Chapter 1612: Civilization Has Its Circles

By now, many large and small states had appeared in the Southern Ocean and on the Southern Continent. Half of them were Ming "princely fiefs," and some were domains specially granted by Zhu Cilang to his most trusted ministers — for example, the Zheng family of the Duke of Quan, the Zhu family of the Duke of Cheng, the Ma family of the Duke of Gui, the Shen family of the Duke of Chong, the Kong family of the Duke of Yansheng, the Zhang family of the Duke of Ying, the Xu family of the Duke of Ding, the Wei family of the Duke of Tong, and others, each with a fief of its own.

Zhu Cilang had originally wanted to set up a state for the Wu family as well, but Wu Sanfu, Wu Sanmei, Wu Ake, and the others firmly refused... The old Wu family had already lost a fortune playing at military governorships; they could not afford to play at fief-states. All the family wanted was to settle down comfortably as imperial in-laws!

Since the old Wu family did not want a fief-state, Zhu Cilang naturally did not press the matter. He knew the Wus were all big, clumsy, rough fellows who only knew how to soldier and collect rent; they were utterly incapable of running a country. If he forced them to found a state, they would certainly lose their shirts.

As for the fief-states the other families had founded around the Southern Ocean and the Southern Continent, most were not doing well. Only the Zheng family's Sultanate of Sulu, the Shen family's Surabaya State, the Wei family's Riau State, a few states invested in by Zhu-family princes — Sijiang, Makassar, Bali, Lanfang — the Luzon State into which the Retired Emperor Chongzhen had sunk his life savings, Zhu Cizhao's Phuket State, and the Malacca State and Palembang State occupying the strategic chokepoint of Malacca — oh, and that big, loose United Kingdom of the Southern Continent — were turning a profit.

All the other states were uniformly money-losers!

Of course, it was not necessarily the case that these states would keep losing money forever, until they closed up shop for good. But long-term losses were foreseeable... So by the fifty-second year of Hongxing, the term "selling one's country" had acquired two meanings in the Great Ming Celestial Dynasty. One was the treasonous betrayal of the motherland; the other was selling off part or all of one's holdings in a fief-state!

You toil and suffer to invest in founding a state ten thousand li away, then lose money miserably — and you are not even allowed to sell it off? Is there no justice in the world? These are all limited-liability states! Investors cannot be made to bear unlimited liability — otherwise who would dare invest?

So now there was not only selling one's country at a loss, but something even worse: bankruptcy and the death of a state... Over the past twenty-odd years, several states had already perished!

That was true total loss — sometimes even costing the investors their lives. A proper human tragedy!

As the saying goes: founding a state has its risks; investment requires caution!

Besides "selling countries," there was also the business of "selling cities"... Because investing in a single state was simply too risky for one family, in many cases several families formed groups to invest together. And investors usually did not merely take shares without participating in management — investing in a fief-state was extremely risky, and apart from the few states where one could dig up gold or that happened to sit astride a trade chokepoint, even the profitable states offered quite limited returns on investment.

The reason people still rushed headlong to invest was that investing in a state could bring benefits beyond monetary returns.

For example, hereditary occupation of political power, or the effect of a wily rabbit having three burrows — although under Zhu Cilang's leadership, political struggles within Ming China were generally mild, who could guarantee they would not turn bloody again in the future?

So for those great and powerful families, having the chance to grab a piece of territory overseas was always a good thing. Even if their descendants came to grief in the Ming homeland, the overseas branch could at least keep the family line burning...

Therefore, those great and powerful families investing overseas would never put up money without taking land. They would usually send out the family's underachieving sons in groups to branch out and spread the family line. One family investing in one state might not have that much capital — and even if it did, it had to diversify! So it was often several families, or several dozen, investing together as a group. The family that invested the most became the state's ruler and took the best territory for its capital. Those who invested less took lesser territory and became city lords.

Of course, this "city lord" did not mean merely lord of a city, but also lord of a castle — some of the lucky ones invested in a place that grew into a populated city, and then they could make money. In most cases, however, what they got was a manor-castle. Though it earned little, it was still a place to settle down and make a living. If it really developed over decades or a century, these city-lord families would put down deep roots. Even the Great Ming Celestial Dynasty could not easily mobilize an army to root them out.

