Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Why did Zhao Xin go to such great lengths to come up with such a theory?
On a smaller scale, it was to pry a legal opening in North America, occupy Upper California, and lay the foundation for future control of Louisiana; on a larger scale, it was directly related to the country's geostrategy after the Unification War.

From his foothold in the outer northeast, seizing the Ezo land, splitting the island country, then seizing Siberia, establishing the Cossack Emirate, then intervening in Annan, driving away the Dutch, and teaching the British a lesson; and then negotiating with the Li Dynasty to delimit the Tumen River and get back the Tumen River Town, forcing the Qing Dynasty to capture Gorkha, allowing Liu Sheng and Fan Tong to leave Congling in the west, allowing Lu Qi to occupy Kinmen and even plan Alaska, are all part of the geostrategic goals.

Chen Danran in the late Qing Dynasty once said that those who do not plan for the overall situation are not enough to plan for a region; those who do not plan for the eternity are not enough to plan for the moment.

Ancient China also had a geostrategic system, which was divided into nine regions: Hou, Dian, Nan, Cai, Wei, Man, Yi, Zhen, and Fan.However, the control capabilities of the ancients were limited, so they divided it based on five hundred miles, forming the geopolitical territory of the Emperor - the world - China - and the barbarians.It is 500 miles from east to west, north to south, and the area is not small. It covers more than 600 million square kilometers. The Western Han Dynasty only had [-] million.

Since the Tang Dynasty, the central government's ability to control the border areas has improved, which has more than doubled its territory. However, the Western Region has always been unstable, with repeated gains and losses.It was not until the Qing Dynasty that the east of Congling was firmly under control after conquests by the armies of Kangxi, Yongzong and Qianlong.

So the question is, where will the North's naval expeditions end up?In other words, where are the geographical boundaries where the future regime can exercise effective control?It is certainly unrealistic to drive the British East India Company out of India, so where is the most advantageous position to set the boundaries of influence between the two sides?

With the beginning of the first industrial revolution, the concept of "world island" is gradually becoming a reality. Eurasia, which is at the core of the world island, will surely become the focus of power competition among all parties.

From the Volga River to the estuary of the Yangtze River, from the Himalayas to Siberia, this vast area is the heart of the world. Whoever controls the heartland can control Eurasia and then the world.

In addition, from the perspective of sea power, it is not enough to control the heartland. Controlling the coastal areas surrounding the heartland is also a top priority.

So in order to achieve the geostrategic goals of land and sea power, how many troops and ships should the North Korean Navy deploy?How many military depots, horse farms, material warehouses, and telegraph relay stations should be set up on the transportation lines?

It does not mean that the world can be managed with the telegraph. Transportation is also an important factor that restricts the effectiveness of governance.Even though colonial empires occupied large areas of land in America and Africa, all they could effectively control were coastal areas with convenient water and land transportation.Would you like to ask the Spanish to take charge of Nevada in the [-]th century?Simply out of reach.

Even in China, a Sichuan-Tibet Highway took 11 people a full eight years to build, even in an era when no one was afraid of sacrifice, and more than 3000 people died.

All this is not just a fight for territory, but actually a battle between East Asian civilization with a small peasant economy and Europe with a bandit culture for control of the world's resources, which is a war of civilizations.

The strategy of land power and sea power mainly targets Britain.As for North America, it is to make it difficult for the United States to rise; without the vast Midwest, there will be no vast domestic market and insufficient resources for full industrialization.

Speaking of which, the earth is so big.Judging from the historical experience of another time and space, the comprehensive industrialization in Europe and the United States alone consumed most of the earth's resources, and excessive damage to the environment forced the manufacturing industry to be relocated.If East Asia also enters full industrialization, the resources on the earth will simply not be enough.

Therefore, at the end of the 80s in another time and space, the Americans took the lead in establishing the "Washington Consensus", the core of which was to use financial means to control Latin American countries through various economic liberalizations, become their economic vassals, and prevent their industrialization. .

Of course, at the beginning, Zhao Xin did not think so long-term.His various actions of banging a hammer and a stick here and there were, on the one hand, for gold, and on the other hand, to vent his grievances from the "hundred years of humiliation" in another time and space.However, as time passed and the scope of his rule expanded, his mentality and worldview also transitioned from a small boss to a political leader, and his way of thinking about problems also changed from casual to rational.

Especially when Beihai Town captured Java and expanded the territory under its control to more than 700 million square kilometers, Zhao Xin began to worry about gains and losses and was completely unable to sleep.

