1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 698 Dispatching troops and immigration

After Ning Qi proposed this proposal, there was a buzz of whispering in the conference hall.These people here all have a certain understanding of the current situation, so they can immediately think of the feasibility of this plan and the impact it will bring.

As far as the current cooperative relationship between Haihan and the Fujian government is concerned, it is not a big problem for Haihan to station a certain size of troops in Fujian and ask the local government to provide certain conveniences, or even let the Ming army in Fujian cooperate in operations.After all, Haihan's continuous military assistance to Fujian in recent years is not free. The local forces in Fujian, headed by Xu Xinsu, still have a high degree of trust in Haihan. At the same time, they have also given Haihan a lot in terms of trade and immigration preferential conditions.But this kind of special treatment is only limited to Fujian, especially the southern part of Fujian where the Xu Xinsu family is mostly in power. If you go further north, it will not be as influential as in Fujian.

"Mr. Ning, it's easy to talk about war on paper, but it's not so simple in practice. Even if Xu Xinsu and the Fujian government are willing to help, this errand will not be easy." Schneider, who had been silent all this time, finally joined the discussion: "The Fujian government wants to ask the court Asking to send troops to Shandong to suppress the bandits is not realistic in my opinion. According to the situation you mentioned earlier, is there really no way for Shandong to take Kong Youde? He only has a city in his hand and a few thousand soldiers. Daming really has nothing to do with him If there is a way, why did he flee across the sea? He started the incident in August of this year and fled to Liaodong until the second half of the second year. It’s not like Daming didn’t do anything for such a long time? I think he was ordered to encircle and suppress He may not be willing to gnaw on this tough bone. Moreover, the local government may not welcome troops from other places to suppress bandits and chaos. God knows who will be soldiers and who will be bandits in the end. Don't forget that Kong Youde's men are guest troops from Liaodong !"

Although Schneider didn't know much about the history of the late Ming Dynasty, half of his insights came from his experience with Ming officials in the Guangzhou Office, and half came from his thoughts after listening to Ning Qi's previous explanation, but he hit it right by mistake One of the crux of the problem.

First of all, one of the reasons for the mutiny in Kong Youde's troops was indeed the supply problem caused by the contradictions in the army caused by his foreign origin.If his troops were not guest troops, they would not have burned, killed, looted and ran amok in Shandong after the uprising.And this directly led to further rejection of foreign troops by the local government and the people. It was difficult for foreign troops to enter Shandong to fight, and it was difficult to get local cooperation.

Secondly, the local situation has not been alleviated for a long time, which is indeed related to the slow response of all parties and the fear of war.Several months after Kong Youde's mutiny, the imperial court did not come up with a clear solution. It was not until Kong Youde took Dengzhou in early 1632 that the imperial court hastily appointed Xu Congzhi as the governor of Shandong, stationed in Laizhou to block Kong Youde's westward advance. route.

When Kong Youde besieged Laizhou, Liu Tongzhu, the commander-in-chief who was ordered to lead troops from Beijing to the south for rescue, arrived in Shandong but refused to join the war.After such procrastination, Kong Youde recruited more than 40 of his original subordinates from Phi Island in Liaodong to join the rebellion.Xu Congzhi and others stayed in Laizhou for a few months, but the reinforcements they waited for came only [-] miles away from Laizhou. The commander-in-chief Deng Ke, Wang Hong and others were waiting for the success of the imperial court's appeasement measures.

However, the imperial court's appeasement policy did not have any effect. Instead, Xie Lian, the vice capital censor, and Zhu Wannian, the prefect of Laizhou, who carried out this order to negotiate with Kong Youde's army were also captured.By the time the Ming court realized that the negotiations had broken down, appeasement was useless, and military means had to be used to solve the problem, the governor of Shandong and the prefect of Laizhou had already died on the battlefield.It wasn't until Wu Sangui's father Wu Xiang led troops to fight there that the siege of Laizhou was finally broken.At this time, nearly a year has passed since the Kong Youde uprising.

