"Your Majesty, a team of soldiers has just caught a special traitor on the flagship of the Westerners, and said that they want to see you."

Wu Xilin, chief of staff of the East China Sea Fleet of the Royal Guard, took several officers and men and escorted a prisoner over.

"See me?"

Zhu Youzheng was about to go to Kinmen Island to have a look, but after hearing this, he stopped.

He looked up and looked at the guy who happened to be escorted not far in front of him by several soldiers.

This is a well-mannered, well-dressed traitor, and he looks quite dignified, much like a cultural person.

"Sinners knock before Your Majesty!"

"Your Majesty spares your life!"

This traitor, who looked panicked, came to Zhu Youxiao's side, and shouted miserably while shouting for mercy.

"Your Majesty! Although the grass people are interpreters for those Westerners, they have never killed anyone, nor have they done anything bad! ”

"Humph!"

Zhu Youxiao's inexplicable anger involuntarily steamed up from the bottom of his heart, "Didn't kill anyone? Didn't do anything bad? To be a dog and a traitor to Westerners is a heinous crime! ”

"What I hate most in my life is to be a dog-licking scum for those Westerners! It is more unforgivable than murder and arson! ”

Zhu Youxiao didn't say this nonsense.

In his previous life, he hated these traitors and scum who were licking dogs for Westerners.

First-class foreigners, second-class officials, and being licking dogs for foreigners became the trend at that time, which made people speechless.

Any foreigner, in the case of penniless, can travel the whole country without worry, without worrying about any accidents.

Countless green tea are scrambling to accompany them day and night......

The status of the Han people, in the world, is not even comparable to the stallion-like blacks, it is simply ......

The more Zhu Youxiao thought about it, the more angry he became, and he was about to pull out the big sword and cut the licking dog of this Westerner alive.

"Your Majesty, the grass people are guilty!"

This translator was an extremely smart person, seeing Zhu Youxiao's face becoming more and more pale, and feeling the strong murderous intent of His Majesty the Emperor, he was immediately so frightened that he almost urinated.

"Your Majesty, the grass people are useful! Willing to atone for sins! ”

"The grass people are extremely familiar with the situation in Western countries, and can provide a lot of information to Your Majesty!"

"Three months ago, for unknown reasons, those Westerners were preparing to replace a large number of governors, admirals, generals, and so on, and were preparing to replace some young and vigorous people to come to East Asia to handle all kinds of affairs."

"At this time, they have been roughly replaced, and their overall strength has been qualitatively improved."

"Oh?"

Zhu Youxiao stopped the action of drawing the big sword, frowned slightly, and asked, "What is the specific situation?" Whether you can survive or not depends on whether your intelligence is worth it. ”

That's a great thing.

When the Southern Ming Puppet Dynasty reorganized the 1.2 million army of the four towns in the south of the Yangtze River, and promoted four relatively capable young generals to be the governors of the capital, Zhu Youxiao was already quite vigilant.

Now these Western countries are quietly making this kind of action, which makes Zhu Youxiao feel that the world is full of malice towards him.

Although this must be the inertia of history and a counterattack against oneself, there must also be a reason.

"The grass people obey."

This traitor licked the dog, and finally saw a glimmer of life, and hurriedly explained endlessly, like a cannon, in order to show his talent and prove that he was useful.

"Your Majesty, the grass people's name is Huang Jianjie, he is a person from the Pearl River Estuary in Guangdong, who has been in business for generations, and has been ...... since he was ."

According to Huang Jianjie's traitor licking dog, the Spaniards and the Dutch at this time occupied Taipei and Tainan respectively, and the Spaniards came to Taiwan earlier than the Dutch.

It stands to reason that the Spaniards should have a preconceived advantage, but this is not the case.

Although the Spaniards still occupy northern Taiwan, the Dutch united with Zheng Zhilong and some merchants of the Ming Dynasty to try their best to prevent the expansion of Spanish merchants along the coasts of Fujian, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

In this way, it seriously threatens the Spanish economy in places such as Manila.

Moreover, the price of goods transported from Keelung was not cheaper than that of Ming merchants directly to Manila, but it cost a lot of money to maintain the garrison, but the Spaniards could not open the door to trade between the Ming Empire and the Japanese Invaders.

In addition, since the fourth year of the apocalypse, the production of silver in the Americas has been decreasing year by year.

Spain was now in a rapid recession due to the decline in silver inflows, the extravagant lifestyle of the nobility, and the defeat of the Armageddon with the Royal Navy of England.

The production and operation of northern Taiwan almost all rely on subsidies from Manila, but Manila itself also needs funds to cope with the war with the local natives, and it is becoming more and more difficult for the Spaniards to survive.

The new governor of Manila, Coquela, decided to reduce the military strength of northern Taiwan in order to reduce expenses.

He ordered the demolition of the Saint-Te located in Tamsui. Domingo City, only garrisoned in Keelung, and the rest of the manpower and materials were transferred back to Manila.

The emptiness of Taipei's defenses immediately attracted the covetousness of the Dutch.

In the past few days, the ambitious Dutch have been constantly testing Taipei, and skirmishes between the two sides are very frequent. Worry-free love book network

The Spanish Empire now occupied much of the Americas, where it obtained enough silver to be shipped annually to the Philippines to finance the purchase of Chinese goods.

Much of this silver was minted into silver coins, known as Spanish pesos.