Sleep how to do?Just think about something!However, the more he thought about it, the more Zhao Xin realized that Confucian culture based on small-scale peasant economy could not provide theoretical nourishment for this kind of geostrategic thinking based on competition for resources and territory, and it was difficult to convince the intellectual class and ordinary people to support it. foreign policy initiatives.

People will always die in wars, no matter how many people there are; when you are thousands of miles away from home, you will always miss your homeland, even if your relatives are by your side.

It's okay to say that Java has Chinese immigrants since the Song and Yuan Dynasties. There are hundreds of thousands of Chinese in West Java and Borneo, but there is no precedent in North America.If you want to transform the New World into summer, you must first have large-scale immigration.However, Chinese people are typically "hard to leave their homeland". As long as they can make ends meet in their hometown, no one wants to move.

Several large-scale migrations in history were either spontaneous actions caused by wars and natural disasters, or they were forced measures taken to restore the economy after wars.It is easy to say, but very difficult to implement in practice, and it requires huge national resources to achieve.

You can't send all the bannermen here, the sky is high and the emperor is far away. If these guys one day create a North American Qing Dynasty, it will be a headache!
So after much deliberation, Zhao Xin could only create a "blood relationship theory", licking his face and forcibly connecting the Miwoks and Manchus, as a theoretical tool for his own occupation of North America, and used this theory to serve geostrategic goals.

Just last night, he briefly explained his thoughts to Lu Qi. His original intention was to hope that the other party would understand his thinking, and also to see if there were any omissions.

However, his theory makes little sense to Rucci.Who said that ancient China did not have the guiding ideology of opening up new territories? Isn’t it true that “the whole world is not the land of the king”?Domineering enough!

Zhao Xingwen said that he couldn't laugh or cry. If this had been the case when he first came to this time and space, he would have thought it was the same.But after systematically studying Confucian classics with Wang Zhong over the years, his mind has changed.

He bluntly told Lu Qi that although many emperors in the past dynasties were engaged in opening up territories, no one dared to use this sentence as a slogan.

"Not to mention the scholars I have just recruited, even the scholars under the Qing Dynasty will sneer at us. Even all East Asian countries influenced by Confucian culture will not agree with us and even laugh at us privately."

"Is it that serious? It's not serious, right?" Lu Qi was somewhat disapproving.

Having no choice, Zhao Xin could only patiently explain from the beginning: "This sentence comes from "Beishan" in the "Book of Songs". The original text is: Under the sky, is it the king's land; on the shore of the land, is it the king's ministers. The officials are not equal, I am engaged in Duxian. You just remember the first sixteen characters, the next eight characters cannot be omitted!" "What do you mean?"

"Lu Qi, the meaning of this passage is not the rhetoric you think at all, but an ancient social beast complaining about the unfair distribution of work by his boss. Translated into vernacular, it means that the entire company belongs to the boss. As a result, the boss does not worry. Being romantic and happy every day makes me, a wage earner, so busy every day that I don’t even have time to go home and take care of my parents.”

Lu Qi said with shame, "I'll wipe it, right?"

Zhao Xin retorted: "Why not? Go and read how it is explained in "Mencius. Ten Thousand Chapters". If it is according to your understanding, all companies in the world belong to me, regardless of whether the other party is better than me. The quantity is large; all the bosses work for me. Although I don’t pay wages, if you don’t listen to me, I will deal with you. Do you think a copycat mobile phone workshop company in Huaqiangbei can manage Apple? From another perspective, Apple Can you control Google?”

"I'll look through the book later." Lu Qi felt unsure.

"Later in the Northern Song Dynasty, someone extended the meaning of this sentence and advised Song Renzong to regard the world as his home. The emperor has no private affairs, and private affairs are also public affairs. If you follow your intention, haha, it will become the common people's selfless wealth, and all It belongs to the emperor. Which emperor dares to say this? Even the Manchu emperor did not dare to rob it openly. The "Qing Code" clearly stipulates the protection of private rights to land."

"You are wrong! The Qing Dynasty can confiscate homes, and the bannermen can also run horses and enclose the land!"

"It was just the beginning of the Qing Dynasty when the country just entered the country, and the bandit nature showed up. Once the world was firmly established, it would be self-destruction to start enclosures. Who would pay taxes? Besides, there must be a crime for confiscation of homes. You can't take away the property of the common people in one state or one county. Copied them all.

