Chapter 1414: Who Told You to Enfeoff?

"Imperial Brother, your younger brother is not afraid of the high mountains and long roads of the Western Regions. A good man sets his sights on the four corners of the world; traveling ten thousand li is better than reading ten thousand books. Besides, I bear the royal mandate, working for the nation and for you, Imperial Brother. Even mountains of blades and seas of fire hold no fear for me — I only fear failing in the task! Imperial Brother, Third Brother has long been accustomed to calling himself king and overlord out there. Would he listen to a powerless little Commandery Prince like me? If he refuses my counsel, what am I to do?"

"Indeed, Our son. The third one has a fierce temper. He became a regional lord at sixteen, and after more than twenty years of military life, he is nothing like those brothers of yours who stayed in Yingtian Prefecture with their noses in books."

"That's right. Over the years, the third one has not been sparing in his letters complaining about you, his elder brother — being packed off to the Western Regions for no good reason, and not even getting any decent territory out of it!"

"Imperial Brother, if the ninth one's mission goes badly, you must not punish him for it!"

"Right, you can't blame him, and you can't take the money back either."

"Retired Emperor, what time is this to still be talking about money... wuwu, my poor son!"

Today was the day to send the "Stay-at-Home King" Zhu Cixuan off on his ten-thousand-li journey. His traveling companions — Jin Boguo, Jin Xuanye, and the officials dispatched by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Imperial Clan Court, and the Duke for Perpetuating Sageliness's office, along with the officers and men of the Palace Guard serving as escort and honor guard — had all formed up outside Laoshan Palace and were ready to depart. Only the "Stay-at-Home King" himself remained in the Hall of Imperial Supremacy, bidding a lingering farewell to his family.

Seeing off the "Stay-at-Home King" were the Great Ming Emperor Zhu Cilang, the Chongzhen Retired Emperor, Retired Empress Zhou, Retired Imperial Consort Hu, the Rent-Collecting King Zhu Cixuan, and a large brood of Retired Emperor's sons who had already graduated from primary school and were now in a state of "awaiting sale." Watching the adults put on their performance, the older and more sensible among these Retired Emperor's sons began to doubt the course of their own lives — they had assumed their future was to be rent-collecting kings, but now they discovered they did not seem to be worth all that much.

Zhu Cilang was having doubts of his own — he suspected he had bid too high. The "Stay-at-Home King" did not seem worth three hundred fifty thousand taels; at most he was worth thirty or fifty thousand. To think Chongzhen had fleeced him! He would have to be more careful from now on.

The other thing giving him doubts was the enfeoffment system he himself had designed.

The enfeoffment system was a double-edged sword! Its advantage was that it enabled low-cost expansion. Without the enfeoffment system, Zhu Cilang would have struggled mightily just to restore the Ming territory as it had been before Nurhaci's rebellion — in fact, even the Ming territory of that time had not been entirely governed by circulating officials. Regional lords of every description — Branch Regional Military Commissions, military-civilian Guard Commander offices, Pacification Commissions, Appeasement Commissions, Punitive Pacification Commissions, and the like — had been too numerous to count. As for the vast territory of the Qing dynasty in history, it too had contained a great deal of feudal fragmentation. But compared with the enfeoffment system Zhu Cilang designed and promoted, those feudal fragments were nothing at all.

Zhu Cilang's enfeoffments were not only large, far-flung, and powerful — they also achieved institutional innovation, creating multiple new types of vassal states: federations, confederations, city-states, and more.

It was precisely through the combined efforts of these vassal states that the Great Ming Celestial Dynasty had swollen to its present scale.

But enfeoffment also had its downside! A state once enfeoffed was water thrown out — spilled water cannot be gathered back! To remove a Governor or Governor-General, a single edict sufficed. To remove the head of an internal vassal garrison, one had to act according to circumstances. But to replace the ruler of a vassal state... heh heh, unless the man himself no longer wanted the job, it meant war!

Of course, Zhu Cilang had no choice — the people below had to eat!

The population had already surpassed two hundred million and was still climbing steadily. If they did not go abroad and stake out more land, were they supposed to stay home and play peasant uprisings? And let no one imagine that equal distribution of land could solve anything — the Shun roving bandits had already tried that. When per capita landholding is too low, equal division can only solve the problem for a time. In the long run it is not only ineffective but actually intensifies the contradictions — equal division of land accelerates population growth, because under a certain degree of equalization the threshold for marriage and childbearing is greatly lowered. This causes the already acute tension between people and land to worsen drastically within one or two decades. Moreover, a certain degree of equal division (complete equal division was impossible in feudal society — the meritorious officials and fierce generals who won the realm had to take a large share, or the emperor would be replaced) had to be paired with policies suppressing private industry and commerce in order to preserve the fruits of equal division for any length of time.

If, like the present Great Ming, one implemented policies encouraging the development of private industry and commerce, that would inevitably intensify land annexation — because agriculture and animal husbandry could also become a business, part of industry and commerce. And in the early stage of capitalism, the raw materials of handicraft workshops depended mainly on agriculture.

So encouraging private industry and commerce and not restraining annexation were essentially the same thing. Under such circumstances, staking out rich overseas land to relieve pressure on the homeland became the only reliable method.

And the enfeoffment system was the one and only way to stake out land quickly, because enfeoffment could shift the costs of administration and development onto others while attracting nobles and capital to participate. But establishing directly-ruled overseas territories meant the court had to bear all investment and administration, and the court also had to cover any losses.

And let no one imagine that staking out a colony was guaranteed to make money. Colonization has its risks; founding a state requires prudence!

The present King of Dai, Zhu Cijiong, was one such unlucky fellow shouldering the administrative and development costs of a vassal state!

He had suffered terrible losses in the trade at Trading City. The story of reopening the Silk Road sounded wonderful in the telling, but only when he tried to do it did he learn it was not so easy.

Central Asia was at war every day — who was going to buy silk, porcelain, and tea?

Russia had now been drawn into the Central Asian war as well, forming an alliance with the Kazakhs, the Khwarezmians, and the Uzbeks to fight together against the Great Ming's three vassals in the Western Regions, and they were having a grand time of it.

Moreover, through its alliance with the Muslim powers of Central Asia, Russia had opened up the Volga–Persia trade route. The cost of shipping goods by sea to Persia, then overland to the Caspian Sea, and then via the Caspian and the Volga into the Russian heartland was far lower than the cost of the overland Silk Road.

So the money the King of Dai, Zhu Cijiong, had sunk into the Silk Road would probably not be recovered any time soon.

These days, Zhu Cijiong spent every day fretting in his princely residence in Trading City. Gazing at the castle he had built at such great expense standing empty, Zhu Cijiong's heart was near breaking. He had invested in more than just Trading City — he had also invested in Yining City and Luntai City within the Beiting Protectorate, and in Kobdo City on the territory of the Tumed Khanate. All of them had now become "ghost cities" — not only unprofitable, but requiring enormous maintenance costs. He was nearly coughing up blood from the losses!

And a Kingdom of Dai that always lost money could not be sustained. To recoup his costs, and to save his vassal state, the King of Dai, Zhu Cijiong, began to play dirty, treating the Dzungar Kingdom as his prey.

(End of Chapter)