Chapter 512: Pandora's Box Opens (Part Two)

Besides these merchants shouting for blood debts repaid in blood, many others had flickering eyes — perhaps they cared nothing for revenge or proclaiming national might, but the potential profits to be gained here stirred their hearts beyond measure.

It was now midsummer, the perfect season when water and grass are lush and cattle and sheep grow fat. Marching beyond the frontier with the army — wouldn't all the cattle, sheep, horses and such of the various Tatar tribes be swept up in one pot? And the able-bodied men of their tribes, even the women and children, all represented heaps of military merit and wealth.

Horses, as high-grade strategic assets, would certainly go mostly to the Jingbian Army; the various merchants would be lucky to get even a small portion. But whatever cattle and sheep were seized, the Jingbian Army would surely sell to them on the spot at low prices.

At present, the Great Ming suffered a dire shortage of grain and goods — whether grain or livestock, both were immensely profitable industries.

Over the years, every merchant who had opened livestock farms along the Eastern Route or beyond the frontier had made a huge fortune. They had also spurred a whole chain of downstream industries — for example, the meat-canning industry, which set up near the livestock farms and processed large quantities of chicken, duck, mutton, pork and the like into canned goods.

Because ceramic-canned meat was not limited by season and could be stored for a long time, far more convenient than smoked meat and such, it was hugely popular among the common people, and especially the army. One could foresee that for the foreseeable future, it would remain an industry of enormous profit.

The meat-canning workshops needed vast quantities of ceramic jars, which in turn gave rise to related profit-seeking merchants. Near these livestock farms, numerous fur and leather processing sites also sprang up. Even the manure collected annually from the livestock farms became something the various farm merchants scrambled over.

All these sites required large numbers of workers, which in turn drove employment for multitudes of people, developing in the direction of the production-oriented merchant class that Wang Dou had hoped for.

And once beyond the frontier, tea, salt, and sugar could not be self-supplied, yet remained daily necessities — merchants sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain.

They rapidly formed networks of commerce, interlocking like the teeth of dogs, a web of intertwined interests, flourishing and expanding at a time when many had never anticipated it. And every time they grew stronger, they spurred the development of yet more industries, leading to a new round of expansion.

Besides these healthy industries, over the years certain shady dealings had also developed in the shadows — namely, human trafficking.

By this time, Wang Dou had long since subcontracted the mines and such to various merchants, simply reaping the profits as a bystander and purchasing the coal, iron and other products they produced on a priority basis. The operation of each mine was still handled by these merchants.

Mining is always dangerous — even in later ages accidents occurred in endless succession, let alone in the present Great Ming. The Eastern Route had relevant laws in place, with detailed regulations concerning miners' wages and personal safety, which made hiring workers from the Eastern Route relatively costly.

Merchants rise only for profit — how could they be content with that? So a covert trade in human slaves, both within the Eastern Route and beyond the frontier, flourished and grew.

Population control in the Eastern Route was relatively strict — even refugees entering the area were subject to a series of regulations; it was not as if one could simply be seized and made a miner. So many merchants turned their eyes beyond the frontier. Slave-catching squads, cloaked in all manner of tender veils, were formed one after another.

The tribes beyond the frontier dwelt in bitter, cold lands — relatively speaking, even their women and children could endure hardship, and they had experience in herding or working hides and furs. Thus, by the thirteenth year of Chongzhen, profit-blinded merchants were already secretly raiding the women and children of some small tribes beyond the frontier, putting them into sewing workshops, uniform factories, and even livestock farms.

These people didn't even need wages — just giving them a bit of food was enough. And because they were fed their fill, these women and children didn't even want to run away, making the cost of using them extremely low. So in the past two years, an increasing number of people from the frontier tribes had been seized and brought to the Eastern Route, especially the Mantaoer region.

What had once been furtive snatching had now become open and brazen plunder — how could this not delight these merchants?

Moreover, marching with the army brought honors; with honors came future land grants. Lai Mancheng was a living example — how could it not make the merchants' eyes red with envy? Not to mention gold mines — if any mineral deposits or the like were discovered on the granted lands, the recipients would enjoy wealth that several lifetimes could not exhaust.

Even without mineral deposits, those fertile fields and grasslands stirred every man's heart — they could leave a vast family estate for their descendants.

Before, everyone had only thought of the frontier as barren wilderness, a godforsaken land so poor it clinked. Only after truly opening it up and building did they discover it was nothing like they had imagined — the frontier was truly a land of treasure.

Indeed, the land beyond the frontier — it all depended on whose hands it was in. In the hands of the nomadic peoples of the frontier, it was barren wasteland; in the hands of the Central Plains people, it was precious land.

In history, how barren was Xinjiang before liberation? After the Construction Corps moved in, they reclaimed tens of millions of mu of fertile fields, turning the region into a vast granary — yet before that, the various ethnic groups there could barely feed themselves. The same land, placed in different hands, produced markedly different results.

The frontier management strategies of successive Central Plains dynasties, whether military farming or border colonization, were in fact all effective. The key lay in the rise and fall of the Central Plains empire's fortunes. As long as it did not decline, frontier operations flourished; once it declined and was forced to contract, all previous achievements were washed away.

