Taichang Ming Dynasty

Chapter 114 The Fifteen-Year-Old Governor
"Sir, the way they use slaves is against the moral principles of heaven," said Xu Guangqi.

"You think it's bad?" Zhu Changluo asked. "Squandering the national treasury and increasing salaries year after year has left the people of the Ming Dynasty living in poverty. This is truly against the moral principles of heaven. Rather than causing the people in the border areas to live in fear and the people in the interior to tighten their belts, it's better to let the Jiannu suffer."

"After all, this is the teaching of a saint. If it is spread out, it will probably cause opposition." Xu Guangqi is still a pragmatist after all, and he still understands the principle of choosing the lesser of two evils.

"Who said we should publicize this? Let's do it privately. There are plenty of people willing to take advantage of this headhunting business." Zhu Changluo ordered: "Okay, continue translating."

"As ordered."

Władysław Amato waited patiently as the two high-ranking officials of the Ming Dynasty discussed things in a language he could not understand. Finally, he was surprised to hear that the court did not want to buy slaves, but instead wanted to sell them.

Because in his understanding, China is not like India. The Chinese have always looked down on foreigners like them, so how could they be willing to be their slaves?

Władysław Amato displayed exceptional business acumen. In business transactions, if the other party was willing to sell, he was willing to buy. In recent years, with the continued expansion of global maritime trade, the demand for slaves has also increased. Therefore, for the slave trader Władysław Amato, even if the Ming Dynasty was not a market but a source of goods, it was not a significant loss.

Władysław Amato began to think: To avoid the Iberian Peninsula's threat, the newly rising maritime power of England and the traditional land power of France were choosing to establish new colonies in North America. As long as a trade agreement could be reached, selling Jianzhou's slaves to Canada wouldn't work. With the west coast undeveloped, a route via the Cape of Good Hope and then to the east coast of North America would be too circuitous. Jianzhou's slaves would be better sold directly to India and Southeast Asia, where the demand was already considerable.

"Excuse me, where does the goods come from?" asked Władysław Amato.

"Of course it's Liaodong. You should have heard that there is a group of nomadic people who are overestimating their own strength and are provoking trouble in the area north of the capital. The court plans to send some of them out of Liaodong after defeating them." Xu Guangqi adjusted his mentality and used tactful words.

"The slave traders in Macau are willing to share the worries of the imperial court." Władysław Amato quickly responded to express his feelings.

"Very good." Zhu Changluo nodded in satisfaction.

"But I would like to ask, when, where, and at what price can we obtain a certain number of Jianzhou slaves." Władysław Amato asked all the questions in one breath. Only with this crucial information could he arrange the route.

"Today we will only determine the guidelines and not agree on the details. Other people will come to discuss the specific plan with you." Zhu Changluo waved his hand.

"I understand." Władysław Amato was not anxious at all. Instead, he felt happy in his heart, because this sentence meant that the court was willing to engage in larger-scale trade with them.

"You are the last one, right? Harald Brandt." Zhu Changluo called out.

"I am truly honored that Your Excellency remembers my humble name." Harald Brandt lowered his posture as soon as he arrived. Unlike the others, he had no way out.

"What do you do?" This was the highlight of the day, but Zhu Changluo didn't seem to take it seriously. Coupled with his constant yawning, he looked like he was desperate and wanted to leave.

"To answer your question, sir, I am..." The arms dealer Harald Brandt repeated what he had said in Suzaku Pavilion.

"An arms dealer. Want to open a factory in Ming territory?" Zhu Changluo curled his lips. "There's no precedent for this."

"My lord. I can set that precedent," Harald Brandt said sincerely.

"Haha." Zhu Changluo laughed. "Becoming a precedent has its price. What price can you pay to have the court set this precedent for you?"

"I can offer generous rewards to you gentlemen." As he said this, he took out a folded note from his pocket and handed it to Xu Guangqi.

"Sir, the above said that he is willing to give 20,000 taels of silver as a filial tribute." Xu Guangqi said.

"Tell him that his little bit of information cannot convince the emperor." Zhu Changluo shook his head.

After translating it truthfully, Harald Brandt asked anxiously, "How can I, then, impress the Emperor?"

"Guns and cannons are, after all, the most important weapons of the nation. I wouldn't be comfortable letting a foreign merchant like you control the Emperor and the court." Zhu Changluo had already prepared his argument. "So I can use this money to help you secure a low-ranking official position, attaching you to the Ministry of Works."

