Since Chenghua, a phenomenon has appeared in Nanzhili, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Huguang, Henan, Guangdong, Fujian, and other places: The peasants in many areas have been reduced from the status of yeoman farmers or tenant farmers to a kind of tenant servants similar to serfs. The so-called 'tenant', also known as 'servant', is not only a master-tenant relationship with the landlord, but also a 'master-servant status'.

Although they can have wives and children, and a meager family property, their social status is like that of serfs. In the Ming Dynasty, slaves were forbidden by law, but many eunuchs and wealthy families mostly had male servants and maidservants. Most of this kind of domestic slaves are used for domestic servitude, and if they are sent to farms to farm, they adopt the ancient method of "exempting slaves as guests", and they are considered tenants by slaves, but they still maintain a master-slave relationship with their masters and become tenants.

famous ones such as Wang Xijue, Qian Haishan, and Xu Jie; Chu Taichu of Suizhou, Miao Sishun of Ningling, Fan Liangyan of Yucheng, Chu, Fan, Miao, Zeng of Henan, Mei, Liu, Tian, Li and other slaves and maids of the right surname of Qiangzong are all more than 1,000 or even thousands.

Because of the natural disasters since the end of Wanli**, the number of displaced people in the world has increased significantly, and Henan, located in the Central Plains, even some middle and upper-class peasants have taken the opportunity to occupy a lot of slaves.

As for the three major merchant power groups of the Ming Dynasty, such as the Hui merchants, the Jin merchants, and the maritime merchants of Fujian, they all relied on slaves to support their commerce. Among them, Huizhou merchants have the most abundant capital, and Huizhou is also the area with the most slaves and the harshest enslavement in China. Each family has a large number of slaves for "business".

This is also why, although industry and commerce in the Jiangnan region are developed, they have not been able to break through the last barrier and enter the stage of capitalist production. Because the industry and commerce in the south of the Yangtze River did not bring the economy of the Ming Dynasty into a new social form, but stabilized the social system of feudal serfs.

After Chongzhen ascended the throne, although a series of slave release decrees were issued, but in the northern region, most of the so-called eunuch remnants were northern gentry, in order to be able to show favor to the emperor, they all more or less expressed their support for the slave release order. In particular, the Hebei gentry represented by Feng Quan, Cui Chengxiu, and Huang Liji were extremely active in this regard.

In the past four years, Chongzhen has continuously suppressed the merchant groups, clans, nobles, and gentry in Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Henan and other places, so that many businessmen and landlords have begun to change to new industrial and commercial owners and new landlords. Of course, this transformation is also an extremely painful process for some stubborn and conservative gentry and landlords, who have to change from the unconventional emperor of the countryside to ordinary people who are swayed by the market and the law.

However, it is clear that Chongzhen did not intend to let these old-fashioned gentry and wealthy families think about it slowly. Just like when he uprooted two vassal kings in Shaanxi, he cleaned up a group of gentry and wealthy families who were attached to the vassal king's clan. After using the civil unrest to suppress a group of Henan gentry, he took advantage of the case of Tang Wang Shizi to clean up a group of wealthy families in Nanyang.

The most famous case implicated in the Tang Wang's case was the Cao family in Nanyang, whose family had thousands of servants and was under the name of the Tang king, so local officials did not dare to inquire about the Cao family's lawlessness.

For such a wealthy family, Chongzhen is reluctant to exile them to the border, because the relationship between them and the officials is too deep, and even if they go to the border, they may not be honest, but it is easy to reveal the truth and truth in the interior of the Ming Dynasty.

So as soon as the case of the prince of Tang was confirmed, more than 400 members of the Cao clan in Nanyang entered Hubei by land under the escort of Jinyiwei, and then boarded the boat in Hankou and went directly to Chongming Island. It was also on Chongming Island that the Cao clan was taken on a huge sea ship, and followed the fleet of five huge ships from Chongming Island to the vast sea in the northeast.

This fleet was formed by Manila and Ming merchants, and the Chinese-Mexican commercial voyage fleet. The five ships that make up the flotilla are all between 600-800 tons and are all new ships built within five years. Two of them, with a deadweight of about 800 tons, were the main force of the Sino-Mexican trade voyage, and the other three ships with a load of 6 to 700 tons were actually ships traveling between China and the North American colonies for the first time this year.

Since the first voyage across the Pacific Ocean organized by Zheng Zhihu in the first year of Chongzhen, this is the fourth voyage of this trading fleet across the Pacific Ocean.

After the first three test voyages, Xia and Autumn set off from China, arrived at the waters of 45°~42°N off the coast of Japan, traveled eastward along the "Kuroshio" in the North Pacific Ocean to the coast of North America, repaired in Los Angeles, the first colony of the Ming Dynasty, for a few days, and then went south to the coast of Mexico for trade, and sailed directly to Manila or Taiwan along the ocean current in the spring and summer of the following year, and then returned to the port of Shanghai. It has become a more mature route.

Through the rotation of ships, it is basically possible to make a round trip to and from the Pacific Ocean once a year. Each voyage takes about 6-9 months. Since Manila colonial officials had a significant interest in this route, almost all the secrets about this route were revealed to the Chinese.

This is why China has dared to increase the size of its fleet and has begun to test the confidence of institutional migration to North America. Of course, for the 987 migrants who were sent to North America, the voyage was certainly not a good experience.

Compared to the other half of the immigrants, who were made up of prisoners and outcasts, the Cao clan was treated better, but not much better. Compared with the fine clothes and food in my hometown, life on a sea ship is simply hell.

And the farther away from the mainland, the more panicked these Cao family members became, and they began to keep asking the captain Gu Changsha to return to the ship. On October 29, after Gu Changsha confirmed that the fleet had correctly turned into the Kuroshio area in the Pacific Ocean, he called dozens of Cao family principals on board to the deck.

