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

Chapter 601: Turmoil in Daqinzhou and the Collapse of Agricultural Society
The Roman citizen Urenas held a torch and shouted: "These are the goods from the Han people. It is these goods that corrupted our Roman citizens, earned our Roman gold and silver, and made us lose our jobs. Finally, the Han people used the money they earned from us to turn it into cannons and bullets, and finally shot them at us Rome. The bullets killed our Roman citizens, and the cannons destroyed our Roman fleet."

"Today we are going to completely destroy these things, so that the Han people will not be able to earn money from us Romans and then turn them into bullets and artillery to attack us."

With that, Urenas threw the torch into the mountain of silk and cloth.

"Boom!" Silk and cloth suddenly caught fire. Both are flammable items. The raging fire even made the citizens of Rome feel the heat.

But the citizens of Rome did not feel sorry for this scene, but applauded.

When the cloth was burned, Urenas shouted: "Pour all these spices and tea into the sea, so that these things will no longer be able to corrupt our Roman citizens."

"Good!" The Roman citizens around rushed forward. They threw the tea bricks they had made into the sea one by one, and scattered bags of precious spices into the sea, letting them drift with the waves.

Looking at the tea and spices covering the sea, the Roman citizens did not feel pity. Instead, they found the scene extremely refreshing. The anger that had been suppressed in their hearts for many years was finally vented. All the Roman citizens watched this scene with joy and excitement.

The Roman elders who suffered losses stayed in a hidden corner, watching the scene angrily: "This is my money, this is my property, how dare you mobs burn my property?"

But these senators only dared to hide here and get angry secretly. The citizens of the entire city of Rome were rioting, and they did not dare to mobilize the army to enter the city of Rome.

Because the Roman army was formed by citizens, if the legion were to enter the city of Rome, I am afraid that these soldiers would help these citizens maintain order.

Maxius said grimly: "We can't let the Roman citizens go on like this, or Rome will be doomed."

Rome was an aristocratic republic. The rulers of this country were neither the two consuls at the top nor the hundreds of thousands of Roman citizens at the bottom, but the more than 300 senators in the Roman Senate. In the eyes of the Roman senators, it was the citizens of Rome who were betraying them.

When Appatius saw these tens of thousands of angry Roman citizens, he realized that the internal conflicts in Rome had become so intense that Rome must expand. If it did not expand, the intense internal conflicts would tear the Roman Empire apart.

Claudius and other overseas students who had just returned from the Han Dynasty were shocked to see the Roman citizens who had fallen into madness. They couldn't believe it and asked, "What's wrong with Rome?"

Fabius worriedly said, "This is the anger of the citizens of Rome. Apparently they haven't done a very good job in recent years."

Aemilius said: "But burning the goods of the Han people is the most incompetent way to vent. The Han people are the overlords of the entire world. If Rome wants to be strong, it must learn from the Han people, not exclude the goods of the Han people."

Cornelius said: "We should conduct a social survey to understand why the citizens of Rome are so angry."

On May 39, the 5th year of the Han Dynasty, Ptolemaic State, Consulate General of Daqinzhou.

Roman diplomat Fan Kang said with a hint of fear: "The Romans are crazy, the whole city is crazy, they are frantically destroying all the goods of our Han Dynasty, burning our silk, and dumping our tea."

"Issue a notice in the name of the consulate general, prohibiting Han merchants from approaching Rome to avoid unnecessary losses." Zhang Pijiang was also surprised by the Romans' actions of burning Han silk and dumping Han tea and spices.

He was too familiar with this scene. The small country of India used this method to resist the silk and cotton cloth of the Han Dynasty. In fact, he was surprised that the Roman economy seemed very resilient, but they still used this method.

Li Ji from the Seleucid Empire said, "Not only will Rome be in trouble, but the Seleucid Empire is also undercurrent, and a nationwide uprising may break out, and then it is not impossible for it to fall apart."

Zhang Pijiang was surprised and asked, "Is it so serious?"

Li Ji smiled bitterly and said, "You underestimate the combat effectiveness of our Han Dynasty's industry. It can be said that apart from a few special products of the Seleucids, do you know what our Han Dynasty's maritime merchants buy the most?"

