The Second Joint Landing Fleet set sail again, and the main fleet of the Indian Ocean Fleet also went with it. As for the defense of several strongholds on Ceylon Island, it was handed over to other units of the Indian Expeditionary Force. The blockade of the sea area was left to the Indian Ocean Fleet.
The other main fleets are responsible.
In order to mobilize troops, the Indian Ocean Fleet has basically completely given up its attempts to fight the Portuguese in other sea areas, and has contracted across the board. It has divided the more than 30 warships gathered into two, and one part will accompany the Second Joint Landing Fleet on the expedition.
Part of Africa is concentrated on the Island of Ceylon to blockade the Island of Ceylon.
The same goes for the ground troops. Basically, the expeditionary force has given up competing with the Portuguese on the western coast of India, West Asia and even Northeast Africa. Only the necessary troops are left to defend the city. The other mobile troops are back to defend the Ceylon Island theater.
At the same time, capable troops were mobilized to prepare to remove the remaining Portuguese strongholds on the eastern coast of India and the coast of Myanmar one by one.
Thus realizing the strategic concept of completely controlling the coastal area east of Ceylon Island.
But these have nothing to do with the African Expeditionary Force.
At the same time, because of the long sea distance, and the fleet did not sail along the coastline, but went directly into the Indian Ocean, preparing to cross the Indian Ocean to Africa, so contact was very difficult. Even if there were fast communication ships to communicate back and forth, the delay would be very long.
It's normal to not hear news from the expedition fleet for ten days or eight months.
This is true for the expeditionary force headquarters in Gohe State, India. It is even more difficult to know the situation of the African Expeditionary Force in China.
In fact, even the news about the Battle of Ceylon Island was not known to Li Xuan until two months later, and this was because the military's fast communication ship was used to transmit the news.
These fast communication ships are all clipper ships equipped with high-power steam engines and are extremely fast. However, even for such ships, it takes a long time to travel between India and the mainland of the empire.
Li Xuan has long been accustomed to this. Communication is so backward these days. What else can be done? If he wants to know the news from the front line in real time, he probably can only wait for future telegrams.
Now, bear with it!
Li Xuan is firmly in the country, and his focus in handling government affairs is still on the internal construction of the empire. Although the external recruitment seems to be huge, in fact, it is nothing more than a small matter for such a huge empire.
For the current empire, the most important thing is not the war with the Portuguese, but its own development.
In recent years, with the gradual large-scale operation of transportation tools such as railways and steamships, and the large-scale adoption of more advanced high-pressure steam engines in factories, mines and other industries, the industrial and commercial development of the Datang Empire has been rapid, even driving the development of agriculture.
develop.
Because with more convenient transportation, many agricultural products from inland areas can be transported conveniently and quickly to areas with more developed economies and more developed manufacturing industries. In economically developed areas, these agricultural products, regardless of whether they are grain, cotton, or soybeans,
The demand for cash crop products such as raw silk and tea is huge.
Convenient transportation not only stimulated the development of industry and commerce in the empire, but also gave many inland areas opportunities for development.
In many places, due to the influence of geographical environment or other factors, industry has not been able to develop. In fact, the economic structure of most places in the empire is no different from that of the pre-Ming Dynasty. Agriculture is the core, plus a small amount of The service industry and handicraft industry constitute the local economic system.
Not every place has the same huge natural advantages as Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin and other places.
Not to mention these big cities, even cities like Dangtu, Pingxiang, and Shenyang had nothing before but nothing. How they developed was because they relied on local mineral resources.
However, more places have no mineral resources, or have not yet found mineral resources, and the geographical location is not very advantageous. Therefore, even though the empire has been developing industry for more than ten years, most places have always remained at the most primitive level. In the small peasant economic system.
But now, as railways and shipping become more and more developed, they cover more and more areas. Although many places are still unable to develop industries on a large scale, their agricultural products can be shipped to industrial cities in large quantities, and Bring huge profits.
In addition, with convenient transportation, many small inland cities can gradually develop industries. Although the scale may not be large, and they are developing small light industries, such as small-scale weaving factories and spinning mills, Flour mills and the like, but at least they brought industry to the local area.
Many small cities in the mainland, even with a few small-scale factories, can bring great economic development assistance to the local area.
Precisely because transportation is so important, Li Xuan has been focusing on transportation construction in the past few years. Not only building railways across the country, he also vigorously developed the steam shipping industry and dredged rivers.
As the last link in the transportation link, the construction of official roads has not been left behind. In addition to the national main roads that Gyeonggi directly takes charge of the construction, various localities are also encouraged to build their own official roads.
In this regard, Chen Lifu did a very good job in Guangdong!
