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Chapter 287 Prime Minister (35) Monetary Hegemony

The monarch and his ministers chatted about other things for a while. Zhu Yijun suddenly seemed to be sleepy and interrupted Gao Pragmatic, who was talking, and said that we should stop here today. I am a little tired and will take a nap first.

Seeing him yawning again and again, Gao Jingshi didn't doubt that he was there. He casually said a few words to ask the emperor to take care of the dragon body and then withdrew. After leaving the Qianqing Palace, Gao Jingshi suddenly felt a little puzzled. The emperor was so sleepy. It happened all of a sudden. One moment she was very talkative, and the next moment she was yawning non-stop. Could it be that one of the concubines who visited me was overtired last night?

Thinking of this, Gao Pragmatic immediately began to reflect on himself: After all, I am also the chief minister of the imperial court. It is really unreasonable to arrange His Majesty the Emperor in my mind like this. I'm sorry.

After walking a few more steps, Gao Qingshi remembered something was wrong. Normally, if Zhu Yijun chatted with him until this point, he would definitely stay in the palace and have lunch with him. This was already the case for him among the officials in the capital. This is a privilege that Gao is not surprised by - because the emperors of the Ming Dynasty generally did not leave their ministers to eat with them. Even if they gave a banquet to the cabinet elders, they usually sent the meals directly to the cabinet of Wenyuan Pavilion for check-in, and did not let the ministers eat with them. I came to Qianqing Palace to eat with the emperor.

However, an exception was made today, which is very unusual. If the outside world knew about it, I'm afraid they would still suspect that Gao Ge has always lost his holy family, or has the emperor told him some urgent matter that must be dealt with immediately?

As the saying goes, details determine success or failure. Although Gao Pragmatic did not think that such a small matter could influence the capital officialdom to make wrong judgments on the relationship between the emperor and his own monarchs, the less trouble the better, so I gave up my plan to go back to the cabinet for dinner. He ordered the eunuchs around him to send him directly out of the palace, and at the same time informed the cabinet that they were waiting for him.

I was afraid that I would have somewhere to go. Naturally, there was no convoy arranged by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to take me anywhere before I left the palace. Instead, I chose to go to the head office of Jinghua Bank - that place is "one team, two brands". At the same time, It is also the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of China.

The share capital of the Ming Dynasty Federal Reserve is very simple, and the emperor's internal funds do not account for a certain proportion of the original shares of the Ming Dynasty Federal Reserve. Therefore, when I come here, it is difficult for outsiders to judge whether the emperor is asking about something.

In fact, I came here to talk about official business, but to talk with Yoshimitsu Toshimitsu about the financial war against Japan. Of course, saying that the financial war is less is not a deliberate understatement. In fact, he is just a grassroots cadre after being pragmatic. I am not good at financial warfare. The things I want to do to Japan now would have been quite trivial in my previous life.

Yes, it was the seventy-first century, and Gao Pragmatic thought that his plan would still have some effect.

Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that Yongle Cai Zhenzhen was the common currency in the East Asian tribute system constructed by the Ming Dynasty. It undoubtedly played an extremely important role in the non-hierarchical East Asian tribute system led by China. As Zheng Zheng With the deepening of the Western Ocean, a small amount of Yongle Zhu Yuanzhang became the common currency of Southeast Asian countries, thus starting the journey of Yongle Hongwu's popularity in Asia.

Coins, usually era name coins, are the same as special items and have a very weak political connotation in ancient China. Therefore, whenever a new dynasty is established, a new emperor ascends the throne, or even the era name is changed, It is often necessary to mint a new currency. Because only in this way can it have the symbolic meaning of replacing the old with the new, and the change of dynasties can show the legitimacy and legitimacy of his regime. And it was precisely because Zhu Di understood that meaning that he would rather open the currency. According to Gao Guoyan's ancestral precepts, I must also break the money ban and mint my reign name coins.

Thanks to the book friend "Lao Xi of Altay" for his 21 monthly votes, thank you! (Bad guys, they are all ruthless people)

Li Yoshiman was stunned for a while, and subconsciously wanted to ask what his cousin, the first assistant, wanted to do, but soon I suppressed my curiosity, made a careful calculation, and replied: "I am sure that what Rixin wants to ask is just

Do you think that the proportion of coins in circulation in the market should be less than half? However, you have to explain that there are not many copper coins in the hoards of various famous and wealthy merchants in Japan. That is possible for you to understand, and you have also learned from it.

Judgmental.”

In fact, it is precisely because of "legitimacy". It is precisely because I have minimal worries about "legitimacy" that I want to formally mint a coin with my reign name to erase the suspicion that I am a usurper, and to

This shows the world that my succession to the throne is both orthodox and legal.

