Chapter 134: The Root of Japanese Rebellion
Alfonso is a treasure!
Su Ze lamented that this old captain was proficient in Portuguese, Chinese, and could also speak Spanish and French. Su Ze had opened three skills with him!
In Portuguese, French and Spanish respectively!
You can increase your skills by chatting with Alfonso in these languages. As expected, language is the easiest skill to improve.
Su Ze just regretted that his Chinese should be at full level, so he had no Chinese skills to brush up on.
Alfonso didn't know that Su Ze regarded him as an NPC to gain experience. The old captain was really confused, why did this Ming officer know so many languages, and also took turns chatting with him in various languages?
In order to make it easier for Alfonso to develop his skills, Su Ze placed the old captain next to Changning Guard and would chat with him every day when he had nothing to do.
What shocked Alfonso was that when Su Ze chatted with him at first, he could only communicate word by word and use phrases. (Level 1 at the time)
But within four or five days, Su Ze was able to chat with Alfonso in complete sentences. (Upgraded to Lv2)
This terrifying rate of progress made Alfonso understand that there really are geniuses for learning languages in this world.
Su Ze has been chatting with Alfonso these days. In addition to improving his three language skills, Su Ze also asked him about the situation.
Alfonso was arranged from the island to the Changning Guard. Although Su Ze had people strictly guard him, he finally made it to land.
The old captain had already accepted his fate and answered all Su Ze's questions.
The New World is a merchant ship that travels to the New World. Su Ze drooled when he heard this. It was a pity that this ship did not come back from America. If so, Su Ze would have become rich all of a sudden.
The ships bound for Manila from South America are all loaded with South American gold and silver!
The Ming Dynasty was very short of money.
The reason is very simple. The Ming Dynasty was not a silver-producing country. The reserves of silver mines were not large, and there was not enough silver to circulate.
But anyone who knows a little bit about monetary policy understands that if there is insufficient currency on the market, it will cause a serious liquidity crisis.
Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, China's main currency has always been copper coins, and money has always been referred to as copper coins.
As for gold, since the Qin and Han Dynasties, only the palace and top dignitaries have used it as a luxury product. During the Han Dynasty, princes were reluctant to spend gold and took gold underground as funerary objects.
Shortage of silver and money, currency shortage has always troubled the Ming Dynasty and was the biggest financial problem of the Ming Dynasty.
At this time, smart people will ask, they are also feudal dynasties, and folk trade is also popular, but why is there no shortage in the Southern Song and Yuan Dynasties?
The Yuan Dynasty itself was founded on trade, and maritime trade in the Southern Song Dynasty was also very prosperous. China's rich products could be exported to earn foreign exchange, in exchange for a large amount of silver and copper.
However, the Ming Dynasty began its maritime ban policy in the Hongwu Year, which almost cut off the import of overseas money, and the problem of lack of currency became even more serious.
In the context of the lack of currency, the idea of looking for alternatives naturally emerged, so the Ming Dynasty Baoqiao came into being.
In most people's minds, credit currency such as Baobao is a manifestation of progress.
But in fact, Ming Dynasty banknotes are not banknotes in the modern sense. They are more like welfare coupons or purchase coupons issued by the government.
The most typical example is that the government can use treasure banknotes to buy your things, and the government can use treasure banknotes to exchange for your silver and copper coins, but you cannot use the treasure banknotes to exchange for copper coins and silver coins.
To be fair, the treasure banknotes of the Hongwu Dynasty were still under control, and the depreciation was not too severe, at least not to the point of being used as waste paper.
At that time, treasure banknotes still had some credibility and could still be circulated among the people.
In fact, there was nothing we could do if it was not circulated. At that time, all the money paid by the imperial court to the kitchen households who burned salt and the horse owners who raised horses were all treasure banknotes. At that time, the salaries paid to officials were also all treasure banknotes. It's useful.
Although the treasure banknotes were also depreciating, they were still usable, and Hongwu made do with them.
But by the Yongle year, the treasure notes quickly depreciated into waste paper.
The reason is actually very simple. In order to promote his legitimacy, Zhu Di started many national projects and large-scale conquests, such as moving the capital to build the Forbidden City, compiling the Yongle Grand Ceremony, Zheng He's voyages to the West, and conquests against Mongolia and other surrounding grassland forces.
It is true that these are beneficial to the country, but practical problems have always existed. How can we support so many large-scale projects and wars on the basis of no increase in taxes stipulated by Zhu Yuanzhang, that is, on the basis of no increase in fiscal revenue?
The answer is of course obvious: print money!
After the uncontrolled printing of money began, the value of treasure banknotes quickly depreciated to the point where it was even worse than waste paper. The people were not stupid. The price of treasure banknotes changed every day. When buying things, everyone had to weigh them. Who would be willing to accept treasure banknotes.
In the later period of Yongle, there were also attempts to save the treasure banknotes and carried out rescue campaigns, such as forcing the use of the treasure banknotes, and issuing larger denominations of the treasure banknotes, but without any surprise they all failed.