At that time, the imperial court dispatched troops from the surrounding provinces to quell the chaos. There were four or five high-ranking officers like the commander-in-chief alone, and their strength was several times that of the rebel army.However, the battle to suppress the chaos was a complete mess. A lot of civil servants and military generals died in the chaos, and the eastern coastal areas of Shandong were turned into ruins. Countless people were displaced because of this, and the losses were very heavy.In this process, there were quite a few troops from other places who entered Shandong to quell the chaos, but not many really played a role.The combat strength of the Haihan militia is strong, but it is very difficult to guarantee that it can exert its due combat effectiveness on the battlefield if it goes to such a far away place to fight away, and it is likely that it will not get the coordination of friendly forces and local support.

Ning Qi naturally knew the details of this period of history, so he had nothing to refute Schneider's question, so he could only cough dryly and said: "Actually, I just proposed a solution. As for whether it is feasible or not, That still depends on how the military judges."

Yan Chujie waved his hand and said, "I thought about it just now, and I really can't do this. Let's not mention the reasons Schneider said just now. Most of the soldiers in our army are from the south, and they suddenly went thousands of miles north to carry out combat missions." , I am afraid that it will be difficult to quickly adapt to the local food and climate. If there is a large area of ​​acclimatization in the army, let alone a war, how to withdraw safely will be a big problem.”

"Your army can't do it, so why did you suggest that the navy go north just now? It's as if our navy is all from the north." Tom Wang grabbed Yan Chujie's handle this time and immediately took a bite: "I just now Before I had time to refute you, they took you there. The navy has been conducting training in the South China Sea, and you will be sent to Shandong to perform missions with a single word. If the ships and manpower are lost there, I will take the blame for this. back?"

"Okay, okay, let's get down to business, don't digress." Tao Dong saw that the two were about to fight again, and hurried out to put out the fire: "As far as the matter is concerned, considering our current situation, it is indeed a bit too anxious to send troops to the north in the coming year. The starting point of Ning Qi's plan is good, but the actual difficulties raised by the military also exist objectively. I think that in the coming year, we must first maintain steady development, seek stability first, and then seek development. Expanding the sphere of influence to the north is our future goal. As for the direction of development, it is also an established policy to assist Ming Dynasty to maintain its rule in the mainland for a period of time to come, but there is no need to take too many risks to do things that we are currently unable to do."

Having said that, Tao Donglai turned to Ning Qi and said, "Do you think it is necessary to vote?"

The executive committee members were overwhelmingly opposed, and Ning Qi was not in the mood to continue to insist on his plan at this time, shaking his head and said: "Since everyone thinks that the time is not ripe, there is no need to vote again. But the introduction of immigrants, I think we can still think of a way, after all, this is not like sending troops to fight, and we don’t necessarily need to do it ourselves. As long as we are willing to pay, I believe someone will take over the job.”

"I agree." Schneider agreed with Ning Qi's proposal this time: "We can start contacting businessmen in Fujian, Jiangsu and Zhejiang now, and see if any of them are willing to do it."

"The cost of transporting people back from such a distant place will not be small." Gu Kai immediately reminded.

Schneider said with a smile: "As the person in charge of the money bag, of course the first thing I have to consider is the cost issue. First of all, we have our own food source, and we can solve the food consumption during transportation at a relatively low cost. Secondly, We can exchange industrial products for immigrants, and whoever brings us immigrants, we will calculate the price according to the population, and use specified types of industrial products instead of gold and silver as the payment method.”

"Everyone knows that many of our industrial products are selling very well in Daming, and the orders signed at the Autumn Fair fully prove this. We can definitely use this as a condition to win more sea merchants to help us from Transshipment of refugees in the north." Schneider continued to explain: "Let me give an example to illustrate the benefits of doing this. Suppose we want to pay 1000 taels of silver for a group of immigrants to the cooperative merchants, but if we switch to using industrial products as the payment method , then the actual value of this batch of industrial products to us is far lower than 1000 taels, because we only need to consider its production cost. But for the merchants who get these industrial products, their actual market value is It should be higher than 1000 taels, as long as they ship the goods to Daming and sell the goods.”