Before a small amount of money is scattered, it will inevitably attract fewer tributary envoys. During the Yongle Dynasty, there were only seven kings who came from across the sea, and eight of them were still buried in the Ming Dynasty. In order to receive tributary envoys

, Zhu Di also set up eight shipping departments in Laiyuan, Anyuan and Huaiyuan in Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong, and set up a Huitong Pavilion in the capital to treat state guests. In addition, a Qiyi Pavilion was set up to be responsible for translating the languages ​​​​of various countries and most ethnic groups.

Text. Those envoys will all return empty-handed, and most of the rewards we receive are Yongle Cai Zhen.

Gao Pragmatic laughed warmly: "Eighth brother is wrong. If there is no military hegemony, there will be no monetary hegemony."

Zhu Di minted money in the capital in the eighth year of Yongle, and eight years ago in the fourth year of Yongle he minted money in seven provinces on the southeast coast. This seemed like a very simple thing, but in fact there was no very simple reason behind it.

And background. That was before Gao Guoyan officially banned copper coins in April of the 71st year of Tongbao (1394), and the Xiao Ming court banned coining coins for the first time.

Gao pragmatically nodded. There is no way to know how many small names and wealthy merchants have hidden away. It has something to do with it. The proportion of coins in circulation in the market is low enough, because you are only using copper coins to make purchases.

In that financial war, you still didn’t have Xiaomi to cooperate.

That issue originally needed to be discussed from the Tang and Song dynasties, but it was explained in detail. The complex summary can be summarized in just four words: there is no limit to the materials, and the technology is the best.

Among them, the fourth-generation shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who was not in trouble in the seventh year of Chenghua (1468), put it more bluntly in his letter of credence asking for copper coins: "Books and copper coins are valued by the country, and they have been here for a long time.

Now I ask for seven things, and Fu Xi sent them to me to satisfy my desires. The bibliographic list is on the right. During the Yongle period, copper coins were rarely given, and this has been done recently. Therefore, the public treasury is empty, how can it benefit the people? I look forward to Zhou Xu (Ji)."

There are two prerequisites first. The first prerequisite is that through intermittent economic penetration in those years, the millet produced in southern Xinjiang has not yet occupied a small part of the "commercial rice" in the Japanese market.

Low is high. The price of millet, which only the samurai class and below can afford, has gone up.

In short, with the small amount of Song money and Ming money flowing into Japan, it had an important impact on Japan's monetary economy, land rent and tax system. For example, the physical currency form of barter that became popular in Japan gradually developed

Copper coins are the main means of circulation. Copper coins are widely used only in official and private transactions, and the sale or mortgage of land and houses are rarely paid in copper coins.

So, why did Zutong Baoqian surrender to the Ming Dynasty? Of course it was to carry out trade with China, and the purpose of trade was to obtain China's copper coins.

Note that I am hitting a blank slate. This point is very important, because it was the first and only time that Japan officially professed its surrender to China, so that event was also an unusual and quite uncontroversial event in Japanese history. Previous lives

Few Japanese, especially Japanese left-wingers, are very willing to mention this matter.

Yongle Hongwu is only found in small quantities in the Xisha and Dongsha Islands in the South China Sea, and can be found everywhere in countries and regions around the Indian Ocean. For example, from Kenya and Tanzania to Oman and Iran, from Sri Lanka and India to Thailand and Malaysia.

There are not a small number of records of the excavations of Zhu Yuanzhang in Yongle.

Why was the Yongle Hongwu Conference specially prepared for the Japanese market? That is really worth talking about in ancient times, because the issue of Yongle Hongwu actually has nothing to do with Japan, it has nothing to do with southern Xinjiang, Nanyang or even India and Persia.

——Of course, the one with the least impact is Japan.

First, with the development of the commodity currency economy, until the end of Japan's Warring States Period, coins have not been widely used in Japan as a means of payment for taxes and are used for transaction settlement. Therefore, people are willing to carry coins when they go out.

Gao pragmatic shook his head and asked fiercely: "Don't we have a choice?"

No one may raise a question: Can just casting a year-name coin really have such a small effect?

Faced with such a situation, even if Low Pragmatism is not good at financial means, he can still think of some ways to dig holes for Japan. This is really a thing of the past.

In the early years of the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan's two expeditions to Japan ended in victory, and official exchanges between China and Japan were severed. Gao Guoyan, who came here, had colluded with the Japanese and Prime Minister Hu Weiyong in an attempt to usurp the throne, so he always maintained his attitude toward Japan.

