"Of course, 100 million taels is not a small amount," Grand Duke Luo stroked his beard and calculated for a while, "but it's not a big deal." ”

"What?" Song Shilie's old eyes are about to fall out, is this human words? Is this what the Great Governor can say?

100 million taels is not a big deal...... How much do you, the Shanghai Mansion, have to loot for the Emperor of the Zhu family in a year?

Grand Duke Luo seemed to know what Song Shilie was pondering, so he folded his fingers and confessed: "The Shanghai Mansion where Xia Guan is in charge has collected more than one million taels of agricultural taxes and military grain rents, more than one million taels of commercial taxes, more than one million taels of commercial port land taxes and rent, and more than five million stone of grain and rice...... A total of more than 6 million taels of rice were sold! Add these together, almost tens of millions of taels! Mr. Song, do you think this 100 million taels is too much? ”

This, how is this possible!?

Song Shilie was really stunned, and he couldn't tell the difference between reality and dreams.

One province looted 10 million taels...... Although more than six million are actually tariffs, the remaining three or four million are real!

How many mansions are there in Daming now! How many of them should be no worse than Shanghai, right? For example, Yingtianfu, Yangzhou, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Raozhou (Jingdezhen), Hangzhou...... 100 million, maybe you can really scavenge it!

Song Shilie thought about it and was wrong.

"Brother Grand Duke, isn't Da Ming at war with Dongyu? After three years of capture, countless amounts of wealth have been wasted! ”

Grand Duke Luo shook his head: "Not only is there a fight with the east, but there is another one in the west, what Yeerqiang Khanate is fighting!" In addition, the sea and the Spaniards have been fighting for several years, but everyone has not made it clear, we have the sign of the Japanese, and they have the sign of the Great Mongolia. Everyone doesn't tear their faces, they don't fight hard, but they still fight. ”

Three wars are being fought at the same time!

Didn't you fight poor?

Song Shilie couldn't believe it.

Grand Duke Luo actually didn't understand what was going on, he shook his head and said, "It stands to reason that such a reckless military force should be poor." But the problem is that in the past three years, the southeast has been rich everywhere, and the more they fight, the richer they are...... Now it is really prosperous and the people are rich, I have been the prefect and prefect of Shanghai for more than ten years, and it is the best in the past two or three years, and I can make money in all kinds of business. And it's not just Shanghai Prefecture, as far as I know, all the state capitals in Jiangnan Province are prosperous!

Although the military expenditure of 100 million is a lot, the current situation in the southeast of the Ming Dynasty should not be a problem. ”

What is happening in the southeast of the Ming Dynasty now is actually a "war boom", a very common economic phenomenon in the capitalist era!

Of course Dagong Luo hadn't heard of it, but Zhu Cihong did!

Although he has not returned to Nanjing much in the past two or three years, the phenomenon of war in the southeast of the Ming Dynasty has long been mastered by him.

This economic phenomenon is actually a matter of course for the current southeast of the Ming Dynasty!

Because the southeast of the Ming Dynasty is a huge handicraft manufacturing center, it can produce a large number of silk, porcelain, cotton, ironware, ships, vehicles, leather goods, wood, munitions, armor, vehicles, gunpowder, salt, medicine and all other things needed in front of the front every year.

All the handicrafts needed by hundreds of thousands of troops to fight on the front line can be produced in the southeast of the Ming Dynasty with quality and quantity, and a huge and efficient logistics department can be organized to transport everything to the front line by land and water.

If there is only a developed handicraft industry, the Ming court will still be trapped in finances, but the Ming Dynasty is not less so-called "money". After all, the handicraft industry in the southeast of the Ming Dynasty has not been prosperous for a year or two, and since the middle and late Tang Dynasty, the handicraft industry in the southeast has been very developed. In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, by virtue of the east wind of the Age of Discovery, the handicraft industry in the southeast of the Ming Dynasty earned hundreds of millions of taels of silver for the Ming Dynasty in just over a hundred years, and forcibly turned China from a silver-scarce country into a "silver empire" that could be used as currency with silver.

