Bringing the Railway to Daming

Chapter 499 Killing Three Birds with One Stone! Relocating the Natives [Seeking Subscriptions]

After Zhu Di finished speaking, he waited expectantly for Liu Kuan's answer.

Liu Kuan looked at him for a while and said, "Your Highness, if I'm not mistaken, among the officials and former Ming Dynasty citizens who migrated with Your Highness, there should be some who wish to directly integrate into the Brahman caste system, right?"

Zhu Di was surprised for a moment, then chuckled, "My brother-in-law guessed quite accurately. Indeed, some people want to integrate into the caste system after they understand it, but there aren't many, and most of them are middle and lower-ranking soldiers and officials."

“The high-ranking generals and officials of Yan may have thought the same way, but they all know that this method is not good for the country, so no one has expressed this idea to me.”

Liu Kuan thought for a moment and said, "As for appeasing immigrants, I have nothing to teach Your Highness—since Your Highness understands the problem, you must be able to come up with some solutions."

"As for the fact that the natives do not accept this system, I have two suggestions. First, increase investment in education—among which improving the national literacy rate and natural science knowledge is secondary, the main thing is to increase the export of Chinese culture, with Confucianism as the main ideology, through education."

"In other words, we should reform the local people's thinking as soon as possible—it may be difficult to reform the adults, but it should be easier for their children."

"As long as we persist in reforming people's thinking through education, I believe that in one or two decades, the number of natives in Yan who still want to restore the original caste system will be greatly reduced."

Zhu Di nodded in agreement.

He had been told about using education to reform people's thinking, but not as explicitly as Liu Kuan.

Liu Kuan continued, "Secondly, we must severely suppress the rebellious natives! We must not make concessions just because there are many rebellions; doing so will only embolden them!"

"Logically speaking, in order to have a deterrent effect, the rebels should be executed on a large scale, and the ringleaders should be executed."

"However, both the Ming Dynasty and the foreign tribes overseas are currently short of manpower, so I do not recommend killing too many people."

“The ringleaders of the rebellion can be executed as a deterrent, while other rebellious natives can be traded to vassal states like Chu, which need to reform their local people, through exile.”

Upon hearing this, Zhu Zhen's eyes lit up, and he couldn't help but interject, "Fourth Brother, I think my brother-in-law is right—I asked you several times before, wanting you to send a group of Indian natives, but you always said you didn't have any."

"You think it would be a waste to kill those rebels? If they stay in Yan, they'll just be a nuisance. Why not trade them all to me?"

Zhu Di frowned and said, "Our Yan Kingdom is also short of people—I will not kill all those rebels, but most of them will be forced into hard labor, that is, they will be considered lowly people."

"With these people around, our Yan Kingdom can complete projects such as road construction, city building, and mining much faster."

Upon hearing this, Zhu Zhen noticed Liu Kuan's ambiguous smile and had an idea. He said, "Fourth Brother, these people can help you with your work if they stay in Yan, but they are also prone to starting rebellions. Tell me, among those rebellions, have there been any secondary or even tertiary rebellions?"

Zhu Di remained silent for a moment.

Obviously, it is true.

At this point, Liu Kuancai added, "Your Highness, why would you worry about a lack of manpower in a place like India? If there is a shortage of manpower within the Yan territory, you can simply plunder other places."

"Didn't Your Highness previously stipulate that the territory of overseas vassal states should not exceed five thousand li in circumference within twenty years, thus restricting the development of these vassal states?"

"Does Your Highness know that the strength of a country is not solely determined by the size of its territory? In fact, one could say that the primary factor in determining strength is not the size of its territory."

"In addition to territory, it also includes its military, economy, technology, etc., which are often linked to population—only when the population is large enough can the military, economy, technology, etc. become strong."

"Although the imperial court restricts vassal states from expanding their territories, it does not restrict them from increasing their population. If His Highness Prince Yan truly desires to strengthen the country, he can easily plunder the population and wealth of other Indian states through foreign wars."

"This will not only make the Yan state stronger, but also allow the surplus population to be traded to vassal states like the Chu vassal state that need to improve their local people, in exchange for the resources that the Yan state needs."

"If we continue to plunder foreign lands for more than a decade, the surrounding states and kingdoms of Yan will inevitably become very weak."

"By then, the twenty-year restriction imposed by the imperial court would have expired, wouldn't that have made it easier for the Yan Kingdom to rapidly expand its territory?"

Zhu Zhen immediately agreed, "Brother-in-law's plan is brilliant, Fourth Brother! This is killing three birds with one stone for the Yan Kingdom!"

While persuading Zhu Di, Zhu Zhen also gained new insights.

Regardless of whether Zhu Di agreed to this matter or not, he would later tell Zhu Gang and Zhu Fu that these two could also capture people through foreign wars, especially Zhu Gang. If they could capture European people, it would greatly help their Chu state to improve the appearance of the natives of Borneo and Java.

As for what to trade with the Yan, Jin, and Qi vassal states for people, Zhu Zhen had already figured it out. In addition to spices and timber from Borneo and Java, he could also send people to Australia to open mines.

He had already heard that Australia had many good mines.

Zhu Di's eyes lit up when he heard Liu Kuan's words, and he nodded, saying, "It is indeed a good plan. I will consider it carefully—thank you, brother-in-law."

This plan was exactly what Zhu Di wanted.

He loves fighting the most.

