Chapter 971 1060 The Teacher Has a "Reasonable Reason"

"Majupa Yi. Tammu Sultanate."

Wei Guangde murmured in his mouth.

The two names he muttered were naturally the names of the countries in Southeast Asia mentioned in the letter.

Majapahit occupied the old port, ending the history of the only enclave in the Ming Dynasty.

Ordinarily, if the Ming Dynasty wanted to restore the Xuanwei Division in Old Port, it should retake this place from Majapahit.

Unfortunately, Majapahit was destroyed by the Tammu Sultanate many years ago, and it is this kingdom that now occupies the old port.

Upon hearing the name Sultanate, Wei Guangde guessed that it had something to do with the religion in the Middle East. He didn't know the specific sect, but in Wei Guangde's impression, Sultan and Chief seemed to be the titles there.

It seems that in later generations, there was a Middle Eastern country with this name.

This is why Wei Guangde connected him with the Middle East after seeing the name Sultanate.

It's funny to say that in Southeast Asia, religion seems to be very developed. Muslims and Islam seem to have established political powers there one after another.

You know, the distance between the Middle East and Southeast Asia is India, which protrudes to the south.

After thinking about it, Wei Guangde suddenly understood why Middle Eastern religions took root in Southeast Asia.

It seems that it is not just the Ming Dynasty. In fact, during the Yuan Dynasty and even the Song Dynasty, merchants from the Middle East already knew how to trade with China by sea. They brought back porcelain and silk from China and sold them to Europe at high prices.

This is why Europeans know that there is China in the East, and the products there are top European luxury goods.

After all, ocean-going trade in this era not only involves huge costs, but also entails great risks. It is natural for merchants to make enough money in just one trip.

The Europeans opened up the New World not just to come to China and trade directly with China, avoiding middlemen such as Middle Eastern merchants and Ottomans.

It seems that Chinese goods are sold from the Middle East through the Mediterranean to Italy, France and Spain in Europe. The price increases are layer upon layer, which makes more European aristocrats unable to afford them.

It seems reasonable for the Middle Easterners to follow the land routes and educate some locals.

Old Port.

This term appeared in Wei Guangde's mind again. This place must be taken back by the Ming Dynasty, because this is the west gate of the Daming Sea.

Before Myanmar was conquered and stabilized, this was the intersection of Eastern and Western civilizations.

Maintaining the Ming Dynasty's influence in East and Southeast Asia and managing this traditional sphere of influence are Wei Guangde's top priority at this time.

Domestic reforms should be left to Zhang Juzheng to study, which is too offending.

At this time, although the Portuguese and Spanish had extended their tentacles to Southeast Asia, their main energy was concentrated on the development of the American continent.

In Southeast Asia, the traditional sphere of influence of the Ming Dynasty, Europeans mainly established a so-called commercial stronghold near the sea.

Commercial strongholds, which can be understood as ports, were established to ensure maritime trade routes and provide supply, maintenance and other services to merchant ships.

Of course, there are also trading venues and some commodity trading.

For these commercial strongholds, both Portugal and Spain fought many wars with local forces.

Generally speaking, Southeast Asian countries are weak and it is generally difficult to resist their guns. Therefore, after paying some land prices, the relationship between the two parties eased and normal trade began.

At this time, it was not that the Europeans did not want to further expand their colonies and were content to stay close to commercial strongholds. The main reason was that their strength was relatively weak and they did not have the ability to continue to expand their territory.

For example, after the Portuguese occupied the Goa region of India, they invaded Malacca in 1511, the sixth year of Zhengde, and seized it from the Manchurian Kingdom.

Although the Manchurian Kingdom asked the Ming Dynasty for help, Emperor Zhengde was very angry after learning the news. He quickly sent his minister Zhu Wan to lead an army to completely eliminate some Portuguese pirates operating on the southeast coast of China and clear all their strongholds.

And later imposed economic sanctions on the Portuguese who invaded and occupied Malacca, prohibiting Chinese people from having any economic exchanges with them.

After that, Chinese businessmen traveling to and from Southeast Asia had long avoided Malacca and avoided doing business with the Portuguese. At that time, some Southeast Asian Chinese had joined the exiled Malacca royal army and helped them counterattack the city of Malacca.

However, because of Malacca's special geographical location, the Portuguese are also very interested in it, so it has not been lost.

Wei Guangde is actually paying attention to two place names now, one is Malacca and the other is Manila.

Malacca had already been occupied by the Portuguese during the Zhengde period, while Manila was occupied by the Spanish only a few years ago. They defeated some king on the Philippine island to obtain this place.

