The Prosperous Era of Longwan

"There is a mine."

Li Rubai said with shining eyes. His elder brother had said so much, and he was not stupid, so he naturally thought of it.

"Haha."

Li Rusong laughed and nodded, and continued: "This time when you go out, check where nearby gems are produced and control those mines as soon as possible.

You have to know that the mines in Daming belong to the court, because they are allowed to be opened only when they are needed, and the output is mostly used by the court itself.

No one has ever heard of gem mines like this.

As long as we can seize the gem mines in Myanmar first, as well as those mines that produce gold and silver, there will be a steady stream of wealth coming in."

"Yes, yes, yes, brother has to be far-sighted. I will take people out to occupy the mines.

Who knows how many people are still thinking about these mines. There are many businessmen in Yunnan who go here several times a year. I am afraid that they have been eyeing these mines for a long time."

Li Rubai was also a little anxious at this time. The local residents in Yunnan were probably jealous of these resources in Myanmar for a long time, but because Myanmar had its own dynasty, they could not reach out.

In the future, this place will become the land of the Ming Dynasty, and those people will definitely try to find a way to mine here from the Mu Palace.

Anyone who wants to eat alone will definitely have to go around the local emperor Mu family in Yunnan.

Even if the local emperor of Myanmar has become their Li family, they can't make it too ugly with the Mu Palace.

The only way is to get these mines before the Mu family.

The first to strike is the strongest, and the last to strike is the disaster.

Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the overall policy for mining has been to ban mining, because in Zhu Yuanzhang's view, the profit of mining is much higher than farming.

If private mining is allowed, everyone will rush to mine for profit, who will be at ease farming?

Moreover, mining ore often damages farmland, which is contrary to his basic philosophy.

The Ming Dynasty is, after all, an agricultural-based country.

At least, Zhu Yuanzhang thought so, so the policy on industry and commerce, like the policy of banning mining, tends to be conservative.

Except for the period of the founding of the country, when it was supported for a short period of time because of the need for commodity circulation, it began to restrict it on the grounds of household registration.

It was just a restriction, not a complete ban.

Because the court also needed merchants to communicate with the market and transport goods to meet the basic needs of the people.

For mining, it was generally dominated by the court. Whatever the court needed, it mined, and it was not mainly for profit.

Most of the private mining was iron ore, producing farming tools, and there were many restrictions.

Of course, although the court prohibited private mining, in the face of violence in the mines, many localities chose to obey in public and secretly mine in private.

And the courts of the Ming Dynasty also mostly supported Zhu Yuanzhang's ideas, especially worried about the gathering of miners and the occurrence of incidents.

The biggest difference between the mining industry in the Ming Dynasty and the mining industry today is that the safety was very low and the risk of mining accidents was much higher than today, so people engaged in mining at that time were generally regarded as desperate people who risked their lives.

For example, when the Liaodong Rebellion broke out in the late Ming Dynasty, the governor Xiong Tingbi was very reluctant to recruit miners.

He believed that the miners were extremely vicious and profit-seeking, difficult to tame and manage into an army, and easy to cause trouble.

This point was completely contrary to Qi Jiguang's philosophy.

Qi Jiguang valued the fierce temperament of the miners more, and with mutual coordination, he could design the military formation to coordinate with each other and cause the greatest lethality.

It can be said that everyone has their own views on this.

Qi Jiguang knew that the miners were fierce, but they were all for money, so he lured them with benefits.

Xiong Tingbi only saw that the miners were unruly and difficult to tame, so he completely rejected them.

In his eyes, such people gathered together to protect their interests and would inevitably resist the management and ban of the court, becoming an unstable factor in society.

In history, from the beginning to the end of the Ming Dynasty, miners' riots were repeatedly banned. For example, the Ye Zongliu and Deng Maoqi uprisings that broke out during the Zhengtong period were miners' riots caused by the court's mining to solve financial problems.