However, the territory of Yan had already expanded to a certain extent three years ago, with the extra territory being occupied by skirting the court's restrictions. Therefore, in the past two or three years, the civil officials of the vassal state have been advising him to shift his focus to internal governance and reduce foreign wars.

This is going to be the death of him. Wasn't one of the main reasons he was in such a hurry to establish vassal states overseas so that he could fight wars freely?
In the past two years, he has indeed been persuaded by the civil officials to restrain himself, but he still feels restless inside.

Now, with Liu Kuan's plan, he can finally legitimately lead the Yan army to conquer all sides.

Next, Zhu Di asked Liu Kuan a few other questions about the governance of the vassal states. These were not very important and were relatively easy to answer. Moreover, Liu Kuan could not answer all the questions, so the conversation ended in a short while.

Next, Zhu Zhen spoke about the governance of the Chu vassal state.

Compared to the Yan vassal state, the territory taken over by the Chu vassal state was also heavily influenced by Brahmanical thought, but it was much less affected than the Indian subcontinent.

Firstly, Borneo and Java were part of the Buddhist cultural sphere a thousand years ago, and were also influenced by Chinese culture.

Brahmanism only entered the country and became mainstream in the last thousand years, as evidenced by the fact that there are still Buddhist countries in Borneo.

Secondly, the locals are fundamentally different from the native Indians—the native Indians have been conquered by foreign tribes many times and have become accustomed to being conquered, and therefore are more accustomed to the caste system.

Before the establishment of the Chu Kingdom, the Javanese people had little history of being conquered by foreign ethnic groups. On the contrary, there were two or three instances of them successfully resisting foreign conquerors.

Therefore, the Javanese were more rebellious than the Indians. Although this was not conducive to rule, it also made the Javanese inherently disloyal to the caste system.

In fact, the caste system in the original Majapahit Kingdom was not so strict.

So what were the main problems Zhu Zhen faced?

The base population is too small.

Today, the Chu state occupies parts of Borneo and Java, where the total number of indigenous people is as high as one or two million, while the Han Chinese, who form the core population, number only tens of thousands. In particular, the Javanese indigenous people are not as easy to govern as the Indian indigenous people. Therefore, in the past year or so, the Chu state has also experienced several local rebellions, keeping Zhu Zhen very busy.

The rebellion was secondary; the most important thing was that the State of Chu currently needed to rely on the local nobles in Java (who were actually large landowners) to carry out its ruling activities such as tax collection and education.

Many local nobles outwardly submit but inwardly hate the Han people. Even if they dare not rebel, they will greatly compromise on the implementation of various policies and may even outwardly comply but inwardly defy them.

This kind of thing hindered the development of the Chu vassal state even more than a rebellion, and it also gave Zhu Zhen and the ministers of the Chu vassal state a great headache.

Upon hearing Zhu Zhen's account, Zhu Di couldn't help but feel secretly relieved.

'Fortunately, the indigenous people of India are accustomed to submission, unlike the Javanese who are more rebellious. Otherwise, given India's large population, I'm afraid I'd be facing even greater trouble than Lao Liu.'

Looking back now, I realize I made the right choice in establishing my domain in India!

After listening to Zhu Zhen's explanation, Liu Kuan pondered for a while and said, "To be honest, I don't have any particularly good suggestions for this kind of matter. I only have some immature ideas for Your Highness, the Prince of Chu, to consider."

Zhu Zhen said, "Brother-in-law, just say so. It would be good if you could help my Chu state in some way."

Liu Kuan first asked, "Your Highness currently considers East Java as your territorial base, right?"

Zhu Zhen nodded. "That's right."

Liu Kuan said: "The Chu vassal state in Java is a small force that can control a large one. First of all, we can learn from the experience of the Mongol Yuan, the Yan vassal state, and even the later Manchu Qing dynasty to establish a racial class."

"For example, like the Yan Fan, immigrants who followed His Highness were made nobles, those who voluntarily submitted and never rebelled were made ordinary citizens, and prisoners of war and natives who had rebelled were demoted to laborers and lowly people."

"Java was previously influenced by the Brahmanical caste system, so there shouldn't be much resistance to implementing this system."

"As for the second point, His Highness has been working on it all along. That is to increase the base of support, and then expand the third group between the base and the Javanese, which can be called dependent immigrants."

"As Your Highness has previously brought in immigrants from Japan, North Korea, and Annam, and in the future, you will bring in immigrants from India and other places."

"With a larger number of dependent immigrants, they can serve as helpers for the Ming Dynasty immigrants and also buffer the conflicts between the Ming Dynasty immigrants and the Javanese natives—just like how the Mongols used a large number of Semu people in the past, and how the Manchus later used a large number of so-called Han Bannermen who surrendered. These are all similar methods."

Zhu Zhen's eyes lit up again.

Although he had been working on Liu Kuan's second point before, his thinking wasn't as clear. Now, after listening to Liu Kuan's analysis, he felt more confident and could more firmly implement the policy, as well as persuade the few ministers under his command who opposed it.

At the same time, he eagerly awaited Liu Kuan's further suggestions.

"Thirdly, more and less are relative. Since Your Highness feels there are too many natives in East Java, why not try to reduce their numbers?"

"My brother-in-law wants me to carry out a massacre?" Zhu Zhenxian frowned slightly, then realized, "No, my brother-in-law means I can relocate some of the natives of Java?!"

Liu Kuan smiled and nodded.

(End of this chapter)