My Daming New Empire

Zheng He raised his hand, and the convoy started moving again.He did not get off the carriage to go with them. No matter how good the relationship is, the court's law cannot be lost, otherwise it would be disrespectful.

After a while, they arrived at the Qingjing Mosque. Headed by Imam Habu, dozens of people greeted them outside the gate.

Zheng He also saw Pu Rihe in the crowd, and couldn't help but sigh in his heart.

The Pu family has long since declined. When Taizu was still alive, no one dared to lend a helping hand to the Pu family.It wasn't until the Jianwen period that these Semites dared to take advantage of the loopholes in the court's decree and bought the surviving men of the Pu family as their servants.

As for the women, they were tortured to death long ago.

Pu Rihe is also in his 40s this year. He is a servant of Habu in name, but relying on the wealth hidden by his family in the past, he is not weak at all among the Semites today.

Before coming to Quanzhou, he had already decided to live in Qingjing Temple during his stay in Quanzhou.After everyone greeted him, they led him into the small courtyard arranged for him.

In the worship hall, everyone took off their shoes and sat on the ground.Zheng He beckoned, Jia Shiwen took the imperial edict from a young eunuch, and looked at Pu Rihe with a happy face.

"Patriarch Pu, although I asked His Majesty for your imperial edict this time, His Highness is the one who will take the lead in going to the Western Ocean this time, and even His Majesty will not interfere. Now you can be charged with crimes, but you can't let us go to the Western Ocean together. .”

Pu Rihe froze for a moment, and his smile froze. "My lord, why did it change again?"

Zheng He sighed and said, "Your Highness disagrees, and no one can do anything about it, so you just accept your fate!"

Pu Rihe came to his senses, replied calmly and asked, "But Your Highness still has hatred for my Pu family? Is there a way to resolve it?"

"It's very difficult..." Zheng He shook his head, ignored him, and said to Imam Habu: "Although His Highness does not agree with Patriarch Pu to accompany him, he is willing to take other people with him to the Western Ocean, but when he arrives in the Tianfang area, he has to bear the burden. responsibility for the matter."

The so-called general affairs are translators, Habu nodded and said: "This is what it should be... But His Highness is very important to the merchants in Ningbo. He met them in the afternoon of the same day and awarded honors to four of them. Why didn't you inform me of anything when you arrived in Quanzhou? Wait? There is also the matter of awarding honors, and I hope the Duke will give me some advice."

Thank you for seeing people with lights, Shan Qingying, bamboo sticks, I spit you out, run with the pigs, Wanling 88 for the reward, thank you for your support

Chapter 6 Lanes

Since Qin Shihuang unified China, the merchant class has been severely suppressed. People like Fan Li and Lu Buwei have never appeared again.

Businessmen are discriminated against. First of all, the ancient feudal rulers ruled the people with Confucianism. Confucianism pays attention to honesty and honesty with people.

It is inevitable that businessmen will be short of money when they do business, and what's more, they will murder other people's lives for the sake of wealth. This has created a very serious opposition to Confucianism.

"No treachery, no business" reveals the true face of businessmen. Therefore, in order to promote the Confucian thought of generosity and benevolence, and maintain the social atmosphere, treacherous businessmen must be suppressed. Over time, the status of businessmen will naturally be very low.

The second is that feudal society is farming civilization.In the feudal dynasty of more than 2000 years, it has always been a society where "men farm and women weave". The social productivity is low, and the people do not have much demand for food. Naturally, the demand for trade is greatly reduced.

Therefore, in ancient times, the commodity trade economy was not highly developed, and the transportation was underdeveloped, and the distance of trade could only be carried out in a small range. No fixed place, just like a homeless person.

The ancient people paid attention to stability and hoped that they would be the number one in the future when they studied, so they naturally would not look high on people like shopkeepers.

The real big merchants have been rare since the Qin Dynasty, and they gradually developed until the Song Dynasty, but they mostly existed as vassals of the powerful.

Finally, there is another important reason, which is the underdevelopment of currency.

The most important thing for merchants to trade is to have the support of currency. During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the coins were mainly metal currencies, and a thousand strings weighed tens of catties. Not only were the finances insecure, but the scale of trade would not be large.

A businessman pursues cumbersome money dung all his life, and noble scholars will naturally sneer at it.Moreover, the ancient society was an autocratic society, and the feudal rulers were most afraid of rebellion by others. Once someone became rich, no one could guarantee what he would do.

Shen Wansan is an obvious example.

The ranking of scholars, farmers, businessmen, and businessmen clearly shows the inferior status of businessmen.

In the Qin Dynasty, merchants were not allowed to wear silk clothing even if they were extremely rich.In the Tang Dynasty, merchants were not allowed to enter the court as officials. It was not until the Ming and Qing Dynasties that the status of merchants changed.

