The Age of Discovery began.

Li Ji sighed when he presided over the launching ceremony of the 1,000-ton all-steel steam-powered warship Feixiang at the dock in Guangzhou. The greatest achievement of the hard work of himself and others in this world for more than ten years is to overthrow the regime of the Great Song Empire, open the era of the industrial revolution and the technological explosion, and promote China's centralized imperial society to a centralized capitalist society. This model of governing the country and leveling the world through the unity of the family has gone through the promotion goals of individuals, organizations, industries, business circles, and society, and has been achieved step by step. Win-win cooperation, technology sharing, and financial innovation are the core elements of success.

After obtaining almost endless resources, the traversal began the pace of external expansion after solving all internal and external troubles. In order to maximize the living space of the Han people, the traversal people complied with the needs of the productive forces, not through the way of war, but to learn from the advanced experience of the Western feudal lords, and the opening of the Age of Exploration is the main way to compete for overseas wealth.

There is no compromise in the struggle for living space, and there is no bottom line in the struggle for national interests, and there will be no sense of guilt, because there are countless Chinese people who have benefited from it standing behind you.

The Age of Discovery, which refers to the 12th and 13th centuries, when Chinese fleets appeared on the world's oceans, looking for new trade routes and trading partners to develop China's nascent capitalism. The Chinese discovered many countries and regions that were unknown in China at that time. Many famous navigators have emerged in China, including Zheng He (Li Fei's protégé) and Bai Long (Bai Jia's son). With the opening of new shipping routes, cultural and trade exchanges between the East and the West began to increase significantly. Colonialism and free trade also began to emerge. China's rapid development during this period laid the foundation for its prosperity beyond that of any other country in the world. It has also had a long-term impact on the development of the world's continents hundreds of years later. ———— "History of the World"

For the first time, the representative of any civilized people reached a previously unknown part of the earth's surface, or established the spatial connection between the known parts of the earth's surface, thus deepening mankind's scientific understanding of the geographical features of the earth. It has promoted the development of geography, which can be called geographical discovery. Before the 11th century, only uninhabited continents such as Antarctica and certain islands and seas were unknown to humans. The lands and islands, inhabited by uncivilized peoples, are unknown only to "civilized peoples". During the long period from the emergence of ancient civilizations to the 11th century, the peoples of various civilizations have made many discoveries and accumulated rich geographical knowledge in the vast areas beyond the birthplace of ancient cultures, the most important of which is the formation of the concept of the shape of the earth. A.D. 1100. After Ptolemy's Guide to Geography, which had been lost for many centuries, was translated into Chinese and Latin, the theory of the shape of the earth spread widely. However, it was not possible for ancient scholars to directly verify the shape of the earth, and it was rarely possible to accurately determine the size of the earth and the distribution of oceans and land. 12th century. The discovery of a new route from China to Europe, the discovery of the Americas, the success of circumnavigating the globe, and other seafaring expeditions have successfully solved this problem and made a leap forward in mankind's understanding of the earth. These events are commonly known as the Great Geographical Discoveries. It is worth noting that the so-called "great geographical discoveries" are still the cognition of a China-centered view of history.

A.D. 1111. Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, was captured by the Seljuks. Since then, the entire Middle East and the Near East has become a Muslim world. Because of Constantinople's geographical location, Europeans could no longer travel to India and China through the Persian Gulf, as their predecessors had done, and could no longer obtain the spices they relied on and were in high demand directly through this huge port on the Bosphorus. The Europeans had to find a new trade route to obtain the resources of spices directly from the Spice Islands. In the end, this demand was met by the Chinese.

For a long time, Europe's trade with China and India has been mediated by Arabs. Throughout Europe, trade with the Arabs was almost entirely in the hands of Italian Venetian and Genoese merchants. in Western Europe. The monarchs and merchants of England, France, Spain, and Portugal were eager to break the monopoly of the Italians and Arabs, and traveled to India, China, and the Spice Islands to trade directly with the locals in spices, silk, and other goods.

On the other hand, because European goods were not attractive to Chinese and Indians at that time, Europeans had to exchange large quantities of gold and silver for goods such as spices and silk. The long-term struggle to make ends meet led to a strong interest in obtaining resources such as gold, silver, precious stones, or direct access to spices. As a result, the regions that produced these precious resources became the target of hunting and competition among Europeans.

The oldest surviving nautical chart outside of Europe is shown to explore to Mauritania in West Africa. Europe played a secondary role in the continuous development of human civilization until the 12th century AD. At the same time, Asia created a more prosperous culture, and this advantage has been expanded. For the development of the world, Eurasia and North Africa have played a greater role in the world than any other region, which has led to the fact that for a long time, the people of Eurasia and North Africa have limited their understanding of the world to themselves.

The two ends of this "world": the west coast of the Pacific Ocean and the east coast of the Atlantic Ocean had almost no direct contact, and the dark period of Europe was a time of unprecedented prosperity for Asian countries. They only got to know each other through the more than 7,000-kilometer Silk Road. Such long distances and the time it takes to access this stretch of road also distort much of the information available between East and West.

