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Chapter Seventy-Seven: The Temptation of the "Invincible Armada".

Strictly speaking, whether it was the original Carthaginians, Portugal, Spain and other countries in the Age of Discovery, or the United States in World War II, the fundamental thing that their fleets could show was to reflect the importance of sea power. Mobile phone access m.

Zhang Jiashi knows very well that if a coastal country does not have sufficient sea power maintenance capacity, then it will undoubtedly be a big blow to this country. For example, if the coastal situation in the Ming and Qing dynasties, if the Ming Dynasty encountered a strong Ming Imperial fleet like Zheng He's voyage to the West, then it is unlikely that these Japanese would want to retreat.

As for the Qing Dynasty, if the Qing Empire had a powerful sailor that could rival the expeditionary fleets of Britain and France, then the Opium War would certainly not have ended in a way that would have made the Chinese extremely embarrassed.

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Zhang Jiashi knew very well that the current naval division of the Qin Empire could be called the strongest in East Asia to a large extent.

However, the fleet of the Qin Empire, which lacked sufficient long-distance sailing capabilities, could not assume the existence of a colonial system based on it.

Zhang Jiashi knew that he wanted to build a system of drumming colonies, using external forces to strengthen the Qin Empire, increase the recovery speed of the Qin Empire, and even effectively improve the national strength of the Qin Empire, at the very least, that is, the Qin Empire must ensure that it has the ability to maintain the stability of the shipping lanes between the southeast coastal region of the Qin Empire and the Philippines in later generations.

The Philippines is not too far from the current Minzhong County or Nanhai County, but Zhang Jiashi is well aware of one thing, that is, in terms of the main ship types of the Imperial fleet, this part of the voyage is actually very challenging.

Moreover, given the state of the South China Sea, Zhang Jiashi did not believe that the current fleet, which could maintain a large degree of navigation from Liaodong to the southern part of Kyushu Island and maintain the route between Qinkai County and Jeju Island in Shang County, would be able to accomplish this task.

To make matters more challenging, there are generally more tropical storms in the South China Sea than in the Sea of Japan......

Well, that is to say, it is difficult for Zhang Jiashi to come up with a set of effective and relatively stable navigation dates at this time.

And this is something that is impossible even in the afterlife.

Therefore, Zhang Jiashi gave up the plan of long-term navigation between the two places, and chose to adopt a large number of navigation methods to strengthen the development and even military preparations of the corresponding area during the period when the sea conditions were relatively stable.

And this category can be regarded as a mainstream mode of shipping between the colonies and the mainland in the middle of the Great Discovery Period.

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Portugal and Spain actively explored new shipping routes, and also began colonial plundering of Asia, Africa, and the Americas before other countries. And this also opened up the colonial period of the Age of Discovery.

The two countries declared their territory wherever they went, and naturally clashed. Through the mediation of Pope Alexander VI, the two countries signed the Treaty of Tordesiras in June 1494: about 370 li west of the Cape Verde Islands, a dividing line was drawn from the North Pole to the South Pole, and the non-Christian lands "discovered" to the east of the line were owned by Portugal and those to the west of the line by Spain. However, the earth is round, and when Magellan sailed west to the Moluccas, the two sides disputed the ownership of the island.

In 1529, the two countries signed a new treaty at Saragosa, which defined the Spanish colonization at 17 degrees east of the Moluccas. Under the two treaties, Spain had almost the entire Americas, and Portugal had a vast sphere of influence in Asia and Africa. This was the first time in the world that a colony had been partitioned.

The Portuguese had long heard that Africa was rich in gold, but did not know exactly where. As soon as they set foot on African soil, they were obsessed with scavenging for gold. Around 1434, an expedition came to the vicinity of Cape Bojador on the coast of present-day Western Sahara, believing that it was the legendary "Golden River" rich in gold, so it was named "Río de Oro", and since then there has been an endless stream of gold diggers.

Later, the Portuguese sailed to the coast of Ghana and found that the area between Cape Sanjian and Cape Hailan was rich in gold sand, so they named it Mina, later called "Gold Coast". They found that there were places where ivory was grown, and it was called the Ivory Coast. From 1480 to 1530, the Portuguese plundered 100,000 pounds worth of gold in the Gulf of Guinea, accounting for 10% of the world's total gold at that time.

As early as the 40s of the 15th century, the Portuguese colonists operated the trade of black slaves for profit.

In 1444, for example, they transported 235 blacks from West Africa for public auction on the European market. Subsequently, about 1,000 people were transported to Europe each year to work as slaves, miners, or to do hard agricultural labor.

In 1502, 10 years after Columbus arrived in the Americas, the first Portuguese ship to transport slaves arrived in Santo Domingo in the Caribbean and sold blacks to sugar plantation owners as slaves for a huge profit.

