New Shun 1730

On the dock, the ceremonial officer was reading the imperial edict of the court "comforting the people of the Celestial Empire in Nanyang" in a rhythmic manner, and the gentry who came to welcome him all shouted "Long live the emperor".

But in addition to the outward welcome, they were also a little worried and dissatisfied about the court extending its claws to Nanyang.

They were very worried that the court would go to Nanyang in the future and take Bangka into the government.

Although Dashun abolished the system of artisan households that saved money, there were no large number of officially controlled handicraftsmen like in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and it might still contract this place to wealthy merchants.

However, this is ultimately an unstable factor.

These wealthy merchants are still considered local tyrants in Bangka and Jiugang Xuanweisi, but this tin mine is so valuable, if people in the country really get it, how can they compare?

In terms of relationship, they have no connection with the court.

In terms of wealth, compared with those wealthy merchants inside the big tree and the nobles who rely on land to intervene in foreign trade, they are even more like small ants.

The wealthy merchants in Bangka did not specifically hate Dashun, but hated any form of state institution.

Whether it was Dashun, the Dutch East India Company, or the British East India Company, they did not like it.

They liked anarchy.

Or like the current situation, it seems that it is under the control of the local chieftains, and the ownership of the tin mines also belongs to the Sultan of Palembang.

But the local chieftains and sultans are a bunch of rubbish. If the Dutch do not come to the rescue, each company is an independent kingdom and can do whatever it wants.

However, seeing the court's warships, it is not easy to show this dislike on the surface, but just keep saying some polite words.

The court officials who followed Liu Yu were quite satisfied with the hospitality of the survivors of the Celestial Empire in Nanyang.

But this scene made Liu Yu a little sick.

The court asked him to come to Nanyang to comfort the Chinese.

However, the Chinese in Nanyang are collectively called Chinese, but if you break it down, there are miners, small businesses, loan sharks, sugar mills and plantations, and some who work hard for a year and become slaves from free workers.

They are all Chinese, but some people are in a life-and-death relationship with each other.

Who are you consoling?

Who will be the basic base for the court to rule Nanyang in the future?

The ruling basis of the Dashun imperial power in Dashun is very clear.

At least, Emperor Li Gan has a clear mind: small farmers, self-cultivating farmers, government soldiers, good family children, in a word, conservative and stable farmers who like to fight.

This is why Li Gan would rather spend more money to let veterans cultivate permanent fields, and he is firmly opposed to throwing veterans into handicraft factories in Gyeonggi and Songjiang to save money.

But in Bangka, or Nanyang, this ruling basis does not exist.

The land ownership system in Java is still the village serf system, and small farmers and self-cultivating farmers are still a minority, and most of them are not Chinese.

Who will the court rely on for the ruling basis after going to Nanyang in the future? This is a problem that the court urgently needs to solve now. This is an unprecedented situation, and the answer cannot be found in history books. Sugar factories, plantations, and mines are not land. They cannot be broken up and distributed to individuals to form a bunch of self-cultivating farmers according to the discussion of suppressing the powerful. What should the court do under the handicraft factory system that must ensure the cooperation of many people?

In this regard, the corresponding strategy of the dynasties is to treat the symptoms and the root cause: large-scale handicraft factories are not allowed, and private mining is not encouraged. Isn’t this a problem? When you reach adolescence, you have desires, which is different from the previous childhood. Just cut it off, isn’t it over?

The court has rich experience in childhood, but I don’t have experience in adolescence, so I am afraid of the unknown and cut it off for permanent governance.

If everything is the same, there is no problem.

However, Dashun does not want everything to be the same. It spends money and effort to go to Southeast Asia for the money of gold and silver trade, and controlling several special trade goods is the best solution for the court to get money, which means that it is impossible to keep everything the same.

Everything cannot be the same, and the word "Xuanwei" is a bit difficult.

Liu Yu could not say that he knew the specific situation in Nanyang very well, but he could guess the situation in Nanyang from the perspective of class, apart from the perspective of Chinese and non-Chinese, and the intelligence collection from Batavia before.

