Today's maritime merchants, especially those in Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Fuzhou, and Qiongzhou, which mainly run to the South Seas, are different from those of ten years ago. They are accustomed to living a life of trading according to the commercial order, and in the face of such a red fruit disrupting the market and bullying behavior of the imperial court, they no longer adopt a reluctant attitude, but actively voice their own voices, and also spread their voices to the imperial court through various channels. The core content is one: you can do business, but you have to abide by the rules, no matter who you are, you have to abide by the rules!

This change is a big pit that Hong Tao has worked hard for more than ten years and carefully dug for the Southern Song Dynasty court! Generally speaking, the slower the rate of digging a pit, the larger, deeper, and more deadly the pit. He only dug the Mongolian Empire for more than three years, and as a result, the Mongol Empire collapsed, and it took two or three years to slow down. The depth of this big pit, which has been dug for more than ten years, can be imagined.

But pits and pits are also different. Some pits have spikes underneath, no matter how big or small, if they fall down, they will hurt their muscles and bones, and this is the kind of pit that Hong Tao dug for the Mongols. Some pits are full of dung, and falling down will not hurt your life, but it is extremely disgusting, and you have to be laughed at by others after climbing up, and this is the kind of pit that Hong Tao dug for the Europeans. There is nothing under some pits, just slippery on all sides, and falling down is neither hurtful nor disgusting, but you can't climb out, or if you don't make some kind of compromise with the people who dig the pits, you will never be able to climb out, and the pit that Hong Tao dug for the Southern Song Dynasty court is like this.

On the question of how to influence the Southern Song Dynasty society to complete the transformation as soon as possible and make up for its own shortcomings, Hong Tao thought for a long time before he came to a conclusion: he could only adopt a bottom-up approach, imitating the bourgeois revolutions in Europe, and let the bourgeoisie of the Southern Song Dynasty stand up and demand their own rights from the feudal aristocracy and the imperial power.

This has the advantage of avoiding a large-scale civil war as much as possible. I don't have to fight against the Southern Song Dynasty. No matter how Zhao Fan and Zheng Qing and others play power tricks to make profits for their own families, in the final analysis, they are all Song people, but their vision and realm have not reached a higher level, and they are not people who must be completely eliminated.

If you forcibly meddle in the internal affairs of the Southern Song Dynasty, you will get only one result, war! As soon as the war starts. No matter what the reason, it is ordinary people who suffer in the end, and this answer has been proven countless times in history, without exception. Those Southern Song Dynasty people didn't understand who they were fighting for, they could only passively rush up, and then die in front of their own cannons and muskets, even if they won in the end, what could they bring them?

Advanced, wealthy? Such a big country, or a country that has been broken. Even if there is no external threat, how many years will it take to recover? How many people have to die of disease, starvation, and freezing in the process? I'm almost fifty years old, how many more years can I work for this country? Can you put it on a path that seems right before you close your eyes? It's all unknown. Is it just to prove such a large number of unknowns, that corpses are scattered all over the wilderness and wasteland?

Hong Tao will never choose this choice, he would rather do nothing than do this kind of thing that stains his own merit book with other people's blood, isn't it the same as Wen Hao and others. Hong Tao never considered himself a careerist, a politician, or a military strategist, and he had nothing to do with these families, nor did he want to get involved. If you have to let him be something. He would rather be a Hongtaostan than an emperor, it is a matter of personal character and preference.

In addition, Hong Tao must try his best to avoid the overthrow of the current regime by pure violence. He himself believes that for thousands of years, the proportion of people in China who have changed dynasties by purely violent means is too high, and every time the city changes the banner of the king, the corpses are killed all over the field. The idea of becoming a prince and a loser and a thief is not in harmony with logic, and it will do more harm than good to the forward development of the nation. When this kind of thinking is habitual and deeply implanted in the thinking of a nation, this matter is troublesome. The phrase "power comes from the barrel of a gun" will be over-interpreted.

Hong Tao has always fantasized about letting the internal contradictions of the country be in a state of gentlemen not moving their hands, don't be so ruthless to their own people, it's best to go to foreigners if you have energy, don't bend down when you see foreign adults, and raise your eyebrows when you see your own people; Don't treat foreigners as friends. Guard yourself against thieves. And he thinks that all this should start from the root and set a precedent for peaceful transformation, as for whether he can become an example and become the basis for future generations to imitate and improve, it is none of his business, he has always been in charge of killing and burying. Ideal, you always have to chase it, and it's another thing if you can't catch up.