"We don't have to worry about consuming too much of the precious metals in stock. The maritime merchants of Ming Dynasty will also actively participate in this plan because they can exchange refugees for value-added goods. This is a win-win situation for both parties, I understand Right?" Tao Donglai immediately understood the beauty of Schneider's method.

"If necessary, we can also lower the price appropriately, so that the trading price of refugees exchanging industrial products is slightly lower than our normal selling price, so that more merchants can be attracted to join in, and they can be more actively searching Those homeless refugees." Schneider continued to talk eloquently: "We don't need to worry about such a price cut that will have an adverse impact on our income. In fact, as long as the labor force in Hainan Island can be rapidly expanded, many industrial products The production cost will further decrease with the increase of production capacity."

"If there is a large influx of immigrants in the short term, can we produce enough food to feed them?" Gu Kai asked.

"There won't be any major problems in this regard." The person in charge of the Ministry of Agriculture, Yuan Qiuye, answered the question.Although his father, Yuan Ruoxiu, is the executive committee member of the Ministry of Agriculture, Mr. Yuan's physical condition has gradually begun to decline as he gets older. Recently, he seldom even attends meetings in person, and Yuan Qiuye is more likely to be the representative. Some.

Yuan Qiuye continued to explain: "After we unified Hainan Island, there is a large amount of arable land in the eastern and northern coastal areas that can be used to build collective farms and promote food cultivation. Even if the population of Hainan Island doubles in the coming year, the food supply It can also keep up. You must know that the annual grain output of Hainan Island was about 200 million tons in the era before we traveled back. Although it is impossible for us to reach that level, as long as we maintain the current grain planting area With the increase in speed and the absence of major natural disasters, it will not be difficult to feed 200 million people on the island in the future."

Schneider also added: "Take a step back. If there is a shortage of food in the short term, we still have two places in Annan and Champa that can import a lot of food. We don't even have to pay cash, just tell them Exchange food for weapons, and these two countries will scramble to bring us food."

What Schneider said was indeed the truth. Two years earlier, Annan had exchanged population, land, etc. for military support and arms exports from Haihan. Later, Champa also bought many Haihan weapons in a similar way.With the national strength of these two countries, it is difficult to have enough funds to buy a large number of expensive Haihan weapons. If Haihan is willing to let them exchange food for weapons, then the people in power in these two countries would rather starve their people than Let's first search for domestic food and exchange it for a batch of weapons.

Since the Ministry of Finance, which is in charge of the money bag, and the Ministry of Agriculture, which is in charge of food supply, both believe that this approach is not a big problem, and there is no need for the military to intervene, as long as the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Civil Affairs can do it, then the feasibility is quite Taller.Although there will still be a lot of cost in implementing this plan, compared to the cost of using the army, hiring outside personnel will save a lot.In addition, the banditry in Guangdong has gradually decreased in the past two years, and the people have calmed down. The speed of Haihan's absorption of immigrants is not as good as before. It is true that other ways are needed to quickly increase the working population on Hainan Island.

For the vote on this proposal, the executive committee rarely presented a unified opinion, and everyone believed that this was indeed a feasible immigration plan.Schneider optimistically estimates that if the operation is done properly, the number of immigrants introduced from Daming to Hainan Island in this way alone in the coming year will probably exceed 5—this figure is compared to the current total of only 20 on Hainan Island. In terms of population, the proportion is already considerable.And Ning Qi, who proposed this plan, finally managed to win back a victory, and he was not too embarrassed because the previous plan to send troops was completely rejected.

Of course, the realization of this proposal is not as simple as what Schneider said in a few words. Even if a Ming maritime merchant went to the north to transport refugees, there are still a series of problems to be solved such as screening, quarantine, and resettlement.According to Schneider's estimated figures, about [-] villages need to be built on Hainan Island just to resettle immigrants. This is definitely not a simple project.The introduction of immigrants may only require the intervention of the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Civil Affairs, but the resettlement of immigrants requires the cooperation of more departments.

(End of this chapter)