As far as I know, the only person in the entire Qing Dynasty who dared to blatantly take the private wealth of the people for himself was the fake emperor Hong Xiuquan.After the Taiping Army entered Nanjing, they promulgated a decree that not only the people's cultivated land was his, but the output was also his, and more than 100 kilograms of grain were distributed to the people every year.The shops and stores in the city and outside the city must belong to him, and the money earned from doing business must be turned over to him. He is not allowed to keep a penny. Anyone who dares not to hand over is a monster.

So you understand why I insist on creating a theory instead of looking for reasons from traditional culture, right?There is no support in Chinese culture for blatantly robbing the world.If so, do you think Zhu Di would have let it go?He could make people go to the mouth of Heilongjiang to build monuments, and he could also let Zheng He seize territory in Southeast Asia. "

"Then according to your theory, why did Zhu Di have people go to the Heilongjiang estuary to erect a monument?"

"Bai told you. That was the Yuan Dynasty's Marshal Zhengdong Mansion! Ming Cheng Yuanxu, of course, had to take over all the territory. Otherwise, why would he carry out the Northern Expedition again and again?"

At this point, Lu Qi suddenly realized that the remarks that he had previously regarded as a guideline were actually a monkey eating twists and turns - full of twists.

When talking about this, Zhao Xin couldn't help but sigh: "In our era, we talked about promoting Chinese studies every day, but deep down we still believed in Westerners' things. Hanfu is gorgeous, but Chinese studies? Hum~~ How many people have you seen sit down and read the complete set of Four Books and Five Classics? I’m afraid they have forgotten all the articles in the middle school textbook!”

Lu Qi was speechless.What can be said?I am the best example.So he secretly made up his mind and planned to spend an hour every day starting from tomorrow to study the Four Books and Five Classics. Forget it, let's just do it for half an hour. Reading it before going to bed will have a good hypnotic effect.

So you know why this guy only memorizes ten words every day, right?
Back to the negotiation scene with the Spaniards.

Since the Spanish colonists had always looked down upon the culture of the native Indians, they deliberately wanted to make them accept Catholic ideas through baptism and achieve mental control so that they could be enslaved by themselves. Therefore, Zhao Xin’s theory of “blood immigrants” was "I didn't know how to refute for a moment.

Faced with this situation, Archbishop Peralta made a decisive decision to temporarily shelve the request for ownership of the Kinmen area from the Chinese, and instead discussed the return and compensation of prisoners of war.

Zhao Xin said that there is no problem in releasing the prisoners, but 2000 people have been detained for so long, and you have to pay for daily meals.After all, no one’s food falls from the sky. Let’s just calculate it at five Spanish silver coins per person per day.As for Admiral Denawa, he lived in a separate house and had high standards of food and daily necessities. Fifty silver coins a day was not much.If it is inconvenient to give money to the above amount, it can be converted into grain.

Is it inconvenient to give money?Haha~~ Everyone in the Spanish mission was secretly happy when they heard this.You must know that the province will not be short of money for anything, isn't it just a pile of silver!

In fact, as long as Beihai Town does not attack Baja California, the Spanish province will not be impatient, because Mexico in this era has the most productive silver mine in the world.There is plenty of money, but the only worry is that it cannot be shipped out.

In 1521, not long after the Viceroyalty of New Spain was established, the Spanish discovered huge silver deposits in Zacatecas and Guanajuato, Mexico. This mining process lasted for more than 200 years.In particular, the Proano Silver Mine in Zacatecas is known as the second largest silver mine in the world.

What?Where is the largest silver mine, you ask?Queensland in eastern Australia has reserves of 2.3 tons.

The province and the military were eager to learn about the Chinese military strength from the prisoners of war, so when faced with Zhao Xin's lion's mouth, the archbishop agreed without thinking.Even the clerk sent by the governor only frowned slightly after calculating the amount that should be paid.However, the secretary has made up his mind and would rather give hundreds of thousands of silver coins than give a grain of grain to the Chinese.

The time soon came to noon.It was already past one point when both sides finished talking about prisoners of war.Zhao Xin, the absolute main force, had spent the whole morning spitting. He was physically exhausted and a little unable to bear it anymore, so he proposed to continue the conversation after dinner and explained that lunch had been prepared at the base.

The Spanish mission didn't want to waste time, so it was only right to finish the discussion quickly and take everyone back.However, none of them expected that something unexpected would happen again just while they were having lunch.

The protagonist of this accident is pineapple, the kind that can be eaten.