Zhu Yingzhen went back to his hometown with the "constructive opinions" given by Gao Yingshi, and Gao Yingshi basically left all relevant matters related to contact with the Shimadzu family to him.
In general, this "constructive opinion" is to let Zhu Yingzhen deceive the Shimadzu family into carrying out development-oriented reforms, making them feel that the fundamental reason why they were defeated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi was not that the Satsuma warriors were not good at fighting, but that Toyotomi was defeated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Omi Hideyoshi's economic strength crushed Satsuma, so he could forcefully push back with ten times the force.
This is not a lie but a fact. The people of the Shimadzu family will definitely understand it, so that they can make the next plan. Naturally, this plan is what Gao Pragmatic is best at: gradually strengthening economic penetration to economic control, and finally forming the Kyoto Huawei
The tree and Shimadzu were in the state of vines, just like today's tumut.
By then, no matter what Kyoka wants to do, the Shimadzu family will have no choice but to follow, otherwise there will be a total economic collapse. That kind of collapse will not only mean the decline of people's livelihood, but also lead to chaos in the feudal government and the rise of low-level samurai, which will be detrimental to the island.
As far as the Jin family is concerned, it is beyond redemption.
To achieve this goal, the main purpose is to grasp the economic lifeline of Satsuma. However, Satsuma is still very backward at the moment. The so-called economic lifeline is nothing more than agriculture, and trade is only a supplement.
Mastering agriculture is obviously not what Gao Pragmatism is interested in, and it is impossible to achieve it - in the final analysis, Japan currently has a land enfeoffment system. What can Gao Pragmatism do to control other people's fiefdoms?
Therefore, what Gao pragmatic means is to let the Shimadzu family produce one or two flagship products, and the income from these two flagship products must be able to overwhelm traditional agricultural income and become the majority of the Satsuma feudal government's income, thereby forming the capital of the entire Satsuma feudal lord.
It is impossible to do without this profit situation.
This kind of thinking is very useful for small countries. For example, the economic rise of South Korea in later generations relied on a few chaebol giants, didn't it?
However, the purpose of Gao pragmatism is to control them after all, rather than develop them as locals. Therefore, the first thing that these two flagship products must satisfy is that they cannot do without the support of Gao pragmatism. Once they leave Gao pragmatism, industries will appear.
The collapse became the "unbearable pain" of Satsuma Domain.
Gao Pragmatic had a rough understanding of the history of Japan's rise in his previous life. In his opinion, if Japan was Germany, Satsuma would be Prussia. There is no doubt that Satsuma was the engine of Japan's modern rise, and its importance to Japan's modernization was even more important than "
The Choshu Domain with the Japanese Army.
The Satsuma Domain, as it is known to later generations, belongs to the Shimazu clan. Its height is 770,000 koku, ranking second in Japan. The feudal city is Kagoshima Castle. However, unfortunately, the current Satsuma Domain was destroyed by Toyotomi.
Hideyoshi taught and punished him, his height was reduced to just over 600,000 koku, and his strength declined greatly.
The history of the Satsuma Domain and the Shimazu family has been briefly mentioned before, so I will not go into details here. I will only talk about the economic problems of the Satsuma Domain at this time.
If financial problems were a common problem that plagued all feudal clans from the Azuchi Momoyama period (Oda Nobunaga-Toyotomi Hideyoshi) to the Edo period (Tokugawa shogunate), then the situation in Satsuma was probably the most difficult among the clans.
Due to many historical reasons, it is no exaggeration to say that the Satsuma Domain has been basically on the verge of bankruptcy for more than two hundred years during this period. Years of lack of money and geographical remoteness have made the Satsuma Domain people regarded as country people.
And suffered repeated discrimination.
Regional discrimination is very common in Japan. For example, the Asano family of the Ako clan was regarded as a "country daimyo" and was required to learn etiquette. As a result, a story about a loyal minister was revealed. And this Ako clan was in Harima country.
,discrimination is not far from Kyoto.
In comparison, the status of the Satsuma Domain, which is farther away than the Ako Domain, can be imagined in the eyes of "city dwellers". This unfair treatment can be said to have greatly promoted the active participation of the Satsuma Domain warriors in the overthrow movement in the future.
effect.
Because they were regarded as rural and even barbarians, for the Satsuma Domain, the significance of successful financial reforms was quite extraordinary. As the strongest among the four major feudal lords at the end of the Bakumatsu period, the Satsuma Domain was able to transform from a domain that had been on the verge of bankruptcy for two hundred years.
