Chapter 703: Learning Their Skills to Govern Them

Strict control? Easier said than done!

Emperor Zhu shot a glance at Qian Qianyi. "Imperial Kinsman Zheng is wrong. How could firearms possibly have flowed from our dynasty to the eastern barbarians? Our dynasty's firearms are somewhat inferior to those of the West and more expensive than Japan's. Even if there were unscrupulous merchants seeking profit, they would surely be importing Western and Japanese firearms into the northern country. As for the inscription 'Made in London, England,' it is most likely the work of someone with an agenda, planting false evidence!

Imperial Kinsman Zheng, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes, yes, yes, Your Majesty is supremely wise! Those matchlocks are either Japanese goods or Western goods, and could also be produced in India."

How shrewd a profiteer was Zheng Zhilong? Once Zhu Cilang tipped him off, he immediately understood that this matter must not be pinned on domestic profiteers.

Because controlling firearms exports would be tantamount to imposing a maritime ban — how could firearms be controlled? Nowadays, the moment someone builds a 1,000-dan seagoing vessel, they openly demand that the shipyard outfit it with several 3-pounder and 6-pounder cannon.

As for matchlocks, they were even more essential for long ocean voyages! Not only did sea merchants and pirates need to buy them, but even the plantation owners going to farm land in the Jinghai and Jin'ou Armies had a gun for every man... If it weren't for every ship having cannon and every man having a gun, going out empty-handed would not make one a colonist, but a slave to others!

So from the perspective of domestic control, colonial expansion truly was not as good as closing the country and locking the gates!

And as for whether some of the firearms flowing out of Ming ports might make their way to the Qing state — there was no need even to ask. One hundred percent, absolutely!

Once a ship left port, it was a free world!

No law, absolute freedom!

So it was perfectly normal for domestic and foreign profiteers to sell Ming firearms to the Qing state. Even if every single Ming merchant were utterly loyal, could they control all those Western merchants? If one wanted to stop Ming-made firearms from entering Qing territory, the only way was to restore the maritime ban...

"Imperial Kinsman Zheng," Wu Xiang, the Minister of War, suddenly asked at this point, "in your opinion, who is it that has been importing Japanese or Western firearms into the Qing state, and conveniently framing England in the process?"

The Dutch! It had to be the Dutch!

Zheng Zhilong had run with the Dutch before. He had been a comprador for the East India Company, and he knew all too well what these conscienceless profiteers were capable of for silver!

"Spain! It must be the Spanish!" Zheng Zhilong said through gritted teeth.

He could not expose the Dutch — because the core of Ming overseas policy was to be pro-Dutch!

Because in this era, the Western nations with significant influence in the eastern seas were four: Holland, England, Spain, and Portugal.

England went without saying — the future empire on which the sun never set! Could Zhu Cilang not guard against them a little?

Portugal's relations with the Ming were actually excellent, but Portugal was now a clay bodhisattva, completely suppressed by the Dutch in Southeast Asia and India, and faring even worse in Europe — swallowed by Spain for sixty years and still fighting a war of independence.

And Spain was the present-day empire on which the sun never set, and somewhat brainless besides, wishing it could go to war with the whole world. How could the Ming be friends with Spain?

So among the Western powers that could be cooperated with, only the sea coachman Holland remained.

Since there was no choice, they could only turn a blind eye...

"Imperial Kinsman Zheng speaks with reason!" Zhu Cilang nodded. "It must be the Spanish up to mischief! That Caballero has been gone for several months now without so much as a reply... It seems he has no intention of signing a treaty for the protection of our expatriates!

These western barbarians are simply beneath contempt. They seized our vassal Luzon, and then used our people to farm and build for them. Once they were done using them, they could not stand to see our people making money, so they levied heavy taxes and harsh laws, forcing our people to rebel — and then they carried out mass slaughter! After killing off one batch, they came back to lure our people to Luzon to make a living.

And now they are openly smuggling guns and cannon produced by our Great Ming to the eastern barbarians. This is truly intolerable bullying!"