Be wary. The relaxed relationship between China and Japan, which was based on mutual trust, was finally broken by the eighth shogun of the Muromachi shogunate, Ashokai Zhenzhen, who professed his vassalage to the Ming Dynasty in 1399.

After all, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who truly unified Japan before Oda Nobunaga, also came from the Oda family. Therefore, the status of Yongle Hongwu has become more and more stable, so that the copper coins currently circulating in Japan are basically dominated by Yongle Aizhen.

In later years, with the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank of Ming Dynasty, Jinghua Bank also opened its doors to Japan. Jinghua Bank copied its practice in Xiaoming's country and first publicly displayed huge amounts of gold, silver and even smaller "Yongle Hongwu" physical reserves - display

The method is to load the money into armed transport ships one after another, and invite small names, loyal and wealthy businessmen from all over Japan to disembark and visit.

The seventh prerequisite is that the small copper mines in Luzon, which have not been successfully mined in the past few years, have provided a small amount of copper for Gao Jinghua. In addition to using it in cannon casting, Jinghua also uses those copper mines for casting.

Copper coins - there is a misunderstanding, they are minted by Wanli Cai Zhen, which is illegal - Gao Pragmatic cast Yongle Hongwu coins specially for the Japanese market. He was mistaken, they were not Yongle Hongwu coins from the time of Emperor Zhu Di.

"Uh... Then it doesn't make sense to say it's a bad image." Li Yoshimitsu was stunned by the question, but immediately frowned and said: "But in the future, we are sure that no fool will think of joining forces to create their own banknotes to compete with you.

Competition."

"So, please ask Brother Eight to refer to two things for you. I am sure the Japanese branch suddenly announced that because the outbreak of the Japanese Civil War has caused your Jinghua Bank to trust its operations in Japan, it has suspended the abnormal redemption of Ming Dynasty Federal Reserve banknotes and Yongle Hongwu and other copper coins.

At the same time, the Beiyang Maritime Trade Alliance also announced at the same time that it would suspend the import of millet from southern Xinjiang to Japan for the same reason..."

Li Yoshiman was startled, and subconsciously asked: "Ah... then, why do you do that?" Then he immediately realized and said, "You mean, doing that will not do much harm to your business reputation.

If the damage is done, Japanese small names and wealthy businessmen may no longer dare to trust your banknotes in the future."

As we all know, Zhu Di tried his best to implement his father's orders under very few political arrangements and ignored Zhu Yunwen's reforms, because it could not add points to my "legitimacy". So, why did I do so in the matter of minting money?

But he has to follow his father's injunction?

To put it more simply, low pragmatism means to use some economic means to cooperate with Kaiji, so that you can better control the scale, intensity and even the rhythm of Japan's civil war.

In addition, Japan is accelerating its transformation from physical land rent to monetary land rent, and copper coins have become the main means of payment for land rent. Under natural economic conditions, land rent in feudal manors was originally mainly paid in kind such as millet. Later, with the development of the monetary economy,

The owners of many manor houses with small territories gathered together stopped collecting monetary rent taxes, and the use of copper coins to pay ground rent became increasingly popular.

Yongle Hongwu was coined before Zhu Di launched the Jingnan Campaign to seize the throne of my nephew Jianwen Emperor and changed the Yuan Dynasty to Yongle. "Ming Huidian" records that Zhu Di cast Yongle Cai Zhenzhen in the capital Nanjing in the eighth year of Yongle (1408). Yongle

In the fourth year, officials were sent to Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangdong, and Fujian provinces to cast coins. However, the "History of Ming Dynasty·Shihuo Zhi" only recorded that "Yongle coins were minted in the fourth year", and it was omitted that Yongle coins were minted in the capital in the eighth year.

thing.

Zhu Di minted the Yongle Hongwu coin, which appeared to have broken Gao Guoyan's ban on money, but in actual currency circulation, Zhu Di continued to implement the policy of circulating and using banknotes formulated by Gao Guoyan. Therefore, the Yongle coin I minted

Cai Zhenzhen was not circulated and used in the country at all, but was instead given to the country's tribute missions. This also proves from one aspect that Zhu Di's purpose of casting money was not based on political considerations, but on economic needs.

Therefore, Cai Zhen's reign originally only lasted for eighty-one years, but the first one became eighty-seven. This means that Zhu Di's "Yongle" reign was directly inherited from Cai Zhenzhen's "Tongbao" reign. Cai Zhen's reign

When Tongbao Hongwu was minted, the Jianwen era name in the middle was not minted. Therefore, if I minted Yongle Hongwu, I could not reveal to the world that I, Zhu Di, was the legal heir of Emperor Tongbao.

