King Shangtai, whose surname is Shang and whose name is Tai. The Shang family started from the time when the three mountains were fighting for hegemony in the early Ming Dynasty. With the help of the Ming Dynasty, they unified the Ryukyu Islands and established a feudal kingdom.
The earliest Ryukyu Islands were just a group of tribesmen competing for the right to survive. Gradually, some tribes began to merge, and finally a three-mountain struggle for hegemony was formed.
Nanshan, Zhongshan, and Beishan are the three mountains named exactly according to their geographical locations. The three tribal alliances began to fight. For hundreds of years, no one could defeat the other.
Until the Shang family, the leader of the Zhongshan tribe, obtained the support of Emperor Hongwu of the Ming Dynasty, it was not actually supported. It was just that Emperor Hongwu allocated hundreds of families from Fujian to immigrate there and politically recognized the status of the King of Zhongshan.
However, these few hundred families of ordinary immigrants completely strengthened the Zhongshan Kingdom. These people brought advanced shipbuilding, farming and iron smelting technologies, which suddenly raised the level of civilization of the Zhongshan Kingdom by a large margin.
Soon Zhongshan Kingdom annexed Nanshan and Beishan and finally unified Ryukyu and formed a feudal kingdom that continues to this day.
More than four hundred years of ups and downs have passed. The Shang family's rule over Ryukyu can only be said to be barely maintained. The mainland civilization is still very friendly to them, but the mainland civilization is too proud and has no extra energy to pay attention to such things. A small country.
In the end, the Shimadzu family took advantage of it and squeezed it for more than two hundred years until Xiao Letian finally rescued the place.
But times have changed greatly. When Ryukyu opened its doors and the west wind blew in, King Shantai, who had just stood up and liberated, suddenly found that although he was freed from the oppression of the Shimadzu family, he could no longer fight the tide of the times.
Young Wang greedily studied Western knowledge. Whenever he had time, he would consult Xiao Letian and more scholars. Gradually, he understood a truth. This era is no longer an era where weak countries can survive.
Everything said in Journey to the West is true. When the world becomes smaller and smaller due to technology, the crushing of weak countries by big countries will become extremely cruel and ruthless.
If you are useless, if you do not have the strength to protect yourself, then your only end is to be annexed by other empires.
After studying the rise of countless great countries, the sad King Shangtai realized the cruel fact that Ryukyu had no hope.
First of all, the land area of this country is too small, and there are many mountains and few fields. If there is no trade, it will not be able to support too many people. If a country does not even have a large enough population, it has been excluded from the threshold of a powerful country. .
In addition, Ryukyu has no resources. It is impossible to develop heavy industry here and can only rely on other economies to subcontract some light industries to maintain it. Just like the current industrial prosperity in Ryukyu, this was purely caused by Xiao Letian's policies.
Industries such as steel, chemicals, and large machinery were placed in the Tanggu Special Zone and expanded to the north. What Ryukyu received was light industry based on these basic industries. To put it bluntly, it was the processing of supplied materials, especially some military achievements that needed to be kept secret. Enterprise, for the sake of safety, Xiao Letian can only put it here first.
Of course there is the financial industry, which is also one of the pillars supporting the Ryukyu economy, but it is a pity that the financial empire belongs to Xiao Letian and not to him, King Shangtai.
The last very sad reason is that Ryukyu has lost its historical opportunity. They missed the enlightenment stage of the great voyage and failed to catch up with the buds of the first industrial revolution. Now, as the Prime Minister said, the spark of the second industrial revolution has already It was shining, but King Shang Tai had been looking for it for several years with his big innocent eyes wide open, but he still couldn't see where the spark was.
We must admit that there is a gap between people, and it is a huge gap that sometimes cannot be bridged in a lifetime.
Of course, what most stimulated King Shangtai was the several military operations of the Chinese. From the day when the Ryukyu Uprising and the Shimadzu family fought for their lives, he already knew what kind of people Xiao Letian and others were. They were all really smart people. A ruthless desperado.
Is Xiao Letian a scholar? King Shangtai will never forget the scene where he shouted in the flames while carrying the Xiaozi flag, inspiring the whole city's Chinese people to charge towards Shimazu's main formation. The blood and fire all over his body, the hysterical madness, were simply not something that a literati could possess.
Later, he participated in the Austro-Prussian War in Europe, and when he came back, he fought with France. The Qing Dynasty also asked him to kill a corpse and even the capital was captured... let alone this war in the Far East.
The intensity of the war is getting stronger and bigger every time, and Xiao Letian's power is no longer suppressed by anyone.
After the Chinese code was promulgated and everyone's hearts were conquered by this code, King Shangtai finally decided. He decided to have an honest talk with Xiao Letian.
On the eve of the Far East War, before Xiao Letian boarded the Zhiyuan, the two had a secret meeting in Shuri City. There, King Shangtai proposed to dedicate the throne to Xiao Letian, and he only wanted to keep a king under Xiao Letian. He wanted to retain his noble status so that Guo Zuo could keep it.
How could Xiao Letian care about a small Ryukyu throne? He smiled and rejected King Shangtai's proposal! The frightened King Shangtai knelt on the ground and even prayed for the position of a duke or even a marquis, as long as it could ensure that the Shang family's ancestral temple would not be destroyed...
King Shangtai, who couldn't kneel for a long time, cried like a motherless child, which made Xiao Letian feel sad. Finally, Xiao Letian gritted his teeth and stamped his feet to point out a clear way for King Shangtai.
"There is no end-to-end solution in life. There are two paths before you, Shangtai. One is to remain the king for several decades and then be forced to step down by the people under the tide of the times. This is a high probability event. It’s not that I’m being alarmist…”
"And the second way is to give up your power and only retain the throne as the national image of Ryukyu, thereby ensuring that the throne and the ancestral temple continue... I can't guarantee you a thousand years, but I will give it back to you in three or four hundred years. , I think it’s still possible!”
"There are two paths, you can choose for yourself. Whether you want to be a real king or a national symbol depends on your own decision!"
Where does King Shangtai have any choice? What a bullshit king. Now his power has been completely eclipsed by the Prime Minister. Xiao Letian is more ruthless than Cao Cao. Should I compete with him for power? Isn’t this a dream?
Without hesitation, King Shotai directly chose the second path, dedicating his power to the Chinese Code of Laws and the Chinese Parliament, and the royal power of the Ryukyu Sho clan that had lasted for more than 400 years.
The old shopkeeper gently tapped the armrest of the chair with his fingers, and revealed to everyone what secrets he could tell. "This is why King Shangtai offered his government. Mi Fu, I'm afraid you can't ask me your questions, but you will answer them." Got it!"
"King Shangtai gave up the power of the king and completely integrated the Ryukyu Kingdom into the Chinese. This will set a good example for the Chinese in other regions in the future!"
"Tell me, should we send a heartfelt gift? We can't let others suffer a loss in terms of power and money, right?"