This type of silver coin is beautifully minted because of its uniform weight, simple circulation, and relatively high silver content.

It is said that the silver content is more than seventy percent, and even the highest can reach ninety percent, which is very popular with the Ming Empire, and is an absolute hard currency in the coastal area.

However, the silver that the Spaniards had plundered with great difficulty was continuously sucked into the Ming Empire, which was not a good thing for the Spanish Empire.

Therefore, the current king of Spain has to limit the amount of silver shipped to Manila each year, stipulating that the quota cannot be exceeded.

Now that the number of pesos in the hands of the governor of Manila was low, he withdrew the smuggling ships sent to Manila on the route to China, and gave free passage to the merchant ships of the Ming Empire that went to Manila to trade.

The greatest embodiment of the value of their existence in Luzon is their trade with the Ming Dynasty.

If this trade was cut off, then the presence of the Spaniards in Luzon would not be of much significance.

But over the years, the Spaniards, unlike the Dutch, rarely sailed to the Ming coast to trade.

They usually waited for the Ming merchants to deliver the goods to Manila, and then they bought them and forwarded them to Europe or the Americas.

Therefore, the Spaniards demanded more stability in trade routes.

Eight years before the Apocalypse, because the monetary policy of the Ming Empire was too bad, although the Ming government also issued a large number of treasure banknotes, they did not pay attention to maintaining the value of paper money at all, and only regarded the Ming treasure banknotes they issued as a tool to collect money.

So that in the end, the credit of the Ming treasure banknote was lost, and it was completely abandoned by the people of the Ming Dynasty, and as a last resort, it had to return to the state of using silver and copper coins as currency.

Fortunately, these Europeans continued to import a large amount of silver into the Ming Empire, so that the Ming could have a relatively sufficient amount of silver as a circulating currency.

Otherwise, what the Ming Empire uses as currency is really a headache.

However, a large amount of imported silver, coupled with poor management, caused the depreciation of silver in the Ming Empire, and there was inflation.

At this time, the world is in an era without rules of the game, it is a world of the jungle, which country does not want to invade others and expand its territory?

Which of today's great powers was not formed by annexing other small countries?

Throughout the history of China, in any period of the heyday of imperial power, it is necessary to go out to invade and annex, only when the imperial power is sidelined, and the government is controlled by the big families, wealthy businessmen and huge wealth, only to seek peace.

And now the Ming Empire is still complacent about the "Heavenly Empire", but it doesn't know that it has lagged behind the Western countries too much.

Was it because the navigation technology of the Ming Empire was too backward?

The Han people invented the compass long ago, at least in the early days of the Ming Empire, the Ming Dynasty's shipbuilding technology has always been ahead of the world.

Zheng He, the "Three Treasure Eunuchs", was able to sail to the coast of East Africa because of advanced navigation technology.

Is it the lack of adventurous spirit of the Han people, the lack of seafaring traditions of the Han people?

Was the territory of the Ming Empire vast enough that there was no need to expand overseas? ……

Obviously, none of this is a reason.

Historically, the Chinese imperial court did not expand overseas, let alone plunder overseas to achieve a strong country and rich people, simply because of the Chinese people's agricultural land culture.

The Han Chinese empire did not share in the great benefits conferred by the sea, and no matter how far the maritime civilization developed, it did not affect their farming culture.

Before August of the seventh year of the Apocalypse, it can be summed up in one sentence: Western civilization is a blue ocean culture, while Eastern civilization is an inland culture of agricultural land.

Agrarian land culture tends to close itself off, regards itself as the center of the world, regards its own system as the best system, and believes that other countries and nations are uncivilized barbarians.

If you think about it carefully, the conservative farming culture is not an inherent cultural tradition of the Han people, nor is it something that is innate.

Confucianism, the foundation of Han Chinese culture, was born in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and became the mainstream ideology of official orthodoxy by the Han Dynasty.

Pursuing the "inner king and outer saint" as the classic, advocating "convincing people with virtue", his favorite is internal fighting, and he never thought of expanding his territory in the past.

Therefore, until Zhu Youxiao was reborn, the Han empire was still so conservative and self-contained.

The strength of the Han and Tang dynasties came from relative openness.

At that time, the conditions were mainly the opening of the land, but for the Han Empire, it absorbed the essence of many world civilizations.

In the Song and Yuan dynasties, in addition to cultural exchanges on land, there was also the content of maritime exchanges.

Although the great welfare of maritime civilization at that time had not yet formed a model, it was more the outward spread of the agricultural land civilization of the Han Empire.

Among them, the key period of the biggest change was the maritime ban policy in the early Ming Dynasty, which magnified the huge defects of traditional culture, and conservatism and arrogance became the main theme.

Before August of the seventh year of the Apocalypse, the huge Ming Empire was almost isolated from the world because it had no reason to share the huge benefits of maritime civilization.

The main reason for this is that those wealthy families and wealthy businessmen have realized the huge benefits of maritime foreign trade and fooled the emperor to ban the sea.

In this context, it is those families and wealthy businessmen who have become rich.

In the middle and late stages of the Ming Empire, countless wealthy families and wealthy merchants were constantly doubling their family properties because of huge maritime trade interests, and they were so rich.

However, the Ming Empire itself gave up its original maritime leading position, and it was impossible to support or support the army to expand, nor could it use maritime trade to strengthen the country and enrich the people.

For so long, the Ming Empire missed the best opportunity for great expansion, which is understandable.