After two dynasties, it seemed that Baochao could not be saved. Even officials refused to receive Baochao as salary. The monetary system of the Ming Dynasty could only return to the two paths of copper coins and silver.
However, when promoting treasure banknotes, Zhu Yuanzhang once issued a "money ban order" to ensure the circulation of treasure banknotes and prohibit the use of copper coins.
But after the treasure banknotes had collapsed and the imperial court wanted to let the people use money, the people no longer had enough copper coins in circulation.
For example, Jiangxi, which is adjacent to Fujian, generally uses rice as currency, Shanxi uses fur, Sichuan uses silk, and the most outrageous thing is that Yunnan basically uses shells, almost regressing to the era of barter.
The "illegal money law" is also a stubborn problem that has not been solved in the Ming Dynasty. Even in Fujian, which uses copper coins, most of them are ancient coins from the previous dynasty. Coins officially minted by the Ming Dynasty are also difficult to circulate in Fujian.
Even in the core areas of the Ming Dynasty, the North and South Zhili, private coinage was rampant and money laws were chaotic.
Many famous officials in the Ming Dynasty tried to solve the problem of money law, but they could only solve it briefly. In the end, they were unable to unify the use of copper coins across the country and eliminate private money and counterfeit money.
By this time, neither treasure banknotes nor copper coins could be used as a unified currency. By this period, silver had become a universal currency, which was an unstoppable trend.
But there are still problems with using silver, which goes back to the original problem. The Central Plains itself does not produce silver, and the total amount of silver is very small.
The result of the currency tension in the market is that the value of silver keeps rising, and tomorrow's silver will always be more valuable than yesterday's silver.
The purchasing power of silver keeps rising, and only fools will spend it. As long as you keep your money, it will appreciate in value. Why use it?
And everyone thinks so, there will be less and less silver in circulation, and the price of silver will rise faster.
At this point in time, the Iwami silver mine in Japan was discovered.
The Iwami Silver Mine is a huge silver mine. After its discovery in the 16th century, it took four hundred years of mining before it was exhausted.
Throughout the sixteenth century, one-third of the world's silver was mined from the Iwami mines.
The Japanese also absorbed the advanced smelting method from Korea, which was learned from the Ming Dynasty and passed on from the Ming Dynasty - the soot blowing method, and refined silver with high purity. At this time, Ming merchants on the southeast coast quickly discovered that the Japanese had silver in their hands.
When the Japanese had silver, they naturally had to buy it, and the Ming Dynasty was the largest production center in Asia. Japanese merchants also rushed to the Ming Dynasty, hoping to trade and buy goods with the Ming Dynasty.
The Japanese rebellion that intensified in the mid-Ming Dynasty broke out against this background.
The cause of the Jiajing Japanese Rebellion was the time when Japanese missions competed for tribute.
At that time, there was only one way to trade with the Ming Dynasty, and that was tribute trade.
Tribute trade is a trade between countries, and the trading objects are the Ming Dynasty and the Japanese country. Therefore, the business groups coming to the Ming Dynasty need a Kanhe issued by the small court of the Japanese country to prove the identity of the tribute envoy.
The incident originated from the Japanese daimyo Hosokawa clan and the Ouchi clan each sending trade missions to China to trade with the Ming Dynasty. After the two missions arrived in Ningbo, Zhejiang, they both held Japanese alliances, so they accused each other of false alliances.
Conflicts arose due to disputes over the authenticity of the documents, and armed killings broke out in Ningbo, Zhejiang. Representatives of the Ouchi clan burned, killed, looted and captured people along the road, causing great damage to the local residents. The pursuing Biwadu commander Liu Jin, Qianhu Zhang Bor and other Ming Dynasty officers and soldiers died in the battle.
This incident directly led the Ming government to abolish the Fujian and Zhejiang Shipping Departments, leaving only the Guangdong Shipping Department. It also led to the severance of trade routes between the Ming Dynasty and Japan, and the proliferation of Japanese pirates, laying the groundwork for the subsequent "Southeast Japanese Disaster" Foreshadowing.
The Japanese rebellion could not be subsided for a long time. In addition to the fact that Japan needed Ming's goods, Ming also needed Japan's silver. The reason why the southeast sea ban was loosened and tightened intermittently. Later, in the Longqing year, the sea ban was simply abandoned to open trade. In fact, it was all related to the lack of Ming Dynasty. Silver related.
The coincidence of history is that not only the Japanese discovered Iwami silver mines, but Europeans also discovered large amounts of gold and silver in South America.
The trade route of the Manila Galleon was to bring silver from South America, then exchange it for commodities in Manila or East Asia, and then transport it back to Europe. This also led to the flow of South American silver into China.
As mentioned before, the problem of physical taxation in the Ming Dynasty could only be solved through the one-whip method of converting silver during the Zhang Juzheng period. The reason was that it was only during the period when Zhang Juzheng was in power that the Ming Dynasty had enough silver flowing in to carry out this financial reform. .
