The fleet set sail and continued to go west, Yang Pingfan asked Su Yu, do you really plan to change the trajectory of history? Why don't you ask Zheng He for a ship, with our current merits and abilities, return to the Ming Dynasty, it is not better to mix up an official and a half-job, first change the system, and then develop science and technology, so that the Ming Dynasty can directly enter the constitutional monarchy and industrialization of modern Britain, isn't that faster, why guide them to complete a round-the-world voyage?

Su Yu glanced at Yang Pingfan, "Change the system?" Have you read too many novels and think that changing the system is to promulgate a few laws and it's over?"

"The economic base determines the superstructure, and the Ming Dynasty is still a feudal dynasty dominated by agriculture, and the only handicraft industry is not large-scale, which can only meet daily needs.

In such a classical agrarian society, where do you find a whole group of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats to implement your systems and laws that are ahead of the times, you don't think that as written in a novel, laws can be enacted by force, and then the whole society can enforce them? You know, under the empire are thousands of people, they are people, they also have ideas, not a machine, you can program it to run.

The reason why the Qin Dynasty died was because it was unified too quickly, and there were no officials who were familiar enough with the Qin law to manage the old land of the Six Kingdoms, so they could only use the bureaucrats of the Six Kingdoms.

Let's talk about the development of science and technology, science and technology do not develop if they want to develop, let's take this pistol as an example.

Let's not talk about its working principle, let's talk about how to produce, first of all, the barrel, it is made of alloy, there is rifling in it, smelting alloy needs smelters, smelters need raw materials, so it also needs mining equipment for mining iron ore and coal, to process the barrel, you need to have a high-precision processing lathe, bullet forming needs a forging machine, and the ammunition inside needs the chemical industry, which either does not exist in the current time and space, or can only rely on manual production, and it is impossible to achieve large-scale production on the assembly line.

Even if you build a whole industrial system, you still need a large number of skilled workers, engineers who maintain equipment, inspectors in charge of quality and other professionals, these workers have to be trained from scratch. Engineers who maintain equipment and the like can't be trained from scratch in a year or two.

And please note that these professionals are all out of work, and you have to pay them salaries and provide rations, do you think you can afford to be able to sustain them with the current agricultural production system?

In our time, you could buy hundreds of screws for ten yuan, and they were delivered to your home free of charge because there was a complete industrial system and modern logistics behind it.

In the current time and space, if you want to produce a screw, I guess it may take a senior jeweler a few days to carve it, and the strength and hardness are not enough. ”

Yang Pingfan was stunned for a while, but he was still unconvinced: "We can not produce such high-precision ones, we can develop steam engines, engage in fertilizer factories and hardware factories, and re-walk the road of the first industrial revolution, so that they can initially enter the industrialization track, and then let them continue to make progress on their own." ”

Su Yu nodded, "Of course, this idea is good, but who will provide rations for these workers who are out of production? Before the Industrial Revolution, Britain had already robbed a lot of colonies, and the local population was not very large, so it could completely rely on all kinds of materials produced in the colonies to feed the local workers.

However, the current Ming Dynasty is a self-sufficient natural economic society, and it is already very reluctant to feed a bunch of bureaucrats, royal families, nobles, and the army who are out of production, and you must know that some of the army still need to go to the army reclamation to solve their own military food problems, and if you get a group of workers out of production, who will feed them? You can only raise taxes, and the peasants who have been squeezed to the limit are only afraid that there will be another Zhu Yuanzhang soon. ”

Yang Pingfan was convinced, "Dr. Su is worthy of being a doctor of history, and he can see the essence of the problem, but I remember that the direction of your research is how to solve this problem by the traverser, so what should I do?"

Su Yu glanced at him, "Isn't this just doing? Why do I insist on guiding Zheng He and them to complete the round-the-world voyage, only if they let them walk around and know how big the outside world is and how rich the products are, the whole society will have the motivation to expand outward and achieve change from the inside out."

Why is China's traditional territory confined to East Asia, and even the Korean Peninsula and Indochina Peninsula do not want to be included, let alone the Far East in the north?

Either because the rulers of the dynasties did not want to make progress, or because these places were so poor that the costs and benefits of maintaining power in these places were not proportional to the benefits, and the vast expenditures were enough to bring down any central dynasty.

You might wonder why no one has thought of exploring overseas, because the cost of building a fleet is just as high, and there are technical hurdles.

But in Daming, the situation is different.

Zhu Yuanzhang is the only person in history who raised troops from the south of the Yangtze River and completed the Northern Expedition to dominate the world. There are many water networks in the south of the Yangtze River, so the people who raised troops from the south of the Yangtze River, whether it is Zhu Yuanzhang or Zhang Shicheng, or Chen Youliang, all attach great importance to the construction of the sailor, after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, it retains the largest and strongest naval fleet in the history of the Chinese classical dynasty for thousands of years (not compared with the Beiyang fleet).

Therefore, whether it is technical reserves or personnel reserves, the Ming Dynasty can complete the task requirements of overseas expansion, but unfortunately, in the original time and space, Yongle used such a naval force to go to the West Ocean and promote the prestige of the Celestial Empire, and finally dragged down the imperial court. Now, since we have traveled to this time and space, it is natural that such a naval force should play its role.

Yang Pingfan nodded: "I probably understand, but as you said just now, the current cultural atmosphere of the entire society is still the world of Confucianism, and there is no corresponding bureaucratic administrative system, no corresponding social and cultural foundation, even if the round-the-world voyage is completed, I am afraid that the inertia of society will prevent overseas colonial expansion."

I also have a general understanding of Confucianism, Shinong, industry and commerce, all of them are inferior, only the reading is high, and the merchants are ranked in the ninth rank, and the scholars despise commerce very much, let alone overseas colonization.