"Thank you, sir!" Harald Brandt kowtowed quite politely, which was obviously a practiced gesture.

"Don't be in a hurry to thank me. This is just empty talk to stop other officials from making excuses." Zhu Changluo waved his hand to signal him to stand up.

"Then may I ask, sir, what is pragmatism?" Harald Brandt asked anxiously.

"Pragmatically, your factory must be registered under the name of the Armoury Bureau. The Imperial Court must take a stake, assign supervisors, and even more importantly, send soldiers to watch over it." After Xu Guangqi finished translating Zhu Changluo's words, he added, "Why don't you thank me quickly? The Armoury Bureau is very strict with you. Registering under the name of the Armoury Bureau means you have the Emperor's guarantee."

"I thank you, Your Excellency." Harald Brandt smoothly put himself into the role of a Ming Dynasty official.

He wasn't opposed to imperial control, and sending troops to observe was perfectly acceptable. As long as he could gain influence, make money, and gain prestige, he had no objection. "Then how much of a share do you want?" Harald Brandt asked cautiously.

"30% to 70%. 30% for you and 70% for the inner court." Zhu Changluo asked for an exorbitant price.

"Sir, this is too much," Harald Brandt countered. "It's more like the other way around."

"Impossible. It's not easy to get connections in the inner court. Even the 70% depends on the mood of Eunuch Wang from the Imperial Household Department." Zhu Changluo lied without hesitation.

"Huh?" Wang An was lost in thought, unable to get a word in. Suddenly called upon, his face was bewildered for a moment.

"Your Excellency, this is it, 60/40. No more." Harald Brandt kept shaking his head. Every part of his body expressed his disapproval.

"40% to 60%, 40% for you and 60% for the inner court. Think about it, you have established a relationship with eunuch Wang and obtained the banner of the Imperial Household Department, so you have to spend less on the ceremony and tribute. Moreover, it is your profit. Even if they take 90%, you still make some money." Zhu Changluo looked unhappy.

"Sir, if this gets any worse, I might as well become a middleman." Harald Brandt sighed and said resignedly, "Let's split it 50-50. I'll dig out my coffin money and scrape together another 10,000 taels of silver. Consider it my filial tribute to the eunuch. How do you think?"

"Xu Libu, what are you looking at me for?" Wang An scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "He said he wanted to give you 10,000 taels of silver as a tribute."

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It was getting late, and Zhu Changluo was unwilling to spend the night at Xu Guangqi's house, which was bound to cause chaos. If he hadn't pressed him, Xu Guangqi would have brought out everyone he could find in the mansion to kowtow to him. So after understanding the basic information and finalizing the profit sharing issue of the firearms factory, Zhu Changluo boarded the sedan chair back to the palace.

The sedan chair is carried by eight people and can accommodate two people without any pressure.

"What do you think about what happened today?" Zhu Changluo asked Zhu Youxiao.

"How do you see it? How else can I see it?" Zhu Youxiao was brooding aimlessly on the three forms and transformations of water. He was startled by this sudden question.

"Do you think I just brought you here to see the sea monkeys?" Zhu Changluo pinched Zhu Youxiao's round face.

"Father, could you be more specific?" Zhu Youzheng straightened himself.

"What do you think these five people have in common?" Zhu Changluo rubbed his eyes.

"Vulgar, extremely mercenary." Zhu Youxiao came to this very intuitive conclusion without much thought. "It can be said that every sentence they say revolves around gold and silver."

"Of course, they're businessmen. Businessmen value profit, just like farmers value their land. It would be strange if they didn't go around." Zhu Changluo was obviously not very satisfied with this answer. "What else?"

"And what else? The five sea merchants come from different regions and belong to different trades. Shipowners, landlords, mine owners, factory owners, and slave owners. Slaves... That's right! Slaves, the very source of their profits!" Zhu Youxiao suddenly realized. "Landlords rely on slaves to farm their land, miners rely on slaves to mine their ores, and only that middleman hasn't mentioned slaves. I suspect that if he were to open a firearms factory in Southeast Asia, he'd likely have dealings with that slave trader. And doesn't that shipowner have a fleet operating in the South China Sea? He'd definitely help the slave owner transport slaves."

"Do you think this is right?" Zhu Changluo asked.

