Because he was blocked back by the emperor at the beginning, Qian Qianyi silently swallowed back the intention of asking to see Chongzhen this time, and he was obviously a little absent-minded in the subsequent conversation, and after hastily ending the report to the emperor, he retired and left uneasy. Mobile M.

Although Qian Qianyi's report was a little absent-minded, Zhu Youzhen had already heard the point of his concern, that is, the area affected by the drought in the north this year was no less than last year. Therefore, after Qian Qianyi went down, he asked Lu Qi on the side: "Has the order to increase this year's grain purchases to the Philippines, Vietnam and other places been issued?" ”

The eleventh year of Chongzhen is the third year of the implementation of the grain strategic security plan formulated by Chongzhen. According to this plan, the grain imported from overseas this year should be no less than 16 million stones, but due to the impact of the drought, the imperial court had to formulate an additional 4 million stone overseas grain purchase plan. 2,000,000 stones were distributed to Vietnam, 1,000,000 stones to Cambodia and Saigon, and 1,000,000 stones to Luzon.

Luzon is the largest island in the Philippine Islands and the one with the best natural conditions. Due to its tropical location, the average annual temperature exceeds 25 degrees Celsius, and there is no season that is not suitable for rice production, so rice can be grown all year round. The rice varieties and wild rice varieties on the island are as diverse as those in Vietnam and Cambodia, so it is also one of the bases used by the Daming Farmers Association to cultivate and select rice seeds.

Before the Spaniards arrived in the Philippine Islands, the population of Luzon had exceeded 700,000 or 800,000, and the coastal plains were basically developed. However, since the arrival of the Spaniards, the population of Luzon has shrunk to less than 300,000 due to the brutal rule of the Spaniards and the spread of viruses from Europe and the Americas.

Twenty years after the arrival of the Spaniards, the natives of Luzon gave up their developed coastal plains and retreated inland into the jungle. At that time, the only people who could trade with these inland natives were merchants from other countries. After the natives fled inland, the Spanish colonists fell into a situation of scarcity of materials, so they had to rely on the materials brought by these people to maintain the normal operation of the colony.

However, after the Spanish colonizers used religion to trick some natives into working for themselves, many Spaniards who came to the colony with the dream of making a fortune began to be dissatisfied with the monopoly of the Philippine retail business by the sales network established by the Chinese in the Philippine Islands.

These people relied on the trust of the natives to make a fortune from the Philippines, but never let the Spanish colonists share in it, so they complained to the governor and legislators of Manila about whose colony it was. For the Philippine colonists, the growing number of Chinese in Balian City was not only a great fortune, but also a threat to the colony.

According to the thinking of the Spanish colonizers, the Chinese whose immigrant population reached almost one-tenth of the total population of Luzon, and the next move should be to seek to seize the rule of Luzon. Therefore, in 1603, the Governor of the Philippines and the members of the Senate issued a plan for the massacre of the Chinese, in which they also incited the natives who had converted under their rule.

Three years later, with the restoration of relations between China and Manila, Chinese immigrants to Luzon flourished again. It's just that the immigration led by the Four Seas Trading Company this time is different from the spontaneous Chinese immigrants in the past. Rather than limiting itself to the handicraft and retail businesses that serve Manila, the company has set its sights on leased land for development.

After the end of the Vietnam War, a large number of Vietnamese were trafficked to the Philippine Islands, and a large number of indentured workers recruited by the Four Seas Trading Company from Japan, by the 11th year of Chongzhen, the total population of Luzon had grown rapidly to about 500,000. The natives are less than 350,000, nearly 30,000 Chinese, more than 24,000 Japanese, 80,000-90,000 Vietnamese, and less than 20,000 Spaniards, mixed-race children, and black slaves.

This drastic change in the social structure brought about fierce conflicts between foreign and local populations, and in addition to opening up the wasteland of Luzon, it was clear that the Four Seas Trading Company would not shy away from the land already inhabited by the natives. For them, this kind of land that has been developed obviously saves time and manpower for development.

In the past seven or eight years, the newly opened fields in Luzon Island have reached almost 3 million mu, and even after deducting some of the forcibly occupied native fields, the newly opened fields still account for nearly one-fifth of the original fields in Luzon Island. This was an astonishing asset for the new governor of Spain, Coquilla, and his retinue that he brought with him from New Spain. Calculated at 10 suo per mu, this batch of fields is also worth 30 million suo, not to mention that most of these fields are good paddy fields, and the market price per mu is about 15-20 suo.

Coquela, who had accused the former governor of Silva of betraying the interests of the kingdom, actively courted the citizens of the lower classes of the colony, who apparently did not benefit much from Silva's trade with the country, so he quickly showed his hostility towards his countrymen at his instigation, and immediately suppressed the councillors and the lords of the estates who advocated friendly relations with the country.

In Coquela's view, the Four Seas Trading Company was not representative of the country, and a rebellion by the natives was enough to remove Manila from the rebellion. Even if the emperor wanted to reprimand, he could use the rebellion of the natives as an excuse, and the fields and goods seized from the natives in Manila would naturally not be returned to the merchants after the rebellion was quelled. According to the experience of 1603, the emperor did not really attach much importance to these merchants who went to trade overseas, and he should have been able to cover up the incident by apologizing to the emperor.