Moreover, there is a theoretical basis for Hong Tao to do this, and the two philosophers of Marx and Engels also said that if you want to achieve communism, the highest social form of mankind, you must follow the process step by step. There are about five steps, the first step is the primitive communist society, the second step is the slave society, the third step is the feudal society, the fourth step is the capitalist society, and the fifth step is the communist society.

At present, Hong Tao believes that the Southern Song Dynasty was in the advanced stage of feudal society, and there were already signs of transformation to a capitalist society. That's why he tried his best to push it, so that it could complete this stage of transformation in the quickest and most trouble-free way, and become the world's first capitalist country. The Jinhe Empire is actually a capitalist country, but it is already a bit different due to Hong Tao's random patchwork. If you had to assign it a category, it would barely be state capitalism.

As for the socialist model, Hong Tao believes that it has not yet been reached, and that it is the highest social model of mankind and the initial stage of communist society, and that there must be sufficient material conditions and spiritual level before we can try it. For example, some of the countries of Northern Europe in later generations have reached the highest point of capitalist society, and they themselves have begun to slowly transition to the initial stage of communism without anyone to revolution. The reason is very simple, they are too rich and the quality of the people is high enough, and the government can no longer fool the people by saying anything, so they must start upgrading.

If you want to enter a capitalist society, you must have two basic conditions. The first is that this society already has the basis of a commodity society, and the second is that this society already has a new class, that is, the bourgeoisie. In fact, the word bourgeoisie is not a derogatory term, it is only because of a certain ten-year movement that people frown when they hear it.

The society of the Southern Song Dynasty already had the foundation of a commodity society, and its economic development was also very comprehensive. However, there was no real bourgeoisie in the society of the Southern Song Dynasty, and they did have reserves, such as handicraft owners, workshop owners, landlords, and big merchants. What Hong Tao has been doing for more than ten years is to train the first bourgeoisie for the Southern Song Dynasty from these reserves.

The reason why he chose maritime merchants instead of other merchant groups was also deliberately done by Hong Tao. Although maritime merchants were also merchants, they were different from other merchant groups in that they were more aggressive and resilient, and they dared to rebel against anyone, including governments and countries, as long as they were given the necessary conditions. To put it bluntly, this is a group of guys who are not very obedient to discipline, forcing them to dare to do anything. The so-called barefoot people are not afraid to wear shoes, these people have a second home or a third home overseas, and they can live anywhere as long as the boat is there.

In fact, Hong Tao didn't pinch his neck to instill anything in them, but just let them feel it in their daily life and business interactions, and there was another different way of life to live. By the way, getting used to their bloody nature gives them the confidence to say no to all injustices. It's not enough to dare to say it, you have to dare to do it after you finish speaking, even if you see blood, you will not back down, because they know that they will support them behind them, as long as they don't violate their own rules, they will not have no place to stand.

This is like a habitual child, who listens to his children from an early age and encourages them to challenge the rules of society. Now these Southern Song Dynasty maritime merchants are children who have been spoiled and raised by Hong Tao. They can't stand this injustice, and they won't go and suffer in silence like their ancestors, they are going to rebel. Even if they are facing the imperial power and the imperial court, they want to give it a try.

"Sell deck guns to the maritime merchants of the Straits Company, with a limit of five per ship!" At present, it is not clear how the Southern Song Dynasty court will deal with this matter, the transportation and information transmission in this era are too inconvenient, Guangzhou is nearly 2,000 miles away from Lin'an, and it will take more than half a month to travel back and forth. Hong Tao can't wait, and he doesn't want to wait any longer, if the Southern Song Dynasty court can easily suppress this maritime strike, and then want these people to stand up and defend their own rights, they will have to wait for the next life.

Wen Nan was originally in Guangzhou, and after hearing the maritime strike, he rushed back as soon as possible. In his opinion, these maritime merchants have overreacted a bit, and at the moment when the Jinhe Empire and the Southern Song Dynasty are discussing how to train the Southern Song Dynasty musketeers, the maritime merchants will inevitably make the Southern Song Dynasty court suspect the Jinhe Empire. It's true that the Straits Company is a business group composed of maritime merchants themselves, but others are not stupid, as long as they are merchants in port cities, how many people don't know who is standing behind this guild? The imperial court will not be confused to this extent.

"Your Majesty is also involved in this matter? Could it be that they ...... "But after listening to Hong Tao's order, Wen Nan instantly figured out that it was really Hong Tao who was playing tricks behind this matter! But he couldn't understand why Hong Tao, who had always adopted a soft policy towards the Southern Song Dynasty, suddenly made a 180-degree turn and changed to a black hand secretly calculating the Southern Song Dynasty.

(To be continued.) )