After that, the Chenghua Dynasty and the Jiajing Dynasty both reopened the mines to solve the financial difficulties, but they were banned again because of harassment from miners.

So in the Wanli Dynasty, officials generally still opposed mining. After all, in their eyes, it was a place that was easy to cause conflicts, and if mining was banned, such things could be avoided.

With this kind of thinking, it is not difficult to understand why they opposed mining.

As for the private mining in some places below, in fact, it really has little to do with the ministers in the court, and most of them are done by people below.

Of course, they banned mining, and there was another sensitive thing, that is, mining tax, which is also an industrial and commercial tax of the Ming Dynasty.

Whether it was the Chenghua Dynasty or the Jiajing Dynasty, or the Wanli Dynasty that caused a huge storm later, the most sensitive thing for the court officials, especially those in the south, was actually to worry that the court and the emperor would target the industrial and commercial industries because of the mining tax and levy industrial and commercial taxes.

The northern scholars were slightly better, while the southern gentry were in the trend of doing business. If the court strictly collected taxes, it would seriously damage their interests.

Anyway, this was the situation in the Ming Dynasty at that time. Both the imperial court and the people mined some mines, but the total amount was limited and could meet their own needs. There was no large-scale mining of various natural resources.

Wei Guangde certainly knew that industrial development was inseparable from mining, but he was more engaged in business and making money through trade.

At present, domestic mineral resources can still maintain a balance between supply and demand, so he never thought about mining.

After all, he was very aware of the environmental pollution caused by mining in later generations and the safety of mines, so he was not very enthusiastic about mining.

He had heard the legend of the coal boss, but it was just a product of a specific period.

How many people noticed this group in the following years? Most of them gradually disappeared due to various reasons.

This time I paid a little attention to Myanmar, and it was Feng Bao’s suggestion.

In his accustomed thinking, he recruits people for mining abroad. As for pollution and safety, what does it have to do with him.

And Li Rusong knew the court's policy on mining, and he planned to make it a fait accompli.

Mines have always existed. Even if Ming Dynasty manages this area, it cannot be stopped or banned at any time.

Therefore, he is confident that these mines in Myanmar will continue to be exploited and earn a steady stream of wealth for the Li family.

The Li family is here, and with the support of the capital, they are not afraid of the Yunnan Mu family at all.

At worst, some of the profits can be given to people in the capital. Anyway, the Li family will still make money.

"Bring more servants there. When the time comes to occupy the mine, let the servants lead people to guard it. Don't worry about who it is."

Li Rusong continued to explain to his brother.

In the future, if the Li family wants to live in the Ming Dynasty, the filial piety in the capital will probably increase, so it will be from the output of these mines.

Li Rusong was not afraid of death when fighting, but his mind was quite flexible, otherwise he would not have been able to lead the Ming army to win so many battles, especially the subsequent war against the Japanese in Korea.

In that war, the Ming army did not have a strength advantage, that is, sharp firearms, coupled with elite cavalry that the Japanese did not have, gave the Ming army more tactics to use against the Japanese.

"Brother, I'm going to mobilize the troops right now."

With a way to make money, Li Rubai couldn't wait any longer and wanted to leave immediately.

He is not a fool. The current situation in Myanmar is that if we don't get these mines in our hands as soon as possible, let alone the losses caused by others' illegal mining and excavation, there will always be some inventory in the mines.

It’s hard to say whether the people in charge will become greedy when they look at the chaos in Myanmar.

"Be careful when you go out. The remaining defeated generals in Myanmar have not yet surrendered."

Seeing his younger brother's eagerness to try, Li Rusong reminded him.

Making money is important, but the life of your brother is more important.

He didn't want to put his brother in danger just because of something external to him.

Of course, the most fundamental reason for removing Li Rubai was that he did not want to keep him in Toungu City, thinking about the tributes all day long.

Sooner or later something will happen.

Watching Li Rubai go out, Li Rusong counted on his fingers again. The list should have been in his father's hand. He didn't know if his father would be as jealous as his brother when he looked at the items on the list.

