, accepting bribes of hundreds of thousands of yuan. Finally, the Handan case broke out, his father was hanged, and he was also implicated and banished overseas.

The master carpenter knew from Yu Ran's expression that he had a story, but he did not delve into it. Who could come here without a story? Instead, he shouted, "Each of you should assign an apprentice and train them for a month."

At the same time, outside Luzon City, Wu Xun brought his mother and three brothers to a piece of wasteland and said, "This is the 200 mu of wasteland that Uncle Chen gave us. As long as it is reclaimed, it will be enough to feed our family. Uncle Chen also gave us a cow and 10 serfs for my father's sake. From now on, I will follow Uncle Chen to do things, and my mother will take care of the family affairs."

Chen Sheng still treated Wu Xun and his men preferentially. He gave them the best farm tools and oxen, as well as ten serfs. He also gave them a good wooden house in Luzon City. Their land was also closer to the main city. He gave them all the preferential treatment he could.

In Luzon City, land can be reclaimed at will, but the efficiency is not very high. There are even less than a hundred oxen in the whole Luzon. Faced with this situation, Chen Sheng used manpower to make up for the lack of oxen's power. Every farmer who was willing to reclaim the land could be assigned 5 serfs and reclaim the land under the command of the Han people.

Chen Sheng had followed Xu Fan for ten years and was deeply influenced by him. He hated slavery, but he had to do mining because it would kill people.

But in other industries, he did not want to continue to promote slavery. He wanted to educate other savages to become farmers to provide food and grass for his Luzon Kingdom. But reality slapped him in the face. These savages did not know how to farm at all. They could not even do slightly complicated things. Moreover, they were extremely undisciplined and often did things that he could not understand.

Even for something as simple as building a city wall, they had to be watched step by step. If they were not careful, they would cause the wall to collapse. As a result, Chen Sheng did not dare to let them build the city wall, and only let them do simple labor such as plastering. How to make use of these wild laborers became Chen Sheng's biggest problem.

Finally, Zhao Gao gave Chen Sheng an idea, which was to distribute these slaves to the farmers in Luzon, with five slaves per household, and have the farmers work with these slaves. This would not only provide labor for the farmers and solve the problem of insufficient oxen, but also allow the farmers to teach these slaves to do some technical farm work, instead of just doing some physical work as it is now.

Finally, Chen Sheng compromised with reality and announced to the whole of Luzon that as long as farmers were willing to open up wasteland in Luzon, Luzon would provide all farm tools and five slaves, and exempt them from any taxes for the first five years. Finally, the serfdom system took root in Luzon.

Wu Xun's mother said, "You should follow Uncle Chen's lead and never follow your father's example."

Wu Xun's mother had given up on Wu Pan. She was Wu Pan's wife through thick and thin. After Wu Pan became rich with Xu Fan, he no longer cared about his wife. However, Xu Fan had moral standards for employing people, so he did not dare to divorce his wife. Wu Pan simply left his wife in his hometown to take care of the children, while he himself lived a life of debauchery in Handan and kept taking concubines.

Wu Xun's mother had no way to deal with this. She took good care of Wu Pan's relatives according to the customs of that era, but she never expected that Wu Pan would do such a thing that would implicate the entire family, causing their family to fall from being the founding nobles of the Han Dynasty to being overseas criminals.

Wu Xun said, "I understand."

Chen Sheng and Zhao Gao came to the outside of Luzon Primary School.

There are hundreds of boys and girls here, all of whom are children of the leaders of the nearby Luzon tribes. Chen Sheng and his men came to this wild land and greatly accelerated the progress of Luzon's civilization.

In the past, the savages here could only survive by hunting. But after Chen Sheng and his men came, there was rice, cloth, salt, and sugar here. Because Chen Sheng brought so many goods, they could directly benefit the surrounding tribes. Therefore, except for the tribes that had direct conflicts of interest with Luzon, most tribes were still relatively close to Luzon because Luzon could bring them all the goods they wanted.

Chen Sheng and Zhao Gao also knew that they were a minority in Luzon. If they continued to clash with them, Luzon would inevitably suffer. Not to mention that Chen Sheng was also responsible for delivering copper ingots to the Han Dynasty and had no energy to fight guerrilla warfare against these savages.

