Although Xia Wanchun is not old, he is very interested in wine. Perhaps this is true for the poet.

After a sip of wine, his eyes immediately widened.

"Your Majesty, good wine, this wine is definitely not an ordinary thing. This is the first time I feel that there is such a delicious wine!"

When both princesses heard Xia Wanchun praise the good wine, they both showed a proud look.

Jianwen:

"Of course, my father is a reincarnation of a god. Not only does he have good wine, but he also..."

"My sister means that the father not only has good wine, but also can go on the battlefield to kill the enemy, command the battle plan, look at the bandits and see the east abduct. If you say too much, you don't know how to drink!"

Zhu Wei was worried that Jianwen would reveal his father's true feelings, so he hurriedly interrupted her.

When Xia Wanchun heard the princess say that she was a child, she smiled slightly and thought to herself that the princess was not big either? But he still held it back.

Zhu Youjian took a sip of wine and interrupted the three children's jokes:

"Xia Wanchun, you are from Jiangnan. Can you tell me what you know? I want to listen to the truth!"

Xia Wanchun hurriedly got up and clasped her fists:

"Your Majesty, please speak, and I will definitely speak out."

Zhu Youjian smiled slightly:

"Sit down and reply. I want to know about Jiangnan smuggling. How much do you know?"

Xia Wanchun:

"Reporting to the emperor, according to my understanding, although the Ming Dynasty's sea ban was only an official sea ban, there were still ships among the people who went into the sea, and those gentry, wealthy businessmen and officials colluded with each other to make profits.

A large number of tea, silk and porcelain can be exchanged for huge amounts of gold and silver when going to sea, but they will not pay taxes to the court.

After His Majesty lifted the maritime ban, the situation seemed to have improved, but smuggling was still rampant. If smuggling could be controlled, the revival of the Ming Dynasty would not be a problem!"

As a time traveler in the 21st century, Zhu Youjian is certainly very clear about these things that Xia Wanchun said.

The demise of the Ming Dynasty was actually closely related to the maritime ban.

It can be said that asking for resources and wealth from the ocean is a consensus among modern people, and the era of sailing started by Europeans at the end of the 15th century.

It has also allowed Europe, which has barren resources to develop rapidly beyond Asia and laid the foundation for Europe's prosperity for hundreds of years.

As early as nearly a hundred years ago, the great Chinese navigator Zheng He had already led an unprecedented fleet to sail to the sea to connect the world.

But the miracle of the world's navigation history failed to continue.

In 1424, Emperor Renzong of Ming Dynasty Zhu Gaochi announced his cessation of voyage to the West in his ascension edict, and the Ming Dynasty's marine exploration was basically abolished.

The termination of Zheng He's voyage to the West was a policy issued by the Ming Dynasty's civil servant group for its own interests.

The direct reason why the Ming Dynasty civil officials proposed to stop Zheng He's voyage to the West was that "there are a lot of expenses and the treasury is empty." To put it bluntly, it is that it spends too much money, causing the national treasury to be empty.

But this is a lie that can only fool the emperors who are in the palace and stay away from the people.

Since the Southern Song Dynasty, the development of foreign trade along the southeast coast of China has reached its peak.

The Southern Song Dynasty was far smaller than the Ming Dynasty's land area, but its fiscal revenue could reach 25 times that of the Ming Dynasty, and overseas trade accounted for the majority.

The Song Dynasty imposed a tariff of 7%-10% on imported goods. The tax revenue of the three civilian departments of Guangzhou, Quanzhou and Zhejiang reached 2 million jin (about 2 million taels of silver) per year.

If the history of the Southern Song Dynasty is far away from the Ming Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty was also a major maritime trade country, and sea ships filled with porcelain flowed endlessly.

It reaches Japan in the east and Southeast Asia in the west, Persia, Arabia and Africa.

It can be said that the profit of overseas trade is ten times or hundreds of times.

The huge profits in overseas trade are no secret to the bureaucrats and gentry in the Jiangnan region. Many families rely on this to make their fortunes.

After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, issued a maritime ban in order to resolve the invasion of Japanese pirates and the remnants of Zhang Shicheng, Fang Guozhen and others.

The three major maritime departments of Quanzhou, Fujian, Mingzhou, Zhejiang, and Guangzhou, Guangdong were abolished, and absolute foreign trade was banned. Anyone who built sea ships privately and engaged in overseas trade was executed, and their families were sent to be exiled.

However, there is a famous saying in "Das Kapital": "If there is 10% profit, capital will be guaranteed to be used everywhere; if there is 20% profit, capital will be active.

With 50% profit, capital will take risks; for 100% profit, capital will dare to trample on all human laws; with more than 300% profit, capital will dare to commit any crime, or even risk being hung.

"Zhu Yuanzhang's strict orders could not stop the residents of Jiangnan's pursuit of interests. Ordinary civilians who had no power and power simply went out to sea to be pirates.

The bureaucrats and gentry, as the privileged class, simply helped pirates sell stolen goods or organized fleets to conduct smuggling trade.

However, the Ming Dynasty did not have a powerful navy and could not stop pirates and smuggling.

