#精品长文创作季#
Through the past and the present, across thousands of miles, insight into the complex world, throughout the changes in the world, for you to analyze the underlying logic of the game between major powers, appreciate the long river of history.
In the previous article (behind the famous minister Zhu Kun being forced to take drugs, it is the real humanity of cutting off people's financial routes as if killing his parents) said that the Shuangyu Island Maritime Group washed Yuyao Xie's family in blood because of economic disputes. This led Emperor Jiajing to resolve to exterminate the maritime groups on Shuangyu Island. After Zhu Kun carried out the emperor's order to exterminate the maritime business group on Shuangyu Island, he was forced to commit suicide by poisoning by the powerful and powerful people on the southeast coast, and Zhu Kun's death was not only his personal tragedy, but also a historical tragedy, and even a tragedy of our Chinese nation.
However, it is not unreasonable for Zhu to refer to Chinese maritime merchants as "thieves of China", and the bureaucrats and doctors of the Ming Dynasty often referred to them as pirates, thieves, and even pirates.
In the Age of Discovery, the chaos of overseas trade in modern times began to open, and for all countries in the world, including Western countries, overseas trade was a piece of extralegal land that was difficult for the king to effectively reach, and it was a jungle world that lacked effective order, so the jungle world of the jungle was the jungle of the jungle, on the one hand, there were huge trade profits, and on the other hand, there were huge natural and security risks.
In order to protect themselves and compete for greater interests, the maritime merchants who ran to the sea gradually formed armed forces on the sea. According to the changes in the objective situation, switch back and forth between the dual identities of pirates and merchants. If you meet someone weaker than yourself at sea, you will become a pirate and do a vote. Back at the port, he became an honest merchant and paid taxes for trade.
Under the effect of the survival of the fittest mechanism of the law of the jungle, over time, one of the strongest will stand out from several maritime forces, and with its strongest strength, provide protection for other maritime merchants in exchange for protection fees, and grab the largest share of trade profits.
In the academic language of later scholars, it is to provide a basic public good such as security and order, and whoever can provide security and order is the ruler. The maritime world of the Ming Dynasty also had to follow this natural law. At first, the maritime private trade was free to develop and grow barbarically, and the maritime merchants of the Ming Dynasty bought and sold freely, contracted goods, and developed peacefully.
However, in the extralegal places of the sea, the law of the jungle preyed on the strong, and the maritime merchants robbed each other, and then formed different gangs because of their own karma, and they often attached themselves to the strong man, and regarded this strong man as their own leader, or fifty ships or a hundred ships, formed a group, and used each port as their own base, forming various armed maritime trade groups.
They not only hired local helmsmen and sailors, but also hired poor and down-and-out samurai sailors in the Japanese archipelago, etc., "to use their strength as wings", as mercenaries of maritime groups, and some of them also partnered with Western colonizers and powerful Japanese princes or wealthy merchants to do business at sea, and their travels spread all over Japan, Siam, that is, today's Thailand and various places in the South Seas. At the same time, these maritime merchants were still waiting for opportunities to plunder in the coastal areas, so that they "became big gangsters".
These maritime merchants can be divided into Zhejiang Maritime Group, that is, the Ming Dynasty's Nanzhili Province under the jurisdiction of Huizhou, Jiangsu and other places today. In addition to the Zhejiang Maritime Group, there are also the so-called Guangdong Maritime Group and Fujian Maritime Group. Among them, the outstanding ones were none other than the Hui merchant Wang Zhi Maritime Group in the middle of the Ming Dynasty and the Fujian Zheng Maritime Group in the late Ming Dynasty.
The relationship between these armed maritime groups and the overseas trade market makers such as the owners of the Nest of the Maritime Merchant Group has also gone through a whole historical process from the maritime group being subordinate to and being dominated by the owners of the Nest of the Privileged Family, and then developing to the fact that the Maritime Group in turn dominates and controls and even dominates the owners of the Nest.
For example, in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the Wang Zhi maritime merchant group needed to purchase all kinds of goods from the mainland from local lords like Yuyao Xie. Foreign goods imported from overseas also need to be sold at a profit through the distribution channels of the Mainland's homeowners. In the late Ming Dynasty, the Fujian Zheng maritime group, especially under the governance of Yanping Wang Zheng Chenggong, the maritime group had become the dominant player in the entire overseas trade network.
The Zheng group set up the so-called martial arts trading system, which was like a wheel in the wheel, supporting the economic foundation of the entire Zheng group and even the Ming regime. The so-called martial arts merchants mean the five major trading houses, which refer to the so-called mountain martial merchants named after the five elements of gold, wood, water, fire, and earth, as well as the sea martial merchants named after the five constants of benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, wisdom, and faith.
What are mountain martial merchants and sea martial merchants? Mountain martial arts merchants are actually five wholesale firms opened by Zheng Chenggong Group in Chinese mainland. They used Hangzhou as a base to purchase silk, porcelain, raw silk, medicinal herbs, and other goods, and then sent them to the so-called maritime merchants to sell overseas. Haiwu merchants are actually the five major shipping companies under the Zheng family, and they use Xiamen as a base to travel through China, Japan, Korea, Ryukyu, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indochina Peninsula countries, and Batavia and other South Sea Islands, engaged in the sale of domestic goods and foreign goods, so that they can rent, collect taxes, manpower, intermediary passenger transportation and so on.
Obviously, by the time of Zheng Chenggong, the maritime group no longer relied on the mainland to organize the supply of goods and sell the goods on behalf of the mainland, but mastered the supply and sales channels of the mainland by itself. The maritime merchant group of the Ming Dynasty waged an indomitable armed struggle against the maritime ban policy of the feudal court. After the Battle of Shuangyu Island, the rise of the Wang Zhihai merchant group and the Ming Dynasty were in constant conflict. The so-called Jiajing War, in fact, was a commercial war between the Ming Dynasty's maritime armed groups and the imperial court around the sea ban and the opening ban.
