Chapter 479: This Business Is Colonization

Zheng Zhilong frowned and did some arithmetic for Zhu Cilang. "Thousand Years, a big bird-ship can carry at most two or three thousand piculs of rice. No matter how cheap the rice in Annam, Champa, and Water Chenla is, once it's loaded aboard it still costs four or five qian of silver per picul, doesn't it? The price difference on one shipload of rice is only two or three thousand taels, and once you subtract the sailors' wages and the cost of repairing the ships, there's not much left!"

Zhu Cilang laughed. "Venerable Father-in-Law, your arithmetic is wrong!"

How could it be wrong? Zheng Zhilong thought to himself: I'm very good at arithmetic! I keep accounts worth several million a year, and I don't even need to count on my fingers.

Zhu Cilang thought to himself: You think you can out-arithmetic me? My math is excellent — I'm the sort of top student who nearly got a perfect score on the gaokao math exam. I used to keep accounts worth tens of billions without counting on my fingers!

Besides, the business of buying rice in Annam, Champa, and Water Chenla isn't done the way you think at all. The money in this business isn't in selling rice — it's in colonization!

As far as Zhu Cilang knew, colonization could lose money or make money. Losing-money colonization was for seizing territory — you could also see it as a long-term money-burning investment.

Profitable colonization came in two kinds. One kind was purely for profit — for example, the Dutch East India Company's colonization of Taiwan was for the purpose of gaining a trading foothold with China and Japan.

The other kind was gaining both wealth and land: you had to make money, and you also had to take the territory.

Right now the Great Ming was beset by troubles at home and abroad, and its purse was far from loose. It couldn't afford to burn money on colonization at a loss — that would ruin it. At the same time, the Great Ming had a large population, unlike the sparsely populated Netherlands, so it couldn't think only of money and ignore territory. Therefore it had to take the path of gaining both wealth and land!

And in gaining both wealth and land, wealth still came first and land second! The key was to first find an industry that could "draw in people" — even if it earned only a little, or earned nothing at all, it had to attract a certain number of people from the homeland to the colony.

Only when the colony's population grew could it further develop industry and cities, and only then could it hold the land and reap rich returns.

Now, the rice trade with Champa and Water Chenla might not yield rich profits, but it could be done on a very large scale. In this era the Mekong Delta was still barely developed, with vast tracts of land that could be opened up for cultivation. Yet at the same time it was not entirely without foundations — there was a port city called Prey Nokor that had developed quite well. This city was the future Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City. At present it was still territory of the Kingdom of Water Chenla, but more than twenty years earlier it had been granted to the daughter of a Nguyen lord of Quang Nam (a separatist regime within Annam) who had married the King of Water Chenla, and so it had become a haven for Annamese refugees fleeing the Trinh-Nguyen conflict.

And these Annamese refugees were close to the Han people of the Great Ming in ethnic blood, living habits, language, and writing. Moreover, at present there was no formal Kingdom of Annam — there was only the Great Ming's Annam Military Commission!

In other words, Annam was now not a truly independent state, but a native-office regime subordinate to the Ming dynasty. This matter had to be traced back to the decline and usurpation of Annam's Later Le dynasty. In the early sixteenth century the Later Le dynasty of Annam entered what was called its "era of decline," with the imperial clan slaughtering one another and powerful ministers seizing the chance to rise. One of these powerful ministers, a man named Mac Dang Dung, ended up with all power in his hands and played out the trick of abdication and usurpation.

But this usurpation was not carried out cleanly. The other two powerful minister families of the Later Le dynasty, the Trinh and the Nguyen, refused to accept the Mac usurpation — they wanted to usurp the throne themselves! Mac Dang Dung had beaten them to it, so they had no choice but to become loyal ministers of the Le restoration, found a distant relative of the Le clan and set him up as emperor, and set themselves against Mac Dang Dung. They also sent men to Beijing to seek aid from the Jiajing Emperor. The Ming was Annam's nominal suzerain, after all! It couldn't ignore a usurpation in a vassal state, could it?

So the Jiajing Emperor sent a great army to chastise Mac Dang Dung. When Mac Dang Dung saw how bad things looked — he couldn't even handle the troops of the Trinh and Nguyen families, and if you added the Ming on top of that, wasn't he doomed? — he offered his territory in submission to the Ming, wanting to be a loyal subject of the Ming. When the Jiajing Emperor saw that Annam had inexplicably returned to the fold, he naturally stopped attacking Mac Dang Dung and enfeoffed him as Annam Military Commissioner.

And just like that, the Kingdom of Annam was no more!