But being lord of one of these manor-castles was not so easy either. Did they think going abroad to become a master was that simple? Plenty went abroad and lost everything, then came slinking back home!

So fire-sale liquidations of castles and manors happened almost every month... Selling cities was far more common than selling countries.

And because the Southern Ocean had fragmented terrain, numerous islands, was easy to carve up, and lay along the East-West trade and spice-trade routes, it became the key region where Ming China's powerful and wealthy invested in founding states and cities.

Where there is investment, of course there are losses...

In addition, the Southern Continent, being relatively close to the Southern Ocean, and its surrounding areas, were also a key investment destination. Because the Southern Continent operated on an "open franchise" model — everyone was welcome. And it had no terrifying tropical diseases, so the great and powerful families of Ming China, including the various princely households, would establish one or several castle-manors on the Southern Continent as a fallback... Somehow, this gave that pack of profiteers — the British East India Company, the Ming-Portuguese-Austrian Company, the Pacific Trading Company, Mancini Tea House, the Yiguan Party Trading Company, and the Sand Ship Gang Trading Company — a way to make a fortune: providing one-stop city-building services!

As long as you were willing to pay, these bastards could contract for everything else... Of course, profiteers could not guarantee that a city lord would turn a profit — the risk still had to be borne by the investor.

Therefore, with all parties joining in and each showing their special talents, the Southern Ocean and the Southern Continent were now covered with small states and as many city-states as hairs on an ox. Though development was rapid, the chaos was considerable. Conflicts frequently broke out among small states, city-states, and manors.

On the seas of the Southern Ocean, pirate ships backed by various small states and city-states often attacked one another... It was like the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods of old — only mutual annexation was missing.

The Ming court naturally wanted to manage it, but was constrained by being too far away to reach and by the complex relationships on all sides, and had never been able to manage it well — these people fighting each other were not barbarians; they were all "our own people" of the Great Ming, possibly even relatives!

So Zhu Cilang had been mulling over setting up a "general agent" in the Southern Ocean and on the Southern Continent, to let this general agent handle a heap of troublesome matters.

Zhu Cizhao had originally been the best candidate for general agent, but after his wife died, the man lost all will to live and stopped managing affairs. And his grandson Zhu Yijin had been "spoiled" rotten by him — apart from eating, drinking, and having fun, the boy knew nothing at all!

Sending him to be general agent would certainly make a mess of things.

So Zhu Cilang had no choice but to find someone else!

"Elder Brother," Zhu Cizhao said with a bitter smile, thinking as he spoke, "the South is vast... Can one alliance leader manage it all?"

"Vast?" Zhu Cilang thought to himself: It is not as vast as the Americas or Central Asia!

Zhu Cizhao continued, "Moreover... do Siam, Annam, Laos, and Chenla count as part of the Southern Ocean? They are Ming's propriety-observing vassals. If they were placed under the Southern Ocean alliance leader, would they accept it? And could the Southern Ocean alliance leader manage them?"

Zhu Cilang said, "Fourth Brother, you make a good point... Siam, Annam, Laos, and Chenla cannot be placed under the Southern Ocean minor alliance leader."

Zhu Cizhao added, "Also, we have some territory on the Lesser Western Ocean and on the African continent... These holdings are not large; setting up a separate alliance leader for them would be inappropriate, would it not? Better to place them under the Southern Ocean minor alliance leader."

Zhu Cilang nodded. "That works too! But would the Southern Ocean minor alliance leader not be managing a bit too much?"

"Then take away the Southern Continent," Zhu Cizhao said. "The Southern Continent plus some nearby islands is more or less self-contained. The United Kingdom of the Southern Continent can be put in charge of the various states there. As for the Southern Ocean alliance leader, the Malacca State and Luzon State can take turns serving."

"Good!" Zhu Cilang said with a smile. "Then there will be four minor alliances — the New Continent, the Western Regions, the Southern Ocean, and the Southern Continent — plus the Great Ming as the general alliance. The Heavenly Alliance will have five alliance leaders!"