"Your Majesty is supremely wise! The Spanish are the worst of the lot, utterly hateful!" Zheng Zhilong said through gritted teeth. "A few years ago they even invaded Taiwan and forced our Ming subjects on the island to build fortresses for them... Such villains are a great menace on our Great Ming's path south into the Southern Seas, and we must guard against them!"

Zheng Zhilong, picking up on Zhu Cilang's words, was now clamoring for war, but he was only shouting.

Those great galleons of the Spanish were no match for the navies of the Dutch or the English, but the Ming navy could not defeat the Spanish navy.

The Ming navy, including the Zheng family fleet, had only seven 500-ton galleons capable of ocean voyages. These seven galleons had been copied from armed merchantmen as templates and were not true warships — at best they were armed merchantmen with somewhat stronger firepower.

Only after all the galleons in this batch were completed would the Anping Zheng family shipyard and the Lopez shipyard in Shanghai begin building true galleon warships — not large vessels of over 1,000 tons, but copies of the Dutch East India Company's warship "Hector." In order to "copy it well," Zhu Cilang had negotiated with Van Diemen in the first month of the third year of Hongxing, reaching a "technology transfer contract" to lease the "Hector" for twelve months, purchase the blueprints, and hire twenty Dutch shipbuilding engineers. For this, the Navy Bureau of the Ministry of War had to pay 80,000 taels of silver and give the first ship of the copied Hector class to the East India Company — for the fulfillment of this contract, Emperor Zhu could not afford to fall out with the Dutch!

Although the Hector was only a 600-ton medium galleon warship with two gun decks and a maximum armament of twenty-four 12-pounder long guns, it was a genuine warship, sturdy enough, with excellent seaworthiness, suited for ocean-going combat. It was better than any warship the Ming navy currently possessed!

But compared with the great Spanish galleons, this warship was still somewhat inferior. Many Spanish galleons had a cargo tonnage exceeding 1,000 tons and could also carry 24-pounder cannon. If Dutch sailors operated a Hector-class vessel, they would not fear the Spanish galleons, but the Ming navy's officers and men were of limited skill — a hundred-year navy was not something casually spoken of. Who could expect the officers and men of a Ming navy that had only been in operation a few years to match the Spanish in skill?

Zhu Cilang nodded. "Since the Spanish are unwilling to protect the Ming people in Luzon, then We shall issue an edict to evacuate our expatriates... The Jinlan commercial port of the Jinghai Army will be opened to all Ming people from Luzon. As long as they are willing to go to Jinlan, they will receive free of charge a residential plot, a plot of farmland, or a piece of land on which to build shops or workshops. Moreover, they will pay no taxes of any kind for the next three years, and half taxes for the two years after that."

The current Jinghai and Jin'ou Armies could not yet be self-sufficient and required large subsidies from the court to be maintained. Therefore, these two military colonies had little autonomy, and the Ming court could direct them remotely — in practice, it was Zhu Cilang and Zheng Zhilong doing the directing.

Their method of developing the colonies was commercial cities plus medium-sized capitalist farms — specifically, using commercial cities as economic centers and farms as the economic foundation to carry out pioneering and colonization.

There were currently two commercial cities serving as economic centers. One was called "Jinlan," roughly the location of what would later be Cam Ranh Bay, and it was the center of the Jinghai Army. The other was called "Jin'ou," formerly Saigon, the center of the Jin'ou Army.

Surrounding these two economic centers were farms laid out in units of 500 mu. Although Zhu Cilang did not advocate equal-field land distribution, he also understood the dangers of large landholding systems, so from the very beginning he had imposed limits on the size of colonial farms. There was not only an upper limit but also a lower limit. The upper limit was 5,000 mu, the lower limit 500 mu, and colonial farms could only be transferred or inherited in units of 500 mu. A 500-mu farm could not be divided in any form, in order to guarantee the farm's economies of scale and the colonial government's tax revenue.

In addition, all commoners arriving in Jinlan and Jin'ou from the Ming homeland could receive 500 mu of land free of charge to establish a farm. If they were unwilling to farm, they could receive an empty plot in the cities of Jinlan or Jin'ou for building a house or conducting business.