Chapter 768 Learn from the barbarians and learn skills to control the barbarians
Wang Sangyu was leaning against the stove reading a book, and there was a kettle boiling water on the stove.
When Zhu Yihai opened the curtain and came in, she said with a somewhat surprised smile, "Where has Master Zhuangzi gone? There is not even a gatekeeper left, and no one has informed me so that I can go to the door to greet him.
"
"It's windy and snowy today, but the gatekeepers of the village are guarding the house very dedicatedly. I asked them not to come to report." He immediately took off his sable fur robe, took off his hat and gloves, and sat down by the fire.
"What book are you reading?"
Wang Sangyu flashed the book cover and said, "The latest set of "Hai Guo Tu Zhi" compiled by Fengtian Bookstore is a very interesting book. You can learn about the world without leaving home."
Of course Zhu Yihai knew about this book. This was a book he asked the East Palace to take the lead in compiling in the name of the prince. In order to enlighten the people's wisdom and increase the reputation of the prince, Zhu Yihai spent a large sum of money and selected many officials and scholars to start the book compilation by the East Palace.
But unlike Zhu Di's compilation of the Yongle Grand Canon, Donggong's book compilation plan includes Shaotian Zhengyin, Qianmingshu, Shaotian Dictionary, Shaotian Almanac, etc., as well as astronomy and geography books such as Haiguo Tuzhi
wait.
This set of atlas of the Sea Kingdom has a total of one hundred volumes and is planned to have one million words. It also contains a large number of maps, illustrations, and even prefaces written by the emperor and the prince respectively. It not only introduces the geography of the world, but also introduces the countries in the world today, and
A brief introduction to the history of each country.
It not only explains the local customs and customs, but also adds a lot of Western skills, etc., and provides a good popular introduction to their science and technology, culture and art, etc.
The whole set of books is ideologically more pertinent in introducing various countries, instead of simply calling them barbarians, but looking at the world with an open attitude and encouraging the people of the Ming Dynasty to be open-minded to the world.
"I have always heard about Zheng He's seven voyages to the Western Seas, but I didn't know much about it. After reading this set of books, which contains maps, routes, and text, I realized that he was so great. More than two hundred years ago, the Ming Dynasty was able to make long voyages.
In the West, even during the Yuan Dynasty, officials and envoys had already sailed to Africa.
Portugal and Spain turned out to be so small, but they were able to discover the New World and New Continent, dig out countless gold and silver there, and sail to the East to colonize here, which is really remarkable."
"Well, don't underestimate it. It won't work to be arrogant, and it won't work to be complacent. As the times move forward, we have to adapt to development. If we stay in isolation, we will be abandoned and left behind sooner or later."
Wang Sangyu stood up and poured a cup of tea for his lover.
A cup of black tea, a warm cup of black tea in winter, is indeed quite heart-warming.
"I have brought you several pieces of woolen cloth, all of which were sent as tribute by the British envoy."
The British envoys were actually representatives of the British business group, the most important of whom were representatives of the East India Company. Although the British East India Company was not as famous as the Dutch East India Company in the past, its development in Nanyang was frustrated in the past few years and it retreated to India for development, but instead developed
Get up quickly.
The British actually wanted to get a piece of the pie in the Far East. Not only did they want to establish a long-term commercial center in Japan, but they also wanted to occupy a piece of land in the Ming Dynasty. They also wanted to get involved in the spice production and trade in Nanyang. Unfortunately, they did not
It went well, and later I simply concentrated on developing in India, but it became very popular.
They were also the dominant company there. As the Ming Dynasty's foreign trade strengthened, especially Zhu Yihai's intention to trade and cooperate with other countries, rather than letting the Dutch dominate, Britain was actively attracted by the Ming Dynasty, and they hit it off immediately.
Now the British East India Company only accounts for a huge profit of 3.5 million pounds in the tea export trade from the Ming Dynasty every year. This does not include the huge profits from the tariffs imposed on the British tea imports that have continued to increase in recent years.
Portugal's weakness allowed the British to take over their place. They occupied an important position in the Indian Ocean. Even the Dutch, who had a dominant position in Southeast Asia, could not suppress them. Spain was also weak and only held the Luzon Islands in Southeast Asia.
, their Pacific-American route, due to domestic legal controls, has resulted in a significant reduction in route trade volume.
"This is white ground and red flower orangutan felt. Do you like it?"
Orangutan felt is also called woolen fabric. It is a cashmere wool textile. It is also the main product of imported Western goods in recent years. People in the Ming Dynasty used to call it woolen material, mainly for making winter clothes. Commonly imported woolen fabrics include dorado, orangutan felt, and feather satin.
, feather yarn, serge satin, Panzhi, etc.
The orangutan felt that Zhu Yihai gave to Wang is actually red doraemon, which is one of the better quality. Zhu Yihai also brought some feather yarn today. Feather yarn is also called feather yarn, but it is not made of feathers.
, originally made of camel hair, and later mainly made of goat hair and silk, or goat hair and cotton.
