Daming One Piece

Chapter 240 The Ice Age (Subscribe)
The 17th year of the Ming Dynasty, 1637 AD.

This year is also the seventh year since the Beigang Xuanwei Division was changed to the South China Sea Xuanwei Division and moved to Nantianmen.

This year, Shi Yiwen was 36 years old.

It was also from this year that the Little Ice Age, which lasted for many years, finally fully demonstrated its power to the world, although it will continue to cool down for many years.

However, the disasters brought to Ming Dynasty in the past few years are unprecedented. This year is called "Chongzhen Great Drought" in history. This is a severe drought that lasts for several years, from the north to the south of the Yangtze River The severe drought almost destroyed the entire economy of Ming Dynasty.

And the first thing that couldn't bear it was not Daming, but the Jurchens in the northern part of the Liaodong Great Wall. After they escaped from Kaiyuan City and returned to Jianzhou, although the Jurchens and Mongols suffered heavy population losses under the attack of smallpox, the severe cold these years , but led to a reduction in local food production, starvation everywhere, and the inability to expand southward.

Facing the cold winter, even these people who live in the white mountains and black waters are afraid of the cold.

However, the vast forest allows them to obtain more fur that can keep out the cold.

During the Little Ice Age, fur was undoubtedly an extremely important commodity. For this reason, the remaining Jurchens had to expand northward to obtain fur. They had many conflicts with the Russians in the north. Of course, while dressing themselves warmly , and also exported a large amount of fur to Daming.

Of course, the price is that Jurchen once again became a servant of Ming Dynasty, and what is the price of all this?

The heads of the Aixinjueluo family were sacrificed.

Hauge, Huang Taiji and others were either killed or expelled. They had to do this in order to survive. Only by making good friends with Ming could they gain a chance of life.Even the Mongols are the same.

Of course, now they have no ambition to go south, not just because of the sharp drop in population.More importantly, the solid Great Wall prevented them from going south.

The stability of the border cannot prevent bad weather.

In the 17th year of Apocalypse, the drought in the northern provinces became more and more serious. The drought mainly occurred in Northwest China, such as Beizhili, Shaanxi, Gansu, Henan, and Shanxi. In the past 18 years, there have been severe droughts in several provinces, the Fen River in Shanxi has been cut off, and Linfen even has "continuous haze" in summer, that is, persistent sandstorms.The rivers in the Haihe River Basin stopped flowing, locust plagues and epidemics accompanied the drought in most prefectures and counties of Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and Henan, and more than 20% of the dead in Gansu Province.

In the face of such a famine, although the imperial court stepped up relief efforts, the peasant uprising was still in full swing and seemed to be intensifying.

Emperor Tianqi, who is in his 40s, is not a wise emperor, but he firmly controls the government. Wei Zhongxian, who was held by him as a sword in the past, has long since lost his role. During an impeachment by the ministers, He was driven to the Shouling Mausoleum in the central capital, and then given to death on the way.Being the emperor's knife itself is such an ending.

Compared with the Chongzhen Emperor in history, Tianqi is undoubtedly facing a much better situation. Although the economy has not improved much, at least there is no restraint from Liaodong.

However, in the past ten years, natural disasters have occurred frequently, floods and droughts have continued, and disaster relief has been provided year after year, coupled with continuous peasant uprisings.

The imperial court's disaster relief is simply not enough.

What's more terrible is that although there was no major war in the border towns in the north of the Ming Dynasty, due to the sharp decline in food in the north, the court needed continuous blood transfusions.In order to prevent the recurrence of border troubles, the imperial court could only continuously import money and food to the north.

Although the situation in Daming is not bad at the moment.

But things are definitely not going to get better in this stall.

As the emperor's apocalypse, he is not only short of money, but also short of food!
And for Shi Yiwen, this is a good thing!
In fact, it is precisely because of the lack of food in the imperial court and the widespread refugees that the imperial court is wary of the South China Sea, but cannot do without it.

Compared with the mainland of Ming Dynasty, which suffered from years of drought, Nanyang is undoubtedly an overseas paradise.

The weather here is good, and there are three crops a year.

Even in a land of fish and rice like Huguang, people cannibalism due to the severe drought. For Daming, the food in the South China Sea has become a major issue related to the stability of the world.

Over the years, the court and the people have imported a large amount of grain from the South China Sea to stabilize grain prices.

For this reason, he even had to turn a blind eye to the South China Sea Xuanweisi.

Everyone knows what Daming would look like without the South China Sea rice that ranges from millions to tens of millions of shi every year.

Correspondingly, what is Shi Yiwen doing?

Busy accepting immigrants from Ming Dynasty!

Faced with the situation where bandits are everywhere, while the imperial court sends troops to quell the chaos, after identifying the leaders and killing them, they will send all the captives to various ports. Starve to death or become refugees again.

Therefore, sending it to the South China Sea became the best choice.Moreover, the price offered by Nanhai is also very attractive - one stone of rice!

A refugee who is sent on board will give the government a stone of rice!

This is an affordable option for all parties.

After all, the imperial court got rice, and Nanyang got people.

In the past few years, Shi Yiwen has been conquests in Nanyang. From the South China Sea Peninsula to the South China Sea Islands, a large area of ​​land has become the territory of the South China Sea Xuanweisi. Of course, in name, small countries including Matalan still exist Yes, there are only a few places such as Beigang and Nantianmen in the South China Sea Xuanweisi.

But this does not prevent Shi Yiwen from resettling a large number of immigrants to various places, hoping that they can grow more food.

Of course, not only must more food be sent out, but the food must also be shipped back.

At this time, the grain transport fleet was no longer limited to Beigang, the private sector, the imperial court, and even the Ming court also formed naval divisions, which were said to be naval divisions, but in fact they were specialized in grain transport.

Of course, for Emperor Tianqi, he certainly would not tolerate the fact that such a large granary in the South China Sea was in the hands of outsiders. As early as the 13th year of Tianqi, he used the excuse of "disrespect" to rush to the South China Sea Xuanweisi to destroy Siam. Chenla was destroyed again, and a large number of immigrants were transported to follow suit, and they farmed and transported grain back to the country.

For the imperial court, the income from obtaining these two pieces of land is extremely rich. Even if the exploitation of officials at all levels is removed, the imperial court can obtain more than 300 million shimi from the two lands every year-this is not even inferior to that of Nanzhili. The year's court grain.

Ever since, the imperial court, which had looked down upon the South China Sea in the past, is now also eyeing the South China Sea. In the 20th year of the Apocalypse, it even took the initiative to attack Manila in order to seize Luzon.

Anyone knows.

Under such circumstances, the conflict of interests between the imperial court and the South China Sea will inevitably take place. After all, both sides are expanding their territory in an almost crazy way...

(End of this chapter)