Warring States Eagle

At the beginning of April in the 12th year of Tianwen (1543), a meeting attended by several parties was held in the spacious meeting hall of Kishidake Castle.

The main participants at the meeting were Nanman businessman Zhu Qinfeng, Ming businessman Zuo Moyang, Ming businessman Wang Hai, Ming salt lord You Jianxia, ​​local businessman Yu Tian Xinkang, and Shenwu Shaoce and Tai Jiuling representing the Luo family.Tai Jiuling was the only woman among the crowd.

Among these people, such as Wang Hai, You Jianxia, ​​etc., all rushed here from other places after receiving Zheng Liang's letter.Zheng Liang called everyone together, preparing to show them a new direction of business expansion.

In the past foreign trade, the Luo family mainly sold gold, silver, copper ore and sulfur to Zhu Qinfeng, a merchant from the Nanban, and Zuo Moyang, a merchant from the Ming Dynasty.The Luo family obtained finished muskets, bullets, gunpowder, saltpeter, and some Nanban specialties from them.At the same time, let them learn about some of the latest Nanban technology.

For Wang Hai, a businessman from the Ming Dynasty, and You Jianxia, ​​a salt lord from the Ming Dynasty, they mainly sold refined salt, coarse salt, a small amount of gold and silver, copper mines, and some local Japanese specialties to them.The Luo family bought some special products and technologies of the Ming Kingdom from them.The most important thing is that they assisted the refugees from the Ming country to move to the territory of the Luo family to settle down, and helped the Luo family to obtain some advanced technologies and even craftsmen from the Ming country.

With the deepening of the cooperation between the two parties, whether it is the merchants from the Nanman side or the Ming country, the cooperation with the Luo family has also developed in the direction of more in-depth joint development.The most typical example is the recent three-party joint development agreement on several ores discovered in Higo and Chikugo.The Luo's family provides resources and manpower, and the other two parties provide technology and sales. After proceeds.Luo's family accounted for [-]%.The remaining two each accounted for [-]%.

Most importantly.During the sale, the Luo family will send guards and entourages to the ships of the two parties.This not only protected the interests of the Luo family, but also exercised the sailing skills of the entourage.It's like training the navy for free.

In Zhengliang's plan, in addition to continuing to deepen the cooperation between the two parties with the Nanman side, Zheng Liang also hoped to obtain from the Nanman merchants the casting technology of large cylinders (that is, cannons), the construction technology of ships, and more advanced gun technology.

For a long period of time in the future, it will be a great era of sailing. Although the current navy of the Luo family is only satisfied with guarding the coastal territory for the time being, the so-called general trend is that if you do not advance, you will retreat.In order to better protect the territory or even open up the territory, more advanced shipbuilding technology and navigation technology must be learned.And the Nanman from the West is a good study object.

At present, since most of the resources are being used in the development of land military and territorial agricultural and civil affairs, the Luo family is temporarily unable to spare more resources to invest in the development of navigation.But as the territory gradually stabilizes and develops, the pace of navigation technology must keep up.

And then there's gun technology.As far as Zheng Liang knows, gear muskets and flintlock guns that are more advanced than matchlock guns will appear one by one in the next few years. With the current level of craftsmen of the Luo family, even if Zheng Liang told them the principles of the above-mentioned muskets, it would be difficult to develop them in a short time. These muskets came out, so it is better to hope that the latest musket technology will be introduced by then.As for now.It is to concentrate resources to expand the production scale of matchlock guns and to continuously improve matchlock guns.

The last is the casting technology of the large tube.In fact, apart from Nanman, Ming also had its own cannon casting technology.For example, the small Frang cannon in the current Luo family's iron cannon team was developed and cast by the Ming Dynasty.

It's just that it is difficult to obtain the cannon technology of the Ming Dynasty, and the technology has lagged behind the West.Therefore, Zheng Liang might as well seek help from the Southern barbarians who value profit in everything. As long as there are enough benefits, Zheng Liang believes that not only can he obtain casting technology, but he might even get some western craftsmen to join him.

For the local businessman Yu Tian Xinkang, the Luo family acted as an intermediary and resold some Nanman and Ming country specialties to him.And he is also acting as a middleman, assisting the Luo family to purchase a large amount of strategic materials such as grain, military horses, weapons, etc. locally.

Finally, there are Shenwu Shaoce and Taijiu Ling who represent the Luo family.These two are the most important people to the Luo family.

The Shenya run by Shenwu Shaoce is mainly responsible for assisting the internal affairs cabinet with businessmen from the Nanban, Ming Kingdom, and local merchants, and at the same time purchasing a large number of strategic materials needed by the Luo family through the Shenwu's own business routes.

At the same time, internally.Shenwu is equivalent to a state-owned enterprise, responsible for managing the sale and purchase of strategic materials such as grain, ore, war horses, and cattle.Private individuals are not allowed to trade in this area.

Tai Jiuling is the most special businessman among them.Regardless of her identity as a woman, all her stores are owned by several wives of Zhengliang, and her stores only sell daily necessities such as cloth, paper, and food.