"What?" Zhang Pijiang
"High-quality iron sand and mineral dyes. It's not about how much money can be made from iron sand and mineral dyes, but that the merchants don't want to return empty-handed."

Zhang Pijiang said: "But they have been transporting grain to us frequently in recent years. Last year, the Seleucid Empire transported 100 million shi of grain, which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars."

Just building the Suez Canal alone involved more than 300 craftsmen working for the Han Dynasty, and these people consumed nearly million shi of grain a year.

The salary of a craftsman was 5 dan of grain, and in a year, almost 700 million dan of grain had to be paid. The trade of tens of millions of dan of grain had become the mainstay of the finances of countries around the Mediterranean.

In Zhang Pijiang's view, the grain trade of tens of millions of dan was enough to maintain the trade balance between Daqinzhou and the Han Dynasty.

Li Ji smiled bitterly and said, "The key lies in the grain trade. If the farmers can't even get enough food, do you think they will revolt?"

Then Li Ji told Zhang Pijiang about the situation in Seleucus. Since the Han Dynasty merchants came to Seleucus more than a decade ago, whether the Seleucids were willing or not, they were involved in the global industrial trend led by the Han Dynasty.

The Seleucid Empire was even worse off than Rome. The Romans could still buy some steam engines, copy water conservancy spinning wheels, and develop their own light industry to block the wave of industrialization of the Han Dynasty, but the Seleucids did not have this geographical advantage. If they wanted to face the powerful Xiongnu State, they had to invest their limited resources in the military. They had to build steel mills and arsenals to manufacture a large number of muskets and cannons. Now, Rome has less than ten corps that have completed the firearms transformation, while the Seleucid Empire has more than twice as many corps as Rome. From this we can see how much military expenditure the Seleucid Empire has had in recent years.

The Seleucid Empire was a hodgepodge of dynasties. Its state system was a monarchy, with a prime minister, a council, a secretariat, and senior officials in the palace, who were all royal relatives and confidants.

However, influenced by Greek civilization, it was an aristocratic republic with local autonomy. The local areas had a certain degree of autonomy, institutions similar to nursing homes, and occasionally military obligations and irregular tributes.

Local decentralization is not conducive to the king's control over the local areas. Once there is an opportunity, the provinces in the remote areas will become too powerful to be controlled and will break away. This was the case with the Parthian Empire, which had many ethnic groups, including Greeks, Persians, Jews, and dozens of other ethnic groups living together. The Seleucid Empire unified this complex dynasty with Greek culture. This patchwork dynasty was naturally prone to disintegration.

Li Shang sometimes admired the kings of the Seleucid Empire. They were able to piece together such a hodgepodge of a country. It was neither feudal nor unified, and yet it prospered for hundreds of years.

Now the Seleucid Empire was facing military pressure from the Huns, economic pressure from the Han Dynasty’s commodity competition, and the huge contradiction between the growing material needs of the nobles and their extremely low productivity. Military equipment such as artillery and muskets required money, luxury goods such as silk, tea, and spices required money, and cattle and farm tools used for land reclamation also required money. After being involved in the global market, the Seleucid Empire was short of money from top to bottom.

In order to make money, the landlords of the Seleucid Empire exported grain to the Yanzhou Governor's Office at extremely low prices. This has become the pillar product of the Seleucid Empire. The Seleucid Empire will use part of the hundreds of millions of dollars to buy luxury goods such as silk, and part of it to buy arms.

The expenses for defending the country cannot be reduced, and the expenses for one's own enjoyment cannot be reduced either. If these cannot be reduced, the only thing left is to make the farmers of the country suffer, take more grain from them, and sell more for money. For the sake of the country's stable development, the nobles believe that the farmers of the country will understand the country.

Therefore, the self-cultivating farmers of the Seleucid Empire found that the harder they worked to produce food, the more food was confiscated by the authorities, and it was difficult for them to just get enough food and clothing, especially those farmers who had been allocated land in recent years. They had only discovered that most of the food they had grown through reclaiming wasteland had been confiscated by the authorities. The nobles also required them to repay the interest on their loans and perform corvée labor on their fiefdoms for free. Now they were constantly hungry and had to work like oxen and horses, which made them just as exhausted as before.

