Chapter 731: The Ming Is the Suzerain State!

In this world, the only thing to fear is the word "earnest"!

Ji Kun, the Ming dynasty's foremost ruthless official, was an earnest man. Although he was most unwilling to be a ruthless official, he still carried out property confiscations with the utmost earnestness — more earnestly than any of the northern censors — which was how he earned the nickname "Ji, King of Hell" and became one of the three worst-reputed officials in the Ming bureaucracy. The other two were "Luo the Flayer" Luo Dagong and "Huang the Tiger" Huang Zongxi!

Luo Dagong had scraped the soil of Songjiang Prefecture so thoroughly that he made it the number-one tax-paying prefecture in the entire Ming, surpassing Suzhou Prefecture, which had held first place in tax payments for more than two hundred years running!

Huang Zongxi, in the Ministry of Personnel, was in charge of merit evaluations and audits, and made it his special business to torment the county magistrates of Jiangnan Province. Every year, a good dozen or more county officials were stripped of their posts by him, and the fellow was utterly impervious to influence — no matter who pleaded on someone's behalf or sent gifts, it was all useless.

Although Ji Kun had gone abroad, his disposition for "doing evil earnestly" still could not be changed. While stopping at Jinghai, he heard the King of Rinan, Zhu Cizhao, mention the news of Siam expelling the Chinese, and immediately pointed out the legal error committed by King Prasat Thong.

From a legal standpoint, the Kingdom of Siam is a vassal state of the Great Ming Celestial Dynasty!

The Ming is the suzerain, and Siam is the vassal. For a vassal state to expel the subjects of its suzerain without cause — that is walking down the road to rebellion!

How could Ji Kun, the Ming dynasty's foremost ruthless official, stand by and watch the sprouts of rebellion go unchecked?

So he immediately, in the name of "Imperial Commissioner and Plenipotentiary Ambassador," issued an order to Zheng Hongkui (originally named Zheng Zhibiao, the fourth younger brother of Zheng Zhilong), Vice Regional Commander of the Dongning Fleet who was escorting the mission to Europe, to change course and go to Siam to demand an explanation.

And Zhu Cizhao happened to be somewhat tired of Zhang Yong, the Vice Military Commissioner of the Jinghai Army, who was on very good terms with Qiu Mengmei, so he simply sent him off with 1,000 Shaanxi soldiers who had nothing to do in Jinghai and were always causing trouble, to go to the Kingdom of Siam and stir up trouble.

Now Zhang Yong and 1,000 elite Jinghai Army soldiers had already gone ashore together with the two envoys, Ji Kun and Li Shaoyou, as well as the Dutch ambassador Van Diemen, and had occupied a large island called Dinnei Island — not a sea island, but a small plain east of the Chao Phraya River, which formed terrain surrounded by water on all sides because a tributary of the Chao Phraya flowed past the eastern side of this land.

This Dinnei Island was located at the river mouth, and many overseas Chinese lived on the island. Most of the residents could speak a little Chinese, and they were not particularly averse to the army of the suzerain state that had come from the sea.

So Ji Kun left Zhang Yong with 500 Jinghai soldiers to guard Dinnei Island, while he and Li Shaoyou took the remaining 500 men, hired twenty wooden boats, and set off up the Chao Phraya River toward the city of Ayutthaya.

"Are you a Ming subject?" Ji Kun, sitting on one of the large boats, saw Ye Jiaxin rowing while dressed in Han clothing, and asked him a question.

Ye Jiaxin said, "This humble one is a Ming subject, from Hubei."

"Hubei?" Ji Kun was taken aback. "So far away?"

There were plenty of Cantonese and Fujianese here in the Southern Seas, but Hubei people were a rare sight!

Ji Kun asked again, "How did you end up coming to Siam?"

Ye Jiaxin sighed. "Wasn't it all because of the fief bonds?"

"Fief bonds." Ji Kun gave a bitter smile and sighed.

These fief bonds had ruined a great number of rich peasants in Hubei. The rich peasants themselves would not have speculated in fief bonds, but many of the great merchants they did business with had lost money in fief bond trading, and so the debt crisis was passed down the chain, taking a batch of Hubei rich peasants down with it.

And Wuhan was now the Western Capital of the Ming, and naturally one of the regions where all policies were enforced most vigorously. So many Hubei rich peasants had been lured into going abroad.

Ji Kun sighed. "How long have you been in Siam?"

"Almost a year," Ye Jiaxin answered.

"Then do you think Siam is good?"

"Good, of course it's good." Ye Jiaxin thought to himself: It's even better than the Ming! The land is flat, the climate is moist, and there are women who don't mind that I've come from far away, alone and wretched, and are willing to marry me — and there are no fief bonds to ruin people! Is there any better place under heaven?

Ji Kun looked at Ye Jiaxin's expression, lost in thought. After a while he asked again, "Can you speak Siamese now?"

"I can."

This Ye Jiaxin was no fool, and he had a bit of a talent for languages. Under his wife's instruction, in just over half a year he had become able to speak Siamese.

