Although there are no coincidences, the misfortunes of Jiangsu and Zhejiang maritime merchants were so dense and interlocked, so it was obviously not just bad luck, but Jinghua was deliberately targeting them.
These large merchants themselves were not good men and women, so they naturally noticed something was wrong, so they contacted each other privately and finally decided to go to Taicang for a meeting.
The reason why I want to go to Taicang for a meeting is mainly because of Wang Xijue's relationship. Wang Xijue is the richest man in Suzhou. As long as the Duke of Wei in Nanjing does not come out to compete for the title, there is a high probability that he will also be the richest man in the Southeast and a leader in Jiangnan business.
However, this is not the main reason why Jiangsu and Zhejiang maritime merchants went to Taicang Prefecture for a meeting. The bigger reason is that Wang Xijue himself is still in dire straits. He really cannot leave his hometown at this time - this kind of move will have a negative impact on his reputation as the most filial piety in the world. It was said to be disastrous, so he had to let others accommodate him.
However, as soon as the maritime merchants arrived in Taicang, they caught up with a big news: Although Shen Shixing's messenger arrived belatedly, he finally arrived and brought Jinghua's "declaration of war".
After an uproar, the merchants split into two groups.
Most Jiangsu and Zhejiang maritime merchants were indignant at Jinghua's arrogance, and they all clamored to make Jinghua look good. The mainstream saying is: The truth-seeking person dares to risk the disapproval of the world with his own body. This is the way to die. This time, we must uphold the justice of the world and punish this beast!
A more polite way of saying it is: Gao Longwen's move is unwise, but I'm afraid there are villains lobbying for it. However, how can we, the humble gentlemen, imitate that man's behavior and shout and kill at every turn? It would be better to jointly write to Baiyulou first so that Gao Longwen knows the pros and cons. This may make him change his mind and get the best of both worlds.
However, behind these two factions, there are still some people who either support the Punishment Faction or the Negotiation Faction, but in their hearts they have already backed down, feeling that they cannot defeat Jinghua at all, so they might as well surrender earlier and simply Then he had a high and pragmatic intention.
This last kind of people are not stupid, nor are they born weak, but their business cannot be separated from Jinghua.
Not all maritime merchants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang make a living by selling silk. There are also many people engaged in business that require goods from other regions. For example, a large part of porcelain needs to be transported from Jingdezhen, and the overlord of Yangtze River shipping is undoubtedly Jinghua.
Using Jinghua's inland river ships to transport materials, not only are the ships excellent and the transportation prices fluctuate less, but Jinghua's reputation is also large enough that no one from anywhere along the route would dare to set up checkpoints on it. These advantages are far beyond those of other ships.
It’s not just porcelain from Jingdezhen. Jinghua’s own Yu porcelain (Jun porcelain, taboo Zhu Yijun) is also a hot commodity that is highly sought after. How can porcelain merchants dare to break up with Jinghua so easily?
So what if you are filled with righteous indignation? Do you really have such great determination? Just because you are angry, you dare to say that I will not eat this meal?
Not to mention that after the imperial court started parallel water and sea transportation, once there was trouble on the Yellow River, many Jiangsu and Zhejiang maritime merchants were engaged in the business of transporting grain. However, the agriculture in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is now mainly based on the cultivation of cash crops, and most of the grain must be transported. Shipped from Huguang area.
This brings us back to the issue of the Yangtze River waterway. Once Jinghua does not supply goods, what will they transport? Transporting sand to Yanjing, inserting a bid and selling the head to give away the head?
So in this way, in fact, only the silk merchants are "not afraid of big troubles", because Jinghua is not involved in the silk industry at least yet - in fact, there are some, but Jinghua makes tussah silk from Liaodong, and the products of both parties are Different grades target different buyers, and there is no direct competition with them.
In this way, the public and the mother-in-law were right, and the landlord Wang Xijue had a head as big as a bucket.
Of course Wang Xijue himself is a hardliner. He is the richest man in Suzhou and the overlord of the Ming Dynasty susi and Suzhou embroidery industry. He does not need to look at others in a pragmatic manner.
But his identity severely limited him, preventing him from clearly expressing his wishes.
First of all, as the convener of this meeting, he must take care of all aspects and cannot express his position based on his own temporary joy and anger.
Secondly, he is different from Gao Pragmatic. As a representative of the pragmatic school of economics, Gao pragmatically dares to show the fact that he is rich, and even regards making money as a means to practice his practical theory of economics.
But he, Wang Xijue, is a master of Xinxue. He has said before that Xinxue is a "practical study of morals" and the focus is on morality, so he has always shown an image of treating money like dirt. If he immediately becomes angry because of what Jinghua is doing now and wants to fight aggressively, then the image he has worked so hard to build over the years will be completely destroyed.
