What is the Grand Voyage?

Engage in a few ships full of goods and go to sea to make money, this is trade; Load the artillery, bring the musket, and rob the way to rob the fortune and rob the color, this is naval warfare and piracy; Open up a few new routes, discover uncharted seas, and dig a grave along the way to rob a grave, this is exploration and discovery. It's as simple as that, just open a golden finger and write down. This is the adventures of a rich man, a generalissimo, a great pirate, and a great explorer. Yes, that's what I originally knew about the Age of Discovery. And rightfully exist in the brain for about twenty years.

As I grew older and more experienced, in recent years I have felt more and more that my perception of the Age of Discovery was wrong, but I didn't know what was wrong.

Not good at innovation but good at summarizing is the characteristic of our generation of learning, so I used the exhaustive method and the comparative method to try to find some kind of internal connection.

So first of all, since the Age of Discovery, what are the seafaring powers? In chronological order, Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, United Kingdom.

First of all, let's look at Portugal, an independent and unified country, only more than 200 years old on the eve of Prince Enrique's Age of Discovery, a large place, about a million people, the economy except fishing is farming, and then there is no then. The land was surrounded by Spain, and the Mediterranean was rich in any country, so there was a man who turned his attention to what Europe called the Sea of Death, and that was Prince Enrique, who was holding a messy map, and there was no real map at that time, because the world had not yet been discovered, and it was all guesswork. But the huge profit from the spice trade (I think so) was Enrique's determination to open a new route from the Dead Sea (south of Cape Bodoghar) in search of India. Twenty-one years later, his explorers finally sailed through the Dead Sea, which was more than 1,000 nautical miles from Portugal, and 17 years later Enrique died, during which time the explorers explored more than 1,000 nautical miles south, and then Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 27 years, and Vasco da Gama made an important discovery of India in 12 years. It turns out that Enrique is a strategic navigator with a golden finger, this is real history, not fiction.

Let's look at Spain, after eight centuries of the Restoration War, finally unified, and then in Portugal made the right judgment (Columbus proposed that the voyage to the west could also reach India, Portuguese scholars judged that it could, but the route was too far to row) The wrong decision to give Columbus to Spain, Queen Isabella I think she also opened the golden finger, the 800-year Restoration War ended in her hands, Columbus did not reach India but reached the Americas, although there is no spice here, But silver is abundant here, and Spain plundered about a billion taels of silver here, so it is only fitting that it should be used here.

Look at the Netherlands again, the only country that does not have a golden finger, smaller and poorer than Portugal, there is no national consciousness at the earliest, Spain said that the Netherlands is its, they acquiesced, but when Spain charged them protection money, they rebelled, the interesting thing is that after driving away Spain, they asked the Queen of England to protect them, and the protection fee was higher, so they rebelled again, and were forced to set up a country, they monopolized the transportation trade of the whole of Europe through price wars, and their cargo ships have small bellies on their decks, Because at that time, taxes were not paid according to tonnage, but according to deck area, and after the dismantling of all armaments, the cost of merchant ships was reduced by half, and the cost was low, which created a naked (unprotected) sea coachman who ran to his death to complete the primitive accumulation, and raised funds throughout the Netherlands to establish the Dutch East India Company, and established the earliest stock exchange to ensure the free circulation and purchase of shares in the hands of shareholders and gave the company the right to sign agreements to wage war. When all the European missions met the Emperor of China, only the Dutch mission accepted the kneeling salute, because they could not lose their great interests because of their dignity, and the best way to show that the great interests of the Netherlands were to make money.

Finally, look at the United Kingdom, after all the territories in the European mainland have been lost, it has become a complete island country, that is, there is no Portugal and Spain to open the golden finger, and there is no Dutch competition to play with life, the known world has been scraped up, the unknown world has been explored and nothing has been found, and a lot of money has been lost, and I want to get a piece of the pie but can't beat it, but Britain is the country that extends the understanding and implementation of the sea is the land, and the Queen of England (and the female) Elizabeth I created the golden finger, that is, the privateer license, Legal robbery is carried out indiscriminately against all ships except for their own country, and promotion and wealth are in the robbery, this is the national pirates, the most famous of which are Drake and Hawkins, a large number of pirates quickly completed the primitive accumulation for Britain, but if we are caught by other countries, we don't know each other, you can only be an unsung hero. The three Anglo-Dutch wars defeated the Netherlands and signed the Navigation Law, and in the future, all cargo ships destined for Britain (including the colonies) were either the country's own cargo ships or hired British cargo ships, so the coachmen disappeared, the war against Spain disappeared, and Portugal became the younger brother of Britain due to the suppression of Spain, and the empire on which the sun never set rose.

Compared with the Ming Dynasty, first of all, the unified country is the same, followed by the national will, this is not the will, the sea is an extension of the land, this Ming does not have, but Zhu Di and Zheng He have, plundering other countries and this is not, opening up new routes to make money, the Ming Dynasty is ashamed of profit, so Zhu Di and Zheng He secretly engaged in it, deterring overseas countries, this is there, poor and these four countries are very rich than the Ming Dynasty, say a few more words here, ignore a population problem when comparing the rich, the population of the Netherlands and Portugal is about one million, and the population of Britain and Spain is millions, Yongle is 60 million, so on the other hand, if one person can solve the problem with one or two silver, the other four countries can solve it by a few million, and the Ming Dynasty can't solve it at all, so leave this account to those who can settle the account.

After enumerating and comparing them in this way, it is concluded that a unified country (concentrating financial and material resources, manpower and rights) has the national will to grab wealth (the history books of the Ming Dynasty have made it very clear), and relies on the land (this is a logical relationship, there are no roots and branches and leaves) to extend to the ocean to expand the road to discover new wealth.

This should be the necessary and indispensable condition of the Great Voyage, from which we can analyze why Zhu Di, such a strong emperor, can not continue the Great Voyage, Zheng He's death is useless, because the Ming Dynasty lacks the will of the country and has no sense of sea power, so Huaxia missed the opportunity of the Great Voyage, all in all, the Great Voyage is a collective act, and you can't do it alone, even if you are Zhu Di.