The cheap ironware and cloth of the Han Dynasty destroyed the local handicraft industry, which led to many complaints from the citizens of Seleucid. From what Li Ji saw, it was just like the tyrannical Qin Dynasty recorded in history books. The people at the bottom worked hard, but most of their income was taken away by the upper class. They worked so hard that they couldn't support themselves and their families. He wouldn't be surprised if a major uprising broke out in the Seleucid Empire tomorrow.

After hearing what Li Ji said, Zhang Pijiang had a strange look on his face and felt complicated inside, because he found that this situation also existed in the Ptolemaic Empire. The only thing that was better than the Seleucid Empire was that there was the huge project of the Suez Canal. People who lacked food could do odd jobs on the construction site. Most of the food income of these workers was transferred to their families, and then confiscated by the Ptolemaic nobles. But at least there was some surplus, which allowed the family to survive and barely have a full meal a day.

It can be said that the Han Dynasty's century-long project has, to a certain extent, alleviated the internal contradictions of the Ptolemaic State.

"This is the wave of industrialization that the emperor talked about. It is indeed extremely cruel. There is really nothing perfect in this world. There are only new things that have more advantages than disadvantages." Only now did Zhang Pijiang realize that it was a very rare event that the harm caused by industrialization was solved with the warmth and tenderness like the Han Dynasty. The situation like Rome, Seleucid Empire, and Ptolemy was the norm.

But Zhang Pijiang didn't know that the state he saw was already extremely warm and silent. Xu Fan had greatly suppressed the ferocity of capital.

The Han Dynasty had not yet invaded Rome, but it burned the Temple of Jupiter and made every Roman citizen pay a compensation of one or two ounces of silver.

What they are experiencing now is nothing more than the process of agricultural society being disintegrated by industrial society. The even more cruel world is far from beginning.

Fan Kang thought for a while and said, "The reason why the whole country of Daqinzhou is in such a mess right now is mainly because too many people have lost their jobs. If it were in the Han Dynasty, we could help the unemployed on the one hand, and let them open up wasteland on the other hand, and this problem would be solved. Now it's just that these countries have too little steel, and there is no way to make enough steel tools for their farmers."

Then he looked at Zhang Pijiang and said, "A few days ago, Hu Hai found me and said he wanted to build a railway in Rome. He thought that only by building a railway in Rome could the goods of Rome be better used by our Han Dynasty. I think it makes sense. Last year, the railway between the Western Regions and Chang'an was opened. The oil export volume of the Western Regions doubled, and the Hami melons and raisins in the Western Regions increased by more than ten times. Now even the people in the Central Plains can eat raisins from the Western Regions, and even the grain from the Western Regions can be transported to Guanzhong. Who would have thought that one day the grain from the Western Regions would be delivered to Guanzhong."

The development of the Western Region Railway was an extremely important event for the Han Dynasty. In particular, the transportation of grain from the Western Region to Guanzhong caused a huge sensation. Guanzhong was the land of abundance for the Han Dynasty and had been the largest granary of the Han Dynasty for decades. Who would have thought that one day it would become a place for importing grain, especially when the source of grain was such a poor place as the Western Region.

Many people in the sea couldn't believe this. The Western Regions were selling grain to Guanzhong. Wasn't this the wrong way around?
But this is the reality. Relying on the huge profits brought by the oil industry, karez and canals were built on a large scale in the Western Regions. As long as there was no shortage of water, the fields in the Western Regions were actually easier to cultivate. In addition, the Western Regions were vast and sparsely populated, and the price of grain was half that of Guanzhong. Moreover, the Western Regions were also the largest cotton production base in the entire Han Dynasty, and became the production base for raw materials in Guanzhong.

The Han military was overjoyed. Once the railway was opened, the Han's control over the Western Regions would be even stronger, especially since it would broaden the military's horizons. In recent years, Han Navy General Luan Bu always talked about building ports and connecting the ports of the Han Dynasty. The Han navy would have its own naval base in any ocean and be able to suppress local forces.

