Last time, I talked about the Ming Dynasty's decision to launch a war of aggression against Japan at this time, and the main purpose was to plunder its massive amount of silver, because the Ming Dynasty was too short of money!

Since the fifteenth century, the old European capitalist countries in the West have been committed to "opening up new routes", and one of the important reasons why Europeans urgently need to open up new routes is to trade with China, because Europeans are very fond of Chinese silk, tea and porcelain, and at the same time have a great demand for spices and lacquerware from other Asian countries, such as spices from South Asian countries, Persian gemstones, and Japanese lacquerware.

As a result, Spain and Portugal were the pioneers of overseas expansion among European countries, especially Portugal, which established a powerful navy at the beginning of national unification and national independence after breaking away from Spanish rule, thus beginning the road of overseas expansion, and was the first to come to East Asia.

As early as 1415, Prince Henry of Portugal led the Portuguese navy to capture the port of Ceuta in Morocco and took the first step in Portugal's overseas expansion. By the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese had bypassed the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa and extended their tentacles to Asia.

By the beginning of the 16th century, the Portuguese trading empire had expanded from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, and followed the route of Zheng He's voyage to the Western Ocean to the Ming Dynasty in China. Since then, Portugal has monopolized trade in Asia based in Goa, India, Malacca, and Macao, China.

Among them, Chinese goods such as silk, tea, porcelain, medicinal herbs, and spices from the Malacca region were shipped to Europe through the Portuguese, and large quantities of silver also flowed into China through the Portuguese merchant ships. In this way, the misfortune has alleviated the "silver shortage" in the Chinese market.

The Spaniards followed the Portuguese and arrived on the island of the Philippines in 1521. At that time, various forces in the Philippine archipelago had relatively close trade relations with China. As a result, the Spaniards saw an opportunity to trade with China and began to compete with the Portuguese.

In 1565, after the Spaniards opened a commercial route between the Philippines and Mexico, they transported silver from the Americas to the Philippines, and then traded with China through the Philippines, exchanging a large amount of American silver for the Chinese goods they needed, so as to break the monopoly of the Portuguese.

In 1574, the transpacific "Manila-Acapulco" route was officially put into operation, and its operating history was as long as 241 years, until Mexico became independent! For more than two hundred years, the route operated 20 to 60 ships per year, providing China with 40,000 pesos in tariffs and more than 1.6 million pesos in trade, which allowed huge amounts of American silver to flow into China.

In addition to Spain and Portugal, in East Asia, Korea and Japan were also important sources of silver imports from China. North Korea itself has abundant silver reserves. Due to the abundance of silver, the gold and silver ratio in North Korea once hovered around 1:11, while the gold and silver ratio in the Ming Dynasty was around 1:6.

There is a large gap between the gold and silver prices of the two countries, with Korean silver being cheap and Ming silver being expensive. Seeing a business opportunity, North Korean merchants came to China to trade, exchanging their cheap silver for Chinese goods, and then returning home to sell them for profit. As a result, silver from Korea was imported into the Ming Dynasty in large quantities through cross-border trade.

Japan is also a silver-rich country, and its island has many silver mines such as Iwami, Akita, and Sado, which are not only rich in reserves, but also of excellent quality, making Japan once known as "Silver Island". In the 17th century, Japan introduced the advanced smelting technology of "ash blowing", which greatly improved the efficiency of silver mining in Japan and led to a rapid increase in Japanese silver production. As a result, Japan's silver production once reached a quarter of the world's total!

However, because of the perennial attacks on the coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty by the "Japanese Invaders" and the fact that Japan had participated in the "Hu Weiyong Case", the Ming Dynasty had an inscription stipulating that it was not allowed to trade with Japan after the "Longqing Switch". This allows Japan to sit on Ginjima, but the money cannot be spent. At this time, the Portuguese saw a business opportunity.

The Portuguese acted as an intermediary between China and Japan, as they shipped their purchases of Chinese goods to Japan for sale, and then shipped silver from Japan to China for trading, in order to earn the difference in price. Thus, from the 16th to the 17th centuries, the Portuguese shipped silver worth at least one million gold coins from Japan to China. Of course, the Ming Dynasty was happy to see this, because there was a large amount of silver to be taxed.

