The maritime merchants of Fujian and Zhejiang smuggled large quantities of silk, tea, and porcelain from Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, out of Yuegang, an inconspicuous small place occupied by pirates in Fujian, to trade with the Dutch, Spaniards, and Portuguese. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

It is precisely because of the huge profits of the sea trade, so the scale of the moon port is also getting bigger and bigger, to the Longqing period, the imperial court planned to open the sea, simply take advantage of the situation, drive away the pirates here, set up Haicheng County here, open the city of the ship, and then carry out official allowed overseas trade.

The originally inconspicuous Moon Port soon became the largest foreign trade port along the coast of Daming.

The reason why Yuegang can have such a great development and change is also because the opening of the sea during the Longqing period is not a complete opening of the sea, and the entire coastline of Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong is thousands of miles long, and only one foreign trade port such as Yuegang is opened. In this way, can it not develop rapidly?

However, although the trade of Yuegang was prosperous, the tax silver that the Ming court could collect from it was only about 50,000 taels per year.

And the reason for this is that although the imperial court opened the moon port, the tariff rate was pitifully low.

So, are all the officials above the Ming court stupid?

They knew that the maritime trade at that time was a huge profit, so why didn't they raise the tariff rate?

This is related to the idea of opening the sea in the Ming Dynasty at that time.

The purpose of opening the sea in Longqing was not to collect customs duties and increase the financial revenue of the imperial court, but to dredge the channels of maritime trade, so that these maritime merchants would not take risks and become pirates and continue to cause trouble on the southeast coast.

So their idea was that it would be good for the maritime merchants to do business here in a good manner, and they didn't even think about grabbing customs duties and taxes from it.

At the same time, along the coast of Fujian, Zhejiang, and Guangdong, in addition to the moon port, there are no smuggling trade ports everywhere, and if you raise the export tariff of the moon port, many maritime merchants will become smuggling pirates again.

So who is cheaper in the prosperous sea trade of Yuegang?

One is the maritime merchants who have cheapened the coastal smuggling, and the other is the pirates who have cheapened the coastal areas of Fujian, Zhejiang, and Guangdong.

According to historical records, Zheng Zhilong, who controlled the Minhai Strait at the end of the Ming Dynasty and controlled the maritime trade of Yuegang, collected more than 10 million taels of silver and protection fees from the maritime merchants every year.

The reason why Zheng Zhilong was able to afford thousands of warships and tens of thousands of sailors relied on the silver collected from maritime trade.

This can be seen from the huge legacy he left to his eldest son, Zheng Chenggong.

In the Southern Ming Dynasty, especially after Zheng Zhilong's surrender to the Qing Dynasty, the reason why Zheng Chenggong was still able to operate such a huge fleet and army was because Zheng Zhilong dominated the Fujian Sea for more than ten years and accumulated huge wealth that rivaled the country.

Since the opening of the sea in Longqing, the pirates along the coast of Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces have occupied the islands in the open sea, controlling the shipping routes of the open sea.

Therefore, although the overseas trade of Yuegang was prosperous for a while, the Ming court did not taste too much of the sweetness of opening the sea trade.

It is precisely for this reason that in addition to the opening of the Moon Port, the opening of the sea in Longqing has ended here, and no other ports have been further opened.

Now it is very different, Chongzhen's second year of the New Year's Day of the opening of the sea, on the basis of the opening of Zhangzhou Moon Port, in one breath opened five ports suitable for sea trade, that is, Guangzhou in Guangdong, Quanzhou in Fujian, Ningbo in Zhejiang, Shanghai in Songjiang Prefecture in the south, and Dengzhou on the northern coast.

At this time, Shanghai was, of course, still a small county town under Songjiang Mansion in Nanzhili, and it did not have the slightest appearance of the demon capital of later generations.

However, these coastal towns, including Shanghai County, are all natural foreign trade ports, because of the previous maritime ban policy, except for the occasional official overseas trade, the non-governmental overseas trade is completely suppressed.

However, this kind of non-governmental commercial trade with the characteristics of capitalist society developed in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, in fact, it was completely irrepressible, just like spring is coming, and weeds are scrambling to sprout, and they are about to erupt.