It can be seen that reputation is sometimes a double-edged sword, and pragmatism is sometimes forced by it, not to mention Wang Xijue's status?
In addition, Wang Xijue now knew that his way back to the court was almost blocked by Gao Pragmatic, and he secretly hated Gao Pragmatic.
Therefore, Wang Xijue in this meeting was so frustrated that he wanted to punch someone. He clearly wanted to have a decisive battle with Jinghua, but he still wanted to speak in an extremely tactful, smooth, and "considerate" way. He was really dumb. There is pain that cannot be expressed.
However, Wang Xijue is Wang Xijue after all. He knows that he must not intensify internal conflicts at this time. He can only unite people as much as possible to form an atmosphere of common hatred and hatred, so that he can have capital and high pragmatic competition. Otherwise, the silk merchants and other maritime merchants would break up if they couldn't reach an agreement. When the time comes, the silk merchants alone would not be able to compete with Jinghua.
So he first advised everyone to calm down and rest at his place for a day to think about the stakes and wait for everyone to discuss it tomorrow.
Generally speaking, for a hardliner like him, this is not a good idea. Because people's courage is multiplied when they are under impulse. If Wang Xijue wants more people to agree to "declare war" on Beijing, he should take advantage of the fact that many people are overwhelmed by anger today. It is even better to hold a vote. , write something like a joint letter, and you can’t deny it in black and white, so you can only bite the bullet and follow it.
But Wang Xijue obviously has his own considerations.
He is not simply the richest man in Suzhou, he is a scholar and an important minister of the imperial court. In terms of reputation, qualifications, and connections, he is a person who has great hope of joining the cabinet.
For such a person, although money cannot be said to be dispensable, at least its importance is certainly not as important as the prospect of joining the cabinet.
Wang Xijue was born in the Taiyuan Wang family, one of the top wealthy families in Chinese history that has been passed down for thousands of years. His ancestors abandoned their official positions and fled to Jiangnan to avoid the war during the "Red Turban Uprising" in the late Yuan Dynasty. One of his descendants entered Taicang during the Hongzhi period. , is the origin of Wang Xijue's branch.
Wang Xijue's grandfather, Wang Yong, was good at business and became a wealthy man. In his later years, he even became the richest man in Suzhou. His father, Wang Mengxiang, was a scholar in his early years and entered Nanjian as a prison student (Nanjian is Nanjing Imperial College). However, due to legal disputes, he was forced to abandon Confucianism and go into business to manage the family business. This made Wang Mengxiang realize that in the Ming Dynasty, money alone was not enough. Official status was more important than money, so he determined to raise his two sons. Cultivate talents.
This kind of thinking seriously affected Wang Xijue in his childhood and adolescence, so that he "regarded money as dirt" since he was a child. At that time, two brothers in the Wang clan were fighting for the family property. In order to gain the support of the head of the family, Wang Mengxiang, one of them secretly wrote a red envelope to Wang Xijue and asked Wang Xijue to intercede on his behalf.
As a result, Wang Xijue became furious and threw the bag of silver into the river in public, and scolded the cousin: "How dare you look down on me?" - meaning how could I, Wang Xijue, take money seriously.
Not only did Wang Xijue's moral performance be excellent, his ability in reading was even more remarkable. He lived up to his father's expectations and ranked first in the 41st Jiajing Examination as Huiyuan, and ranked second in the Imperial Examination. Second to Shen Shixing - and Wang Xijue himself is not very satisfied with this, because he feels that he lags behind Shen Shixing because his appearance is not as good as the latter - He Qiaoyuan, a historian of the late Ming Dynasty, Nanjing household of the Chongzhen Dynasty, and Minister of the Ministry of Industry, wrote in "Wang Wensu" Wang Xijue is described in "In Praise of the Public Statue" as having "red eyes and yellow beard, a sick crane and a thin tortoise".
Crane and tortoise are originally complimentary words, but illness and emaciation obviously do not count. This is still said with a compliment. It can be seen that Wang Xijue's appearance is probably a bit too "skinny", and the red eyes and yellow beard... this is even more unfair. It’s in line with ordinary aesthetics.
Therefore, Wang Xijue was not even convinced by Shen Shixing's knowledge, and believed that he was the real pillar of the country.
For such a person, what he really wants is obviously to be a high-ranking official and rule the world, so as to revive the reputation of the Wang family in Taiyuan. Anything other than this is trivial.