As soon as Coqueira arrived in Manila, he imprisoned the former governor Silva, purged Silva's cronies and members of the former Manila Council, and strictly reviewed the trade quota of Manila's galleons, which caused him to have a great conflict with the high-level figures of the former Manila colony, and these people naturally did not tell him what the real background of the Four Seas Trading Company was.

Coquilla thought that he was only dealing with some foreign merchants, but in fact he was provoking the colonial trading company in which the Ming Emperor took a stake. Many Spanish merchants and officials who were close to the Four Seas Trading Company had anticipated Coquela's defeat, and in order to keep their fortunes, they even revealed all the information about Manila to the representatives of the Four Seas Trading Company in Luzon.

In May, the Philippines is in the midst of a sweltering rainy season, but Baguio, where Guo Qing, the representative of Sihai Trading Company in Luzon, is located, is still in cool weather below 20 degrees. This wasteland, discovered by Guo Qing, has become a city that has just begun to take shape in the eleventh year of Chongzhen. Because of Baguio's favorable geographical environment and climate, it has not only become a major station of the Four Seas Trading Company in Luzon, but also a summer resort for many wealthy Chinese and Spaniards.

Ahead of the second season rice harvest in the Philippines, Guo Qing received an order from Beijing to increase grain purchases. The advanced farming tools brought by the Chinese, coupled with the rice farming techniques brought by China, Japan and Vietnam, make the yield of rice fields in the Philippines not lower than that of rice in the Jiangnan region, with an annual yield of about 3-4 stone per mu of rice.

However, due to the plantation economy of the Spaniards, only about two-fifths of the fields in Luzon were grown with grain, and the remaining three-fifths were used to grow cash crops such as tobacco, abaca, cotton, sugar cane, etc. Before the company entered Luzon, the Philippines' grain production was largely underwhelmed. However, there is no shortage of food due to crops such as corn and sweet potatoes brought by the Spaniards from the Americas, tropical fruits such as coconuts and bananas and abundant fish in the Philippine Islands.

After the company entered Luzon, the grain planting area and production increased, so that the company began to ship nearly 1.8 million stone of grain from Luzon last year. This year's plan is to ship out 250 stone of grain, and now with this additional 1 million stone, it is also 3.5 million stone, which should be said that the problem is still not big.

However, after learning about the thoughts of Coquilla and some Spanish colonists in Manila, Guo Qing decided to increase the amount of grain requisitioned by another 500,000 stones, which was mainly aimed at those indigenous tribes who had taken refuge in Manila, in order to force these indigenous tribes to revolt and break Coquela's plan.

According to the plan of Coqueira and his subordinates, after the harvest season, the indigenous tribes of the island and a part of the Vietnamese slave laborers will launch a simultaneous rebellion in the Cagayan Valley, the Yong Plain and near Manila, and the Spanish colonists in Manila will attack the Chinese-inhabited city of Balian in the name of counterinsurgency and loot this thriving Chinese city.

May-October is the rainy season in the Philippines, which is extremely inconvenient for the use of firearms, so Coqueira intends to schedule the rebellion in September-October. Guo Qing, who learned about Coquilla's plan, obviously did not intend to give Manila enough time to prepare.

Therefore, it was intended to force the indigenous tribes near the Yang Plain to revolt first, and then give the Japanese an opportunity to launch a protective operation to protect the overseas Chinese, so as to force Manila to stop the massacre plan against the Chinese. At the same time, the company was able to mobilize troops from Taiwan to enter the city to protect the expatriate.

The Central Plain between Manila and Baguio is one of the most agriculturally valuable areas of land in Luzon, and this plain is much larger than the Inner Lake Plain, where Manila is located. However, the Spaniards were only concerned with finding gold and silver deposits and trade with the country, and the Spanish colonists were not well populated, so they had no incentive to develop this land full of swamps and forests after occupying the Neihu Plain, which had been developed by the natives.

Thanks to the efforts of the Turen tribe who fled from the Neihu Plain and the Four Seas Trading Company, the land finally began to show its potential as a land of fish and rice, and rice paddies began to appear on both sides of the Agno River.

However, because of the richness of this land, the various forces of Luzon began to compete. The native tribes, driven by the Spaniards from the coast into the jungle, had apparently been deluded by the Spanish missionaries, and counted their suffering to the mouths of the Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese who were vying for their land.

In the southern part of the Yang Plains, Poni Sau, a tribal leader whose territory lies between the Kayapo and Bangka hills, was angry at the company's tax collector's suggestion that the tax had doubled last year.

He rebuked the tax collector: "This is our land, our homeland, our people, what right do you have to collect taxes from us?" Go back and tell your company, the people of Pampanga have nothing to give to the company, except blood and fire..."

On June 19, the 11th year of Chongzhen, Bo Nixiu's expulsion of the tax officer of the Sihai Trading Company set off the beginning of the local rebellion in the Central Plains. These natives attacked not only the company's agricultural stronghold in the Yang Plain, but also the Spanish-owned estates, from which many Vietnamese slave laborers fled and joined the Pampanga rebels.

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