It can be said that it is the common knowledge of modern people to seek resources and wealth from the ocean. The Age of Discovery started by Europeans at the end of the 15th century allowed Europe with poor resources to develop rapidly beyond Asia, laying the foundation for Europe's development. Hundreds of years of prosperity. Nearly a hundred years before the Age of Discovery, China's great navigator Zheng He had already led an unprecedented fleet to sail out to sea and connect the world. However, this miracle in the world's maritime history could not continue. In 1424, Emperor Renzong of the Ming Dynasty Zhu Gaochi issued an edict on his accession to the throne. China announced that it would stop sailing to the Western Ocean, and the Ming Dynasty's ocean exploration was basically abolished. Looking at Zhu Gaochi's temple name "Renzong", we can understand that anyone worthy of this title is an emperor who follows Confucian ideals and even obeys the advice of civil servants. The termination of Zheng He's voyages to the West was promoted by the Ming Dynasty civil servants out of their own interests. .
The direct reason why the Ming Dynasty civil servants proposed to stop Zheng He's voyages was that "the expenses were huge and the treasury was empty". To put it bluntly, it meant that too much money was spent and the treasury was empty. However, this can only deceive oneself. The lie of the emperor who lives in the palace and is far away from the people. Starting from the Southern Song Dynasty, the development of foreign trade along China's southeastern coast reached its peak. The Southern Song Dynasty's land area was much smaller than that of the Ming Dynasty, but its fiscal revenue was 25 times that of the Ming Dynasty. Overseas trade accounted for the majority. The Song Dynasty levied 7%-10% on imported goods. % tariff, the annual tax revenue of shipping companies in Guangzhou, Quanzhou, and Zhejiang alone reached 2 million guan (approximately equivalent to 2 million taels of silver). By analogy, the total overseas trade in the Southern Song Dynasty was more than 200 million guan.
If the history of the Southern Song Dynasty is far away from that of the Ming Dynasty, then the Yuan Dynasty was also a major sea trade country, with a constant flow of ships filled with porcelain, reaching Japan in the east and Southeast Asia, Persia, Arabia, and Africa in the west. It can be said that The profit from an overseas trade can easily be ten times or a hundred times. The huge profits from overseas trade are not a secret at all to the bureaucrats and gentry in the Jiangnan region. Many families have made their fortunes through this.
After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, issued a maritime ban in order to deal with the intrusion of Japanese pirates and the remaining forces of Zhang Shicheng, Fang Guozhen and others, canceling the shipping departments of the three major cities of Quanzhou in Fujian, Mingzhou in Zhejiang, and Guangzhou in Guangdong. Foreign trade was prohibited, and anyone who built sea-going ships privately or conducted overseas trade would be executed, and their families would be sent to the army. But there is a famous saying in "Das Kapital": "If there is 10% profit, capital will be used everywhere; if there is 20% profit, capital will be active; if there is 50% profit, capital will take risks; for 100 With a profit of more than 300%, capital dares to trample on all human laws; with a profit of more than 300%, capital dares to commit any crime and even risk hanging.”
Zhu Yuanzhang’s strict order cannot stop the Jiangnan region. Due to the residents' pursuit of profit, powerless ordinary civilians simply went to sea to become pirates, while the bureaucrats and gentry of the privileged class simply helped pirates sell their stolen goods, or organized fleets to engage in smuggling trade. However, the Ming Dynasty did not have a powerful navy and was unable to stop piracy and smuggling. Zhu Yuanzhang's maritime ban was of no use except reducing the court's tax revenue. The bureaucrats and gentry took the opportunity to become the leaders of the Ming Dynasty's overseas trade and make huge profits. Take the famous Zheng Zhilong (Zheng Chenggong's father) maritime trading group in the late Ming Dynasty as an example, which earned tens of millions of taels of silver every year.
The emergence of Zheng He's voyages to the West broke the monopoly of maritime trade held by the bureaucrats and gentry in the Jiangnan region. Zheng He's fleet on his voyages to the West consisted of more than 200 ships, including 63 main treasure ships. According to British scholar Mills' calculation, each treasure ship could carry 2,500 tons. Before each voyage, the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty would purchase a large amount of porcelain, tea, Silk and other goods were shipped to the sea for trade in countries along the route, and the trade volume of each country was limited every year. Zheng He's fleet brought a large amount of goods, which naturally affected the sales of the Ming Dynasty's smuggling caravans.
