open sea

Chapter 717
In the sixth year of Wanli, something happened in the Central Plains that seemed ordinary at this time, but it had an extremely important impact on the future.

Zhang Juzheng, who returned to the court after his father's funeral, went back to his hometown and suffered all the way from others to poke his spine and scold him for being unfaithful, unfilial, and greedy for power. When he returned to the capital, he made another decision that would suffer even more infamy.

Government-run artisan schools were established in North Zhili, South Zhili, Shandong, and Zhejiang provinces, under the direct jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry. The disciplines were divided into cotton spinning, wool spinning, canvas, grain making, wine making, koji oil making, salt and tea making, and daily use. Papermaking and printing for clothing department stores, tool making for craftsmen and building materials, bricks and tiles, and finally, fuel disciplines such as shipbuilding, ship repairing, wood, coal, kerosene, etc.

The artisan school was nothing new in the Ming Dynasty, and it was not surprising that officials who were familiar with the teaching of different subjects formulated the rules. Only Zhang Juzheng's order made the entire Grand Canal jittery.

The four major government-run schools do not recruit students from all over the world. The basic foundation of any country in this era is agriculture, especially in a big country like the Ming Dynasty. Once the farmers put down their hoes and do other things, the country will perish.

Thirty percent of the students were admitted to the school by military craftsmen and craftsmen from all over the country, and the remaining [-] percent were only admitted to the children of Cao households on the canal.

The government-run artisan schools in the four provinces are full of bullshit. A total of [-] students are enrolled in the four provinces a year. The school is four years long. The government only gives the school space, and each student pays tuition fees of three taels of silver a year. eat.

The accommodation is basically provided by the students themselves, and the school provides the land, but from the school, the cafeteria to the dormitory, all the students who have paid money to go to school work and contribute. Every school is first built with brick kilns and small hut.

Fortunately, the Ministry of Industry's heart was not too dark. The bricks and soil were allocated by the chief secretaries of the provinces, and the students were not asked to spend any more money.

The pay was so bad, the result was self-evident. The enrollment notice was printed from Beijing and sent along the canal to every cao chief, who read it out to the cao households. After three months, none of the schools in the four provinces had recruited enough students.

Nanzhili only recruited one hundred and eight people, and it was called Liangshan Academy, which became the biggest joke in the sixth year of Wanli.

Only a few people in the ruling and opposition parties have speculated about Zhang Juzheng's behavior - the court's use of sea transportation instead of water transportation will become a real reality in the near future.

Everyone knows that the cost of sea transport is much lower than that of water transport, but first, water transport has been associated with commerce and the military for hundreds of years, and has become a huge industry with a lot of influence; There are millions of Caomin in their family who eat by this job.

This is an unsolvable problem. For the livelihood of millions of people, these people have no land and no skills. Even if they want to serve as soldiers, they will not be recruited by the army. These days, starting from Qi Jiguang and Yu Dayou, recruiting soldiers pay attention to those who are not from good families. .

Most of the people in Cao are the urban population. In Qi's words, the urban people have deep routines.

Without water transportation, these people will cause social unrest.

Even Chen Mu's sea transportation failed to touch the water transportation at all. What they transported by sea was only money, food and goods from Nanyang.

But these two things are no longer a problem now. It only takes ten years for a million Caomin. After ten years, most of the next generation of Caomin will enter the large government-run factories in Xuanfu, Nanzhi, Beizhi, and Guangdong through craftsmen schools. The remaining Cao people can still meet the needs of water transportation.

As for the intertwined interpersonal relationships, Zhang Juzheng is not afraid, and Zhang Juzheng is not afraid of anything now - he is an unscrupulous person who is not as good as a pig or a dog. The students and fellow villagers he brought out scold him like this. Is it useful to manage contacts?
Is there anything he can't do, who can't he offend?

Standing on a wall and climbing a thousand feet, one can be strong without desire. Zhang Juzheng does not need to worship generals. He can still go up to the nine heavens and down to the nine abyss.

For this action, it has something to do with the expansion of Daming's overseas market again, but it has little to do with Chen Mu. The key is that Yin Zhengmao, the Minister of Western Affairs, is making too fast progress.

The Portuguese, who had been entrenched in Goa for decades, abandoned this commercial station and completely withdrew from India at the end of the fifth year of Wanli, declaring the complete failure of their official eastern route.

Only the Portuguese forces remaining in the Indian Ocean have little to do with Portugal. They are widely distributed in the Kingdom of Arakan, Burma and the Indian ministries and are active on turbulent battlefields as mercenaries.

Yin Zhengmao did not rely on the military or bribes to obtain Goa. On the contrary, it was the Governor of Goa who had no choice but to bribe Yin Zhengmao to bring this land under the rule of the Western Army of the Ming Dynasty and continue to survive in the form of a mirror in India. on the ground.

Today, in the various city-states scattered in southern India, more than half of the land is divided by Yin Zhengmao into the capital of South India.

The reason why the Governor of Goa gave up the rule of Goa is funny to say because they were completely cut off from Lisbon.

As for why, you have to ask Lin Afeng, the king of Africa whose capital is Xidacheng on the other side of the Arabian Sea, and whose country name is Han.

For nearly two years, no Portuguese ship could reach the Indian Ocean through the Arabian Sea without incident. The same happened to the Safavid dynasty of the Persians and the Ottoman Empire of the Turks.

There is a very interesting thing here. Even before the Ottomans negotiated peace with the Holy Alliance in the fifth year of Wanli, their brains were about to collapse in the Mediterranean in the west, and the trade between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean did not stop.

Everyone needs this tax money to support the war.

As a result, trade in the Indian Ocean was disrupted by a group of powerful pirates.

It's not that Lin Afeng and his subordinates are very aggressive. On the contrary, in the two years, except for the prestige at the beginning, their fleet spent most of the time floating at sea to avoid being attacked by the Safavid Dynasty and the Ottomans. The fleet formed after being enraged pursued.

But in this era, the triangular trade was more popular. There was a triangular trade belonging to the whites in West Africa. They loaded blacks on ships and sent them to the Americas for sale, which was called the black slave trade.

There is also a triangular trade in northern Africa. Barbary pirates sold white people to the Ottoman Empire as white slaves after plundering European ships in the Mediterranean Sea or directly attacking European coastal cities.

Now there is another triangular trade in eastern Africa that appeared, flourished and ended very short-lived. The merchants of the Ming Dynasty and the Portuguese sold goods to the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea through Malacca, and the merchants of Ottoman and Safi sold them to Damascus by land through the Red Sea.

However, most of the time, the goods left the hands of the merchants of the Ming Dynasty and were snatched by pirate ships of the Han Kingdom on the way to Damascus. They were sold back to the merchants of the Ming Dynasty at a low price, and then sold to merchants in the Indian Ocean by the merchants of the Ming Dynasty.

In just two years, a mature commercial waterway was almost destroyed by pirates. Lin Afeng even took a trip to Goa while busy with this main business, turning it into ruins.

The Portuguese could not hold on to their own strength, not to mention that Yin Zhengmao's expansion in India was too fast, and he seemed unstoppable and unable to contact the country. After discussing with the bishop of Macau, the governor of Goa decided to temporarily break away from the control of the Holy See and belong to the Ming Dynasty.

On the other side of the ocean, a battle is about to start with an arquebus that is close to being scrapped.

　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)