New Shun 1730

These are all pure commercial issues in the sense of free trade.

They include price increases due to supply shortage caused by war, and the Dashun taking advantage of the British-French competition for India to monopolize the sales of some commodities.

In addition to pure commercial issues, there is another special point.

That is the rule of Nanyang. The cost of Dashun and the Netherlands is completely different.

First of all, let’s make it clear:

Southeast Asia belongs to the Dutch East India Company, not the Dutch government.

Nanyang belongs to the Dashun court, not the Dashun Western Trade Company.

This is where many differences arise.

The Dutch rule in Southeast Asia is all for monopoly and profit.

Dashun’s rule in Nanyang, monopoly, is just a by-product of rule.

The Dutch East India Company’s monopoly in Nanyang requires the company to bear all costs.

Dashun’s monopoly in Nanyang, as a by-product of rule, is supported by part of the national finance.

And the navy, garrison, Guiyi Army, and marines supported by this part of the finance are not specially set up for Nanyang, but are by-products of the future seizure of India and the emperor’s desire to collect land taxes in India.

Now they have nothing to do but have to pay the soldiers, and by the way, they have a violent monopoly.

Non-employees of the Dutch East India Company, the VOC does not welcome them to Southeast Asia.

What are they doing here? To be private traders and share the company's profits? To be smugglers?

Southeast Asia belongs to the company, not the Dutch government.

So 80% of the sugar mills and sugarcane plantations in Batavia are run by Chinese; 80% of the trade between the islands is done by Chinese; 80% of the intermediaries between the company and the natives are Chinese.

It is not a magical incident that non-employees of the Dutch company complain that the governor of Batavia is too good to the Chinese and too bad to the people of his country.

The population of the native people is insufficient, and the intermediaries of the middle class are more guarded against, which is itself a factor that greatly increases the cost of rule.

Nanyang belongs to Dashun, not Dashun Western Trade Company.

The Dashun court encouraged the people to go to Nanyang, otherwise they would stay in the mainland, and there would be conflicts between people and land. Were they going to let the harmless idolized King Zaping appear again?

Hurry up and go to Nanyang. The more you go, the better. As long as you can go, we will give you any policy. Anyway, the policy doesn't cost money.

The local population is huge, and basically controls the middle and upper links of the economy, so the cost of ruling is much lower than that of the Dutch.

The private merchants of the Netherlands have the ability to ship goods to Europe for sale.

The private merchants of Dashun can only sell in Dashun. Large companies with strong capital can't stand in Europe, so why can private merchants sell goods in Europe.

The important source of profit for the Dutch East India Company is Nanyang.

For the Western Trade Company of Dashun, Nanyang is just an ordinary source of goods, and its value is not as good as tea and silk.

The Dutch East India Company must use strict means to control the production of cloves and other products to ensure the price. Because the capital is not thick, it can only increase unit profit.

The Western Trade Company of Dashun has strong capital and must use loose means to increase the production of cloves, so as to fight a price war to defeat the Brazilian clove wood, regain the European clove market, drive away substitutes, and re-complete the monopoly of the European spice market.

In the eyes of the natives, the Netherlands is the Dutch East India Company, the thousands of garrisons, and the capital is Batavia.

The South Sea is China's traditional sphere of influence, and the Dashun in the eyes of the natives is a huge empire from the Western Regions to the Whale Sea.

In the eyes of the natives, the Dutch boasted that their fleet in the Atlantic Ocean could not come, so it did not exist.

So it was possible to resist and had a chance to win.

In the eyes of the native nobles, Dashun could not be resisted and could not be won - resisting the Netherlands meant only needing to capture Batavia; and resisting Dashun meant needing to capture Dagukou and bombard the Forbidden City, otherwise they would face a retaliation like a mountain pressing down on their heads.

Especially the Celestial Empire, which had just conquered Japan, seized the South Sea, and showed off its military power, and had heard of its name for thousands of years.

The psychological difficulty of the two was different.

The Dutch company's garrison was both a "guard soldier" and a "Beijing camp."

They could not fight big wars. The maximum size of three to five thousand people meant that an uprising or a rebellion would often take seven or eight years. They had to tear down the east wall to repair the west wall, and the military force was always stretched to the limit.

The Dashun Company had no garrison. The garrison in Nanyang was the imperial garrison, just a garrison. The real field troops of Dashun were of another scale.

If a large-scale aristocratic rebellion really broke out, the regular field troops could be assembled quickly. Dashun did not need to tear down the east wall to repair the west wall, but only needed to borrow the field troops in Guangzhou and Ceylon.

The costs for the company here were very different.

The Dutch East India Company had to raise troops, but not too many, otherwise it could not afford it.

The Dashun court had to raise troops, even if they were not used on weekdays.

If there was a war in Nanyang today, the troops from Guangdong and Ceylon would be transferred there. The company only needed to pay the expenses of mobilizing the troops, not the money for raising the troops on weekdays.

It is impossible to say that the court would not raise troops if they were not used on weekdays.

The real big part of the military expenditure is to maintain the army on weekdays - this is exactly why the Dutch East India Company chose to exploit to the extreme. It costs money to maintain the army on weekdays, so why not fight to gain the profit from exploitation? The company is well aware of this.