So Zhao Gao thought of dividing and tapping into these barbarian forces. He used food, cloth, salt and sugar to lure the barbarian tribes close to them to become his allies, and drove them to deal with those barbarian tribes that were hostile to Luzon.

Judging from the situation in the past few months, the results are extremely obvious. The direct conflicts between Luzon and the savage tribes have decreased, and the frequency of attacks in the copper mining area has also dropped significantly.

Moreover, Zhao Gao also negotiated an agreement on the purchase of slaves with the leaders of the barbarian tribes who were close to the State of Luzon. One piece of cloth or 5 stone of grain could be used to purchase one barbarian, regardless of gender, age or status.

This caused a sensation in the entire Luzon savage tribe. They originally had the habit of headhunting, but now they simply changed to capturing slaves. Because of Zhao Gao's change, the peaceful Luzon began to become full of conflicts.

Countless small tribes disappeared in the primeval forests of Luzon, and countless savage slaves appeared in the city of Luzon.

Chen Sheng didn't want to use this method to capture slaves at first, but Zhao Gao's words made him give up this idea.

"Mining means death. If we don't use these savages, will we let our own people fill the mines?"

Chen Sheng knew that even in Guanzhong, where conditions were the best, mining accidents were inevitable, and the emperor had no choice but to introduce Hu miners to mine. Not to mention places like Luzon, where conditions were harsh, more than a dozen people died for every shipload of copper ore. Luzon didn't have many civilians, so they had to let the local savages fill the mines.

In order to capture slaves, Chen Sheng sent some leather armor to the tribes close to Luzon, which raised their defense to a higher level and enabled them to capture the savages around Luzon more efficiently.

In half a year, Luzon had more than 2,000 slaves. It was with the help of these slaves that Luzon was able to build its current docks, cities and copper mining areas.

Of course, Chen Sheng did not forget the way of education. If he relied solely on the imperial court to immigrate, there would be hundreds of vassal states in the world, and each of them needed immigrants. Even if he had a special status, it would be difficult for him to get much. Exploiting slaves could only be regarded as tyranny. Educating the savages to become Han people was the right way for his Luzon Kingdom to develop.

"I am a Han Chinese!" said a teacher, pointing at the Chinese characters on the blackboard.

"I am a Han Chinese!" dozens of young children read aloud.

"I love my motherland." The Master pointed to the following passage.

"I love my motherland." The child continued to read aloud.

Zhao Gao looked at this scene with satisfaction and said, "My Lord, this primary school only has a few hundred students now, which is too few. Most of the immigrants who moved here this time can read and write. We can expand the primary school to thousands of students and educate all the children from the surrounding tribes."

"Those old savages have already become rigid in their thinking and are difficult to educate. It is enough for our Han Luzon Kingdom to cultivate the land and mine minerals by making them slaves. It is too difficult to make them become qualified Han people."

It's no wonder Zhao Gao thought so. Most of the adult barbarians can only understand some simple Chinese, but these students can already communicate with them proficiently in Chinese and have learned hundreds of simple Chinese characters. Comparing the education costs of both sides, Zhao Gao naturally tends to educate the children and train them to become the first generation of Han people in the local area.

Chen Sheng said: "What the Prime Minister said is exactly what I want to say. Tell these barbarian leaders that they can get one dan of grain for every child they send to study."

"Let the next transport team double the food supply. The number of wild people on the entire Luzon Island is estimated to be less than 10, and their children are only 2 to 3. We in Luzon can still afford to support this number of people."

Chen Sheng studied with Xu Fan for several years and learned some of his ways of doing things. He understood that these children were his base in Luzon, so he was willing to spend money on their training in order to block the influence of their tribe on the children.

This primary school is managed in a closed manner and has a strict schedule. Classes are scheduled from morning to evening from Monday to Friday. Agricultural studies are conducted on Saturdays to teach these children to become qualified farmers. Only on weekends will the children return to their mothers.

Chen Sheng intended to instill Han Chinese ideas into them through education, teach them qualified skills, and make these students his base. If he could educate 20,000 to 30,000 children and turn them into good Han Chinese, within ten years, the entire Luzon Island would belong to him.

(End of this chapter)