New Shun 1730

"For example, in the case of Batavia, if there were no hundreds of thousands of Western silver coins, the remnants of the Celestial Empire in Batavia would have been slaughtered. It is true that if you want to love the people and be benevolent, you must have money."

"I have thought about the Batavia incident carefully. Some people say that it was all because of the governor's brutality. But I think that if there was no Valknir, and he was replaced by a Bricknir, this incident would have happened the same."

"You should take this as a warning. There are good and bad officials. If you implement policies and orders , if a good official takes the post, everyone will praise him; if a bad official takes the post, everyone will rebel... This policy order is acceptable. "

"But if this policy order is implemented, no matter whether it is a good official or a bad official, whoever takes the post will cause the people to suffer and everyone will rebel... then there is something wrong with this policy order itself,"

"My dear ministers are all pillars of the country, you must always advise and advise, don't issue such a policy order."

Liu Yu deeply agreed, thinking that the emperor could actually summarize the contingency and inevitability in a simple way? This is a talent.

As for the Batavia incident, if a Qingtian Da Ye was replaced, the result would be the same, and it might even be possible that a Qingtian Da Ye might catalyze the uprising.

The Qingtian Da Ye is just a Da Ye, and he can't solve the problem of shrinking sugar market brought about by Persia, the Caribbean, Japan and many other directions.

As long as the Dutch East India Company does not change its plundering and monopoly profit model, the problem of Batavia will remain unsolved.

It is impossible to expect the Dutch East India Company to cut its own flesh, so it can only rely on external forces to clean it up.

The officials here today may not all understand what is going on in Batavia, but they have roughly understood what the emperor said.

It's just that the same words and the same truth can be interpreted in many different ways.

Several people thought, Your Majesty is worried about some emerging industries in the future, which will bring some uncontrollable things that cannot be solved by changing good or bad officials?

Or is it that the emperor is just feeling sad about the past and taking advantage of today's events to make the situation in the late Ming Dynasty, which seems to be unsolvable no matter who changes, not happen in Dashun?

It was hard to figure out what the emperor meant for a while. The emperor only said half a sentence and did not continue to talk about this matter. He talked about the selection of people and laws and regulations for sending people to Batavia to "supervise the Dutch to implement immigration."

Not all the ministers present are core decision-makers. Some of them are not aware of some things, such as all this is a preparation for going to Southeast Asia.

Those who knew didn't say anything, and those who didn't knew thought that the emperor was really just caring about the people of the Celestial Empire thousands of miles away, so they expressed their own opinions.

But these opinions gave Liu Yu a headache. Several people completely imagined the Nanyang situation out of thin air. What they said was completely irrelevant. They didn't know what the situation was in Nanyang at all.

After listening for a while, the emperor couldn't help pinching his nose, thinking that it really didn't work to expect these people to deal with these unprecedented new things, at least not for the time being.

What are they talking about?

After listening patiently for a while, he finally couldn't stand it anymore and waved his hand and said, "Forget it... This is just sitting at home and guessing what it is like thousands of miles away. My dear ministers, you should go back."

After that, he pointed out a few people who participated in the core secrets of the central government to stay.

The rest of the people didn't care. They all had their own specialties. You asked me about etiquette and criminal laws, and I am better than others. But Your Majesty asked about Nanyang. We are still busy with the affairs of the ministry on weekdays, so how can we think about Nanyang again?

Unless you are a saint, how can you know everything? Even if you are a saint, you still don't know whether the sun is brighter at noon or in the morning.

After complaining a few words, several people thought that it was not unreasonable for the emperor to distinguish between the inside and the outside, to have six governments and foreign affairs, navy and other ministries outside the six governments.

Within the six governments, they can communicate and exchange positions with each other. It is no problem for a doctor in the Li Government to work in the Hu Government for a few years, or a governor to work in the capital for a few years.

But if people in the Li Government are allowed to manage diplomacy and people in the Hu Government are allowed to manage the navy, it would be a bit unreasonable.

After these people left, the emperor could no longer suppress his previous headache, and he shook his head and smiled bitterly: "The inside and outside of the Celestial Empire are completely different. Internal and external affairs should be separated."