Of course, he could not read Siamese script, and he had not mastered complex vocabulary, but he could carry on a conversation.

"Oh," said Ji Kun. "Then come along with this official as an interpreter. Once the negotiations are concluded, I'll put you in for a commendation."

An interpreter? And a commendation too? Could it be that he was going to become an official? No — just a clerk, then!

This really was a pie falling from the sky! Could it be that his family's fortunes were about to turn?

After a burst of wild joy in his heart, Ye Jiaxin suddenly felt a little worried, and asked in a low voice, "Your Excellency, do you think the negotiations can succeed?"

"Hmph!" Ji Kun stroked his beard. "How could they not? Our Great Ming Celestial Dynasty is Siam's suzerain, and moreover we have troops garrisoned at Ca Mau and Jinghai, a fleet at the mouth of the Chao Phraya, and the Dutch also support the Ming!"

As he spoke, he glanced at Van Diemen, who was sitting on the same boat, sweltering in the heat and wiping sweat away again and again. "Ambassador Diemen, does Holland support the Ming?"

Van Diemen had spent several years in China and could already speak Chinese. Hearing Ji Kun's question now, a surge of irritation rose in his heart — it had always been he who stirred up trouble and sowed discord; how had he now been made into a foreign gun wielded by this Chinese bureaucrat?

"We of course support the Ming's lawful rights and interests in Siam, but the rights and interests of the Kingdom of Siam should also be fully protected!"

Ji Kun smiled. "That is only natural. Our Ming is Siam's suzerain, and naturally bears the responsibility of protecting its vassal state!"

The moment Van Diemen heard talk of suzerains and vassals, he began to get a headache.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there existed in Southeast Asia a suzerain-vassal tributary system with the Ming as the Celestial Dynasty and the various Southeast Asian states as vassals.

And this system stood in enormous conflict with the Western colonial system!

If one looked at it through Western legal theory, a state like Siam was a protectorate of the Great Ming Celestial Dynasty, and could even be regarded as a part of the Ming Empire!

Their sovereignty was incomplete, and so they could very easily slide into the position of a Ming colony.

As long as the Ming once again possessed powerful seafaring capability, then those Eastern states that had traditionally attached themselves to China and lacked the ability to build strong sea power of their own would very naturally acknowledge the suzerainty of the Celestial Dynasty.

And the Ming, having consolidated its suzerainty, would then go further and seek ways to convert suzerainty into profit — the previous Ming emperors might not have done so, but this current Ming emperor would certainly maximize the benefits of suzerainty.

In other words, the Ming would seek to colonize its vassal states in Southeast Asia!

At this very moment, in the city of Ayutthaya, reputed to be invincible.

King Prasat Thong, who had never fought a war, devoutly believed in Buddhism, and loved poetry, was sitting on his gold-wrapped throne, looking at the two rows of flustered, half-naked men in the great hall, his brows tightly knit, saying not a word.

These half-naked men were all his ministers!

The courtiers of the Kingdom of Siam had no official robes; they attended court bare-chested and half-naked, so looking down from the throne, one could tell at a glance who had a fine figure and who needed to work harder at losing weight. Oh, they all seemed a bit fat!

King Prasat Thong vaguely remembered that in his youth, at the court of his grandfather King Ekathotsarot, what he had seen were rows upon rows of muscular, fierce men!

Those fierce men were the professional head-choppers left behind by King Prasat Thong's great-uncle, the great King Naresuan. The great king had been utterly ferocious — war every year, campaigns every season — and with the strength of Siam alone had challenged the two great powers of Burma and Chenla. First he had rebelled against Burma and restored the nation, then he had broken Burma three times, and finally he had conquered Chenla, fighting tooth and nail to carve out a great Siamese empire!

But more than forty years of continuous war (counting from Bayinnaung's conquest of Siam) had left the interior of Siam desolate everywhere, with severe population loss — especially the massive deaths of able-bodied men. Ayutthaya's national strength was exhausted, and it truly could not sustain a vast empire.

Therefore, the three Siamese kings after the great King Naresuan had all avoided war as much as possible, allowing the people to rest and recuperate, developing agricultural production, and at the same time vigorously recruiting foreign immigrants (mainly Chinese) in order to restore national strength as quickly as possible.

But more than forty years of civil governance had made the nobles of the Kingdom of Siam forget how to fight wars. And just at this time, that muddle-headed, day-to-day Great Ming Celestial Dynasty had suddenly shown its might — first subduing the chaotic Annam, then destroying the lingering Champa in one stroke, and then step by step nibbling away at the eastern territories of Chenla.

Under these circumstances, King Prasat Thong, sensing danger, felt that the Ming immigrants within his country were a threat and that it was necessary to control them, driving away all the Ming immigrants near the city of Ayutthaya.

But who could have known that his decree had barely been issued, and not many Ming immigrants had yet been driven out, when the Ming naval fleet arrived to demand an accounting.

(End of Chapter)