Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 2066 Poverty leads to change ([-])

315 Poverty Changes ([-])

Bamboo fence thatched huts, chickens crowing and dogs barking.In a small mountain village near Guandao outside Pengze County, under a large acacia tree surrounded by several people, Chen Ming, who had just returned from the Chengdu Commercial Station in Sichuan, was holding a broken cattail fan, fanning the wind while foaming all over the place. Talking about the mountains with others.

A few young people next to them are naval staff officers from the Madang Fortress. They are sitting on small farm chairs with their military uniforms unbuttoned, holding wine bottles or cigarettes in their hands, with a decadent look of doing nothing. appearance.

They really haven't been doing much lately.Due to the tense relationship between Dongdong and Shun, the official cooperation between the two countries has basically stagnated.The Dongan people withdrew the senior craftsmen at the Changsha Gun Bureau, the engineers who helped set up the docks and reservoirs in Baling, and the managers of the cooperative factories in Jiangxi, not to mention the consultants from the military.

Faced with such a "heartless" move by the people on the east coast, Shun Guo was naturally not polite.First of all, they shut down the commercial stations set up by the East Bank government in major cities such as Changsha, Hengyang, Wuchang, Baling, Chengdu, Nanchang, Ganzhou, etc., prohibiting these official agencies from purchasing materials, selling goods, and even collecting intelligence.Regarding this matter, in fact, there are quite a few people in Shunguo who support it, because these business stations often "abduct" people locally, which makes people angry.In the past, when the government begged people from the east coast, it was naturally difficult to say anything. Now that the relationship between the two parties has become hostile, it is natural that there is no need to be polite, and all the houses are closed.

In addition, there are many agents of non-official organizations active in Shunguo, such as Zhang Shaozong, the famous comprador of Dinghai Textile Factory, etc., but unexpectedly, they were not questioned.This may be because they are citizens of the Shun country themselves, and they have nothing to do with serving the East Coast government on the surface.Even Li Nanxian, the comprador of the well-known semi-official Bank of Taiwan, is still leisurely collecting tea in Yangloudong, and his business has not been affected at all. There is no limit, and it is still a breeze.

From here, we can get a taste of it, that is, after Shun Guo "broke his promise" on the east coast, of course he has to respond accordingly and come up with some anti-sanction measures.But when they counterattacked, they were actually very measured, that is, they only engaged in official affairs and let off the people. Even some half-official and half-civilian institutions, such as the Bank of Taiwan, which often negotiated various matters on behalf of the East Coast government, were subdued. The country lightly let it go.

The reason is that there is basically no money left, and Shunguo is really short of money!Originally, when the population was only 1000 million, it raised 30 troops. Although the population has increased and the number of troops has been slightly reduced, the burden is still heavy.Not to mention, they have also built official road systems, ports, and fortresses in various places. This has reached the limit of the use of money, food and people's power.To be honest, living in Dashun is really not as good as living in Manqing, life is too hard.The army-first countries are like this, there is no other way, ordinary people must be worse than normal countries, although the military color of the Qing Dynasty is also very strong.

It is precisely for this reason that Shunguo dare not really cut off all trade with the East Bank now.Because in that case, their biggest silver influx channel will be cut off, and the domestic economy will face serious difficulties.You must know that China has been a country with very scarce precious metals since ancient times, and gold, silver and copper are scarce.Otherwise, grain and cloth will not be used as currency for a long time, and there is a serious shortage of general equivalents.

In fact, there were also factors in this regard in the early days of Europe.But people are lucky. The great voyage discovered the New World. The Spaniards mined a huge amount of gold and silver in Mexico and Upper Peru at the same time. The Dutch and the British also brought back a lot of gold from Africa, Japan and other places. The entire Central Europe, Massive amounts of gold and silver were injected into the social and economic systems of Western Europe.In this case, the price revolution happened naturally, followed by the rapid development of industry and commerce, and the rapid progress of industrial technology.

Therefore, it is very necessary to maintain a certain amount of gold and silver in the market in order to develop rapidly in industry and commerce and to collect more taxes.Shun Country now spends a lot of money because of the successive years of war. Hard currencies such as gold and silver have basically entered the hands of soldiers and their families in the form of military salaries and rewards, or they have gone to buy military supplies. In terms of expenditure, Shunguo's finances are actually quite dangerous, otherwise they wouldn't have repeatedly printed money to deceive people.

So, what do you think they can do?The trade with Ningshao and Denglai is basically the main way for them to obtain gold and silver, and it is an important resource for their regime to continue to wage wars.At present, they can export resources such as tea, raw silk, tung oil, bristles, medicinal materials, coal, pig iron, etc., and the buyers are mainly from the east coast. If these businesses fail, it will indeed hurt them. I am afraid that China's industry and commerce will also go backwards for many years.

Chen Ming is the person in charge of the Chengdu Commercial Station established by the East Bank government.After the deterioration of the relationship between the two countries, he was not affected at first. He received various local specialties as usual and sold some goods from the east coast, such as hardware products, leather, soap and other things produced in Sakhalin Island.But later, perhaps the Changsha court put pressure on Liu Zhonggui's shogunate, causing them to close down and leave.But fortunately, Liu Zhonggui cherishes the relationship with the East Coast people more. Before leaving, a senior judge of his shogunate invited a banquet, everyone gave a small gift, and the goods in the warehouse were bought at the original price. Finally The gift sent out of the country is not bad.