"Of course not. The laws of the Ming Dynasty do not apply to them, so there is nothing wrong with merchants owning slaves. Although slaves are born lowly, they are still human beings, different from animals. Only barbarians treat humans as animals." Zhu Youxiao said.

Zhu Changluo nodded. In this era, the concept of hierarchy was the absolute mainstream. If someone were to ask, "Are kings, princes, generals, and ministers of different races truly of equal rank?" the answer would most likely be "Yes."

However, there are significant differences in Eastern and Western thought. Influenced by the ideal of benevolence, Easterners generally view other ethnic groups as human beings, while Western colonizers bluntly treat other ethnic groups as subhuman. The humiliating history of the past century demonstrates that Westerners didn't colonize China not because they didn't want to, but because, for a long time, the powerful centralized dynasties prevented them from doing so.

If the Ming Dynasty had not been strong enough, these shipowners and merchants who sailed across the oceans to Asia to "strike gold" would never have sat quietly at a table and argued about profit sharing, much less knelt on the ground like slaves, begging Ming officials for a chance to open factories and trade. Instead, they would have unhesitatingly treated the Chinese like animals, just as they had treated the people of India and Southeast Asia, making them "foreign masters" rather than "foreign minions."

"Then do you exclude them?" Zhu Changluo asked.

"Your Majesty, from the bottom of my heart, I strongly dislike the behavior of these people. After all, humans are different from animals. They are barbarians, while I have learned the ways of the sages." Zhu Youxiao changed the subject. "However, I am your son, and you are the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Your Majesty puts the people of the Ming Dynasty first, and I should do the same."

"Moreover, the people enslaved by them are not slaves of the Ming Dynasty, nor are they the people of the Ming Dynasty. There is no fundamental difference between them and the Jiannu who betrayed the court and cut themselves off from the world. Therefore, for the benefit of the people of the world and for the sake of the Ming Dynasty, I should temporarily put aside the ideals of a saint and become a mercenary. Unless..." Zhu Youxiao paused.

"Unless?" Zhu Changluo motioned him to continue.

"Unless we can expand the territory of the Ming Dynasty to Southeast Asia, set up counties and educate the barbarians," the fighting blood of the Zhu family seemed to be burning in this young man who was about to turn fifteen.

"Do you want to be Emperor Wu?" Zhu Changluo asked with a smile.

"Your son." Zhu Youxiao lowered his head in embarrassment, like a young man who was caught red-handed while having a middle school syndrome.

"Remember your passionate heart and lofty ambitions. Go back and write them down in a notebook. Keep it somewhere you can find it only. Whenever you feel tired or bored, take it out and read it." Zhu Changluo gently stroked his son's head and said in a serious and steady tone, "When Emperor Jiajing first came to Beijing, he also wanted to make a difference, but he ultimately lost himself in the vain pursuit of eternal life. If Hai Rui hadn't carried his coffin and died admonishing him, Emperor Jiajing would probably never have remembered his heroic image."

"I understand, son." Zhu Youxiao nodded solemnly.

"Since you are willing to go against your nature and deal with these Westerners, I will give you a job," said Zhu Changluo.

"Your Majesty, I am willing to do it." Zhu Youxiao didn't even ask his father what he wanted them to do.

"To govern a big country, you must first manage a small piece of land. I will give you a prefecture, and you go and manage that prefecture well." In the successor training plan formulated by Zhu Changluo, "managing a small piece of land" is an extremely important part.

Emperors rose to power through inheritance, but since the Jiajing period, they have become canaries in the capital, observing the world from a narrow perspective. After ruling for decades, they have been unaware of even the most basic conditions of public opinion and prices.

Zhu Youxiao was very excited. He swallowed nervously and asked, "Excuse me, father, where is that mansion?"

"That mansion doesn't exist yet." Zhu Changluo kept the secret.

"Ah?" Zhu Youxiao felt like a cat was scratching his heart. "How can I take care of it if it doesn't exist?"

"Tianjin." Zhu Changluo snapped his fingers. "I want to build a new large port city in Tianjin. You will be appointed as the governor there. Starting from scratch, we will transform Tianjin into Guangzhou."

"New construction? Your son?"

"Why, no confidence?"

"Yes!" Zhu Youxiao was filled with excitement.

"Very good. After the next spring imperial examination, I will give you several new Jinshi. They will assist you, and you must train them."

"My son obeys the order!"

(End of this chapter)