It was impossible to become the head of a vassal, or even to create the vassal politics that would last for nearly a hundred years, without stable financial support.
Since the establishment of the Satsuma Domain, financial problems have always been the top issue in the feudal administration. It is precisely because of financial difficulties that the Satsuma Domain has been unable to carry out various reform projects, resulting in the Satsuma Domain's long-term backwardness, and the awareness of long-term backwardness has become the basis for reform.
Obstacle.
The main financial problem of Satsuma Domain is that there are too many recurring and non-recurring expenditures.
The first problem comes from the feudal organizational system of the Satsuma Domain. The feudal organizational system of the Satsuma Domain is quite unique, called the outer castle system. This unique system is similar to the imperial family system of the Kamakura shogunate. It is the result of the Shimadzu family being replaced by Kamakura
It is a historical legacy after the shogunate named it guardian.
The biggest feature of the outer city system is that its samurai do not gather and live near the main city, but live in small strongholds near the fields. There are a large number of mountain towns called "roku" in Satsuma Domain.
There are small military strongholds such as the Fortress and Pingyuan Castle, and these places are collectively called the outer castle (the main city headed by the Shimazu family is the inner castle).
In these military strongholds, there lived a large number of semi-samurai or quasi-samurai groups. These people farmed in peacetime and organized to attack in time of war.
The reason why this situation exists is that on the one hand, the Shimazu family, as the guardian daimyo during the Kamakura shogunate period, inherited the imperial family system in order to unify the local area as soon as possible, and retained a large number of local wealthy families and their clans in the territory, and entered the Warring States Period
During this period, these gang members were transformed into the so-called outer city warriors, that is, quasi-warriors.
On the other hand, the outer castle system is also a result of the long-term wars of the Satsuma Domain. Since the Satsuma Domain entered the Warring States Period and had never stopped fighting until the establishment of the Tokugawa family, compared with other clans, the Satsuma Domain needed
Mobilize more troops to maintain its combat effectiveness.
Therefore, in order to be able to balance war and farming, and to facilitate control of the country, Satsuma established a large number of quasi-samurai personnel all over the countryside. The samurai of the Satsuma Domain accounted for more than 26% of the total population, close to 40%, and the proportion of the number was unmatched even in Japan.
Common.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Moreover, when the Shimazu family almost completed the goal of unifying Kyushu, they were defeated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and were forced to spit out a large amount of land. This caused a
This serious consequence: a large number of samurai and quasi-samurai who had been established during the unification of Kyushu lost their land at once, but the Shimazu family could not abandon them. As a result, the Satsuma domain had a large number of vassals. Because there were too many vassals and the territory was
The salary of these feudal lords was reduced, so the Satsuma clan was naturally scratching its head.
The second question came from the later Tokugawa shogunate, but since it has not happened yet, I will not go into details. Generally speaking, it can be expressed in one sentence: Since the Shimazu family sided with the Western Army in the Sekigahara War,
Therefore, the Tokugawa shogunate kept giving them small shoes, which caused various inexplicable extra expenses for the Satsuma Domain.
The financial problem is nothing more than revenue and expenditure, that is, "source" and "flow." In addition to the complicated expenditures, the Satsuma Domain also has big problems with its income.
As mentioned before, the measure of wealth in Japan during this period was the amount of rice produced. Therefore, the land producing rice was the cornerstone of finance. The land of the Satsuma Domain was divided into two prefectures, Kagoshima and Miyagi (Japan) in later generations.
(The prefectures are larger than the cities (you can search the reasons for this on your own)), and a large part of them is a small plateau unique to Japan, called Surasu Plateau.
This small highland was formed due to the eruption of an active volcano and the accumulation of lava and rock fragments that flowed out. Such land accounted for 52% of Kagoshima Prefecture and 16% of Miyagi Prefecture in later Japan (
Satsuma land is in these two prefectures).
A very serious problem with this kind of land is that the soil has extremely poor water retention. Water often flows in after rains, making it very difficult to cultivate crops. Moreover, due to the accumulation of volcanic ash and debris, coupled with the erosion of rivers, this kind of land is prone to various occurrences.
Strange landforms.
The changing landforms have exacerbated the difficulty of irrigation, and the Satsuma Domain is located facing the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, often becoming the landing point of large typhoons. Irrigation difficulties and a large number of natural disasters have made the Satsuma Domain, although nominally 770,000 koku (now
600,000 stone), the actual income is often just over 350,000 stone (currently 300,000 stone).
The low income and high expenditure, coupled with the consumption of long years of war, have made the current actual situation of Satsuma Domain one of extreme poverty.