Gu Changsha, who used to be a pirate on the Shanghai-Zhoushan route, had to give up his career as a pirate after the rise of the Shen family in Chongming, but he has always been very contemptuous of the inland gentry and wealthy families. In his eyes, in addition to borrowing the power of the government to scare people, these inland tyrants are themselves a bunch of waste.

Now that these wastes have been sent overseas by the emperor to reclaim wasteland, it is obviously intolerable to show off his power on his ship. It's just that the areas where the ships sailed before were all within the jurisdiction of the Ming law, so he still kept his patience.

Now that the fleet is heading for the Kuroshio route to North America, there is not even a single whaling ship in sight, so he naturally wants to settle accounts with these wastes and let them know who is the boss on this ship. Otherwise, in the next 2 or 3 months of the voyage, how could his ears be cleaned?

Gu Changsha, who was standing on the platform of the stern building, pressed the railing with both hands, looked at the Cao family below and said with a smile: "A few days ago, some of you came to complain to Lao Tzu every day, either because the cabin was too small, or because the food was terrible, and asked Lao Tzu to let out the captain's room. There are even some people who feel that Jinyiwei is no longer on the ship, so they feel that they are still the gentlemen on land, and they shout at Lao Tzu and let Lao Tzu turn around. Okay, today I have nothing to do, so I'll ask you, what do you want, why don't you say it together..."

"To whom do you shout Lao Tzu? A pirate from a ragtag family is also worthy of being called Lao Tzu in front of his grandfathers. Just like you, grandpa used to kill him in the street, and he didn't have to worry about burying it..."

"That's it, that's it, even if our old Cao family is in trouble, it's not something you can drink as a killer. My family's in-laws are all over Henan and Huguang, either a high-ranking family or a new branch jinshi, you are a white ding who drives a boat, and you dare to come out to play prestige, you really can't cure you..."

Gu Changsha originally just wanted to make these wastes suffer a little and let them stop a little. As a result, I didn't expect that these arrogant Cao family members were not only not afraid, but also insulted and threatened themselves in turn. The transoceanic route was the most dangerous sea voyage, and even if the Spaniards had obtained all kinds of information about the voyage across the Pacific, seven out of ten ships would be able to return, which was considered a very safe route.

In order for the crew to be able to complete a voyage across the ocean in peace, in addition to giving generous rewards, the captain's personal prestige is also extremely important. A captain who is seen as weak by the ocean-going crew can easily be abandoned by the crew when the voyage is not going well and then turn into a pirate ship.

Gu Changsha naturally couldn't allow these wastes to insult himself in front of the crew, and he had to show these pampered Cao family members what the rules of the sea were. Twelve Cao family members, who had no complaints, were sentenced to death by Gu Changsha for trying to incite the crew to rebel, and the prisoners were put in sacks and thrown into the sea with a nine-pound shell.

The other eight Cao family members, who immediately begged for mercy, were sentenced to 15 lashes in public. This kind of flogging, introduced from British ships, was punished with a nine-tailed whip submerged in seawater, and basically three strokes could blur the flesh and blood of an adult's back.

After carrying out such a strict punishment, Gu Changsha naturally would no longer give any preferential treatment to the Cao family, and all the men of the Cao family were driven into the bottom warehouse, and there was only two days of release time a day, and food and fresh water rations were strictly controlled. Although the woman was allowed to stay on the second deck, she also had to take on some laundry and cooking duties, and it was no longer like a hike as before.

Gu Changsha's cruelty and brutality finally made these Cao family members sober up, they were no longer the wealthy family with thousands of servants in Nanyang, but just some prisoners who were thrown overseas by the emperor. The in-laws of the high family, whom they are proud of, will not give them any help on this ship.

After punishing these Cao family members, Gu Changsha's subordinates immediately gathered around him, some people were complimenting him, some were worried about whether there would be any retaliation when they returned to the mainland afterwards, and more subordinates wanted to divide the Cao family's women.

Gu Changsha suddenly reprimanded his subordinates angrily: "I enforce the law against them, even the commander of the fleet who commands this fleet can't trouble me." As for whether his relatives would trouble me, if their relatives really had such great ability, they would have picked them up long ago before they got on the boat, and it was my turn to teach them a lesson.

But do you also want to be tied up in sacks and thrown off the boat? Do you really think that our ship can escape the capture of other ships? If you want to die, jump into the sea by yourself, don't let them bother Lao Tzu..."

Gu Changsha, who is now a confidant of the Shen family, knows very well in his heart that the death rate of immigrants in the North American colonies is extremely high, and since the emperor has abandoned them to Los Angeles, he can basically treat them as dead people. The emperor doesn't care about their lives anymore, what else is there to fear.

And the reason why the mortality rate in North America is so high, and the imperial court still has to emigrate there, is because the local resources are too rich. After more than three years of hard work and exploration, although the immigrants of Daming in Los Angeles are less than 1,000, the terrain of the west coast of North America has been painstakingly surveyed from the Baja California Peninsula named by the Spaniards to the ice floes in the north.

Before the Spaniards had time to colonize this area, it not only had a large number of fur animals and rich fishery resources, but also dense forests and fertile land. The quality of the fur produced on the west coast of North America is comparable to that of Siberia, especially the rich beaver resources in North America, making beaver skins and beaver incense a sought-after novelty in the Ming market, with a value comparable to gold.

For business groups such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Four Seas Trading Company, the most appropriate means of obtaining a stable source of North American fur is to move people to this region, and this is the biggest motivation to promote immigration to North America.

And when this Ming immigrant trade fleet headed for North America with great hopes, the situation in Japan was also extremely tense.