"Before the war, Nanyang was still outside the Celestial Empire; after the war, it was inside the Celestial Empire."

"Now it is still outside, and we still have to use the people of the Privy Council and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to do this. I was planning to find some people waiting for official vacancies to experience it, but now it seems that it is not possible. Let's talk about it later."

"Now there should be news from the Russians. The Russian envoys can't sit still, and the Northwest Border Treaty has been settled. The matter of the Whale Marquis going to the West can be carried out. Have all the preparations been made?"

Liu Yu nodded and said: "Everything is ready, except for the money from your majesty's treasury. The instigators in Batavia want to buy military equipment..."

Badavia doesn't have much money to buy military equipment, and anyone present can afford it.

At most, 30,000 to 50,000 taels of silver. Even if they were honest, they would not miss 30,000 to 50,000 taels.

But Liu Yu certainly could not pay this money. Ministers themselves funded the rebels? Are they preparing to become the king of Nanyang in the future?

Moreover, the rebels in Batavia did not leave a very good impression on the emperor.

Shi Shi told the truth, and the spies sent by the emperor also told the truth. The words "You, Li Zicheng, rebelled and became the emperor, so why can't we do something big in Java" when persuading the emperor to surrender made the emperor very unhappy.

During the war against Japan, the emperor once told his ministers three lessons, one of which was that feudalism was absolutely not allowed.

The consequences of feudalism were fully demonstrated in the war against Japan. They harbored their own ulterior motives, preserved their strength, watched the fight from the mountain, and replaced the enemy... All these made the emperor determined not to be feudal.

In the eyes of the emperor, there can be tributary states in Southeast Asia, but these tributary states must not be established by the Chinese.

He is the Son of Heaven and considers himself the ruler of all Chinese. He can allow the Sultanate of Malacca, Brunei, Sulu and other countries to pay tribute, but it is impossible to allow the Chinese to establish their own country.

In fact, since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the strong emperor has seen the benefits of Southeast Asia.

Zhu Yuanzhang once said: I have heard that all those who benefit China benefit from the South China Sea. From today's perspective, if the sea route is opened and the tributes of the various tribes are accepted, and the officials can get the right people from the places where they come to trade and trade, and collect the ancient taxes, it can be compared with the tax of 130.

Liu Yu said that the profits from Nanyang were no less than the local taxes of Henan, and Li Gan certainly believed it.

The problem is that as an emperor, he has to consider how Nanyang will "profit" in the future, as well as the governance model of Nanyang.

The Ming Dynasty's system, to put it bluntly, is actually similar to what the Netherlands did.

It's a new skin, but the inside is still the same, in short, two words: monopoly.

The official monopoly and the trade company monopoly, in terms of form, are actually not much different.

The sea ban plus tribute trade can enable the royal family to monopolize foreign trade. For example, when Zheng He sailed to the West, the royal family had to have a prerequisite to profit: sea ban.

Is there any essential difference between the sea ban during Zheng He's voyages and the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company's "non-company ships are not allowed to pass the Cape of Good Hope, and those who violate the rules will be sunk, and the goods will be half for the company and half for the royal family"?

In the early days of the Ming Dynasty, the sea was banned, and the big ships of the Ming Dynasty sailed across the Western Ocean to bring goods. This is similar to the East India Company's ships sailing east of the Cape of Good Hope, but if private ships dared to cross the border, the East India Company would directly sink them... It's nothing more than one catching on the shore and the other catching on the sea.

Private voyages were prohibited, and the official monopoly on trade channels was at the same time, which could obtain excess profits. Without monopoly, where would the excess profits come from?

In order to make money, the emperor actually did some things that were similar to those of the East India Company. It seems different, but if you think about the essence, there is not much difference.

In order to ensure the price of spices, the Dutch dumped ships of spices into the sea to ensure that they were scarce and sold at high prices. This is market regulation of prices.

Zheng He brought back a lot of pepper and hematoxylin from his voyages to the West. In the early days, they were scarce, with 20 to 30 taels per 100 catties; later, with more voyages to the West, the price dropped to 70 to 80 taels per 100 catties. This can also be regarded as market regulation, supply and demand relationship.