Zhu Yuanzhang's maritime ban was useless except for reducing the tax revenue of the court. The bureaucrats and gentry took the opportunity to become the leader of overseas trade in the Ming Dynasty and make huge profits.

Take Zheng Zhilong (Zheng Cheng Cheng's father) Maritime Trade Group, the famous Zheng Zhilong (Zheng Cheng's father) in the late Ming Dynasty, as an example, earning tens of millions of taels of silver each year.

The emergence of Zheng He's voyage to the West broke the monopoly of bureaucrats and gentry in the south of the Yangtze River.

Zheng He's fleet of ships of various sizes and sizes voyages to the West, including 63 main treasure ships.

According to British scholar Mills, each treasure ship can carry a load of 2,500 tons. Before each voyage, the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty would uniformly purchase a large amount of porcelain, tea, silk and other goods to go to sea with the ship to start trade in countries along the route.

The trade volume of various countries is limited every year. Zheng He's fleet brought a large number of cargo, which naturally affected the sales of smuggling caravans in the Ming Dynasty.

The most important thing is that everyone blatantly violated the maritime ban because the emperor could not catch it.

Now Zheng He has formed an invincible fleet at that time, and is not easy to show off overseas, eliminate pirates, and catch a smuggling fleet.

The people in charge of the fleets of voyages in the Western Ocean are the emperor's confidants and eunuchs. They just need to be loyal to the emperor, but they don't have to give face to the bureaucrats and gentry. If they are caught in smuggling, whether they die or live depends entirely on the emperor's mood.

Therefore, the smuggling fleet decreased greatly after Zheng He voyages to the West. At that time, the silver flowed into China by trade every year was as high as 260,000 kilograms. Silver was money in the Ming Dynasty, and money was moving. This large interest group no longer hated Zheng He's fleet.

The Ming Dynasty relied on imperial examinations to select scholars, and the Jiangnan region with a developed culture had a long monopoly on the admission quota.

The famous "North and South List Case" in 1397 is a concentrated reflection of this phenomenon. Most of the officialdoms in the Ming Dynasty were controlled by officials from the Jiangnan region, and these officials were more or less related to overseas trade.

Even if civil servants who do not involve overseas trade, the "bingjing" and "charcoal respect" that are filial to the people below every year, they hold a large sum of money, have short hands and short mouths, and have to speak for interest groups. And isn't the political correctness of the civil servant group to crack down on the eunuch's power?

A large group of civil servants collectively advised the abolition of voyage to the West, so naturally they could not be said to have affected their own personal interests. They should put forward the slogan of openness and integrity, which is "large expenditures, and treasury is empty."

However, Zhu Di, the Emperor Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty, was a very independent emperor and was basically disdainful of civil servants. Therefore, it was not until Zhu Gaochi, the Emperor of Ming Ren, ascended the throne in 1424 that he had abolished his voyage to the West.

By 1430, Emperor Xuanzong of Ming Dynasty, Zhu Zhanji, ordered Zheng He to voyage to the West for the seventh time again. Unfortunately, Zheng He was already old and had been delayed for many years. Many of the personnel and facilities for voyage to the West had been abandoned, and the Ming Dynasty's feat of voyage to the West was no longer sustainable.

Whether Zheng He made money when he went to the West was profitable, he just looked at what Zhu Di, the Emperor Chengzu of Ming Dynasty, did.

Zheng He's first six voyages to the West ranged from the third year of Yongle to the twenty-two years of Yongle.

During this period, Zhu Di personally conquered Mongolia five times, and dispatched more than 100,000 troops each time.

The Duke of Chengguo Zhu Neng and British Duke Zhang Pu went south to attack Annan four times, which was a waste of more than 100,000 troops.

The craftsmen were recruited, and millions of civilians expanded the city of Peking, built the Forbidden City, moved the capital to Beijing, etc. A lot of money was produced from the emperor's inner treasury.

The emperor's money was earned by eunuchs such as Zheng He for helping him. To put it bluntly, all the money earned from voyage to the West came to the emperor's own small treasury.

If North Korean officials have no selfish intentions, do not want to pay taxes, and monopolize overseas trade, they should not promote the abolition of voyage to the West.

Instead, we should promote the abolition of maritime bans and promote the expansion of foreign trade.

This selfishness can be said to have destroyed the only chance to postpone the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

The biggest reasons for the demise of the Ming Dynasty were two. One was that the country's fiscal collapse and could not afford enough money to pacify Liaodong and suppress the uprisings of peasants such as Li Zicheng.

If the Ming Dynasty emperor could make money from maritime trade, the so-called "three pays" would be nothing, so how could he be short of money?

Second, during the Little Ice Age, natural disasters continued in the Ming Dynasty, grain harvests failed year after year, and famines continued.

Chameng, Siam, Annan, Zhenla and other countries in Nanyang are all major grain-producing countries, with grain ripening twice or three times a year.

If the fleet of voyages to the Western Ocean has always existed, these grain-producing lands will always respect the leaders of the Ming Dynasty.

Whether it is collecting grain, borrowing grain, or buying grain, it can solve the problem of food shortage in the Ming Dynasty. Unfortunately, there is no if in history.
Chapter completed!