These various types of woolen fabrics are woven from wool, cashmere, silk or cotton. Some are plain, and some have patterns, so there are many categories. Among the commodities exported from the UK to Ming Dynasty, cotton is one of them.
The first major product is cotton gauze and cotton cloth, and then this woolen product.
In the past, Britain also exported clocks, glasses, telescopes, glass mirrors, glass, etc. to the Ming Dynasty, but now the Royal Shaofu has its own factories for these products, and the output, quality and price are far better than those of the British and other Westerners.
Instead, he started exporting to them.
"This is a very good thing. It makes clothes warm and wrinkle-free, especially it can protect you from rain and snow. I also bought some from the village a few years ago, and they are not cheap. Orangutan felt costs one silver dollar per foot. This feather-forged felt is very good.
It also costs five taels of silver per square foot, a set of orangutan felt clothing materials costs dozens of taels of silver, and a set of feather satin clothing costs sixteen or seventy taels of silver."
"A piece of ordinary cotton fabric used by ordinary people in the market for making clothes now only costs three coins. This set of feather satin materials is enough to cover the expenses of a family for a year."
Zhu Yihai smiled and said, "The orangutan felt and feather satin I gave you are still top-quality, and the price will have to be doubled several times."
"How could Your Majesty let this British man earn money from our Ming Dynasty, and not let the Young Master do research and set up some woolen workshops?" She said with a smile.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! "This is natural. The Shaofu Supervisor has already started to establish a woolen textile project. Although we raise few sheep in the Central Plains, there are still sheep raised in Saishang in the northwest and Yan Dynasty.
It’s quite a lot. We don’t lack goat cashmere, so why import large amounts from abroad every year?
However, this British guy refused to sell our woolen textile machine. Now he mainly relies on imitating it. Last year, he quietly started a Hanzhong textile bureau in Hanzhong. However, at the beginning, the progress was not smooth, and he did not know enough about the raw materials.
The incoming raw materials include coarse and fine wool. The current machines are suitable for fine and soft wool. People have to be hired to sort out the fine wool from the coarse wool. Forty people can only sort out two kilograms a day and collect a hundred pounds.
Only ten kilograms of wool can be woven into high-quality wool, and the rest can only be woven into coarse woolen blankets, which is very expensive.
Moreover, the location chosen for the factory there has insufficient water resources and high salt content, which affects the quality of bleaching and dyeing. The factory is newly built, there are not enough craftsmen, and there are not enough workers. In short, there are still many problems.
Up to now, we can only produce eight horses a day, and the workshop reports that the annual output does not exceed 300 horses, and the cost is higher than imported ones, and the quality is worse."
Wang Sangyu didn't find it strange at all after hearing this. The emperor, while taking care of everything in the military and state affairs, would always find some time to pay attention to other things that others seemed to be not doing his job properly.
From minting to mining, from opening a bank to issuing vouchers, from building a weaving bureau to a shipyard, from an artillery factory to a pot factory, from a clock factory to a woolen factory.
"Your Majesty won't just admit defeat like this, right?"
"That's impossible. If there are not enough craftsmen, we will pay them high wages. If the machines are backward, we will try to buy or steal new and better machines. If the location of the factory is not good, we will change the location. A second woolen weaving bureau has been built in Zhangjiakou, Xuanhua.
As long as you are willing to invest in the early stage, are you afraid of not getting anything in the later stage? We have such a big market in the Ming Dynasty, with so many pastures and nomadic tribes in the surrounding southwest, northwest, and north, and so much wool. There is no shortage of raw materials and markets. How can we use this in vain?
Give up the big market to the British and import large amounts from them every year?"
At the very least, after the Ming Dynasty also had a woolen weaving industry, even if it imports again in the future, the pricing power will still be in the hands of the Ming Dynasty.
"Your Majesty doesn't want to give this little money-making opportunity to foreigners. Aren't you afraid that foreigners will be angry?"
"What are you afraid of? When it comes to buying and selling, you have to compete. This business is not only about exchanging what is needed, but also about competing in technology. When there is no technological advantage, then you can only be sheared and reduced to a supplier of raw materials. If our woolen fabrics are
When it gets up, foreigners will no longer be able to sell it at such a high price, or even be unable to match our cost in the future, so they will have no choice but to sell wool and cashmere to us."
"In fact, foreigners are also like this. Our silk used to be soft gold in the eyes of Europeans, but in the Tang Dynasty, the Persians had already begun to raise silkworms and weave silk. In the past few years, because of the Ming Dynasty silk shipped to the Americas from Luzon
Good quality and low price. Didn't the King of Spain prohibit Luzon from transporting Ming Dynasty silk to the Americas, limit the number of merchant ships coming to Luzon, and limit the silver shipped from the Americas to Luzon? Instead, they only allowed Luzon to transport Ming Dynasty raw silk to the Americas, not silk.
Weaving products, isn't it because they are afraid of impacting their Spanish domestic silk industry and taking away their American market?