It's just that before Zhu Cihong took over, there were still two huge flaws in the economy of the southeast of the Ming Dynasty, which made it impossible for it to transition to the initial stage of capitalism, and there was no way to turn the huge amount of silver from "dead money" into "living money".

One of the major shortcomings is that agriculture is not enough to support the further development of the artisanal workshops – it is very unrealistic to think that capitalism can move into capitalism by leaps and bounds without the support of agriculture and rely on a small number of metallurgical and metalworking industries.

Because the development of capitalist industry and commerce requires a large number of people, if there are not even a few people, how can you engage in industry and commerce? In the early days of industry and commerce, they were all "crowd tactics", and they all had to rely on manual labor to open a mine, make iron, weave cloth, or so on. Without the gathering of hundreds of thousands or millions of people, it is very difficult for capitalist industry and commerce to gain sufficient impetus for development.

With so many people gathered together and no longer engaged in agricultural production, how can the problem of their food be solved?

So capitalism cannot be developed at all where agriculture is not developed enough, or where there is no way to obtain sufficient agricultural products by means of low-cost transport!

For example, Beijing, the original capital of the Ming Dynasty, could not develop capitalism in the 17th century - hundreds of thousands of residents who supported the function of the capital of the Ming Dynasty needed to import four million Shicao rice from the southeast every year to feed, so what kind of capitalist industry and commerce would be developed? If there are hundreds of thousands, millions of industrial and commercial residents, how much food will have to be imported?

In addition, early capitalist industry and commerce were often inseparable from the support of the textile industry. Whether it is wool spinning, cotton spinning, or silk weaving, it is inseparable from agriculture and animal husbandry to provide raw materials.

If there is no food supply, where is the rich land to produce raw materials for handicrafts?

And the agriculture of the Ming Dynasty was obviously not enough to support the great development of industry and commerce - an important reason for the peasant war at the end of the Ming Dynasty was that agriculture could not provide enough products! When the scale of production of cash crops continues to expand, the supply of food becomes insufficient......

Therefore, after Zhu Cihong took charge of the southeast, he did not forcibly start any "industrialization", but focused on agriculture. Finding food for more than 100 million people is the top priority!

His method was fourfold: First, he abolished the tax-free privilege of the scholars, so as to eradicate the backward "mail-in system" and make the circulation of land more market-oriented, so that the small landlords and rich peasants who were good at agriculture could obtain more land.

The second is to increase imports, importing rice from the warm and humid Southeast Asia through the two methods of "customs and grain tax" and "expansion of the suzerain".

The third is the Huanghuai transportation project, which has turned the areas on both sides of the Huai River, which were originally flooded for many years, into fertile soil for grain production through waste transportation and protection.

Fourth, it is necessary to increase the popularization of new crops such as potatoes and sweet potatoes, so as to strengthen the ability of agriculture to resist natural disasters.

After the four-pronged approach, by the time of the Northern Expedition in the sixth year of Hongxing, the grain supply in the southeast of the Ming Dynasty was already very abundant, and the grain price could be stabilized at about one or two stone rice for a long time. The production of cash crops, such as cotton, mulberry leaves, tea, soybeans, etc., has also risen enough to support the development of handicrafts and capitalism.

Another major flaw in curbing the transition to the initial stage of capitalism in the Ming Dynasty is the imperfection of the financial system! The so-called statement that hundreds of millions of taels of silver are invested in the land is actually nonsense. Silver does not become land, it can only be exchanged for land. Because the financial system in the mid-17th century was too backward to absorb the inflow of silver, silver became a collector's item rather than capital.

In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Emperor Zhu promoted the establishment of Yanshang Bank and Haishang Bank, in order to establish a banking system that allowed silver to turnover.

Because the banking system can make money through the multiplier effect, when the Ming financial system centered on the two major banks gradually matured. For the Ming court, "silver" is no longer a silver ingot placed in the official treasury, but a series of numbers on two bank accounts...... The military expenditure of 100 million taels is just the silver in the account of the Ming Dynasty, which has run to someone else's account.