Chapter 78 This is too difficult

Chapter 78 This is too difficult

Chapter 78 This is too difficult
When talking about the maritime ban in the Ming Dynasty, many people in later generations like to put the blame on the imperial edict of Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, which stated that "not even an inch of wood is allowed to go to sea."

Of course, Zhu Yuanzhang had some faults in this, but the maritime ban during Zhu Yuanzhang's reign was also forced upon him.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the people were not attached to it. Hostile forces overseas often took advantage of the vast ocean to harass the Ming Dynasty's borders and seas, which caused a great burden on the security of the Ming Dynasty's coastal areas.

Comrade Zhu was also worried that the people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, as well as the foreign merchants living in Quanzhou, would continue to support the remnants of Zhang Shicheng, Fang Guozhen and others and fight for the world. This also made Comrade Zhu afraid of the power of the sea, so he repeatedly reiterated the policy of banning the sea.

Comrade Lao Zhu, who came from a peasant family, experienced the tragic turmoil at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. He also witnessed how the wealthy and ruthless merchants oppressed the good people.

Therefore, Mr. Zhu hates those businessmen who like to "speculate and profit" and engage in smuggling trade at sea.

In addition, the tribute trade policy controlled and managed by the imperial court since the Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties caused the tribute trade to suffer continuous losses due to rampant smuggling, resulting in "empty treasury". Cracking down on these smuggling activities was also a heavy financial burden for the newly established Ming Dynasty.

Finally, based on his many years of practical experience, Mr. Zhu believed that the foundation of the Ming Dynasty lay in agriculture, and everything produced by agriculture was enough to feed the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, the maritime ban was a taboo that no one could touch during the more than 30 years that Mr. Zhu was in power.

In order to strengthen this taboo and increase control over the inland coastal people, Zhu Yuanzhang used the Hu Weiyong case to fabricate a major political case of "Hu Weiyong colluding with the Japanese and committing treason", which made those who had ideas about opening the sea silent and dared not say a word.

During the Yongle period, national strength increased greatly. The imperial court was able to build giant warships that could sail thousands of miles across the ocean. It also launched a series of spectacular voyages to the West. However, with the death of Emperor Yongle himself and Zheng He, who was carrying out the voyage, the country's national strength increased greatly.

This great feat carried out by the emperor's will was thus cut short.

The later emperors either lacked courage or were born and raised in the deep palace and received traditional Confucian education, which made the class thinking of "scholars, farmers, merchants and artisans" engraved in their bones, and they lacked sufficient understanding of the outside world. Therefore, even if they wanted to open the sea, they could not do so.

However, under the repeated intimidation of the southern gentry who had already seized the benefits of maritime smuggling and the oppression of the so-called ancestral system, the emperor who wanted to open up the sea gave up the idea of ​​opening up the sea to the West again. Ideologically, the Ming Dynasty, which had thousands of miles of coastline, was completely transformed into an extremely conservative inland country.

The two most famous examples are during the reign of Emperor Yingzong. When Emperor Baozong, who had just ascended the throne, was only an eight-year-old child and knew nothing, he was fooled into issuing an edict to "stop all construction", banning the "voyages to the West" activities that began during the Yongle period.

Of course, the biggest reason for this ban, apart from the fact that the emperor was young and ignorant, was that in the previous voyages to the West, only the emperor and a few powerful people benefited, while the cost of the voyages had to be borne by the court.

It would be a miracle if the civil service group in charge of management is willing to continue with such an unhealthy financial model.

After all, it took a lot of money and effort for them to help the emperor govern the world, but in the end the emperor took all the benefits of the voyage. Not only did they not take a share, but they also had to help the emperor pay for the cost of the voyage. It would be strange if such a model could continue.

Therefore, the prohibition of sea voyages during the reign of Emperor Yingzong was not unjust at all. If anyone was to blame, it was because the emperor was too greedy, so these civil servants took advantage of the emperor's young age and the many sea bans issued by Emperor Taizu as an excuse to directly stop the voyages to the West, thus cutting off the emperor's idea of ​​continuing to eat the court's subsidies to make money for his own coffers.