Unfortunately, the Mac lord who became Annam Military Commissioner still could not defeat the remnants of the Le dynasty, and in 1592 he lost the capital Thang Long, with his remaining forces fleeing to the Ming.

The restored Le dynasty then submitted to the Great Ming and requested the restoration of the name "Kingdom of Annam." But the Ming did not agree, and merely transferred the title of Annam Military Commissioner to the Later Le dynasty.

Yet the chaos within Annam did not end with the Later Le restoration — on the contrary, it became even more confused.

Because the Later Le dynasty itself had no real strength; it had only been restored thanks to the support of the Trinh and Nguyen lords. After the restoration, it was naturally the turn of the Trinh and Nguyen lords to usurp the throne. But there was only one throne — who would get to usurp it? So the two families went to war. At the same time, the Mac clan, which had fled to the Ming for refuge, had not yet gone cold, and in 1600 briefly restored itself and seized Thang Long. Though they could not hold it afterward, they fled to Cao Bang Province in northern Annam and set up a separatist regime there.

In addition, there was also a Vu clan (Vu Duc Cung) that had played a major role in the collapse of the Mac dynasty, who raised troops in rebellion in 1599, proclaimed himself King Long Binh, and also carved out a piece of territory in northern Annam.

So within the borders of the tiny Annam Military Commission there now existed four regimes, fighting among themselves into a complete mess, while outwardly all had to acknowledge the Great Ming as their "good father."

Yet even an Annam like this still had strength to spare to bully the southern kingdoms of Champa and Water Chenla — and it wasn't even the Trinh, Nguyen, Mac, and Vu all bullying them together; just the Nguyen lord of Quang Nam alone had Champa and Water Chenla suppressed. From this one can imagine how weak those two countries were.

And Zhu Cilang, who aspired to be a great colonizer, was also very weak right now. He might not even be able to wipe out the four "little lords" of Annam.

But he also needed to import grain from overseas and at the same time acquire arable land, in order to ease the contradiction between people and land at home. So he could only pick on Champa and Water Chenla, the weakest of the weak. And he didn't dare send a great army in high dudgeon to destroy their states — because the great armies all had to be used against the Tartars and Li Zicheng. So he could only coax and swindle his way into taking advantage of Champa and Water Chenla.

Seeing that Zheng Zhilong did not understand, Zhu Cilang had no choice but to patiently explain: "Venerable Father-in-Law, buying rice from Annam, Champa, and Water Chenla to sell in Quanzhou and Shanghai indeed doesn't earn much — after costs, it might even lose money. But you must understand: if we pay half a tael of silver per picul to buy rice from Annam, Champa, and Water Chenla, and buy in large quantities, then people will certainly go there to open up land and plant.

Leaving Annam aside for the moment, both Champa and Water Chenla have vast tracts of wasteland and fertile soil that can be opened up. Moreover, the national strength of these two countries is utterly feeble — even Annam, split into four, can bully them at will, let alone our Great Ming Celestial Dynasty.

Now our Celestial Dynasty is short of grain at home. To borrow their fertile land to open up and plant — that is their honor! And we won't farm their fields for nothing: we can protect them from being swallowed up by the Nguyen family of Annam. For their kings and nobles, that would be a fine thing too, wouldn't it?"

Zheng Zhilong still did not understand. This might be a good thing for the kings of Water Chenla and Champa, but what benefit was there in it for the Zheng family?

Zhu Cilang continued: "The rice of Water Chenla and Champa needs to be transshipped through ports and trading towns. And those transshipment ports and trading towns can of course be made into our territory. In this way we would have lasting footholds in Water Chenla and Champa. Water Chenla and Champa also lie on the trade route by which merchant ships travel between China and the Southern Seas. Once we have footholds there, our merchant ships will find it much more convenient to go to the Southern Seas and to Siam. Your Zheng family's maritime territory can also expand accordingly.

Moreover, Water Chenla and Champa have quite a few special products that can be sold for good money — for example ivory, rhinoceros horn, ebony, aloeswood, yellow wax — and they can also grow sugarcane and produce cane sugar. As long as we have footholds there, all of these can become sources of wealth for us."

It did seem to be something like that. Zheng Zhilong felt a little dizzy listening. This was clearly a rice-buying business — how had it turned into seizing other people's territory, establishing ports and trading towns, and taking all their special products for oneself? This sounded like something the Tartars and the Western barbarians did! Our Great Ming Celestial Dynasty ought to be a dignified superior state — how could it also engage in such swindling, bullying villainy?

(End of Chapter)