1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 981 Social Change
After Fan Dimen had a general understanding of the local agricultural development, he asked Zhang Xin: "Then, are these local farmers working for you now, or are they working for the landlord?"

Zhang Xin explained: "Depending on the different cooperation methods, the labor relationship between employees and landlords is also different. Some landlords entrust the land to us to cultivate, and they only collect a certain percentage of the annual harvest for land use. It is equivalent to a joint venture with us, but there is basically no need to bear the risks in the process of operation. Under this kind of cooperation, the labor cost is borne by us, and naturally it is working for us. You saw it at Nanhai Restaurant yesterday That Huang Zijie, the land under his name is handed over to us in this way. Another way of cooperation is that we provide technical support, and the manpower is provided by the landlord himself. These farmers are equivalent to still working for the landlord. .”

Fan Diemen thought for a while and said, "Then the latter method of cooperation must be more beneficial to the landlord's income."

Zhang Xin nodded and said: "Of course, but on the one hand, the landlord needs to bear the risk from planting to harvesting, on the other hand, the local labor price is actually rising year by year, and the cost of cultivating the land by the landlord will also increase accordingly. .In addition, we will also give more preferential treatment to the landlords in the first form of cooperation, such as arranging their children to study in Sanya according to their merits. This kind of opportunity is not available to everyone.”

Thinking about Huang Zijie's excited expression at yesterday's banquet, Fan Dimen can somewhat understand the attraction of this condition to the landlords.After all, Sanya is the stronghold of the Haihan people, and it is very likely to become the capital of the Haihan country in the future. It is definitely worth doing for the rural rich people who want to change the fate of their families and enter the upper class of society. To make some economic sacrifices.

In terms of the social structure of the Far East in this era, if you want to change from a pheasant to a phoenix, you either have to study hard to become an official, or you have to try to marry the upper class.Although the latter method seems to be relatively less technically difficult, it is a different situation in Haihan.

First of all, there are actually only a few hundred Haihan people at the top of the pyramid in Haihan’s social structure, and less than half of them have the need to start a family. The number of targets is very limited.Secondly, Haihan people are also known to be picky about marriage. Not only do they require the woman to have a clean background, good looks and good health, she must also have a certain cultural foundation. The purely illiterate basically have no chance to become the companions of the chiefs.

After some screening under various conditions, there are really not many people who are qualified to fight for this opportunity. On the contrary, it is easier to study in an institution run by Haihan people.After all, Haihan's need for educated people is obvious. As long as they are educated and loyal to the executive committee, they can have a great hope of being absorbed into Haihan's yamen to do things.

In the past, serving the Haihan people did not seem to be a good job for the glory of the ancestors. Many people loyal to the Ming court secretly denounced it as an act of treason and disobedience, thinking that it was a manifestation of disloyalty and unfilial piety.However, as Haihan grew stronger day by day, the number of people who still held this view gradually decreased. Especially after the news of Haihan's establishment of the country came out, the trend of public opinion also changed significantly.In the past, the positions in the Haihan yamen were often dismissed as "eagle dog" and "running dog". But it's completely different.In the future, who is the master in this Haihan Kingdom, people with good eyesight and good brains will naturally be able to distinguish clearly.

Entering the Haihan Academy for further studies—becoming an official—changing the social status of the family, this route is undoubtedly a very realistic shortcut for the landlord class who have a well-off family but suffer from no upward channels.However, the Haihan Institute of Higher Education is indeed not a place that everyone can go to. Either it has outstanding achievements in the past, such as having already passed the Ming Dynasty exam, or it can only be recommended by local officials in charge of cultural and educational affairs. .Haihan linked these ascending passages with the attitude of daily cooperation, in exchange for the cooperation of the landlord class in land policy.In the current environment of social change, such a clear transaction condition is really hard to refuse.

Although some landlords still insist on hiring farmers to cultivate the land, with the gradual changes in the main production relations in society, they will also realize that their behavior is contrary to the trend of social development. If they do not make changes to adapt to such social changes, Sooner or later, it will become an object of social abandonment.And those who can seize this historical opportunity and follow the trend are very likely to become the first batch of beneficiaries after the establishment of the emerging regime, and take this opportunity to become Haihan's supporters and guardians.

Van Diemen is not very interested in how much rice can be harvested from the farmland led by Haihan. The East India Company has neither the ability nor the interest to organize such large-scale grain production in Batavia. He is more interested in getting Understand how Haihan in the process of changing the land policy neutralized the strong resistance of the landlord class that should have erupted.

From Zhang Xin's description, Van Diemen believes that he has already found part of the reason. The Haihan people do have their own uniqueness in the application of political means, which can make a considerable part of the landlord class choose to exchange interests instead of confrontation. Over time, these people will naturally be assimilated into Haihan's community of interests.

However, what Fan Diemen didn't know was that it wasn't that the landlord class that originally belonged to the area ruled by the Ming Dynasty had never initiated resistance, but that those who tried to use violence to resist Haihan's rule were all arrested and killed in the past few years. The group of people with the most resolute attitude of resistance has long been dealt with by Haihan as a model. The most famous of them is the related personnel who were dealt with after the Danzhou assassination case in 1631. Since then, no one has done it again. Dare to talk about the intention of resistance.

After using violent means to eliminate the diehards, and then using the benefits to lure the remaining people into submission, this combination of punches has indeed achieved very good results in the Qiongbei area.Although there are still many rigid-minded diehards in rural Danzhou who do not want to comply with Haihan's land policy and agricultural development plan, few dare to stand up and oppose it publicly. Smooth edges and corners.