Another example is the "Battle of Tribute" that took place in the second year of the Jiajing reign. This incident not only caused the people of Ningbo to suffer an unexpected disaster, but also killed Liu Jin, the commander of the anti-Japanese war team, and Zhang Tong, a captain of a thousand households, who tried to mediate the fight. This caused a great shock in central Zhejiang at that time!
Afterwards, Xia Yan, a seventh-rank official at the time, submitted a memorial to the court, saying that the Japanese invasion was caused by the Maritime Customs and requested the court to abolish the only remaining Maritime Customs. Finally, after a series of interest games, the court abolished the Maritime Customs in Fujian and Zhejiang, leaving only one in Guangdong.

At this point, of the thousands of miles of coastline of the Ming Dynasty, Guangdong was the only official and serious seaport left. As for other places, they naturally became the back gardens of smugglers due to the lack of power from the court.

However, smugglers only seek immediate profits and are unable to establish a system or a violent law enforcement team to maintain the system like the imperial court. As a result, gradually, in addition to the continuous smuggling in the Zhejiang and Fujian regions, there are countless pirates and endless Japanese pirates.

Due to the gradual neglect of maritime affairs by the imperial court in the southeast, four brothers, Li Guangtou, a businessman from Fujian, and Xu Dong, a businessman from Huizhou, began to control the smuggling trade in the Shuangyu Port area and established order, making Shuangyu Port gradually become the largest smuggling trade port in East Asia and flourishing at that time.

However, this information is not something Gao Gong can know now. The maritime stories he told Zhu Zaigui were about the period from Taizu's implementation of the maritime ban, Chengzu's dispatching of Zheng He to the West, the suspension of voyages to the West during Yingzong's reign, and the "Battle of Tribute" that took place in the second year of Jiajing.

But after listening to these stories, Zhu Zaigui had a general understanding of the history of the Ming Dynasty's sea ban.

Zhu Zaigui sighed, "The coastline of our Ming Dynasty is thousands of miles long, but now there is only one Maritime Customs Office in Guangdong. How can it manage these thousands of miles of coastline? There may already be a large number of pirates competing for the benefits on the sea. If the court cannot properly review the maritime policy, a big pirate who claims to be the king in the south may appear in the southeast sea in the near future!"

"And if we fail to properly appease and deal with this big pirate, it might lead to the bandits wreaking havoc and harming the people along our southeast coast."

Zhu Zaigui's sigh sounded like a thunderclap to Gao Gong's ears. He never expected that a prince of the Ming Dynasty, who was born in the deep palace with a silver spoon in his mouth, would be so ignorant. Could this be the wisdom bestowed by God?
Gao Gong whispered, "Why does Your Majesty think so?"

Zhu Zaigui said indifferently: "Isn't this the way things are in this world? When your power withdraws from a place, a new power will naturally invade that place. If this new power is not stable enough, it will become the worst hidden danger. By then, there may be no peaceful days in the southeast of the Ming Dynasty."

"The court not only has to deal with the invasion of Anda in the north, but also has to deal with the chaos in the southeast. It's a headache just thinking about it. But this is not something that you and I can worry about. Your Majesty and the elders in the cabinet should have their own countermeasures."

Zhu Zaigui's words made Gao Gong feel heavy all of a sudden. The emperor was obsessed with cultivating the mysterious Dao and asked, "The cabinet is full of selfish people who are just sitting in their positions and doing nothing. How could they see such a simple truth?"
Thinking of this, Gao Gong couldn't help but feel ashamed. If it weren't for Zhu Zaigui's words, he would never have been able to see through these problems until now.

So at this moment, Gao Gong hoped that the emperor could let go of the knot of "two dragons cannot meet" and have a good chat with Prince Yu about the affairs of the court. Maybe there would be a way to break the crisis.

Unfortunately, this is too difficult.

(End of this chapter)