As for the rest of the content, Wei Guangde couldn't stand it anymore because it was very confusing. One moment it was Srivijaya, another moment it was Mansikaga, another moment it was Majapahit, the Sultanate of Tammu, and even the Bajrang Kingdom was mentioned. , Wei Guangde was completely stunned inside.

Obviously, Southeast Asia at this time, mainly the two island countries of Indonesia and Malay, had very rapid political changes in the past hundred years, which can be understood as belonging to the Warring States Period.

As for the strength of the Nanyang Navy of the Ming Dynasty, Yu Dayou only mentioned it briefly in his letter, because it can be summed up in one sentence that it is not strong enough and cannot go south for the time being.

Yu Dayou had seen Portuguese and Spanish warships, so he had a clear understanding.

At this time, there is no other way to win a naval battle with them except relying on numbers.

Yu Dayou does not need such tactics. He is now urging the shipbuilders to design Western-style warships that can be equipped with a large number of artillery on the side.

Of course, Yu Dayou also talked about their encounter with a group of pirates during the development of Dongfan Island. It is said that the pirate leader is called Lin Feng.

The Ming army seized Lin Feng's nest on Dongfan Island, but because of insufficient preparation, Lin Feng ran away with dozens of ships and now has no news of his whereabouts.

Wei Guangde did not take a second look at this. It was just a group of pirates.

But he did not know that the existence of Lin Feng's pirate group finally gave the Nanyang Navy an excuse to go to Nanyang.

In the next few days, Wei Guangde was doing what he should do in the capital, but the news sent by Yu Dayou was not enough to affect the Ming Dynasty's policy towards Nanyang.

However, because the old port appeared in Wei Guangde's mind again, he suddenly realized another problem, which seemed to be a trouble that had not been well solved from the establishment to the demise of the Ming Dynasty, that is, the mining system.

Mining in the Ming Dynasty was actually a common thing. After all, China has a history of mining for thousands of years. Whether it was the Song Dynasty or the Yuan Dynasty, mining had never been interrupted, and there should not be any problems.

Unfortunately, Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, was different. He believed that a mining ban policy should be implemented.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, farming was regarded as the foundation of the dynasty, and it was believed that mining would destroy farming.

Because the profit of minerals was higher than farming, a large number of people would flock to this industry driven by interests. Taizu believed that this would lead to the abandonment of farming.

Secondly, the biggest difference between the mining industry in the Ming Dynasty and the mining industry today is that the safety was very low and the risk of mining accidents was much higher than today, so people engaged in mining at that time were generally regarded as desperate people who risked their lives.

Such people gathered together to protect their interests and would inevitably resist the management and ban of the court, becoming an unstable factor in society.

It should be said that Zhu Yuanzhang's view was not wrong, but it was a bit narrow. After all, mineral development is actually a major event that benefits the country and the people. We cannot only see the disadvantages and ignore the advantages.

Wei Guangde was reminded of mining because of the large-scale riots in coastal prefectures and counties due to the blockade of Ming Yingzong's sending navy to the West.

Mining was a very profitable business activity in ancient times. It can be said that it is not an exaggeration to make a lot of money.

However, in the Ming court, mining was prohibited. This was a rule set by Taizu.

However, in order to solve the financial problems of the court, Ming Yingzong decided to resume mining, because after the mining ban, the Ming Dynasty obviously had a shortage of materials.

Resuming mining can not only solve the demand for mineral products by the court and the people, but also increase the income of the court and solve the problem of insufficient finances.

Ming Yingzong thought so and did so.

At this time, the mines that were still being mined in the Ming Dynasty were all official mines, but there were also private mines among the people.

Emperor Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty ordered the opening of mines. Since the purpose of opening mines was to solve the financial problems of the imperial court, the minerals mined were mainly precious metal minerals, mainly gold, silver and copper.

These mines are mainly distributed in provinces such as Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangxi, among which silver mines are the majority.

In the middle of the Ming Dynasty when Emperor Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty was in power, due to the development of agriculture and handicrafts, the treasure notes and copper coins issued by the imperial court could no longer meet the growing transaction needs. Therefore, silver gradually became the value scale in trade and was widely used in society.

The widespread use of silver also allowed the Ming court during the reign of Emperor Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty to lift restrictions on the use of silver.

The widespread use of silver has caused the value of silver to continue to rise. The imperial court also began to regard silver mines as a place of interest, and for this reason issued a ban prohibiting any individual from stealing silver mines privately.