For the East India Company, this actually doesn’t have much reference value. The Dutch have always been violent when opening up colonies in Southeast Asia. Regardless of whether they will kill a wave first on 21, they have never considered being as meticulous as Haihan. Govern the place with a slow fire.Of course, this also has a lot to do with the environment in which the Dutch live. The racial and cultural differences between them and the Nanyang aborigines are difficult to overcome. Alien groups with any advantage will have a hard time gaining a foothold here.However, the Haihan people and the Ming Han people have the same ancestors and the same culture, so the difficulty of integration is relatively much smaller.

The reason why Fan Dimen wants to study the ins and outs of this is mainly to understand the Haihan people's behavior habits and ways of thinking about problems.During the period when his former Governor Cohen led the East India Company, there were obviously many serious mistakes in the policy towards Haihan. In the early stage, he did not pay enough attention to Haihan, and missed the opportunity to eliminate it in the embryonic stage; He was defeated by Haihan several times in the conflict, which caused great damage to the East India Company's armed forces; in the later stage, he was incapable of responding, and failed to make any substantive progress in the negotiations with Haihan, which seriously affected the East India Company The company's trade operations in Northeast Asia.

After Fan Dimen took office, he was faced with many problems in the post-war reconstruction, but he still specially took the time to go to Hainan Island for investigation, in order to get as much information about Haihan as possible, so that he could understand Haihan in the follow-up exchanges. intention to make a more accurate judgment.Van Diemen is not seeking to reverse the situation and overwhelm Haihan, but at least he can not appear too weak in bilateral negotiations, especially in the future South China Sea Trade Union, a commercial organization, can have a certain say in the process of formulating transnational trade rules , unless he was wiped out by Hai Han and couldn't fight back at all.

Haihan's sophisticated performance in governance really surprised Van Diemen. The more he knew about Haihan, the more he felt that the strength of this group was unfathomable. In addition to the extremely clever trading methods and the almost invincible armed force In addition, I did not expect that the Haihan people also have a clear plan on how to manage a country well.Judging from the stations visited so far, Haihan's ruling foundation on Hainan Island is indeed quite solid, and the establishment of a country can be said to be a natural move.

After spending two days inspecting many villages and towns around Danzhou City, the investigation activity entered the next link, visiting local distinctive academies.Danzhou has always had a prosperous literary style, and it is the most concentrated area of ​​academies on Hainan Island. It can also be regarded as the cultural center before the opening of Sanya.Many academies have cultivated a large number of literate intellectuals for Danzhou, and many of them have joined Haihan in recent years. Therefore, the executive committee has always attached great importance to Danzhou's cultural and educational undertakings.This time, Ning Qi, the executive committee member in charge of cultural and educational affairs of Haihan, inspected Danzhou, and specially arranged two days to inspect the local academies.

The first academy Ning Qi visited was the well-known White Deer Academy in Danzhou. This ancient academy was built in the Northern Song Dynasty. During the 200 years of the Ming Dynasty alone, there were already sixty or seventy candidates. Every three years in the township examination, there will be a frequency of people passing the exam.Such a proud achievement has also made Bailu Academy the leading educational institution on Qiongzhou Island, and many students even come here from the mainland to study here.

When Haihan first came to Danzhou, the academy was quite reserved, and he was unwilling to lower his dignity to cooperate with Haihan in culture and education.However, after Zhongming Academy where Huang Zixing served as the head of the mountain was uprooted by Haihan in the name of suppressing rebellion and bandits, Bailu Academy, like many other local academies, chose to change its attitude and partially accepted Haihan's cultural and educational arrangements.

Haihan's arrangement of the academy's teaching is mainly out of the need for political propaganda, and it is required to join the study of Haihan's various major policies in addition to cultural classes.This kind of requirement is not as simple as arranging extracurricular homework for students to study by themselves, but to set up special courses in the academy, and Haihan will send special teachers from Sanya to teach them.

This kind of course arranged by Haihan has a lot of practical content, and the promotional content formulated for young people is far more interesting than shaking your head and reciting the Four Books and Five Classics. After the class starts, it quickly captures the attention of young students.Ning Qi was in charge of coordinating and directing the work of compiling the curriculum. He was a university teacher before time travelling, so he had a good understanding of young people's thoughts.Although the environment of this era is very different, some things are inherent, such as intellectuals' interest in participating in and discussing state affairs.

The purpose of these scholars who entered the academy to study was not only to be able to read and write, but ultimately they wanted to obtain a reputation in the imperial examination, and then use this as a springboard to enter the officialdom.To achieve this ultimate goal, in addition to literary attainments, there is also an indispensable quality that is political awareness.The teaching content formulated by Haihan is to analyze some influential policies and measures during the 200-year reign of the Ming Dynasty, such as the promulgation of the "Law of the Ming Dynasty", the implementation of the sea ban, and the enfeoffment of vassal kings, etc.

Originally, no one dared to discuss these matters casually. If one was not careful, he would be accused of "recklessly discussing government affairs". However, in the course arranged by Haihan, these policies were used as examples to assess the impact on them. Analyze and detail the pros and cons.And this is undoubtedly a very attractive course for scholars who are interested in politics but have serious lack of officialdom experience. From this course, they can understand the process of the Ming court formulating policies and decrees, as well as various measures made from the perspective of Haihan. Parse comments.

Haihan has no such scruples about things that others dare not discuss, and the angle of observation and the depth of analysis are far beyond the knowledge of ordinary people in this era, and the students of the academy have come into contact with a whole new world.This kind of targeted propaganda will not only make them aware of the limitations and drawbacks of the Ming Dynasty's political system, but also understand how Haihan used administrative measures to avoid repeating the same mistakes, and adopted many more clever methods than Daming Reach a political situation where the inside and the outside are peaceful.Although the political propaganda of this course is strong, it is full of freshness to the students. It is often difficult to get rid of its attraction after listening to the course once.

(End of this chapter)