In the original history, in order to alleviate this poverty situation, the Satsuma clan's solution was to send troops to the Ryukyus. During the Shimazu Tadashi period, by conquering the Ryukyus, the Shimadzu family seized 40,000 koku of land on Amami Oshima. At the same time, they obtained from
The right to profit from the Ryukyu tribute trade.
This move not only greatly alleviated Satsuma's financial difficulties in the early and mid-term, but also allowed Satsuma to obtain strong economic sources: such as the brown sugar produced in Amami Oshima.
Sugar was a valuable commodity in Japan at the time. Brown sugar was needed to make confectionery and traditional sake brewing in various places from Honshu to Kyushu. At that time, Ryukyu was the largest producer of brown sugar in Japan, so this
Huge profits are exclusive to Satsuma.
Brown sugar even established financial credit for the Satsuma Domain. With the benefit of brown sugar, the domain office successfully obtained a large number of loans from merchants in Osaka and other places, which provided immeasurable help to the domain's finances in the early and mid-term.
However, the Satsuma Domain's seizure of Amami and Brown Sugar interests only effectively alleviated its financial distress. In fact, it only left Satsuma in a state of half-starvation. The finances still needed to borrow money to maintain daily expenses, and
The high interest rates attached to loans gradually became another major burden on Satsuma's finances.
Therefore, the early reforms in Satsuma only alleviated the fiscal crisis, but did not really reverse the financial difficulties. They even added major difficulties (interest) to the subsequent finances, and were essentially still on the verge of bankruptcy.
And now due to the existence of Gao Pragmatism, Satsuma Domain will definitely not be able to get even the Ryukyu Islands, so Satosu's life money is destined to miss them. It can be said that the financial problems of Satsuma Domain at this time are actually more serious than those of the Ming Dynasty.
The court was still exaggerating.
Gao pragmatically planned to give them constructive suggestions through Zhu Yingzhen, which seemed to be a consistent feature of ancient China: the monopoly system.
Of course, it is not a monopoly on salt and iron, but a resale system of sulfur and camphor. Sulfur and camphor are the main products of Satsuma Domain’s foreign trade. The main goods purchased by Jinghua on Kyushu Island are sulfur, while Zhu Yingzhen’s family is engaged in camphor trading-previously
This was mentioned in the Miike Port conflict.
In fact, Gao Pragmatic knows very well that the camphor production in Taiwan Island is greater and the quality is better. However, Taiwan's development has only just begun. So far this year, less than 200,000 Han people have immigrated, which is far from the level of running away.
The period of developing camphor in the old forests of deep mountains. At this moment, the Satsuma Domain can still continue to operate the camphor trade as its financial mainstay.
However, the Satsuma Domain's backward production and sales system obviously does not match the strong purchasing power of the Ming Dynasty. According to Gao Situ's estimate, even if the Satsuma Domain's camphor production increased tenfold, it would only be a splash in the Ming Dynasty. This is completely necessary.
Let the Satsuma Domain abandon the laissez-faire development and management of the past, carry out official reforms, let the Domain Office take over management rights, and sign an exclusive supply and marketing contract with the Beiyang Maritime Trade Alliance.
At the same time, the same is true for the sulfur trade. For Japan, which has many volcanoes, sulfur is close to a godsend - a free gift. It is produced throughout Japan from north to south, but the main production areas in later generations are Tohoku and
Kanto.
There is no need to worry about the high output, and there is no need to compare it with later generations. After all, the amount of sulfur used in later generations is many times more than the current one. Anyway, judging from the current situation, as long as Satsuma develops and manages it well, his family's output will be
It's enough to start a war all over the capital.
Of course, having said that, Gao Pragmatic does not really intend to let Satsuma Domain become the only supplier of sulfur to Beijing. Maybe he can tolerate getting goods from Satsuma in normal times, but he will definitely maintain low prices in other places with sulfur output such as Taiwan.
level of development, in order to avoid the problem of sulfur shortage in Jinghua if the situation in Satsuma or Japan gets out of control.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! However, according to Gao's rough estimate, even if Satsuma reformed sulfur and camphor into a monopoly system, it would not be enough to become truly powerful, and it would probably be no more powerful than the historical seizure of Ryukyu sugar.
It will be slightly stronger after that - unless Jinghua really goes to war everywhere and the demand for sulfur increases significantly.
Therefore, in addition to the two traditional products of sulfur and camphor, Gao Pragmatic also needs to point out another clear path for Satsuma, and at the same time tie it more firmly to the big ship of Jinghua.