Because in the newly occupied territory of the Luo family, those shops representing the power of the old wealthy family were trapped by the Luo family's blockade of the border of the territory and were deliberately suppressed by the Luo family. In the end, they either changed their careers or defected to Tai Jiuling's shops.Over time, Tai Jiuling's shops are now almost all over the territory of the Luo family, and occupy more than half of the daily material transactions in the territory of the Luo family.

These two people, one is to assist the Luo family to control the internal strategic material transactions, and the other is to control the material transactions of the daily life of the people, they can be said to be very important two people in the Luo family.When necessary, Zhengliang can use these two people to indirectly regulate the prices in the territory to ensure the stability of the territory.

In general, these people who came today were all connected with the Luo family due to various reasons, and even gradually formed the prototype of a huge business empire centered on the Luo family.

Today, these people were summoned to Anyue City. In addition to confirming the bilateral trade agreement with everyone again, Zheng Liang also proposed to increase the import demand of paraffin, glutinous rice, lead, and high-quality iron ore.

Finally, there are two most important issues.One is the plan to open up North Korea's maritime trade routes, and the other is the decision to sell Huo Tong.

"Everyone, please look here." Masara pointed to a brief map and said, "Starting from Karatsu and Hirado in our family, bypassing Iki Island where civil strife is taking place, you will find Arima Island, and then bypassing Arima Island will be Arima Island. It’s possible to reach North Korea. It’s a place where there’s a lot of ore, cotton, and other wealth.”

Everyone stared at Zheng Liang's map on a Ming screen, waiting for Zheng Liang's next words.

"Not only can you sell some of your own specialties there, but more importantly, its distance is closer than the distance from the Ming Dynasty or even the west."

"I think you already understand what I mean. That's right, you can sell your things there, and then replace them with the supplies that your family needs, and then return to your home for trade. This will greatly reduce your time at sea. voyage, and can get more wealth."

"In addition to this sea route, there is also an island here called Jeju Mu, which is also an island of North Korea. If we establish trade relations with North Korea, we can also directly bypass Iki Island and Arima Island. Trade with North Korea directly on this island."

In fact, Masara secretly felt that it would be more feasible to take the route of Iki Island and Arima Island.Directly conducting trade with North Korea in Jeju Mu will not only encounter the problem of how to establish trade relations with North Korea, but also encounter a large number of pirates at sea from the Ming Dynasty, North Korea, and Japan.

Of course, taking the route of Iki Island and Arima Island is not necessarily smooth sailing, and the first problem encountered is how to establish trade relations with North Korea.

In 1510, the Korean Li Dynasty government, which was troubled by the Japanese pirates issue, issued the "Miura" entry restriction order to restrict the trade between Japan and North Korea. As a result, Japanese expatriates and businessmen who were dissatisfied with this restriction broke out. It is known as the "Miura Rebellion" in history. , the Korean historians call it the "Miura Japanese Rebellion". Zong Shenghong led 300 troops to land in Xiongchuan, North Korea to protect businesses and support the riots, and was defeated by the North Korean government army and died. In 1512, the two sides signed the "Yongzheng Treaty" (the Korean side called it the "Jinshin Agreement"). In order to punish the Tsushima Zong, the Joseon Dynasty reduced the number of ships that traded with Tsushima to 25. After the "Miura Rebellion", the trade between Tsushima and North Korea began to decline.

Therefore, the current North Korean government will not rashly accept new foreign trade partners.The worst plan is to imitate the Ming Dynasty, and can only secretly trade with some private merchants along the coast of North Korea.But even so, it is necessary to find ways to find these private businessmen.

In addition to the issue of establishing trade relations with North Korea, the second issue is the obstruction and harassment of many pirates along the way and the forces of Bodo and Zongjia.

Masara also thought about the possibility of cooperating with the main family on Arima Island.The current governor of the Arima clan is the No.13 acting governor, Mune Haruyasu.This person can be regarded as an enlightened family governor.However, as one of the many daimyos in Japan, the Tsushima family still owns a small amount of territory in some places on the main island of Kyushu, and they have been trying to rely on the Shao Er family to expand their power on the main island of Kyushu, so as to control more land and avoid being affected by Tsushima. The island was originally too small in size, and there were many mountains, so there was very little arable land, so it was heavily dependent on food imports.

But this wish was shattered when the Luo family captured Mutian Castle, the last fortress of the Shaoer family in Hizen.Although the Arima family still maintains some of their territories in Chikuzen, it is hard to say what their diplomatic attitude towards the Roche family is.

But no matter what, the plan to open up North Korean trade routes and sell local supplies such as swords and Huotong (Huotong, not muskets) in the hands of the Luo family to North Korea in exchange for urgently needed supplies in the territory will not change.For this reason, Masaragi is going to send people to North Korea and Arima Zong's house to inquire first.

(Thank you for the monthly tickets of book friends "Every name you want to get is used", "Xingchen Zixiao", "boring, ing~", and thank you book friend "baby↗ Muzi" for the reward.) (To be continued.. )