They used this as an excuse to continuously increase the navy's military budget to the Sages' Council. Overseas interests are now too important to the Han Dynasty. Nearly half of the Han Dynasty's economy is related to overseas trade. Only if the navy can suppress the global waters can the Han Dynasty's overseas interests be guaranteed. Therefore, the Sages' Council was very happy to approve the navy's military expenditures. The Han Dynasty's navy launched warships one after another, and the number of naval soldiers was almost close to that of their army. The navy's military expenditure exceeded that of the army five years ago.

This made the Han Army extremely annoyed and helpless. The navy could protect the interests of the court outside, but their army could only stay in the Han territory. They could not even add a few more tractors as a supplement to their transportation force.

This time, Ji Xin discovered that after the railway network in the Western Regions was connected to the railway network in the Central Plains, the Han Dynasty's control over the Western Regions increased by more than ten times. If this railway network continued to extend and connected to the Xiongnu Kingdom and then from the Xiongnu Kingdom to the Seleucus, Ptolemy, and even Rome, a trunk line that controlled the world's railway network would be connected. If this railway network was realized, the Han Dynasty would be able to control the entire World Island. As long as I control the World Island, the hegemony of the Han Dynasty will never decline.

Therefore, Ji Xin has been proposing to the Sages Council to build a World Island railway network in recent years. The sages of the Han Dynasty are also quite interested in this idea. The biggest trouble now is the Xiongnu Kingdom. They do not want their own railway network to be connected to the Han Dynasty's railway network.

Fan Kang and his men, you know the world railway island network plan, and they also want to realize this plan. Since the Huns have no way to connect for the time being, it is also possible to connect to Daqinzhou first.

"If we build a railway in Daqinzhou, the specialties of Ptolemy, Seleucid Empire, and the small city-states of Rome can be sent to our Han Dynasty to increase our wealth. Once this railway is built, our Han Dynasty will definitely hire a large number of civilians and create a large number of jobs for Daqin. Daqinzhou will not be so chaotic. At the same time, the railway will assist the canal, and the economic lifeline of the entire Daqinzhou will be controlled by our Han Dynasty."

Zhang Pijiang said: "I will ask the court first. After all, the cost of building a railway is not low."

Fan Kang said with a smile: "This is to build a railway for Daqinzhou itself. Why does it need to spend the money of our Han Dynasty? We can gather several banks in Dahan and see how much they have in deposits and use their money to build the railway. You know, the railway is a high-quality asset. As long as it is not built in the mountains, there is no need to worry about not being able to make a profit. More importantly, once the railway is built, it can also drive the development of our Han Dynasty's steel mills."

Li Ji was surprised and said, "Fan Kang, you look strong and muscular, but I didn't expect you to come up with such a sinister plan."

He had not failed to think of using Daqinzhou's money to weave a network for the people of Daqinzhou.

Fan Kang retorted: "How can this be considered a conspiracy? This is an open conspiracy. What's wrong with what I said?"

Seleucid Empire, Antioch.

The prince Antiochus of that time has now taken over his brother's throne and become King Antiochus IV, but he can also clearly feel the undercurrents in his own country. The Jews and Persians want to rebel, and the various autonomous territories and some princes also want to break away from the control of the Seleucid Empire. The Seleucid Empire is now facing internal and external troubles.

The international students he brought to the Han Dynasty have now returned. The Seleucid Empire has a tradition of promoting one's own relatives, so this group of international students was valued by Antiochus IV as soon as they returned.

Dmitri said seriously: "Your Highness, our country's military expenditure is too high. You should cut some of the old and weak soldiers and let them farm to increase the wealth of the country. You can learn from the military settlement system of the Han Dynasty."

Antiochus IV smiled bitterly and said, "What about the Huns?"

If he had a choice, he would have disarmed long ago, but now the Huns were eyeing him covetously, and he did not dare to reduce the number of troops or stop repairing border fortresses.

Dmitri said, "I'll say something discouraging. The reason the Huns don't invade our country is not because they are worried about the army in your hands, but because they are worried that the Han army will attack the Huns. Our country's safety actually depends on the Han army. Keeping so many troops is just a waste of national wealth. Why not cut some of the troops and use this wealth to learn from the Han, to develop industry and create wealth through industry? We can even go a step further and give up a piece of land on the border for the Han army to be stationed here, which will make the Huns more wary."

(End of this chapter)