However, the Dutch took the initiative to trade with Japan, after all, Japanese folding fans, lacquerware, and tea were still very popular in Europe, because since China invented porcelain, the production of lacquerware has decreased.

Through the import of silver from the Americas, Europe, and East Asia, more and more silver was circulated in the Ming Dynasty, which brought a new idea for the Ming Dynasty to completely solve the problem of the "money standard system", and gave birth to the "silver standard" monetary system, that is, the formulation and implementation of the "one whip law".

But what the Ming emperors did not expect was that the problems brought about by this new monetary system were also very serious, because China was first and foremost a "poor silver country", and silver was not a domestic "sovereign currency" like "copper coins", but a "foreign product", and its issuance power was not in the Ming government, but foreign trade.

Therefore, once the legal tender of the Chinese dynasty was "silverized", when the country was "closed to the country" or the political situation was turbulent, silver was likely to change from a "life-saving pill" to a "life-saving talisman", because the imperial court had too little silver in its hands, and could only obtain "money" through exacting taxes and selling official titles. This will not only cause the finances of the imperial court to collapse quickly, but also cause social morality to become more and more corrupt, and let the selfishness and ugliness of human nature be exposed!

First of all, silver became the mainstream currency of the society at that time, which had a huge impact on the monetary policy of the Ming Dynasty, because the characteristic of the previous "money standard" was that it was monopolized by the state and was a tool used by the state for economic exploitation. But after the silverization of money, the imperial court had no right to mint money.

The so-called "money, the ear of the exercise of power by the Son of Heaven, the power of the fruit of the above, although the sand and gravel can make the interest in the pearl and jade, the mulberry can be shouldered in the brocade, and the piece of paper is only a word flying in the world without condensation." However, after the Ming Dynasty's currency was "silverized", this situation was fundamentally changed, because the Ming government was unable to control the production of silver and could only rely on foreign trade. However, the foreign trade of the Ming Dynasty was in the hands of wealthy private merchants, not the Ming court.

This is like the countries of the world in later generations, although they also gained "benefits" in "economic globalization", but due to the "globalization" of the currencies of the "superpowers" and the digitization of GDP or GNP in the industries of various countries due to "international standards", the local currencies of various countries were strongly squeezed out by international financial capital or even bought by the bottom.

As a result, the economic development achievements of all countries in the world have become the wedding clothes for the "superpowers", and the "financial capital" of the people has "woolen" and "leeks" through "big water release" and repeated interest rate hikes to return funds, even if the per capita GDP of all countries can achieve the first place in the world, but ordinary people should be poor and still be poor!

Straight to the point. Since "copper coins" and "treasure money" are both top-down currency, while the monetization process of "silver" is bottom-up and promoted by the people, the monopoly of autocratic power over currency is lost. This caused the financial revenue of the Ming Dynasty to be kidnapped by "silver" and could only rely on foreign trade. The impact of this is that the state is unable to manipulate the comparison and abandonment of the currency, and its value changes are entirely dependent on the fluctuation range of the market economy.

This is a good thing for only the economy (market economy), because it is greatly conducive to the development of capitalism, especially "capitalism" in the "commercial" stage, and can even cross the "industrial" stage and directly evolve into "financial capitalism", which is called "usury imperialism" in the later world.

Therefore, from the middle and early 15th century, after the Ming Dynasty lifted the "silver ban", because the Ming Dynasty, as the world's largest trade surplus country at that time, had a continuous and stable import of silver, so in the following hundred years, the purchasing power of silver was stable and maintained at a high level.

Due to the import of silver, the "hyperinflation" originally caused by the "treasure banknotes" was alleviated, and then the commodity economy of the Ming Dynasty achieved great rapid development, and capitalism sprouted everywhere, and even "usury financial capitalism" appeared all over the country, such as money banks and pawnshops.

The economic prosperity of the Ming Dynasty was mainly concentrated in the southeast coast and the southern region, because these regions exchanged bulk commodities through the production of tea, silk, porcelain, medicinal materials, etc., and it was the large-scale commercial production of the southeast coastal areas that prompted the Ming Dynasty currency to be rapidly "silverized".

After that, as the Ming Dynasty became more dependent on the import of trade silver, the Ming government's dependence on the economy of the southeast coastal areas was also strengthened, resulting in great progress in the production of goods in the southeast coastal areas, and the emergence of a regionalized, specialized, and market-oriented economic model.