Because of the considerable benefits, naturally money is attractive, and many people take risks and choose to enter the forbidden mining area to steal. The imperial court's ban not only did not stop the development of private mines, but instead allowed more people to participate in it.

Since mining requires a lot of manpower, the scale of these mining teams is not small, generally reaching 500 to 600 people, and they also have weapons for self-defense, which gives these illegal mining teams a basis for rebellion.

The person who led them in the rebellion was Ye Zongliu from Zhejiang. In the seventh year of Zhengtong, he and Wang Neng, Zheng Xiang, Cang Datou and others gathered more than a thousand people to enter the Xianxialing mountain area to mine silver.

Moreover, the safety of the mines at that time was very poor, and large-scale collapses often occurred, so it was also called "trapped pits".

But even so, the Ming government still tried its best to block the area and obstruct the mining of these farmers.

Ye Zongliu realized that mining could not sustain the livelihoods of these miners, so he advocated launching an armed uprising to solve the problem of social inequality.

They held an uprising in the tenth year of Zhengtong, and the Ming court immediately sent surrounding official troops to suppress the bandits. Ye Zongliu had to lead the rebels to move to Chuzhou, Yunhe and other places, while continuing to mine and accumulating strength.

In the 12th year of Zhengtong, Ye Zongliu raised troops again and captured Zhenghe County. Later, he successively occupied Pucheng, Jianyang, Jianning and other places in Fujian, and controlled the traffic of the three provinces.

The miners' uprising led by Ye Zongliu lasted for a long time, but because they had no clear goals, the soldiers of the uprising army were just seeking survival and had no greater political ideals, so they inevitably failed.

However, from then on, the uprisings of miners in various places broke out like mushrooms after rain.

In fact, these uprisings were mostly to resist the arrest of government troops.

At that time, small-scale miners' uprisings often broke out in Fujian, so residents of various villages organized small-scale armed forces to carry out defense work. Deng Maoqi and his brother Deng Maoba were both leaders of local armed organizations.

They called on local farmers not to pay winter sacrifices to landlords and asked landlords to collect rent in the fields in person, which naturally caused dissatisfaction among landlords. The landlords complained to the county magistrate, who sent inspectors to arrest Deng Maoqi, but they were defeated by Deng Maoqi, who then launched an uprising.

During the Zhengtong period, the Ye Zongliu and Deng Maoqi uprisings broke out one after another, and their impact was huge. In fact, it also reflected the serious defects of the system formulated by Zhu Yuanzhang.

You must know that the period of Emperor Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty was the early period of the Ming Dynasty. When the national strength was still booming, the people rebelled for various reasons.

After that, the Chenghua Dynasty and the Jiajing Dynasty both reopened mines to solve the financial difficulties, but they were banned again because of harassment by miners.

Due to time constraints, Wei Guangde didn't know what went wrong during the opening and banning of mining during the Zhengtong and Chenghua years, but he still knew something about the situation during the Jiajing period.

During the Jiajing period, because it was a government-owned mine, the miners' lives were very bad. The government conscripted peasants to serve in the form of corvée and didn't care about their lives at all.

In such an environment, they had no way to survive unless they rebelled.

Because they rebelled, the Emperor Jiajing, who was afraid of trouble, chose to close the mine decisively.

It's good to think about giving miners some protection, but the mine supervisors will not really implement it in order to gain benefits.

Wei Guangde still knows the morality of Ming officials very well, and he can't count on them.

Just when Wei Guangde was thinking about the mining system reform of the Ming Dynasty, the news about Nanyang from the Jinyiwei was finally sent back.

It can only be said that the Jinyiwei was the real intelligence, at least they figured out that the Xuanwei Division of Jiugang was occupied by Majapahit during the Zhengtong period.

After that, this land was ruled by the Sultanate of Demu, and the current ruler is the Kingdom of Bazhang, a former lord of the Sultanate of Demu, who took advantage of the civil strife in the Sultanate of Demu to rise.

How should this account be settled?

If there are still many Majapahit people there, it is natural for the Ming Dynasty to send troops, after all, they invaded the territory of the Ming Dynasty.

But now the rulers have changed twice, even if there are still a large number of Chinese people living in the old port, so what?

When the Ming Dynasty's navy arrives there, can it still get their support?

The name of the army is justified, and now this "name" deeply stops Wei Guangde.

"Continue to develop in various parts of Nanyang and find out the situation there, especially the attitude of the Han people."

Wei Guangde could only tell Liu Shouyou so that he would continue to pay attention to this matter.