The most important thing is that originally everyone blatantly violated the sea ban because the emperor could not catch them. Now Zheng He formed an invincible fleet to spread his power overseas, wipe out pirates, and catch a smuggling fleet. Easy. The eunuchs who were in charge of the voyage fleet were all the emperor's trusted eunuchs. As long as they were loyal to the emperor, they did not need to give face to the bureaucrats and gentry. If they were caught smuggling, whether they would live or die would all depend on the emperor's mood. Therefore, the smuggling fleet was greatly reduced after Zheng He's voyages to the West. At that time, the amount of silver flowing into China due to trade every year was as high as 260,000 kilograms. Silver was money in the Ming Dynasty, and wealth and silk moved people's hearts. This large group of interest groups did not want to die. Zheng He's fleet.
The Ming Dynasty relied on imperial examinations to recruit scholars, and the culturally developed Jiangnan region had a long-term monopoly on admissions. The famous "North-South Ranking Case" in 1397 was a concentrated expression of this phenomenon. Most of the Ming Dynasty officialdom was dominated by those from the Jiangnan region. Controlled by a group of officials, these officials are more or less related to overseas trade. Even civil servants who are not involved in overseas trade, are "Bing Jing" and "Tan Jing" who are filial to their subordinates every year, hold large sums of money, are short-handed in taking people, and short-tongued in cannibalism. They still have to speak for interest groups and attack eunuchs. Isn’t power the political correctness of the civil service group?
A large group of civil servants collectively advocated for the abolition of the Western voyages. Naturally, they could not say that it affected their own personal interests. The slogan they wanted to use was "the expenses are huge and the treasury is empty." However, Zhu Di, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, was a very independent emperor and basically looked down upon the civil servants. Therefore, it was not until Zhu Gaochi, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty who believed in the civil servants, came to the throne in 1424 that the voyages to the West were abolished.
In 1430, Zhu Zhanji, Emperor Xuanzong of the Ming Dynasty, once again ordered Zheng He to make his seventh voyage to the West. Unfortunately, Zheng He was already old, and there were many years of delays in the process. Many of the personnel and facilities supporting the voyages to the West were abandoned. The Ming Dynasty's voyages to the West The feat was unsustainable.
Whether Zheng He made money from his voyages to the West, you only need to look at what Zhu Di, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, did. Zheng He's first six voyages to the West took place from the third year of Yongle to the twenty-second year of Yongle. During this period, Zhu Di personally conquered Mongolia five times, each time dispatching more than 100,000 troops; he sent Duke Zhu Neng and the British Duke Zhang Pu's four southward expeditions to Annan cost more than 100,000 soldiers and horses; he recruited millions of craftsmen and civilians to expand the city of Beiping, build the Forbidden City, move the capital to Beijing, etc. A lot of the money came from the emperor's inner treasury. , and the emperor's money was earned by Zheng He and other eunuchs for him. To put it bluntly, all the money earned from his voyages to the West went into the emperor's own small treasury.
If the officials of the Ming Dynasty had no selfish motives and did not want to avoid paying taxes and monopolizing overseas trade, they should not promote the abolition of the Western voyages. Instead, they should promote the abolition of the maritime ban and promote the expansion of foreign trade. Such selfish motives It can be said that the only chance to delay the demise of the Ming Dynasty was destroyed. The biggest reasons for the demise of the Ming Dynasty were two. First, the national finances collapsed and they could not spend enough money to pacify Liaodong and suppress the peasant uprisings such as Li Zicheng. If the emperor of the Ming Dynasty could make money from sea trade, the so-called "three rates" It’s not a problem at all, how could there be a lack of money to spend; secondly, during the Little Ice Age, natural disasters continued in the Ming Dynasty, food harvests failed year after year, and famines continued. However, Champa, Siam, Annam, Chenla and other countries in Southeast Asia were all major food-producing countries. With two or three crops a year, if the voyage fleet had always existed, these grain-producing areas would have always respected the leadership of the Ming Dynasty. Whether it was requisitioning, borrowing, or buying grain, they could solve the Ming Dynasty's food shortage problem. , It’s a pity that history has no if.