This is not only due to social development, but also because until the Ming and Qing Dynasties, silver from all over the world flowed into China, which supported the currency scale of the merchant class.

Today is still the early Ming Dynasty, neither gold nor silver are in large quantities, which cannot meet the needs of the society at all, let alone the exchange of merchants.

Even the royal salary needs to be replaced by cloth, silk, spices, and wood. No matter how many goods the merchants have, the exchange is also a very troublesome thing.

Even if the merchants of this era have a lot of money, it is almost impossible for them to take out 1 taels of silver.

Because their wealth is not gold and silver, but in kind, land.

There are many weaving merchants in Suzhou who can produce 30 bolts of silk at one time. According to the value of these silks, they can be worth [-] million taels of silver, or even higher.

But it is impossible for them to exchange so much silver at once, because the amount of silver on the market is limited.

Therefore, they can only trade with the inner prisoner, and exchange for the food, tools, and materials they need from the inner prisoner, and only a small part can be exchanged for circulating gold and silver.

It was not until the middle of the Ming Dynasty that a large amount of gold and silver from Dongying and Nanyang flowed into China, and the scale of commerce gradually expanded.

In the sixteenth century, Spain discovered a large amount of gold and silver in the Americas, and then a large amount of these gold and silver flowed into China, which allowed the merchant class to get rid of the shackles that had been around their necks.

In the article "Yin Yun's Novels Wushu People" written by Yin Yun, a Liang native in the Southern Dynasties, it is written that "with a waist of one hundred thousand guan, ride a crane to Yangzhou".In fact, this is just a metaphor. It is impossible for a person to ride a crane, let alone be rich in money.

According to the copper coins in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, one is about two or three grams, and it is always two or three kilograms.One hundred thousand guan is 30 million kilograms, or two to three hundred tons. It takes dozens of boats to load it, and hundreds of vehicles to pull it by car.

Who has such a cow that can be wrapped around his waist!

For example, the Pu family went from the Tang Dynasty to Vietnam, then to Guangzhou, and then to Quanzhou. When their family grew to the largest, they owned thousands of sea ships and called more than [-] sea ships, monopolizing the entire spice trade.

However, the amount of gold and silver is still not much, and more often they are bartered. No matter how large the scale of commerce is, it is also subject to the circulation of gold and silver in the entire society.

The tea merchants and celadon merchants in Quanzhou are all rich and powerful, and they are allowed to sell their goods, but the amount of gold and silver they own is also far from the scale of the entire trade.

So in this era, even if Zhu Zhanji does not use banks to regulate, as long as he controls the import of gold and silver from outside, he can use internal control to control the business of the entire country.

However, this model severely restricted the development of commerce, so he thought of using banks to control commerce.

And using knighthood to improve the status of merchants, although it is only an opening, the temptation to these merchants is not so great.

The status of the merchants was low. After the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the control over the aliens along the coast was very strict, and Ahmed and the others were even more guarded against.

Now they seem to have seen a lighthouse in the darkness. If they can get honors, each of them will spare no expense to join the upper class of Ming Dynasty.

Zheng He didn't hide it either, and told the experiences of the five honored people.Ningbo Qiuhe was awarded the honor because of his cooperation with Zhu Zhanji, and under the influence of Zhu Zhanji, he built roads and bridges in his hometown to facilitate the people.

Wu Jinwen in Ningbo is because he released food for disaster relief during the Yongjiang flood last year, and Han Yilang in Shaoxing is because he has abandoned his family property in the past few decades and has been promoting communism and solidarity in his hometown.

Hangzhou Liao Chengxian has been promoting charity. In the past few decades, he has donated money to build many Puji halls, Hui'an halls, Yuying halls, Jishan halls, and Sang Jing halls to benefit the people.

And Yuyao Jin Zhiyuan is a member of Jin Kuo's clan. He was influenced by Jin Zhiyuan. In the process of preparing the goods for the internal supervisor, he not only lent a large amount of goods to the internal supervisor, but also affected a large number of people.

After introducing these, Zheng He said: "Although His Highness is somewhat wary of foreign races, it is because he takes the interests of the country very seriously. As long as he does not do things that harm the interests of Ming Dynasty, His Highness has no prejudice against the merchant class. The five of them were able to receive honors mainly because they made their own contributions to the stability of Ming Dynasty.

This also reminds you people that businessmen who make profits should give back to the countryside and promote harmony among the people.As long as you can do this, even you people can still be trusted by His Highness. "

He looked at Pu Rihe again and said: "Your ancestors have troubled you, but you deserve it. At least in your generation, you should keep a low profile and stop thinking about showing off."

Pu Rihe's face was a bit unwilling, but at this time he could not confront Zheng He, his current status was just a servant, while Zheng He was the Duke of the state.

If it weren't for the fact that everyone still cared that he was from the same clan and had received favor from the Pu family, he wouldn't even be qualified to sit here.