Just like what he had been saying in the court, don't try to find a sword by sticking to the boat, don't cut your feet to fit the shoes, and don't wait for the rabbit by the tree.

The current situation in Nanyang is very complicated. It is not a situation in a certain period of time in the future when all the Chinese in Nanyang are looking forward to the arrival of the imperial army.

The reason why all the Chinese in Nanyang are looking forward to the arrival of the imperial army in history is that the claws of imperialism such as Britain and the Netherlands have completely strangled Nanyang and firmly controlled it.

The upper-class Chinese will only hope for a community after being beaten, and the court is the real image of this community.

Now, the situation is very different.

Britain has not even taken India, and the Netherlands can only control the spice producing areas and cities such as Batavia. The French were just driven away by the Siamese many years ago.

Chaos.

There is no power that can control the entire Nanyang.

Lack of control, and being at the trade hub, this is the favorite place for the "budding" people, lacking real control and control.

Dashun? What's more, Dashun? It's different after coming, but it still needs control? Then why do you like the court to go to Nanyang?

So when Liu Yu saw the scene of the gentry lining the streets to welcome him at the dock, he knew what was going on.

Nanyang is still the same Nanyang.

But Nanyang at this time is not the Nanyang at that time.

If you think about it from another perspective, you will know that no court likes the Chinese who go to Nanyang, especially the Chinese outside the places with strict Dutch control such as Batavia.

The court’s consistent approach to ruling made the Chinese here have many doubts.

After the grand welcome, these managers and contractors who were suspicious wanted to invite the court to dinner to find out something and test the court’s attitude.

In name, it was a welcome party, but it was not good to help them.

However, the officials were not very happy with the banquet. There was no wine or pork at the banquet.

Although not all contractors here could not drink alcohol or eat pork, some of the people who attended the banquet could not eat or drink. The ownership of the mine here is still in the hands of the Sultan of Palembang, and some of them are actually Chinese who have taken root here in the previous dynasty and have been localized.

The rest of the court officials were fine, and they followed the local customs.

The group of officers following Liu Yu couldn’t help cursing in their hearts, no wine for dinner? What the hell is there to eat? Sailing is hard, and it’s hard to dock once, but I can’t eat happily. This meal is meaningless.

Several local leaders came forward to offer tea instead of wine, saying respectfully: "You have worked hard on the journey. My place is poor, so I have prepared some dishes. Please don't despise them."

"Some of us left our hometown to make a living, and some of us came here to mine tin in the past few years. We are not abandoning the king's rule, but we know that it is hard to leave our hometown."

"The ancients said that Yue birds nest in southern branches and Hu horses rely on the north wind. If we were not trying to make a living, who would be willing to leave our hometown, stay away from the tombs of our ancestors, and come to this hot place?"

When it came to the emotional part, the man had already started crying, and everyone was moved.

After talking about the pain of homesickness, he finally got to the point.

"Your Excellency, you have come to Southeast Asia to comfort the people. We are truly grateful to the court. The Netherlands also buys a lot of tin from here at a fair price. Although they are barbarians, they have quite a lot of laws and fair transactions."

"On the contrary, there are many unruly people who are not doing their jobs properly and have bad intentions. They do many illegal things, so that the Netherlands has a lot of prejudice against us, the people of the Celestial Empire."

"That's right, a rotten fish stirs up a pot of fish. Your Excellency, you have come to Southeast Asia to comfort the people, and you should give these people a lesson."

"If these unruly people were in the Celestial Empire, they would also do many sneaky things, and even have the intention of causing chaos."

"These people are in Southeast Asia, and they also make people in Southeast Asia and Western countries hate us, the people of the Celestial Empire. But the Netherlands is afraid of the majesty of the Celestial Empire and dare not deal with it easily, so there is such a big chaos in Java. These people have greatly damaged the majesty of the Celestial Empire. Your Excellency should investigate in detail."

After hearing these words, several officials who came with Liu Yu nodded repeatedly. Although they came with Liu Yu, they were not from the same system.