Therefore, he advised the merchants to take a night's rest first, so that they would not be accused of starting a provocation based on public opinion in the future. But at the same time, Wang Xijue didn't really intend to let them give in and go back to their respective homes and find their mothers tomorrow morning, and they didn't say anything after being made like this by Jinghua.
He first quietly invited silk merchants to his backyard to discuss matters. After sending them away, he invited several big businessmen involved in shipbuilding. Finally, he invited porcelain merchants and grain merchants related to the Yangtze River waterway.
Several groups of people were invited in total, and the discussion was not concluded until midnight.
In the early morning of the next day, Wang Xijue, dressed in mourning clothes, once again attended and presided over the Maritime Business Conference.
Due to yesterday's night talk, most people were relatively silent today. Only a group of businessmen who really couldn't break away from Jinghua were still arguing that Jinghua was invincible and they might as well just "surrender and lose half" to avoid really pissing off Jinghua. Well, no one will be able to reap the fruits by then. Not to mention anything else, without Jinghua's two ocean fleets taking turns to escort, how can we do this overseas business?
When you go to Japan, there are already a lot of Japanese pirates in Japan. Even some daimyo are princes during the day and become pirates at night. Without Jinghua's "book sword flag" covering them, shipping to Japan is free. These people are not Wang Zhi, the king of Jinghai back then, but they don't have the ability to scare those big names. On the contrary, the only person who can deter them now is the highly pragmatic Jinghua.
You can’t go to Japan, let alone Nanyang. After the Minhai Pirate Group was defeated by Jinghua two years ago, although most of them were dismissed by Jinghua and a small number of them were incorporated, there are still many people scattered around and they are now sporadic pirates.
Jinghua can ignore these pirates, because Jinghua is accustomed to forming large formations to facilitate escorts, and formations of dozens of large-scale ships are not something that scattered pirates dare to covet.
But now that Jinghua doesn't take them to play, what will they do?
What's more, Nanyang has to face not only pirates in the Fujian Sea, but also along the coast of Guangdong, Luzon, and even more in the entire Nanyang region. In addition to pirates, those Europeans also often rob passing merchant ships - who doesn't know the style of these colonists? Those who are easy to rob will be robbed, and those who are not easy to rob will just do business honestly.
Wang Xijue listened to them calmly, then looked around and asked, "If you still have any concerns, you might as well tell me one by one."
The manner in which the court officials spoke was different, as if they were receiving petitioners.
But this is the Ming Dynasty, and everyone really just accepts this. Then a few more merchants raised some more detailed questions. Wang Xijue nodded gently, listened with a smile, and then slowly stood up.
Wang Xijue was not tall, and even looked a little thin, but he had a strong aura. He raised his hands slightly and then pressed them down gently. Everyone fell silent and listened to him with bated breath.
"Xi Jue has considered what you are worried about last night." He stretched out his hand to signal to several people in the field, and said: "The heads of the seven families, including Wang, Xu, Chen, and Zhang, have reached an agreement last night and will jointly establish a family. The shipyard will build a batch of inland river ships as quickly as possible to transport goods from various places along the river and get rid of your dependence on Beijing."
This news is quite shocking, but the strength of the seven companies is indeed quite strong. Even if it cannot be compared with Jinghua Shipyard, which has long been the king of shipbuilding, it seems that it can still be expected if it is only for Jiangsu and Zhejiang maritime merchants.
But this was not enough. Someone asked again: "It's okay for the seven families to build inland river ships by themselves, but I'm afraid it's not that easy for large sea ships? I'm not saying that the seven families can't build sea ships. After all, this craft is not what it is today." I just said that we need to learn, but what about the muskets and artillery on sea ships? Wouldn't Jing Shigong (Wang Xijue Jingshi) say that the Seventh Family also planned to create a musket factory and an artillery factory? This is not comparable to shipbuilding, we No one has ever done this business."
Wang Xijue had already expected this, and said with a smile: "Brother Peng is very worried. It is true that none of the seven companies among us can build a musket factory or an artillery factory immediately. However, these muskets and artillery may not necessarily have to be found only in Beijing." You can get it - Wang has his own means to discipline your future ships so that they will not be without cannons. I wonder if Wang’s words can be trusted by Brother Peng?"
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Thanks to book friend "Cao Mianzi" for your reward and support, thank you!
Thanks to book friends "Ling Qi Zhao Bi Xin" and "Book Friends 20171207172606535" for their monthly support, thank you!
PS: Although I ended the shopping mall chapter in two chapters, from the plot point of view, it is obviously not finished yet. This part is left blank. I will pick it up after a while when things become more important and add some narration. Uh. ...The main thing is to avoid writing too much ink here.