Because of the influence of the so-called policy of opening the sea in Longwan, the commercial trade of the entire southeast coast was very popular at that time, the private business atmosphere was very strong, there were many businessmen of all kinds, and the status of businessmen was improved, and the whole society was a state of laughing at the poor and not smiling at prostitutes, and everyone was pursuing to make a fortune.

In this state, if the Ming court still did not open the ports, transferred the overseas trade in the coastal areas from underground to aboveground, and regulated them, then a large amount of tariff revenue would be lost in vain.

Therefore, opening coastal ports and regulating non-governmental maritime trade is a major policy that Emperor Chongzhen must adopt no matter what, and no one opposes it, and whoever opposes it has to get out of the position of courtier or magistrate.

However, despite this, under the insistence and persuasion of the cabinet ministers, for the sake of safety, the edict of opening the sea in the second year of Chongzhen's second year still only opened five treaty ports.

For the cabinet ministers, it is difficult to say whether the disadvantages outweigh the advantages or disadvantages of opening the sea to trade.

For Emperor Chongzhen, it is not clear how big the scale of overseas trade is for folk smuggling along the southeast coast.

At the same time, it is also more convenient to set up a foreign trade port in one direction, and after accumulating a set of mature experience in the future, another batch of ports can be opened.

In this way, the resistance can also be much smaller.

Now the cabinet ministers and the six ministers have a lot of contact with Emperor Chongzhen, and they already know the general idea of this emperor, and among all the courtiers, the four ministers who have the most say in this kind of affairs, as well as the Ministry of Rites and the Ministry of Households, have all expressed their support for the opening of the sea, so all the courtiers who can look at the direction of the wind and know the current affairs will not easily stand up against it.

However, above the Ming Dynasty, there has never been a shortage of such stunned young people who do not know the times.

This kind of person can basically be divided into two categories, one is the one who reads books and has a bad brain, naively thinking that he is asking for the life of the people, and after all, it is for the good of the emperor.

The other type has ulterior motives, and is the spokesperson of certain business groups, who are instructed to stand up against it.

The first group of people may still be saved, because they are more or less out of righteousness.

The second group of people is hopeless, because they are completely selfish.

Emperor Chongzhen finished reading the pile of notes handed in by the celebrant supervisor, although he made up his mind to deal with a group of people and pave the way for the implementation of the policy of opening up the sea, but he was still quite depressed in his heart.

These five ports, plus the moon port in Zhangzhou, Fujian, are a total of six.

Although the strength of opening the sea is not large, the resistance is not small.

As the time entered February, the yamen in the north and south began to work, and the edict of the imperial court to open the sea was soon delivered to the governors of various places, and I am afraid that a new wave of criticism will follow.

Thinking of this, Emperor Chongzhen threw down the music in his hand, stood up, and left the study in the Qianqing Palace.

In his opinion, since these imperial historians above the court have nothing to worry about, because they are not responsible for the specific implementation of the policy of opening the sea, no matter how much they oppose it, if the emperor is unmoved and ignores it, then their opposition will be useless at all.

The current Emperor Chongzhen wants to see what is the attitude of the most important governors along the coast of Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong for the policy of opening the sea, if some of them oppose the opening of the sea, then he must be removed as soon as possible, because the opening of the sea for trade and the training of the new army are the fundamental policies of the Chongzhen Emperor to save the fortunes of the Ming Dynasty.

It can even be said that opening up the sea to trade is a fundamental policy rather than organizing and training a new army.

The formation and training of the new army can be strong for a while, but the opening of the sea and trade can allow the Chinese civilization to go to the sea, contact the most advanced civilization of this era, and then gradually reborn, complete the transformation, and completely change the national fortunes of the Ming Dynasty.

Because only the opening of the sea and trade has become the consensus of the Ming and the opposition in the Ming Dynasty, then the formation and training of the new army's sailors will become an inevitable need, and then sending sailors to the sea to protect the shipping routes of maritime trade will become an irreversible trend, and then colonizing overseas will become a natural choice.

In this way, the Ming Dynasty will embark on the same path of overseas expansion and overseas colonization as Taixi Zhuyi.

This is the road that Emperor Chongzhen wants to lead the Ming Dynasty to revive eventually.