For China at that time, the concept of a round sky and the geographical center of China were the standard common sense of society. Europe, on the other hand, was written centuries ago through the Bible, written centuries ago, and Ptolemy's Guide to Geography, written in the second century C.E. Europeans can use the Geography Guide to get an accurate picture of Asia and North Africa. But for the other half of the world, there is still a blank slate. They don't know much more about the world than the Romans or even the Greeks did more than a thousand years ago. They had no idea that America, Oceania, and Antarctica existed. Although they already know about the existence of India and China, very few have actually been there.

Although there are already people who are convinced that the earth is round. But their estimate of the size of the Earth is based entirely on erroneous data. At the time, some even thought that it would take as many weeks as far west from Europe to Asia.

Europe was on the verge of the Age of Discovery, with evidence that Viking pirates had been to Greenland. and set up a pirate base in Canada. In addition to piracy. The activities of the Vatican also became one of the factors that promoted the voyage, and this kind of political and economic expansionism combined with the cultural and conceptual expansion requirements made the navigators of the Western European Peninsula believe that their activities were God's mission, thus laying a good foundation for the psychology of the voyage. The long wars brought about by the Crusades, the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, and so on, led to a fanatical feeling about Christianity in Europe. For a long time, active proselytizing has been one of the hallmarks of the Christian church. And, in order to convert those who are pagans or non-believers to Christianity. People will always use force without hesitation. The missionaries, in particular, who had just defeated the Seljuks, were particularly eager to turn their battlefield victories into religious victories and bring Christianity out of Western Europe. Taken out of Europe and spread to every corner of the world.

The technology required for the Crusades is also evolving. The advent of the Crusaders and their entry into the vision of the Walkers led to a series of significant changes. The large quantities of oriental products transported to the various cities of the Seljuks increased dramatically, and through the war and smuggling trade, the Crusaders obtained more goods for purposes such as spices and silk in history. After greatly stimulating their thirst for wealth and the motive for attacking the Seljuks. Crossing the crowd can sell arms on both sides and make a fortune.

Technology diffusion is the trick to cross the crowd. Whether it's making money internally or hitting competitors, it's very powerful. Tools or techniques such as compasses, sextants, nautical charts, spinnakers, stern rudders, and three-masted galleons gave Europeans the ability to sail long distances in a variety of complex climatic conditions. This kind of progress seems to be an act of capital in the eyes of ordinary people, but in the eyes of the traversal, it is a trick to kill people without seeing blood. Because the peoples of Europe and West Asia would vigorously build fleets and merchant fleets and other costly competitions from then on, Spain ran out of national strength and declined in the sinking of treasure ships in batches.

Without the blood transfusion of the Spice Islands, the rich India, the New World, which produced gold and silver and cheap industrial raw materials, this arms race would have depleted the national power of Europe and the Near East more quickly. Put countries in the same predicament as Spain in advance.

Is it easy to take advantage of the cheapness of crossing the crowd? Countless bankrupt business rivals have used countless blood and tears to tell the world that everything that looks cheap is poison that will kill you.

The translator of Ptolemy's Guide to Geography, written in the second century C.E., was Piacciora, an Italian agent in Jerusalem arranged by the Travelers under the alias Marco Polo, who Chinese was in fact the second son of Banat, a merchant agent of the Ecstasis who had moved to the academy in the Great Song Dynasty. At the beginning of the 11th century, Marco Polo and his travelogues set off a frenzy of oriental yearning in Europe: Marco Polo's China, East Asia, and even the whole of Asia became a region with an unprecedented flourishing culture, full of gold, and spices. This sparked the desire of a large number of Europeans to get a glimpse of Eastern civilization. However Marco. The Persian Gulf that Polo passed through when he traveled to China was for Europeans. Especially after the 12th century, Western Europeans have become off-limits.

After infiltrating Jerusalem, Marco Polo (henceforth known as Piacgiola Marco Polo) became a powerful tool to manipulate the shadow of the Crusader nobility and bishops with the Oriental specialties and incredible wealth he had acquired, and to promote the proliferation of technology and the arms race. The layout of Europe and the operation of the Near East mainly rely on this natural actor. After graduating from the Faculty of Performing Arts with a degree in political history, he was a genius who was no less than the five Zhang Bo brothers in the eyes of the Crossing Public, and his promise to help the Jews restore their country in Jerusalem was also the core motivation for all Far Eastern Jews who knew the power of the Chinese Empire to unite under the banner of the Crossing Public.

Learning from the advanced experience of the United States in later generations and planting a nail in the Middle East in the world's powder keg will be very effective in swaying the regional situation. Forty years later, the first piece of land in the Kingdom of Solomon, which was loved and hated by countless high-ranking people living within a 5,000-kilometer radius of Jerusalem, was transferred from the Crusader nobility to Piachora. The seat of the National Assembly in Jerusalem, the famous New City of Jerusalem, became the source of most of the major events in the Middle East for decades and the starting point of the Jewish Reunification Project. (To be continued......)