In order to "sell at a high price", Chengzu used pepper and sumac to convert money according to a fixed price, and paid officials wages, forcing a high price.

This is similar to the Ostend incident a few years ago. When the price of tea plummeted, the Dutch East India Company did not pay money when distributing dividends, but distributed two bags of tea to each shareholder according to the tea price when the price was high last year. You can imagine what the shareholders would think.

The abolition of the voyage to the West is also a very obvious conflict of interest.

The internal treasury and the national treasury are separated. The money for building ships to go to the West comes from the national treasury; the profits after returning belong to the internal treasury.

This is similar to the East India Company raising capital with a smile and saying goodbye to dividends. If this model can continue, all economics books will have to be torn up and rewritten.

From a purely economic perspective, Zheng He's voyage to the West and the trade strategy of the Ming Empire are the "Royal South Sea Monopoly Company", which relies on a "sea ban" policy similar to the East India Company to obtain excess profits and monopoly rights.

This is why the "East India Company" model cannot adapt to Ming or Dashun.

If it is not done well, it will be a ban on the sea, but the monopoly will not be achieved.

The coastline is too long, and smuggling cannot be eliminated. If the royal family wants to make money for trade monopoly, they can only choose the direction that is convenient for monopoly. For example, the Qing Dynasty created the Thirteen Factories in order to make money.

In a thousand words, it is all for one word.

Money.

Merchants' money is not the emperor's money, it's that simple.

Why can Dashun set up a monopoly company in Japan? Because Japan is closed to the outside world. Dashun can check one, the trade company can check one halfway, and Japan can check one more when it closes its own country, so it can be established as a monopoly.

We should thank the Tokugawa family's closed-door policy.

Songjiang Trading Company's monopoly on Japan depends on Japan, not on the monopoly order issued by the Dashun court.

Without Japan's closed-door policy, the monopoly order is nothing. Even when Japan was closed to the outside world, there were "military virtues" of sea merchants forcing through the Shimonoseki Strait and smuggling to Kokura. The court's monopoly order is nothing.

And Nanyang cannot be monopolized.

The Dutch were so powerful, but they still couldn't monopolize. The British and Chinese could still smuggle and bypass the Dutch to get spices.

In the end, Zheng He's monopoly model of sailing to the West was destroyed because the Jiangnan merchants wanted to break the monopoly. This is basically the same as the reason why many people in the Netherlands opposed the Dutch East India Company's monopoly.

Li Gan and Liu Yu discussed the difference between them and the lessons of Zheng He's voyages to the West. In the end, they came to the conclusion that Nanyang could not be monopolized.

However, blocking the Sunda Strait and the Malacca Strait can maintain the monopoly of European trade.

The money the emperor wants is not the money from the trade between Nanyang and Dashun.

Rather, it is the money from the trade with the West.

Dashun merchants can do whatever they want with Nanyang. Just check pirates and tax evasion. Anyway, the coastline is so long that smuggling cannot be checked and little money can be collected.

However, the emperor wanted to monopolize the export of spices from Nanyang, silk, porcelain, tea, sugar, etc. from Dashun to the West, and he wanted to make profits based on the ability to support the navy and to migrate to the Western Regions and the Whale Sea.

What the emperor was thinking was different from what Liu Yu was thinking.

The emperor was thinking that if the trading company could go abroad and sell goods to Europe through cooperation with the Swedes, that would be the best.

If not, then take Malacca, establish a port of trade in Malacca, and make profits by monopolizing trade with Europe.

Close the door in Malacca, make Nanyang the back garden of Dashun, completely eliminate the influence of Westerners, and throw all Western trading houses to Malacca. If you want to buy spices, porcelain, raw silk, tea, etc., buy them in Malacca, don't think about other places.

And those small countries in Nanyang can only trade with Dashun, but it is not led by the government, but the profits are given to merchants, and they can play by themselves.

Under this idea of ​​domination and profit, it became intolerable for the Chinese to establish a country in Southeast Asia.

Since Southeast Asia is the back garden, then similar to the Anxi Protectorate, there can be the Four Towns of Anxi and small countries in the Western Regions, but there must not be a country established by the Han people themselves.