This time, Gao Pragmatic created an industry that was in line with the original historical development and could be controlled by him: glass manufacturing.
The Satsuma clan in the original history later developed "Satsuma Kiriko", which is the process of cutting and carving delicate patterns on the surface of crystal or glass with emery by hand (see "Satsuma Kiriko" and "Edo Kiriko" on Baidu). However, the original
Historically, this technology appeared very late, in the 1830s. The reason is very simple. At that time, glass was relatively popular.
However, with the expansion of the Beijing-China fleet, the production of binoculars urgently needs to be increased. Therefore, Gao Pragmatic has recently also considered putting the development of the Oriental glass industry on the agenda. Previously, natural crystals were used, and there were some problems in terms of raw materials.
It stands to reason that this industry should not be located in Satsuma, Japan, which is not native to Japan, but Gao Pragmatic is not too worried about this, because in this era of Japan, the development of the glass industry cannot be separated from Gao. This confidence does not come from
It comes from technical control, but from raw material control.
There is a misunderstanding in many time-traveling works that glass is waiting for time-travelers to invent it and then sell it overseas to make huge profits. But in fact, glass has been invented by the ancients a long time ago. About 3700 BC, the ancient Egyptians made it
Glass decorations and simple glassware were produced, but at that time only colored glass was available.
About 1000 BC, colorless glass was manufactured in China. Commercial glass appeared during the Northern Song Dynasty and began to become an industrial material. In the early Qing Dynasty, optical glass was produced to meet the needs of developing telescopes.
But one thing is very important, that is, the glass in ancient my country has always been relatively simple low-temperature lead-barium glass. Due to its chemical composition and firing temperature, it will explode when exposed to hot water, so it cannot be used to make daily utensils. This is different from that in the West. The "soda-lime glass" belongs to two different glass systems. Although the latter is less transparent, it is strong and durable and will not burst when exposed to heat.
Therefore, the glass in ancient my country can only be limited to decorations, and is rarely used as eating utensils, let alone making optical glass. However, it is obvious that what high pragmatism requires is optical glass, which is the common glass in later generations.
Everyone knows that the raw materials of glass are nothing more than quartz sand, limestone, feldspar, and soda ash. The first three raw materials are almost available all over the world, and Japan is no exception, but the last one, soda ash, is different.
In ancient times, the technology for making soda ash was sound, but it was cumbersome and uneconomical. In fact, only natural soda ash could be used, and the soda ash used in the high-pragmatic soap business was also natural soda ash.
Natural soda ash is not that common, especially the ones that are "with mining value" are even less common. This thing is sodium carbonate, also called soda, soda ash, stone soda, and soda ash. It is widely used in printing and dyeing.
Tannery, edible. Natural soda ash mainly exists in salt lakes, with limited output. It has been used by ancients for a long time, but before the advent of modern "artificial soda", this was a major restriction for industrial production.
Unfortunately, Japan is very poor in this regard, and the production of natural soda ash is negligible. By the way, to correct a mistake, the alkali juice made from plant ash is not sodium carbonate, but potassium carbonate. What is produced in saline-alkali lakes is sodium carbonate.
So who has this thing? Tumut has it. The mainstream name of soda ash in the Ming Dynasty is "mouth alkali", and the reason is derived from Tumut: because it comes from outside the mouth, it has this name.
In addition, there is a huge production area in Henan - but Gao Qingshi didn't know it at first. He was only informed by Liu Xin not long ago, so he has not yet started mining it.
All in all, within East Asia, the soda ash production areas worth exploiting are now directly or indirectly controlled by Gao Pragmatic. He does not have to worry about Satsuma mastering the glass manufacturing process and getting stuck in his neck.
Moreover, with his superior caution, he did not intend to hand over the entire manufacturing process and production base to Satsuma. His idea was that Jinghua would handle the basic manufacturing, and the subsequent processing and polishing would be handed over to Satsuma.
Of course, the glass industry is hugely profitable, and the added value of finishing is even higher, so it can be expected that Satsuma will gradually increase investment in exchange for this profit.
But this is in line with high pragmatic needs, because in this system, Satsuma is the fish and Jinghua is the water.
Water without fish is still water, and fish without water can only be dead fish. The more Satsuma invests in this aspect, the more inseparable it will be from Jinghua. Coupled with the previous sulfur and camphor, Satsuma will have no choice but to stay there.
The thieves in Jinghua didn't dare to jump off the ship.
The sugar-coated poison has been prepared, just waiting for the hungry Shimadzu family to take the bait.
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