Imperial Master of the Ming Dynasty

In fact, the ruling class of the Ming Dynasty was not completely ignorant of overseas knowledge.

On the contrary, due to the great conquest of the Mongol Empire, whether it was the complete Eurasian land bridge or the intermittent maritime connections from the Yuan Dynasty to the Mamluks, the East-West trade that lasted for thousands of years provided a new understanding of each other. Opportunity.

Mongols, Semu people, Westerners, and Persians were all common in the south in the late Yuan Dynasty.

Therefore, the top brass of the Ming Dynasty were fully aware of the huge profits from maritime trade.

Zhu Di was very aware that the resistance to lifting the maritime ban stemmed not only from Zhu Yuanzhang's ancestral precepts, but more importantly, the court was worried that overseas trade would drive farmers away from their fields, thus causing instability in Ming society.

To put it bluntly, the first thing to be lost when the maritime ban was lifted was the interests of the Ming gentry, with civil servants as their spokespersons.

How to counter the gentry’s resistance to maritime trade?

Zhu Di took a deep breath and waited for Jiang Xinghuo to show him the path hidden in the fog.

Jiang Xinghuo smoothed over his thoughts and said slowly.

“You also know that since the late Song Dynasty, there have been many ‘scholar-bureaucrats’ in the local area. They own a large amount of land and property, and the Mongolian tax farming system has made their land annexation more and more unscrupulous.

After the founding of the Ming Dynasty, these people transformed into the gentry class of the Ming Dynasty. They were widely distributed and ubiquitous, and their influence was extremely huge. They were prestigious in the countryside and colluded with local officials. They monopolized the fields and controlled the population. Mastered the guidance of public opinion and even controlled the test questions for the lower-level imperial examinations. "

"These gentry are not only landowners but also academics. This leads to the relationship between gentry and civil servants, which is basically derivative and derivative. It is an intertwined force. There is me in you, and you are in me. It cannot be cut off. .”

"When Emperor Taizu Gao of the Ming Dynasty first came to the throne, he took measures to weaken this force. On the one hand, he investigated land annexations, and on the other hand, he cracked down on corruption. In the process, the status of these land annexers dropped sharply."

"On the other hand, Emperor Taizu Gao began to support a new class at this time. In this land, a new class of military elites gradually emerged."

"These founding noble military ministers, who were like the Guanlong clan in the Northern Zhou, Sui and Tang dynasties, controlled a large amount of wealth and power, gradually overpowering the old land annexers, and even gained the right to speak in the court."

"At this time, the gentry and civil servants became the common enemies of the emperor and the noble military ministers. The gentry and civilian officials and the newly emerged noble military ministers started a fierce confrontation."

Zhu Gaoxu listened with rapt attention and couldn't help but ask: "Who do you think Mr. Jiang can win among the gentry and civil servants and the noble military ministers?"

"Gentlemen and civil servants."

Jiang Xinghuo simply replied: "In at most fifty years, the noble military ministers will completely lose their power. In another hundred years, the noble military ministers will have to kneel down and lick their boots when they meet the gentry and civil servants."

How can it be? !

Zhu Gaoxu was a little unbelievable. Whether it was the founding nobles of the Hongwu Dynasty or the current noble Jingnan of the Yongle Dynasty, their power and arrogance suppressed the civil servants. The civil servants could not compete with them at all. This was a typical era in which warriors ruled the country.

But Jiang Xinghuo actually told Zhu Gaoxu that the gentry and civil servants could win a longer-term victory?

"Why?" Zhu Gaoxu was puzzled.

"Because the Ming Dynasty cannot repeat the founding of the country and the Jingnan period forever, but it must repeat the imperial examination every three years."

Just a word.

It's like hearing thunder in a silent place.

"Snapped!"

The wine glass that Zhu Di had been holding in midair fell to the ground.

The delicate porcelain cup splashed onto the ground and turned into irregular fragments.

Ji Gang didn't have time to clean up the floor, or even wipe the skin scratched by the porcelain shards. He fell into the same sluggish state as Zhu Di as he listened beside Zhu Di.

Ji Gang was a scholar, and he was also deeply shocked by these words.

After a long time, Zhu Di just repeated silently.

"Because the Ming Dynasty cannot repeat the founding of the country and Jingnan forever, but it must repeat the imperial examination every three years."

It’s a very simple and straightforward truth.

All meritorious military generals will grow old sooner or later, and the probability of being a general's son is much greater than that of a general's tiger.

Famous generals are all killed on the battlefield, not coddled in the prince's house.

But the gentry and civil servants were destined to pass on knowledge from generation to generation and annotate books from generation to generation, accumulating them more and more.

Zhu Di suddenly felt a strong sense of urgency.

He felt that if he did not do something that could fundamentally change the Ming Dynasty while he was in power.

Then the future of Ming Dynasty may be as Jiang Xinghuo said.

The two generations of his father, Zhu Yuanzhang, and his, Zhu Di, supported the noble military ministers who fought against the gentry and civil servants. They would gradually become corrupted and degenerate, and eventually became stepping stones under the boots of civil servants.

And without the support of nobles, the vassals were raised like pigs.

Who can the future emperors of the Ming Dynasty rely on?

Relative? Or a eunuch?

But what can I do?

Zhu Di suddenly remembered the word Jiang Xinghuo mentioned when he talked about "three life-saving lines" not long ago.

——Limitations of the times.

He seemed to be in a vast fog, and could only see a few steps in front of him. No matter how hard he ran, no matter how hard he imagined, he could not know what was outside the fog.

Maybe it's the netherworld, maybe it's the paradise of cave heaven.

And Jiang Xinghuo is the one who can stand high in the sky and tell him what will happen in the future from a perspective overlooking everything.

Across the wall, Zhu Gaoxu pondered for a long time, and finally asked: "Since gentry and civilian officials will sooner or later replace the noble military ministers, is there any way to avoid it?"

"There is a way." Jiang Xinghuo nodded.

"All questions must go back to our original topic."

"The second solution to the clan support problem."

"With such huge profits from overseas trade, relying on the emperor alone is destined to lead to the demise of the people and the government. And even if all the clans are tied up, that is, the power of the Ming royal family is used, it seems a bit insufficient."

"The only solution is for the emperor, the clan, and the nobles to jointly invest in large-scale and lucrative overseas trade."

"This is also a solution to the 'involution' trend of agricultural civilization. I will also discuss this issue in "On National Destiny"."

Well, it doesn't matter if you can't finish the story. For Jiang Xinghuo, it was just his pastime to point out the country before his death and shock the ancients with a little knowledge.

I didn’t take the initiative to ask for death. I didn’t finish talking about it when I died. It’s not me who was the one to blame, so I just dug a hole.

——It's "On National Destiny" again!

Zhu Di remembered this name deeply.

"To use a metaphor, the emperor as the supreme ruler, his clan, which is composed of kinship relationships, and his distinguished military ministers, which are composed of meritorious service relationships, are two concentric circles formed from the inside to the outside, and the emperor is the center point."

Zhu Gaoxu understood the meaning of the two concentric circles as Jiang Xinghuo drew ◎ on the ground in Shatian.

"In the Ming Dynasty at this time, only when their interests and directions were consistent, could the power they exerted be able to fight against the traditional scholar-bureaucrats, which is today's gentry class."

"Otherwise, once the Ming Dynasty loses its heroic and enterprising emperor, the vassals start to raise pigs, and the nobles start to play martial arts, the Ming Dynasty will completely lose the ability to fight against the conservative gentry class that was born based on the agricultural civilization and is destined to boycott overseas trade, and will return to the In the dynastic cycle law of "The Theory of National Destiny"!"