In the eyes of the Dutch East India Company, Nanyang is a colony that is all about making profits.

In the eyes of the Emperor of Dashun and the court, Nanyang is a stable pressure relief valve for Dashun.

As long as Nanyang can ensure that it can accommodate enough people from the lower Nanyang every year, and can accommodate 100,000 people, the cost of governance saved will be much better than the little bit of oil and water squeezed by means of exhausting the pond to catch fish - last year's flood in northern Jiangsu, 280,000 taels of silver and 700,000 shi of grain were used for disaster relief, and more than a dozen counties were exempted from taxes for three years, and 5,000 troops were mobilized to prevent accidents.

The Dutch East India Company was thinking about how to make money.

The Dashun court was thinking about how to save money.

Especially the money for disaster relief and stability maintenance, which is the use of almost all of Dashun's fiscal revenue.

For the Dutch East India Company, making money is profit.

For the Dashun court, saving money is making big money.

Under these differences, there is a strong contrast around Batavia and in West Java, where the Dutch originally ruled and were taken over by Dashun.

To some extent, it is even very funny.

The "advanced", "free", "commercial", "progressive", "capitalist" Netherlands, in the vicinity of Batavia, carried out the most backward "forced planting system", a variant of serfdom, which was about to regress to slavery.

The so-called "backward", "centralized", "peasant", "feudal dynasty" Dashun, in the vicinity of Batavia and West Java, carried out radical, the most laissez-faire capitalist land reform at the time: free trade, private ownership of land, and taxation per mu.

Of course, this is called "equal distribution of land" in the dictionary of Dashun.

Because according to Dashun's idealized ruling model, or the inertia created by history, Dashun's idealized ruling model for conquered areas is as follows:

Equal distribution of land.

All households are registered.

The village head is responsible for collecting taxes.

The government governs.

There are no gentry or local nobles to hinder the rule.

A vertical model is formed, including the emperor - six governments - local officials - village head and baojia - small farmers.

This is also an idealized way of ruling, including in the interior.

The problem is that the gentry class in the interior is entangled and cannot be moved.

According to some sayings at that time, "The imperial court has been eating the shit of the gentry in the Central Plains for a thousand years. Now it has to endure this shit when it goes to Nanyang. Then it has to eat the shit of the Nanyang chieftains?"

The shit of the gentry in the mainland, whoever becomes the emperor, has to eat it with his neck stiff.

In Nanyang, there are neither bureaucratic connections from the imperial examination nor land ownership of the founding heroes. Most of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese people are at the bottom. The few high-ranking Chinese who can ride in and out of the former governor's mansion in carriages are not trusted at all.

The imperial court naturally did not even think about it. It started with Wandan and directly launched the most intense land equalization reform.

The most difficult relationship to deal with is that you are in me and I am in you.

The easiest relationship to deal with is a group of outsiders. Those who should be killed should be killed and those who should be arrested should be arrested. It is simple and rough.

The local officials are from the imperial examination or Wude Palace. When they come here, do they know who these gentry and nobles in Wandan are?

They can't even find any connections.

Confucian education since childhood, if you can make it well, then make it well, if you can't make it well, then make it equal. In the mainland, you can only shout slogans, but here you finally have a chance to try it.

A large number of young people who have just graduated from the new school are now adults, and they can't read and write, but they can't take the imperial examination.

A definite factor of social instability, the emperor would like them to get out and go to Southeast Asia to be minor officials and give them a job.

It should be said that the West Java model in the eyes of the Dashun court is a variant of the retro Western Zhou feudal system in the sense of Confucianism.

A large number of young people who are practical are scholars, and they are not working.

The Chinese in and around the city are the countrymen.

The local natives are savages.

It's just that they can't make it well, but they are equal.

Taxes are paid to the government, and the government then pays these "scholars" as salaries to ensure that they are not working.

The countrymen are the basic base of the rule, and they can be armed and incorporated into the army at any time, and there are also a large number of families who join the army and get the privilege of tax reduction and exemption.

The scholars replaced the original local nobles, priests, landlords, etc., and governed the "savages", mainly collecting taxes, handling disputes, and encouraging farming.

Strangely, this model was surprisingly good.

Not only was the tax revenue in the Banten area sufficient to guarantee the salary expenses of these extra "scholars" and clerks, but the tax collection efficiency was much higher than that in the inland areas.

The people also supported it.

Even the small businessmen who did business were very happy, because the sales volume of goods in the Banten area after the land reform was much higher than that in other places.

The court was also very happy, because it not only ensured a balance of income and expenditure, but also had a lot of surplus.

Of course, there must be some who were unhappy, but some were unhappy, such as the original local nobles.

However, they either died or were sent to Ezo to do hard labor.

But this model also scared the domestic gentry who were like Ye Gonghaolong, who shouted the restoration of true Confucianism, and who could make a well if they could, and could not make a well if they could.

The emperor had to come out and publicly stated: Nanyang is different from Jinai, and the Nanyang model will never be used in Jinai.

People who graduated from the new school can only be officials in Nanyang or work in companies. There will be no new subjects or existing official positions.