Thus, frontier affairs depended primarily on the Central Plains. When the Central Plains was strong, even if the frontier tribes were as mighty as the Xiongnu or the Turks, they were not worth mentioning. When the Ming was strong, the Jurchens and Mongols could only obediently act as servants. But if the Central Plains declined, and it happened to coincide with the rise of the frontier tribes, that was the beginning of tragedy.

Yet at this moment, the Great Ming had a turning-point opportunity — namely, the global decline of nomadic power.

In 1571, the Tatars had still burned Moscow, and before that, the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate had repeatedly raided deep into Moscow, carrying off strong men, women, and children. In one raid on Moscow, they took away 130,000 captives.

They were transported to Asia Minor, Africa, and even certain parts of Europe to be sold, so much so that a Jewish merchant sitting at the entrance to the Perekop Isthmus, seeing so many people pass through, could not help asking: were there still more people left in Russia?

But afterward, nomadic power in Russia declined on a massive scale, and it became the Russians' turn to sell Tatar slaves.

Wang Dou had come to the Great Ming precisely at this critical juncture. Viewed on a global scale, the historical cycle of nomads rising and farming peoples declining would no longer occur; henceforth, the world belonged to the farming peoples.

And the gains made by modern Europeans made his eyes red with envy. In truth, the frontier was not poor — it all depended on how you managed it.

Historically, when the Russians occupied Siberia, in the year 1586 alone, from the fur tribute collected from the local natives, the state treasury obtained 200,000 sable pelts, 10,000 black fox pelts, 500,000 squirrel pelts, and many beaver and marten pelts.

By the mid-seventeenth century, the estimated annual revenue from Siberian furs accounted for thirty percent of the state's total income. After covering the administrative expenses in Siberia, it still retained a large surplus — the harvest could be called exceedingly rich.

Not to mention the English colonists, who frequently carried out transactions like exchanging a single iron nail with the native tribes for a huge fat pig.

So the key was a shift in thinking — to let soldiers and civilians alike profit from frontier expansion. And the frontier merchants of the Central Plains had, in fact, always possessed a considerable pioneering spirit. Historically, Shanxi merchants, besides domestic trade, also ventured throughout the entire Asian region, even extending their reach into the European market. Some merchants could converse fluently with the northern peoples and Russians in Mongolian, Kazakh, Uyghur, Russian, and other languages.

Their ability was beyond question; it all depended on how you used them. After all, merchants recognize only profit as their mother — they have no fatherland, no morals, no sense of shame. If following you brings profit, they will rally tightly around you and become loyal allies.

Living in this great era, why couldn't he grab a share for himself?

Therefore, as soon as he had a little spare energy, Wang Dou began cultivating an enterprising spirit among the merchants, supporting them in establishing armed trade caravans, and tacitly condoning their bloody deeds and misdeeds against outsiders. Capital required accumulation — better to spill the blood of outsiders than the blood of one's own people.

Once Pandora's box was opened, as long as it was directed outward, he would not interfere. For although he practiced benevolence and righteousness, he was selective about whom it applied to.

This time, the frontier army marching beyond the pass with armed trade caravans in tow was part of Wang Dou's grand plan. Perhaps once they tasted the sweetness, it would spur those landlords and local strongmen to turn their eyes outward and carve out living space for their own people.

Of course, although the merchants were blinded by profit, they weighed the costs between gain and loss with perfect clarity — they would not do business at a loss. Hearing that the various tribes beyond the frontier now mostly consisted of only the old, weak, sick, and disabled, and that their own expedition carried no risk while the potential spoils along the way might be immense, immediately everyone began clamoring.

In a matter of moments, numerous people also devised all sorts of pretexts for their going to war, so that their campaign would have just cause and righteous confidence.

Many also said: "It is now midsummer, when water and grass are lush — precisely the time when the various Mongols beyond the frontier customarily hold the Naadam Festival. This is the most solemn holiday on the grasslands. By then, many nearby small tribes will be driving their cattle and sheep, bringing their local specialties, to trade at some of the larger tribes — we can sweep them all up in one pot!"

As soon as this man spoke, it immediately provoked another wave of raucous laughter. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together — among merchants, there was naturally none of that outward sanctimony shown to outsiders. Since they were going out to plunder and kill anyway, and the Jingbian Army commanders were no moral exemplars either, even the filthiest talk could be spoken among them.

Still, someone did say: "Though this campaign carries no danger, the frontier is vast. I fear only that when the time comes, those tribes will be hard to find, and the great army may come up empty."

Immediately, the assembled merchants looked toward Wen Fangliang, Gao Shiyin, and the others seated at the head. Although they traded beyond the frontier and collected intelligence on the various Mongol tribes under the guise of travel and trade, overall it was still chaotic and loose, unable to form a broad, systematic understanding of the frontier lands. On this point, they could only rely on the Jingbian Army.

Shen Shiqi snorted coldly in his heart: "These merchant types still don't understand the Jingbian Army's intelligence capabilities. In an operation this large, given the Jingbian Army's combat style, would they possibly rush into battle without thoroughly grasping every detail of intelligence on the various tribes, as well as the terrain and water sources along the march route?"

Perhaps in the several thousand years of the Central Plains, when it came to the emphasis placed on intelligence gathering, if the Jingbian Army claimed second place, no one would dare claim first.