The British are now making millions of pounds a year from the tea trade and levying huge tea taxes. They are still not satisfied. They have begun to secretly steal tea tree seeds from the Ming Dynasty and secretly test planting them in India.
Tea leaves, I want to grow my own tea in the future and no longer buy tea from us."
This is the inevitability of capital, which naturally seeks to make profits.
The Ming Dynasty now exports a huge amount of tea, and the price is still very high. It has pricing power, black tea is 26 taels per quintal, and green tea is 24 taels per quintal.
Nowadays, several major tea export centers have been formed in the Ming Dynasty. Huizhou green tea is concentrated in Tunxi and transferred to Shanghai from Xin'an River via Hangzhou. Keemun black tea is also transported to Shanghai via Tunxi or Jiujiang.
Pingshui tea from eastern Zhejiang was shipped from Shaoxing to Shanghai via Hangzhou.
Wuyi Mountain tea is shipped to Fuzhou Port for export.
Wuhan has also become an important tea port, and tea bricks shipped to Mongolia, Qinghai, the Western Regions and other northern regions are also exported from Hankou.
Last year alone, Shanghai Port exported more than 600,000 tons of tea, Fuzhou exported more than 600,000 tons of tea, Hankou exported more than 200,000 tons of tea, and Guangzhou and other ports exported more than 100,000 tons of tea.
The Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company almost monopolized the Ming Dynasty's foreign trade tea. Britain also took the lion's share by virtue of its advantage in the Indian Ocean, making more than three million pounds a year. The British tea import volume was also year-on-year.
The volume has increased sharply every year, reaching an astonishing volume of more than 200,000 tons last year.
Last year, the export value of exported tea reached an astonishing 40 million taels, and the tea tax collected more than 4 million taels. Exported tea has been equal to domestic tea sales.
Regardless of the small pile of tea, it is now a key industry in the entire southern provinces, and countless people have benefited from it. Those who grow tea, make tea, collect tea, and sell tea. People help pick tea and take care of the tea mountains, which can also increase their income.
From the local area to the central government, a large amount of tax revenue was obtained.
From emperors and aristocrats to traders and servants, everyone is popular to drink tea. From expensive famous tea, to ordinary ration tea, brick tea favored by nomads, to exported black tea and green tea, the tea industry has basically taken shape.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, tea taxes were basically non-existent, but now there are millions of tea taxes a year.
The British want to grow tea in India, the Dutch also want to grow tea in Nanyang, the Spanish also want to grow tea in Luzon, and even the Japanese and Koreans want to grow their own high-end tea to achieve tea freedom, but only now
Until now, even if they could grow tea trees and make tea, their scale and quality were far inferior to those of the Ming Dynasty, and they could not pose a threat to the tea leaves of the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty firmly controlled the trade volume and pricing power of tea leaves.
"The revenue from the special tax on tobacco, wine, salt, tea and mines is now enough to supply the Ming Dynasty's annual military expenditures. With the recovery of the customs, there are even savings."
Even Wang Sangyu, who didn't know much about national finance, heard how shocking this was. In the past, the Chongzhen Dynasty imposed various additional levies, including three rates. Even if the three rates were collected in full, the maximum amount he could receive was only two thousand or two thousand taels.
silver.
But even if only part of the three rates were collected, it would still force the whole world to rebel.
But now the emperor only uses these few miscellaneous items that he could not receive during the Chongzhen Dynasty, and he can actually support the world's soldiers and horses, and still have a surplus.
She knew very well that the Ming Dynasty's army was receiving good treatment, and some officials even criticized it for redundant troops. She had led a rebel army before and knew how difficult it was to raise troops.
"It's funny that some people always sneer and insinuate that Your Majesty is not doing his job, is greedy for money, and loves to plunder, but they don't know what kind of ability His Majesty is. He doesn't apportion a penny to the people, and the five special taxes on salt, tea, tobacco, wine, and minerals have already covered military expenses.
It is really rare to be able to pay generous salaries and give preferential treatment to soldiers."
Zhu Yihai doesn't think this is an exaggeration. Think about it in later generations. A Chinese tobacco company pays more than one trillion yuan in taxes a year, which is hundreds of billions more than the national military expenditure. Therefore, if several items such as salt, tea, tobacco, wine, and mines are developed,
Well, that can definitely far exceed the agricultural tax.
"After the prince's wedding, I will go on a tour to the west. You can go with me." Zhu Yihai said.
Wang Sangyu looked at the emperor and said, "Your Majesty, on your western tour, shouldn't you bring those Mongolian women with you?"
"Anu and the others are going too, and I also want you to go with them."
"Since Your Majesty doesn't mind it, I will go west and have a look." Wang Sangyu agreed.
"Your Majesty, are you really relieved to let the prince stay to supervise the country?"
"With the help of the ministers, there is nothing to worry about."
Wang Sangyu asked again, "Your Majesty's journey to the west will only go as far as Dunhuang, right?"
"Um."
"You won't march all the way to Yarkand City, or even to Moscow in Tsarist Russia, right?"