The southeast coastal area was originally the most important grain production area in ancient China, and the Ming Dynasty also highly relied on the grain of the southeast coast in the early days to supply the needs of the imperial court and the army in the north. However, at this time, with the development of commercial production in the southeast coastal areas, the land in the southeast coastal areas is covered with mulberry fields and hemp fields, and cash crops are widely cultivated, and the grain produced by them can no longer even meet their own needs.

As a result of the commodity trade, the wealthy in the southeast generally had a large amount of silver, and they could rely on the grain they bought from Hubei, Henan, Anhui, Shandong and other places to meet their daily needs. As a result, grain production in the Central Plains has also rapidly moved towards "commercialization".

When the grain production in the Central Plains was also in short supply, the people of the Central Plains had no choice but to go to Shaanxi to buy grain with silver, but the grain supply in Shaanxi was insufficient, because there was no place to buy grain, so they could only expand the scale of production, so the common people began to open up the land to the Loess Plateau and produce all kinds of grain to meet their needs.

Unfortunately, in the early 17th century, the earth entered a "Xiaoice Age" (Xiaoice Age), because the climate became dry and cold, resulting in the Ming Dynasty's agriculture suffered a blow, not only a large-scale reduction in grain production and harvest, but even cannibalism, so that the Ming Dynasty fell into crisis.

At the same time, silver production in the Americas and Japan plummeted, preventing the Ming Dynasty from trading overseas to obtain enough silver to sustain its economy, especially its finances. As a result, the Ming Dynasty fell into the predicament of a shortage of silver and became a centralized state that was beaten by a "lack of money".

The shortage of silver and the reduction of grain production led to a rapid rise in food prices, and the Ming Dynasty fell into a deep economic crisis, and finally collapsed completely.

On the other hand, due to the development of "servitude and silver", the people needed to use silver to pay taxes, but the people did not have silver in their hands, so they could only go to the market to exchange it. As a result, the vast number of unscrupulous merchants took this opportunity to profit from it and exploited the people by buying grain cheaply, but the imperial court could do nothing about it.

Because the time when the government collected taxes and silver was not synchronized with the time when the crops were ripe, if they were earlier than the agricultural time, the peasants had to borrow money to pay taxes, so they were exploited by "usury capitalism". As a result, even in a good year, the living conditions of the farmers are not optimistic, and they are always "cut leeks"!

Soaring prices and economic exploitation intensified the social contradictions in the Ming Dynasty, causing the Ming Dynasty to encounter a political crisis again. This internal crisis was deep, because peasant uprisings came and went; The external crisis is also not optimistic, because the northern Mongolia and the northeastern Jurchens are eyeing each other, repeatedly entering the Ming Dynasty, coupled with the fact that the Japanese Japanese have always traveled back and forth along the coast of China to rob, kill and extort everywhere, so that the Ming Dynasty in the internal and external difficulties step by step towards the final collapse.

It can be seen that the "silverization of currency" or "monetization of silver" was a key event in the history of the Ming Dynasty, which brought "good" while bringing "benefits" to the "Age of Discovery", but also promoted the occurrence of this irreversible event. As the saying goes, "blessings and misfortunes depend on them, and misfortunes and blessings lurk in them", which can be compared to the "economic globalization" of later generations!

The impact of "silver monetization" on China's history is also huge, as it is an important point of change in China's tax system for thousands of years, and it is also a catalyst for a new historical stage of China's commodity economy. However, the "monetization of silver" also brought about a major crisis, making the Ming Dynasty's silver overly dependent on the world market, which posed a fatal threat to the financial security of the Ming Dynasty. This is like the function of huge "foreign exchange reserves" brought about by "economic globalization" in later generations.

Huge "foreign exchange reserves" can stabilize a country's balance of payments, but it is also easy for "international financial capital groups" to achieve ulterior motives by harvesting them to control a country's economic lifeline or even state power. Therefore, "economic globalization" is not necessarily a good thing, and if it is not done well, it will be "counterattacked." This is like the Ming Dynasty, the world's largest economic power in the Middle Ages, which eventually collapsed due to "currency silverization"!

At the same time, the great prosperity of the commodity economy brought about by the "monetization of silver" changed the mode of social operation in China for 2,000 years, causing the traditional self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy to be impacted and even disintegrated, and finally causing "mourning and sorrow", similar to the outbreak of the "economic crisis" in later generations.