In Guangdong, Chen Lifu not only engaged in railways and shipping, but also made great efforts in the construction of official roads.
The Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway is Chen Lifu's biggest achievement after taking office, which is to promote the construction of the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway. The current construction progress is extremely fast, and it is conservatively estimated that it is possible to open to traffic in three years.
In order to open to traffic faster and to reduce costs, the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway uses a single line.
This is also an important feature of the current railway construction in the Tang Empire, that is, except for a few sections with very busy traffic, the rest are single-track railways.
Even railways such as the Jiangnan Railway use single-track railways.
In terms of shipping, Chen Lifu mainly dredged the Xijiang River, Beijiang River and Dongjiang River.
As for Guandao, Chen Lifu took the lead in launching the plan to connect Guandao towns nationwide.
Provincial finance provides subsidies, local governments raise funds themselves, and mobilize local villagers to work for free to build official roads in each town.
Although the standard of this official road is very low and can only barely pass carriages, it is still a huge improvement.
In addition, the response among the people was very good, and many gentry actively donated money and materials to build officialdom.
This can be regarded as a tradition among the Chinese gentry. Generally speaking, except for a few hard-earned roosters, most gentry are more concerned about building bridges, paving roads and running schools in their hometowns.
How did the many private schools in the Datang Empire come into being in these years? In fact, most of them were organized by local gentry themselves, and the private schools in the Tang Dynasty were all typical non-profit institutions, let alone making money.
Often the gentry have to pour money into it every year, which is completely different from the fact that later generations will get private schools and make a lot of money.
To put it bluntly, many private schools in the Tang Dynasty were actually the product of philanthropy by the gentry, not the product of the industrialization of education.
This is not to say how many these gentry there are, but it is a tradition of thousands of years in China. Generally speaking, gentry are more concerned about their reputation, especially the heads of families who pride themselves on their scholarly family background. They cherish their feathers even more.
All kinds of powerful people make money, and at the same time, they use a little money to do good things and try to maintain a good reputation.
When a bridge is built, a road is paved, or a school is established, a stone tablet is usually erected to record how much a certain gentry contributed to the establishment. People want to leave their name in history.
But even though they did it for fame, it is similar to the American people doing charity in order to avoid taxes in later generations, but at least they did it, and it was much better than the powerful people who did nothing.
Under this tradition, Chen Lifu's pipeline-to-town plan was greatly welcomed by the people.
Gentlemen in many places, when they heard that the government planned to bring official Taoism to their homes, they came to donate money and materials without the need for local government mobilization.
Ordinary people are also very happy because they can work on construction sites to earn wages.
Although the government would encourage people to work for free, there was no corvee system in the Tang Dynasty. If the government wanted to let people work for free, it was impossible. They had to pay wages.
At most, the wages are less, or they are not paid at all, and they are just responsible for food.
And even so, many farmers actively participated!
This is only limited to the leisure time. If it is the busy farming period, not many farmers will go to build roads!
Only during the off-season, you can see farmers in many places working in groups to build roads.
Are they doing this for their hometowns?
Sorry, they don't have such a high level of consciousness.
It was purely because they were building roads and the government was in charge of the food.
Anyway, during the off-season, being idle at home is just a waste of rations. If you go to work on a road construction site, you can still make a living for the day, save rations for your family, and even earn a small amount of wages for some jobs.
The gentry actively participated and donated money and materials. The farmers also actively signed up to build roads in order to make a living during the off-season. Chen Lifu also made the provincial finance contribute a lot of money, and then asked the prefectures, counties and other local yamen to
Tightening the belt will also squeeze out funds for road construction, so if you do it this way, the results will be particularly great.
After Li Xuan, who was far away in Jinling City, heard about Chen Lifu's achievements in building official roads in Guangdong, he felt that this approach was quite feasible. The government, gentry and farmers would jointly spend money and efforts to build roads, which was a good thing.
Immediately, officials from multiple departments were sent to Guangdong to learn about the local road construction policy. Li Xuan kept an eye on these people personally and made sure to find out all the details of the matter. Li Xuan also hoped that in
Other provincial highways do the same.
However, in many things, success and failure do not lie in the general direction, but in the details.
If you want to replicate this successful approach in other places, the most important thing is not the plan, but the details.
He specially sent a research team there to figure out all the details and then summarize a complete plan that could be replicated.
However, according to the itinerary, if this research team wants to complete the research and come back to report, it will probably be next year, which is the 24th year of Xuanping. If nothing goes wrong, Li Xuan plans to select a few more next year.
The province implements this official road construction plan.
In addition, by next year, it is estimated that the expeditionary force will also arrive in Africa, but I don’t know whether their journey will go smoothly or whether they will encounter a storm and wipe out the entire army...