Chen Ming took a group of people by land first, and then by boat. After tossing for a long time, they finally arrived at the Madang Fortress managed by the East Coast Navy.Perhaps they were afraid that something might happen to them along the way, and the Shun army even sent a small group of cavalry to escort them along the way, which was extremely surprising.

At the Madang Fortress, Chen Ming suddenly received an order from Liu Houfei, the captain of the Ningshao Pioneering Team, asking him to temporarily stay in the Madang Fortress to check the investment status of the merchants on the east bank in the Jiangxi area to see if there was any loss. And make a detailed report out.Of course, the above is on the surface, and it is Chen Ming’s duty as a commercial official. In addition, Liu Houfei also arranged another job for Chen Ming (that is, an intelligence officer), which is to investigate the social and economic conditions of Jiangxi in detail, so that Yin County can make a comprehensive estimate of the current situation in Shun Country.

Chen Ming readily accepted this task, and immediately set about it.Now more than eight months have passed, the work of identifying assets on the east bank has long been over, and the task of investigating social conditions in Jiangxi has also been completed. At present, most people have withdrawn to the Madang Fortress, waiting for the next order from their superiors.

Today Chen Ming took people to the nearby Pengze County to purchase some daily necessities, such as food, meat, eggs, milk, vegetables, fruits, etc. Return by land.This would be because it was getting late, they stayed in a mountain village temporarily and planned to go back tomorrow.

"The Huguang and Jiangxi regions at the core of Shunguo have basically denied the traditional concept of building a country based on agriculture. Of course they also attach great importance to agricultural production, and they keep saying that 'agriculture is the foundation of industry and commerce. Without agriculture as the foundation, industry There is nothing to do, nothing to do business’. But we have to understand that the “base” they mentioned here is neither the traditional agricultural concept in Chinese culture, nor the “source of financial profit” that many feudal literati in their country said. ', but from the perspective that agriculture provides raw materials for industry, and enables industry to provide products for commerce, promoting commercial circulation and development. That is to say, they actually regard agriculture as the basis for independent existence of industry and commerce." Several entourages and naval staff officers sitting around Chen Mingchao said: "You have also seen here in Jiangxi that the military leaders of Shun Kingdom have used everything to make money. They vigorously advocate commercial agriculture and attach great importance to economics. The planting and promotion of crops is very different from the "Kadu Nongsang" that local officials in all dynasties paid great attention to."

"In feudal society, due to people's basic requirements for living materials and the form of taxation, farmers had to devote their main energy to growing food crops, and they had to seize the time to engage in various handicrafts. Therefore, various harvesting industries Production exists in the form of household sidelines. The policy of "persuading the people to farm and mulberry" is to ensure the self-sufficiency of raw materials for the household handicraft industry. But Shunguo is obviously out of this small-scale peasant economic model, well, at least in the surrounding areas of some big cities. Wrong." Chen Ming continued: "I have carefully inspected Nanchang and other places, and the government here is actually trying to introduce Indian cotton, and I don't know where they heard that this cotton variety is good. In addition, they are still To rectify the tea business and sericulture industry, these are all prepared for commercial industrial production, and I don’t know where they plan to sell these things. If we don’t buy them, who will they sell them to? Zheng’s? Guangdong? Or the Qing Dynasty?”

In fact, to a certain extent, Shunguo, a regime with a relatively low starting point (peasant uprising regime), was very pragmatic like the Manchu Qing Dynasty.They attach great importance to commerce and the profits brought by foreign trade. Their government documents have publicly supported commercial agriculture, because this is one of their few commodities that can be exported to earn foreign exchange. "If you only hold on to agriculture, it will be difficult to support (the army)", thinking that the army and the country cannot be self-sufficient by relying solely on grain cultivation.Because in that case, where does the money come from?Without money, how to import weapons and war horses?How to invite foreign consultants?How to buy foreign technology?Without the above, how can the combat effectiveness of the army be maintained?How can the regime hold on?

These are very real problems.Shunguo has survived under tremendous external pressure until now, and naturally has its own set of survival philosophies.They always understand that survival is the most important thing, so all straws that can keep them alive must be grasped.They have fought all their lives and clearly understand that it is not small words and righteousness that can save their lives, but a loyal and reliable army!Unable to maintain a combat-capable and large-scale army, they will not be able to survive, so they are willing to do anything to achieve this goal, even if they are criticized by many gentry and literati of this era.

After all, it was all forced out!

"Shunguo definitely hates us now. But they don't dare to piss us off completely, for fear that they will cut off their financial resources. They probably commercialize agriculture in their country, engage in a handicraft factory system, and produce a lot of goods. Except for our purchases, they can only be sold to surrounding areas, but this is not easy, there are not many customers who are better than us." Chen Ming said with a smile: "Of course they have already realized this problem. And they are working hard to solve it. You see, this time they went south to attack the Ming country, they desperately wanted to squeeze into Guangdong and seize the key seaport, but unfortunately our people took the first step and blocked them back. What are they going to go to the seaport for? Isn’t it for trade, for gold and silver? I reckon that these grandsons have already met businessmen from the Dutch East India Company or the English East India Company. Otherwise, why are they trying so hard to go to sea? Is it?"

(End of this chapter)