After the Red River Massacre in Batavia, the wealthy merchants who fled believed that "the Netherlands is not bad, but the governor is bad, and the things in Batavia are intolerable to the Dutch king."

Some officials believed that "the local Chinese asked for exorbitant prices, stirred up trouble, and relied on their wealth and courage to make trouble." Because one version of the story that reached the court was that the Dutch hired Chinese to serve as soldiers in Ceylon, saying that they would be assigned land as military households, but in the end, the rebellion was caused by insufficient distribution.

People can only use what they know to fit what they don't know.

Many officials in the Celestial Empire are not stupid, but they don't know the situation outside at all, so they can come up with the idea of ​​"military households dividing land" in Ceylon.

Officials certainly don't like the "troublesome people" who make trouble.

Liu Yu just smiled at this. He didn't know much about Banga's situation, so it was hard to say anything at this time.

But in the original history, Bangka was an important destination for "Chinese piglets". Fellow villagers cheated fellow villagers. In history, poor Chinese people in Zhanjiang, Hailufeng and other places were deceived to Macau one by one, and then transported from Macau to Bangka for mining.

In today's situation, Macau's trade monopoly has been abolished, and it has embarked on the road of human trafficking more than a hundred years earlier.

What is the situation in Bangka? Liu Yu has been stationed in Wendeng for so long, and he has also conducted social surveys on nearby gold mines.

He still has a good idea of ​​what the mine is like and how to make money. That is still Wendeng and Shandong, which are orderly, legal, and under the control of the court.

Judging from the history of later generations, the death rate of Chinese slaves in Bangka is much higher than that of North American black slaves, and is similar to the death rate of Indians mining in South America under Spanish rule.

This has nothing to do with morality, and it does not mean that Protestant Puritan slave owners are kind.

It is only because the slaves were transported from Africa, so far away, and the mortality rate was high, so it was quite expensive; while the Indians in South America, the Tamil slaves in Ceylon, and the Chinese slaves in Southeast Asia were cheap.

Protestants, Catholics, Chinese, South America, Tamil, and Chinese can be included.

Nowadays, the average price of an adult male slave is 50 pounds, 150 taels of silver. The key is that slaves are legal property. If they die, it is equivalent to losing 150 taels of silver. Who would not feel sorry for the money?

150 taels of silver is really a lot.

Yale made a fortune by selling tea and donated money to the university. He donated 2,000 taels of silver, which was enough for the university to be named after him.

But it is different for hired workers. It doesn't matter if they die. Anyway, there are plenty of them, especially cheap, and they are not legal private property.

Now there are so many Catholics squeezed into Macau, without land and jobs, and the Dashun only allows entry but not exit, and does not believe in any form of "false conversion", which makes the labor cost plummet.

After laughing at the term "troublemakers", thinking about the changes in Macau, Liu Yu thought that Bangga would still be a big trouble in the future.

He glanced at the respectful local boss and suddenly asked, "I see there is no wine or pork on the table. I think there are many Muslims among you. You are mining here, but you can also ask the people who come here to work what religion they are? Do you want Catholics too?"

The local bosses also knew about the ban on religion in Dashun, and thought that the court was asking for this reason, so they hurriedly said: "You are joking, sir. We don't care what religion they are. As long as someone is willing to work, we will take him. As for whether he is a Catholic, we really don't know."

"And we usually live in Jiugang, not in Bangka. Bangka has its own foreman to take care of it. We provide funds and workers provide labor."

"After all, this recruitment is not an imperial examination, and you still need to ask about your hometown and ancestors."

Liu Yu said, thinking that this is interesting.

Catholicism has a strong grassroots organizational ability. Most of you mine owners don't eat pork. Now that the court has banned religion, a large number of unemployed Macau Catholics have gone out to sea to work...

These people who went to Southeast Asia to work have been separated from their clans and the order and organization of the court the moment they boarded the ship.

When they arrived in a strange place, they were like a group of scattered sand. There were also a bunch of Catholics who might have come from Macau to find work, and they were working in a mine where oppression was severe... I don't know if the miners can take off by organizing people with the help of the shell of religion, but Catholicism will definitely take off in Banga.