Su Ze looked at Captain Alfonso's navigation chart and drooled at the Japanese country.
The Iwami Silver Mine is a huge treasure house!
The Japanese country is now in the so-called "Warring States Period". It is now the 33rd year of Jiajing. Six years later, Oda Nobunaga, the strongest among the regional samurai, rose up and defeated Imagawa Yoshimoto Si with two thousand troops in Ozazama. Wan Dajun became famous and began the twenty-year road to unify the Japanese country.
It can be said that the current Japanese country is in a period of chaos because of village wars.
Of course, Su Ze didn't want to trade with Japan. What Su Ze wanted was the Iwami Silver Mine!
If we wait until Toyotomi Hideyoshi unifies Japan and becomes regent Guanbai, there will be no chance to fish in troubled waters!
In addition to the chaos in Japan, Europe at this time was also in chaos.
France abandoned its religious piety and united with the Ottoman Empire to form the Alliance of Iris and Crescent, and started a melee with the Holy Alliance headed by Habsburg.
Although Martin Luther is dead, the prelude to the Reformation he kicked off has not stopped, and the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism has intensified.
The entire world is heading towards a chaotic era of great strife. The sixteenth century is the crossroads of history, which determines the general trend of the world in the next five hundred years.
After thinking about the general situation, Su Ze looked at the Changning Wei chart on the wall.
Hey, food must be eaten one bite at a time, and the road must be walked step by step. Not to mention the war in Europe, even the civil war in Japan has nothing to do with Su Ze.
Let’s deal with the Japanese pirate deer king who is about to land in Fujian first.
From Alfonso's mouth, Su Ze also found out about the Deer King.
King Shika is the leader of a group of wandering samurai in Kagoshima. After joining the command of Mingshan monk Xu Feng, he recruited ronin samurai from the Japanese country and formed a pirate gang composed entirely of real Japanese.
It is said that King Deer has a thousand Japanese soldiers under his command, but according to Alfonso's information, King Deer led a total of 1,500 Japanese soldiers in this invasion of the southeast.
King Lu has nearly thirty ships, large and small, and has now issued a note to all forces in the southeastern coastal areas to blockade the southeastern waters.
According to Alfonso, although Japanese pirates often broke out in the southeastern region of the Ming Dynasty, there was still some order amidst the chaos.
For example, when a real Japanese like King Lu wants to invade, he will notify the nearby merchant ships and other forces and ask them to leave the combat area within a time limit.
Alfonso has also received the note. He originally planned to evacuate the southeastern waters within a time limit after completing the delivery of the goods in Yuegang.
The ultimatum given by the Deer King to Alfonso and the Portuguese was in early September, which was consistent with the information Su Ze received from Zhang Haihu. This was the day when the Deer King was preparing to fully invade the southeast.
Of course, when Japanese pirates do this, they do not mean that Japanese pirates abide by the rules, but that they are making a living on the sea. It is often the case that there is me among you, and you among me.
Today's Japanese pirates may be hired by the Portuguese tomorrow to suppress a Nanyang kingdom that is trying to rebel.
The Japanese pirates may one day need to do business with the Portuguese and buy their food and weapons.
You must know that when these Japanese pirates burned, killed, humiliated and looted in Fujian, there was no morality at all.
For Su Ze and Chang Ningwei, Japanese pirates are life and death enemies, and only dead Japanese pirates are good Japanese pirates.
The atmosphere in Changning Guard became even more tense. While reading the military book sent by Yu Dayou, Su Ze was tinkering in the blacksmith shop, and finally developed his blacksmith skills.
I have to say that the blacksmith skill is really difficult to master. Su Ze remade almost all of Chang Ning Wei's farm tools, and then he reached Level 3, 10/300.
On July 27th, Su Ze finally finished reading Yu Dayou's Art of War, and the system popped up a prompt:
[Reading the Art of War, "Art of War" skill +20, Lv5, 3/1000]
[Art of War skill breaks through Lv5, Please extract passive skills. 】
Transitional chapter, I am an out-of-context dog, don’t scold me, don’t scold me.
1. Let’s talk about the financial issue in general. There are many reasons for the incomprehension of money laws, and this issue is relatively complicated.
2. There are many reasons for the Japanese Rebellion. Bai Yin’s story is a personal one, but it is relatively credible.
Later in the Wanli year, Toyotomi Hideyoshi attacked North Korea and asked the Ming Dynasty for an armistice condition, which was to pay tribute from Ningbo and to open a trade port. However, after the Ming army defeated the country and Japan began to seize the country, this matter was not mentioned again.
3. The policy is very complicated. In fact, it cannot be said that sea bans have no benefits. Everything has pros and cons. It is also naive to think that sea bans can solve all problems.
4. A fat bird is not a clean fan. I agree that the Qing court was reactionary and cruel, and there were no good things in the feudal dynasty. If you don’t agree with me, you can read "History of Southern Ming Dynasty" to treat hypotension.
(End of chapter)