But since the attempt in Banten has been successful, it can be promoted in the Dutch-ruled West Java region taken over by Dashun.

Replace the forced planting system with land tax.

Replace the rent in kind with currency tax.

Abolish labor service with the one-whip tax rate, and include the labor service money in the per-acre tax.

It should be said that the Banten model is the complete model of many reforms that started with Wang Anshi's reform in the Song Dynasty, the one-whip law in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, and then after the establishment of the Dashun Dynasty.

There is no gentry to hinder.

There are no local bureaucrats and gentry, so outsiders can use the extremely violent methods used at the founding of the country.

Enough "marginalized" scholars of non-native and non-landowning origins.

Good shipping conditions and markets allow taxation to be monetized.

Dashun's excellent handicraft industry foundation has directly eliminated the family sideline business of small farmers here.

The land is fertile enough, the climate is good enough, and the amount of land per capita is enough.

Policies were implemented with extreme speed, while monetary taxes collected paper money.

Factors such as this have made this a comprehensive small-scale peasant economic demonstration reform area that Dashun, Ming Dynasty and even Song Dynasty wanted to do but failed to achieve.

The implicit premise of this kind of reform is naturally that land belongs to the state, not to village communities or nobles. Otherwise, why would we pay taxes to the government?

This premise essentially meant that the old land system in the Banten area was dismantled overnight by violent means, and it also laid the foundation for leasing land to build plantations in Dashun.

This overnight is actually the foundation laid by the Dutch before.

The commercial activities of the Dutch have brought the village land economy here to the edge of collapse.

It's just that the Dutch insisted on adopting the forced planting system in a reactionary way, while Dashun pushed forward with the inertia of their own country's rule.

And this is inevitable.

Because Dashun could not give Nanyang to a certain company, so Nanyang belonged to the imperial court.

It was impossible for the imperial court to adopt a forced planting system as its ruling method. The imperial court was not used to this method at all, and was more accustomed to collecting land taxes after dividing the fields. This is the inertia of domination.

The Dutch population here is insufficient, so it is impossible for the Dutch to engage in such vertical direct rule, and they can only rule indirectly.

The population of Dashun here is quite sufficient, and the extra marginalized literate population was also created by Liu Yu more than ten years in advance, so it can be ruled directly.

Different paths lead to the same goal, Dashun's reforms in Wandan were both the idealization of the land-equalizing school of northern Confucianism.

It was also an early version of the Javanese reforms that the British tried to implement in Java seventy years later but were ultimately rejected by the board of directors.

The biggest difference is that in the reform conceived by the British, the head of the local village community serves as the spokesperson of the government.

Dashun, on the other hand, was composed of a large number of new students who could not take the imperial examination. As the spokesperson of the government, it directly canceled the significance of the existence of the local village chiefs.

From the guiding ideology, both are based on laissez-faire economic principles.

Ultimately, Dashun's own handicraft production capacity was the only one in the world qualified to use this guiding ideology to guide colonial construction at this time.

Dashun was confident enough to exchange ironware from the north, cotton from southern Jiangsu, groceries from Guangdong, porcelain from Jiangxi, and silk from Jiangsu and Zhejiang for the remaining products of West Java and earn enough profits.

At the same time, Dashun experienced widespread changes in the country such as converting rice to mulberry and converting fields to grow tobacco. Local officials were worried about food problems and went to court many times to seek the attention of the court.

Dashun has experienced it, so he understands that there is no need to control it here. Farmers will naturally plant the most profitable products. Not only will it not affect the output of Nanyang's trade goods, but it will increase output compared to the forced planting system.

Both the Ming Dynasty and Dashun are the most "excellent" laissez-faire templates - because of the high yields on land and lending, the approximately 90,000 tons of silver that began flowing into China from the Ming Dynasty to China, Europe, the United States, and Japan all flowed to land.

It is completely consistent with the theory of laissez-faire. The invisible hand directs all the money to land and financial lending.

Absolutely free buying and selling of land, coupled with the annual inflow of silver, coupled with the weird low tax rate of thirty to one tax, even the state-intervention law of flat trading and market trading was thrown away, and then there was the radical "foreign currency as the national currency of the country". Silver tax reform is a perfect match for the laissez-faire template.

Therefore, the Dashun court, which had experienced constant requests from local officials to pay attention to things such as "converting rice to mulberry" and "converting fields to grow tobacco", did not understand these economic terms, but it was actually very clear about the prospects of reform in West Java.

If coffee indigo is profitable enough, these people will naturally grow coffee indigo.

If it does not make money, it proves that Dashun has failed to develop the European market.

Anyway, if you want to make money, Dashun naturally has no shortage of handicrafts that can be exchanged for these things.

Moreover, for VOC, Nanyang is the company's property, so just squeeze it out as much as possible.

For Dashun, Nanyang belongs to the imperial court, and the people who do handicrafts in the country also belong to the imperial court. Of course, it is hoped that Nanyang will also benefit these people doing handicrafts.

In this case, why not change it like this?

We, Dashun, have our own national conditions here. How can we continue to use the old system of the Dutch company?