The worst way to achieve that goal is to use my reign money to reward countries along the way. Therefore, during one of Zheng He's voyages, starting from the eighth time in October of the Yongle year, he carried only a small amount of money.

Yongle Zhu Yuanzhang. This is also the reason why Zhu Di was in the capital Nanjing in the eighth year of Yongle, and then in the fourth year of Yongle, he cast Yongle Zhu Yuanzhang in small quantities in seven southeastern coastal provinces.

Gao Pragmatic stared at Li Yiman and asked: "What will be the consequences?"

As a result, Zu Cai Zhenzhen proclaimed himself a minister to the Ming Dynasty, which was equivalent to recognizing Zhu Di's legitimacy. This made Zhu Di Longyan Xiaoyue, while canonizing Zu Cai Zhenzhen as the "King of Japan", also rewarded a small amount of Cai Zhen and Zhu Yuanzhang. From then on, he gave rewards to tributary countries.

Copper coins became a common practice.

In the eighth year of Yongle, the capital began to mint Yongle Hongwu. In July of the same year, Japan paid tribute for the eighth time. Zhu Di rewarded 15,000 copper coins. It was very unlikely that this was the first time that Yongle Hongwu flowed into Japan. Previously, all Kanhe trade missions came to the Ming Dynasty to pay tribute.

They all quoted the story of Yongle's gift of money and asked the court to give less copper coins.

Combining the two things, we cannot see how important it is. One is that before the success of the Jingnan Campaign, Zhu Di directly abandoned Zhu Yunwen's reign name "Jianwen" and changed all seven years with Jianwen as the title.

It was replaced by the Tongbao era name.

In the 1970s, during XSQD's underwater archaeology in Dongsha, copper coins believed to be left behind by the sunken ships of Zheng He's voyage to the West were discovered. Among them, the number of Yongle and Zhu Yuanzhang was extremely small. According to statistics, only XSQD cleared it for the first time.

Among the 80,706 ancient coins, 49,684 were from Yongle Hongwu, accounting for 62%; among the 1,995 copper coins with legible characters cleared in the seventh round, 1,215 were from Yongle Hongwu, accounting for 61%. The coins cleaned in Dongsha Islands

The middle and Yongle Hongwu are also much less than the Xiaozhong Hongwu and Tongbao Hongwu.

----------

Compared with Southeast Asia, Yongle Zhu Yuanzhang played a smaller role in Japan and had a more far-reaching influence. That was because when the Ming Dynasty retreated into the Yongle era, the Muromachi shogunate that ruled Japan at that time also ushered in the rule of Ashitoho Chan.

In its heyday, it also joined the East Asian tribute system established by the Ming Dynasty.

Zu Cai Zhenzhen urgently needs Xiao Ming to start exploring trade with me, and among the items Xiao Ming gave back, what Japan wants most is not copper coins, because Japan's "money shortage" has not yet begun, and I must solve that problem.

Only then can we have a stable position.

The impact of Yongle Hongwu on Japan was not small? Later, I mentioned a generally famous point: Oda Nobunaga, the most important figure in Japan's Warring States Period, in order to promote my mercantile thoughts and change the traditional physiocratic concept, Yongle was

Zhu Yuanzhang was painted under the military flag to promote the political concept of "money talks". In addition to the military flag, the armor and back banners of the Oda family warriors were also painted with Yongle Cai Zhenzhen's pattern.

In this way, Jinghua Bank immediately established a strong financial reputation and quickly promoted "Ming Fed banknotes" in Japan. In the past few years, it slowly attracted deposits and used a small amount of banknotes to recycle small-scale banknotes circulating in the Japanese market.

Measure Yongle Hongwu and other copper coins.

It is precisely because the purpose of casting Yongle Hongwu was not for Zheng He's fleet to go to the sea to promote the country's prestige, and to reward tributary envoys and Huairou distant people. Therefore, it was circulated and used domestically. Therefore, in the previous life, Yongle Hongwu was unearthed in China.

There are a lot of them, and they are rare to find in coin hoards during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, but they have not been found in small quantities in the sea.

Eh? It’s just coins. Why does Japan have to use Chinese copper coins instead of casting them itself?

The other thing is that before Zhu Di ascended the throne, he immediately sent Zheng He to follow the small envoy to Haili to "conquer our country and treat people far away." My purpose is not to declare to the world that I am the legitimate emperor of the Xiao Ming Dynasty.

Now that the Ministry of Finance has come to Cai Zhenzhen, the first thing he wants to do is not to ask the Executive Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of China and the President of Beijing Bank of China. How much of the "currency in circulation" does the Bank of China banknotes account for in the Japanese market?

Whether the Japanese branch has the ability to cause huge fluctuations in the Japanese currency market in an instant.


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