In 1510, Spain openly sold slave licenses, which allowed those who held them to trade slaves to the Spanish colonies in the Americas, and Portuguese slave traders bought them in large quantities and monopolized the slave trade in the Americas. They openly rounded up blacks along the coasts of West Africa, especially in the densely populated Senegal, Gambia River valleys, and the Gulf of Guinea, or provoked tribal conflicts to buy prisoners of war, and even used cheap goods to induce local chiefs to betray their subjects, and then put these innocent blacks in wooden shackles, shackles, chained together, and escorted to slave trading strongholds for shipment to the Americas.

In the area of the Gold Coast, there are 30 or 40 strongholds of this size, and some ruins still exist today. Benin was a famous slave trading center and was called the "Slave Coast" by slave traders. Later, the slave trade spread to the islands of Mozambique, Tanzania, and Madagascar on the east coast of Africa.

After da Gama opened a new route to India, Portugal's invasion extended to Asia. At the beginning of the 16th century, Portugal was a small country of more than a million people, unable to occupy many large countries with a long culture and vast land, so it mainly plundered by establishing military posts, monopolizing trade routes, and engaging in fraudulent trade. The Portuguese colonists soon occupied Sokorat and Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, where they controlled the Red Sea routes, defeated the combined Indian, Turkish, and Arab fleets in Diu, and in 1510 captured Goa, India, as the capital of the Eastern colonies, with a governor-general.

They continued their invasion to the east, occupying Malacca, Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and the Moluccas, known as the "Spice Country".

The mid-16th century was the height of the Portuguese colonial empire, which had military posts and trading posts in West Africa, East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, India, the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia, and monopolized the main trade routes between Europe, Asia and Africa.

The Portuguese regarded the Indian Ocean as their own inland sea, openly intercepting, pursuing and robbing ships of other countries, killing people and overstepping goods, and even sinking women and children into the sea. They taxed the people of the occupied territories, extorted spices, or used cheap small goods such as mirrors, pins, and glass balls to defraud valuables such as pearls, precious stones, and ivory, and shipped them back to Lisbon to sell at high prices for a staggering profit. For example, in India a quintal of pepper is less than 3 ducats, and shipping to Lisbon can sell for 40 ducats.

In 1517, the Portuguese began trading with China. In 1553, under the pretext of going ashore to dry goods, he settled in Macao. From 1557, he set up an official government, repaired forts, and stole Macao as a colonial stronghold. In 1543, Portuguese colonists arrived in Japan and soon established a trading post in Kyushu.

At the same time as Columbus opened a new route to the Americas, the Spanish began to conquer and plunder the West Indies. At the end of 1492, Columbus established his first colonial stronghold in northern Haiti. In 1496, Columbus's brother built the city of Santo Domingo on the southern shore of Haiti as the capital of the West Indies. Based in Haiti, the Spanish colonizers conquered Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the entire West Indies, with an Indian Office in Seville.

They "committed atrocities and wanton slaughter" against the Indians "like ferocious wolves that break into the tame lambs." By the forties of the sixteenth century, only 500 of the more than 60,000 Indians on the island of Haiti remained, while hundreds of thousands of Indians in places such as Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Cuba had been exterminated.

From 1519 to 1521, Spanish colonists conquered the Indians of Mexico.

Mexico is the cradle of Indian culture, where the Mayans and Aztecs created splendid cultures. The Mayans were the only written Indians and were called the "Greeks of the New World." "As early as the 1,000 years ago, they had made a significant contribution to enriching human life by cultivating corn, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, peppers, cocoa, cotton, and tobacco.

They created the solar calendar, which was divided into 18 months in a year, 20 days in each month, and the last 5 days were taboo days, with a leap plus 1 day in 4 years, for a total length of 365.2420 days, which is close to the prediction of modern science. The Aztecs had established a slave state, centered in Mexico City, with 80,000 inhabitants, one of the most populous cities in the world at the time.

In April 1519, the Spanish nobleman Hanan Cortez, led about 600 infantry and 200 Indians, carrying 10 cannons, 16 horses, and 11 ships, landed in Veracruz on the east coast of Mexico and launched an attack on the Aztec country.

King Montezuma II sent a large amount of gold, silver and jewels to Cortez, asking him to withdraw his troops. Cortez, on the other hand, went so far as to sow discord that he entered Mexico City in November by forming an alliance with many of the tribes dissatisfied with Montezuma. Montezuma not only did not resist, but personally presided over a grand welcome and welcomed Cortis into the palace.

Cortez plotted to arrest Montezuma and rule in his name, extorting gold, silver, and jewelry.

In June 1520, when the Indians revolted, Cortez's gang fled in the night rain, killing and drowning in the lake, and the looted treasure fell to the bottom of the lake, which became known as the "Night of Sorrows." In August 1521, Cortez again led his troops into Mexico City, turning Mexico into a Spanish colony, calling it "New Spain." In 1523-1524, the Spaniards invaded Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador.