Because the "silver standard system" formed by the "silver monetization" had a strong impact on the "money standard system" of the Ming Dynasty, it further weakened the economic power of the centralized state of the Ming Dynasty, and the "liberal spirit" contained in it posed a serious challenge to the ruling order of the feudal dynasty and caused violent social turmoil.

Since the imperial court had no money, it was certain that it was impossible for the Ming army in the southwest, northwest, and eastern Liaodong to be mobilized. And Tian Le's "Songshan Xinbian" needs people, Zhenda Baoding, Yulin and other towns need to guard against Mongolia, Sichuan and Shaanxi need to guard against Banzhou, Guangxi Yao Rebellion needs to suppress rebellion...... From the looks of it, it seems that only the four provinces of Zhejiang, Zhizhi, Fujian, and Guangzhou have the energy to start a war against Japan.

The four provinces of Zhejiang, Zhizhi, Fujian, and Guangzhou, under the intelligence of Japan's imminent invasion in the 19th year of Wanli, carried out military expansion and arms race to varying degrees. Since the 19th year of Wanli, the Zhejiang Navy has expanded by more than 36%, adding 99 warships (including 32 No. 1 Dafu ships), expanding the number of troops to 7,000, and the army has a small range, only 4%, adding three generals, more than 1,500 officers and soldiers.

The final statistics show that the military strength of Zhejiang Province after the expansion is roughly as follows: in terms of naval divisions, there are 1,106 warships, including 28,957 sailors; In the army, there are 46 army troops and 23,321 officers and men. In Fujian, since the 19th year of Wanli, 40 bird boats have been added to the Wuzhai Sailor Blessing Boat, and 1 Blessing Boat and 4 Bird Boats have been added to the Haitan Tour. There are 2 bronze boats and 4 bird boats. The third battalion of Zhejiang soldiers on the second road in Beizhong has a total of 1,900 people.

To sum up, the expansion of the land army in Zhejiang and Fujian is not large, but there are more than 1,000, and the expansion of the naval division is relatively large. If there is a war, Zhejiang Province alone in terms of naval warfare will be able to crisscross Japan's waters by relying on the 99 warships added in the 19th year of Wanli and 32 of them No. 1 Fu Ship, and directly sweep away Japan's maritime forces that stayed in the Han Dynasty. However, in the landing operation, it is difficult to verify the number of troops that can be mobilized by the four provinces.

However, the 200,000 elite soldiers planned by Xu Fuyuan mentioned above are probably impossible. Even if there were, the Ming court could not afford to pay for the 200,000 Panhai landing army. Therefore, on the contrary, the original Zhang Wenxi plan in which each province sent 15,000 troops, and the total number of troops was 60,000.

But how much can the landing of 60,000 people in Japan do? There's a lot going on. Referring only to the period of the First Korean War, Toyotomi Hideyoshi's reserve force left in the country was 100,000 (see "The Complete History of the Korean War in Wanli" for details). Based on this calculation, Japan should be able to support a 100,000-level defensive counterattack at that time.

In this way, the gap between the two sides will not be too large, and it is unknown how much of a storm the 60,000 expeditionary Ming army can stir up in Japan. Perhaps, these Ming armies could take a piece of land in Japan, adding to the claims of ancient times in the future.

Perhaps, these Ming armies could unite with the local daimyo and bring about the early collapse of the Toyotomi regime; Perhaps, it will be a failed expedition. It's a pity that history has no ifs. After all, this strategy can only be realized in the fantasies of posterity, in novels.

……………………………………

Haha, thank you for your attention, collection, recommendation, subscription and review of this book! As an author, I am very happy and honored to provide readers with a novel that meets the needs of the general public. As the saying goes, "Life is short, but the tip of the pen is slender." "Therefore, the road to cultivation is long, where to find immortality? There is nowhere to go for troubles, and read the people in the book! I hope that the novel "Heaven and Earth Let Me Go" series can bring happiness and insight to everyone!

This story is pure fiction, if there are similarities, it is a coincidence! Friends, the part-time job is hard, the time is urgent, the creation is not easy, like the collection, by the way, forward, want to know the plot? Next time I break it down! ("The book has its own golden house?") There are thousands of bells in the book? There is Yan Ruyu in the book"? Welcome to my book)