This commercial war lasted until 1565, that is, the forty-fourth year of Jiajing. In this year, Wu Ping, a maritime merchant in Nanao Island and Guangdong Province in Shantou, Guangdong, led the so-called "Japanese Invaders", which were actually China's maritime forces, and fought the last battle of the so-called Anti-Japanese War with Qi Jiguang's army. Although these so-called "Japanese robbers" have understood that the general trend has gone and the island is difficult to defend, they still fought to the death. Many fought until the last moment and refused to surrender.
After this battle, the so-called plague of the Ming Dynasty basically subsided. However, the resolute armed struggle of the maritime clique has accelerated the rotation of the gears of history. The powerful and powerful groups on the southeast coast used the armed struggle of the maritime group as a lever to finally pry the Ming Dynasty into liberating the maritime ban policy. In 1565, the armed struggle of the maritime groups was largely suppressed. In the following year, in 1566, Emperor Jiajing died, followed by Emperor Longqing in 1567.
At this time, Tu Zemin, the governor of Fujian, wrote to him, "Please open the market, and the smugglers are public sellers." The so-called smuggler refers to the smuggler, while the public offender refers to the legitimate businessman. The so-called opening of the market, easy smugglers to public trade, means to lift the sea ban and legalize overseas trade. By this time, Emperor Longqing of the Ming Dynasty had understood that free trade was the trend of the times. So, he pushed the boat down the river to announce the lifting of the sea ban and allowed private merchants to sell the east and west oceans, which was known as the "Longqing switch" in history.
Let's turn the clock of history back. In the thirty-seventh year of Jiajing, that is, in 1558, at the climax of the so-called Jiajing Anti-Japanese War, Wang Zhi, the leader of the maritime group, was ensnared in prison by Hu Zongxian, the governor of Zhejiang, in the name of peace talks. In this recital, Wang Zhi said:
"The thief (king) directly seeks the benefits of the business sea, sells goods in Zhejiang (Jiangsu) and Fu (Jian), benefits with others, defends the border for the country, and never seduces the party thieves to interfere with things, which is known to the gods and people of heaven and earth. The husband has repeatedly made small contributions, but he can't reach the top of the hoodwin, but he has no family property, and the ministers are really unwilling. "If the emperor is merciful and gracious, forgives the sins of the ministers, and has to be driven by dogs and horses, Zhejiang Dinghai Changtu and other ports, still like the case of Guangzhong, customs clearance and taxation, and do not lose the tribute period. ”
The general meaning of this passage is that as long as the imperial court can lift the sea ban, allow the coastal areas of Zhejiang to open treaty ports, and set up customs to collect customs duties, the so-called plagues on the southeast coast can naturally be eliminated. However, the imperial court rejected Wang Zhi and ordered his execution. Ten years after Wang Zhi's death, in 1567, Longqing switched, and Wang Zhi's appeal was finally realized. Accordingly, 282 years later, in 1840 AD, another group of naval forces from Britain also expressed the same demand through war, demanding that the imperial court lift the sea ban and open the treaty port.
It can be seen from this that no matter ancient or modern, Chinese and foreign, no matter what kind of civilization or what kind of nation, as long as they adopt the so-called military and commercial dual cycle of production and lifestyle, their logic will always be surprisingly consistent. In 1565, the 44th year of Jiajing, the Spanish admiral Miguel López de Legaspi led a fleet of five warships from the port of Acapul, Mexico, to cross the Pacific Ocean from the port of Acapul, Mexico, to conquer the island of Sue in the center of the Philippine archipelago.
After conquering Suwu Island, the Spaniards were faced with two choices in the direction of development, either to continue south to attack the Nanyang Islands, or to turn around and go north to conquer China. If the Spaniards went south, they would conquer Mindanao and use it as the capital of the new colony. If the Spaniards decided to go north, they would conquer Luzon and use it as the center of their new colony.
As De Legaspi, commander of the Spanish fleet, wrote to the Spanish governor in Mexico in 1570, if our aim was to conquer China, we should point the finger at Luzon and use Luzon as a base for the conquest of China, and the Spaniards chose to go north. In 1571, the Spaniards conquered Luzon and established the colony of Manila, which came under the jurisdiction of the so-called Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Viceroyalty of New Spain was geographically located in present-day Mexico and the Caribbean in Central America.
By 1576, the then Governor General of the Philippines had drawn up a detailed plan for an invasion of China and presented it to King Philip II of Spain. In this plan, the Spaniards said that the expedition would require between 4,000 and 6,000 men, armed with spears, guns, and ammunition, enough to occupy the provinces along the southeast coast of China. And it is very easy for us to rely on the ports and fleets there to form the largest power on the sea. The conquest of one province of China is enough to conquer its powers.
By April 1586, the Spanish delegates in the Manila colonies had drawn up a detailed plan for the invasion of China in ten chapters, and had submitted a petition to their king. He asked the King of Spain to send an expeditionary force of 10,000 to 12,000 Spanish soldiers to China for colonial and commercial gains, as well as to spread Christianity.
This was followed by representatives from the Manila colony who went to Spain to present a petition to their king. However, history did not intend for the Spaniards to go to China in 1587 on behalf of the Western powers. The historical plan was to open the gates of China in 1840 by the British. History left the Spanish Armada at the Battle of Grifland with the English Navy in 1588, and the Spanish maritime supremacy was gone, never to be seen again.
But the Spanish colonizers of the Manila colony were still lying on their couches in China, patiently waiting for their opportunity, while the Ming court was unaware of all this. In the Age of Discovery, the second round of confrontation between China and the West is about to begin.