From 1531 to 1533, Spanish colonists conquered Peru. Peru was another center of civilization for the Indians, where the Incas, who called themselves descendants of the sun, built a vast empire. The Incas were good at architecture and were known as the construction engineers of the Indians. The capital, Cusco, is home to the resplendent Temple of the Sun and the lifelike "Golden Garden". The highway they built through the north and south is considered one of the greatest projects of mankind.

In January 1531, Francisco Pizarro (c. 1475-1541) led 180 soldiers, carrying two cannons, 50 horses, and three ships, left Panama and landed on the northwest coast of Peru. In November 1532, Pizarro took advantage of the Inca throne dispute to occupy the northern town of Cajamarca, and set up an ambush to surprise him, capturing King Atahualba alive and killing more than 2,000 Incas. Pizarro extorted gold and a large amount of silver from the king to fill his cell, and treacherously killed him. On November 15, 1533, Pizarro led his troops into the Inca capital of Cusco and turned Peru into a colony.

The Spanish colonizers then conquered Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile and other South American countries. By the middle of the 16th century, Spain had invaded Central and South America, with the exception of Brazil, and established a vast colonial empire.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Spain established the Council of Indian Affairs, which was directly responsible to the king, and was in charge of administrative, military, financial, legislative, and religious affairs in the American colonies. A trade agency was also set up to deal with trade between Spain and the Americas. In the Americas, four viceroyalties of New Spain, New Grana, Peru and La Plata were established and governed by governors.

Spain introduced a "guardianship system" in the Americas, which consisted of the distribution of large amounts of land and Indians to Spanish nobles, favored vassals, adventurers, and the hereditary possession of the Catholic Church, who had the right to compel the Indians to engage in construction, the exploitation of mineral deposits, the cultivation of land, the payment of taxes and all kinds of labor, and the right to convert the Indians to Christians.

In this case, the Indians were nominally free men, but in fact slaves.

"Guardianship" was first introduced in Santo Domingo and later spread throughout Spanish America. With the extinction of the Indians, "guardianship" was replaced by black slavery. The Spanish colonizers, in collaboration with the Portuguese, transported large numbers of black Africans to the Americas, forcing them to work in the mines and plantations with extreme hardship.

It is said that the average working life of young adults on a plantation is only 7 years. The labor in the mine is hard and the working conditions are poor, and when the miners are often gone, they often have no return, and their relatives often bury them in advance.

The number of blacks who arrived in the Americas in the 16th century was 900,000, in the 17th century it was 2.75 million, and in the 18th century it peaked at 7 million. By the 70s of the 19th century, a total of 15 million blacks were shipped to the Americas. For every black person trafficked to the Americas, five people die on the African continent and on the way. As a result, Africa loses between 60 million and 100 million people.

The Spanish colonists amassed a great deal of wealth on the white bones of Indians and blacks. From 1521 to 1544, they transported an average of 2,900 kilograms of gold and 30,700 kilograms of silver from the Americas each year. By 1545-1560, gold had increased to 5,500 kilograms and silver to 246,000 kilograms.

At the end of the 16th century, Spain mined 83% of the world's precious metals in the Americas. Marx hit the nail on the head: "The discovery of gold and silver in the Americas, the extermination, enslavement and burial of the indigenous populations in the mines, the beginning of the conquest and plunder of the East Indies, and the commercial hunting of negroes in Africa: all these marked the dawn of an era of capitalist production." ”

The opening of new shipping routes and the ensuing colonial plundering had a profound impact on the history of countries around the world. Many countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas have since gradually become colonies or semi-colonies, and have become the objects of plunder by Western colonizers. Portugal and Spain were the general vanguard of colonial plunder, while the Netherlands, Britain, and France used their powerful military and economic power to squeeze out Spain and Portugal, and continued to carry out brutal colonial plundering in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, bringing great disasters to the people of these regions.

However, there is another side to the story. After the opening of the new shipping routes, the world will be integrated, which will be conducive to economic and cultural exchanges, and will promote the formation of unique cultural circles in some regions, such as the Americas, on the basis of absorbing foreign cultures, and promote the convergence of world civilizations.

The opening of new shipping routes and colonial plunder also had a major impact on Western Europe, causing commercial and price revolutions, and in the final analysis, contributing to the collapse of feudalism and the rise of capitalism.

The so-called commercial revolution refers to the expansion of commerce, the increase in the variety of goods, the change of business methods, and the transfer of commercial centers on trade routes, which began to form a world market. Commerce between Europe and Asia and Africa expanded, and commercial ties with the Americas began.

A large number of goods from Asia and Africa began to appear in large quantities on the European market. The trade routes and commercial centers of Europe gradually shifted to the Atlantic coast, and the commercial cities of Italy tended to decline, while Lisbon, Antwerp, and London became increasingly prosperous. New financial institutions such as joint-stock companies and exchanges have emerged. A large amount of cheap precious metals plundered and mined from the colonies flowed into Europe in a steady stream, causing prices to skyrocket, known as the price revolution.

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All of this is the key to maintaining the connection between the homeland and the colonies of a strong fleet.

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