Thinking about it, I don't think so. Dad still has a good sense. He actually knows very well what kind of money can be greedy and what kind of money cannot be greedy.

Just as he thought, within a few days of the documents being sent out from the capital, he received the list of the first seized treasure.

More than ten boxes of gems and jades, as well as hundreds of thousands of taels of gold and silver. In addition, there are also a large number of exquisite objects made of gold, silver and brass to be handed over to the capital.

When he saw the list, Li Chengliang couldn't move his eyes away.

This wealth is too great.

Even the more than ten boxes of gems and jades are worth at least ten to two hundred thousand taels of silver, and nearly five hundred thousand taels of gold and silver. How much is that?

When an officer reaches the rank of commander-in-chief, he handles a lot of money every year, but not this much.

"Boom."

Li Chengliang's hand hit the table hard, making a dull sound.

There are so many treasures left in Toungoo City. It is unbelievable how much wealth the navy took away from the city.

Judging from the account books of the Toungoo Dynasty of Myanmar that were sent together, it can be seen that the harvest in the treasury is not large, and there are not many gold and silver reserves. Myanmar also mainly collects taxes in kind, and there are large amounts of grain accumulated in many warehouses in the south.

But he didn't like that thing, it was still cute with white flowers and golden flowers.

Li Chengliang also read his son's letter, so he immediately wrote a letter in his own hand, asking his son to send someone to escort sixteen boxes of treasures and hundreds of thousands of taels of gold and silver to Ava City, and then transport them back to the country as soon as possible by land.

As for the things in the warehouse, it was too troublesome to go by land, so Li Chengliang preferred to go by sea.

However, it is best to report it to the capital and let it be decided there.

"Eight hundred thousand kilograms of copper material, tsk tsk, why is there so much copper in Myanmar!"

Looking at the seemingly worthless things at the end of the list, Li Chengliang saw another huge fortune.

Unfortunately, they had all been counted by the Navy and put on the cargo list, so there was nothing he could do.

Well, Yunnan was the main producer of copper materials in the Ming Dynasty. The annual output of copper was only 150,000 jins. Yu Dayou directly copied 800,000 jins of copper materials in Dongyu City, which was worth almost 200,000 taels of silver.

This is just one city, although it is the royal city of Myanmar.

Along the way, Li Chengliang also collected a lot of money from the cities in Myanmar, including gold and silver, as well as many utensils made of brass.

The Ming Dynasty was short of copper materials, so copper was mined in Yunnan official business, that is, the government mined copper mines in Yunnan to make up for the court's demand for copper materials.

It seems that Myanmar, like Yunnan, is rich in this stuff.

Li Chengliang didn't care about the goods on the list, but he was still very interested in the mines that mined them.

If you occupy one, you will be able to lay golden eggs for a long time.

While Li Chengliang was thinking about this, Mu Changzuo was also busy sending his men to seize the large mines in Myanmar that he knew.

However, unlike Li Chengliang and Li Rusong, Mu Changzuo's goal was much clearer, and there were merchants to lead the way for them.

Among them, Myanmar's silver and copper mines are mainly concentrated in the lead-zinc-silver belt on the eastern plateau of Shan State in northern Myanmar. The belt extends north to Yunnan Province, China, and south to Thailand. It is more than 2,000 kilometers long and is the most important mining belt in Myanmar.

The well-known Myanmar jade mines in later generations are also mainly found in the Pagan area of ​​Kachin State in northern Myanmar.

The gold mines in Myanmar are located in central Myanmar, such as the Sagaing area in the central and northern part of Myanmar, which is the main gold mining area in Myanmar.

In addition, Myanmar's gem mines are also mostly found in the Mogok area in central Myanmar and the Mengxiu area in the east.

However, Mu Changzuo knew that the gold and gem mines were still under the control of the remaining Burmese army and could not reach out to them for the time being, so he was now mainly targeting the silver and jade mines in northern Myanmar.

As for the copper mines, although they were also valuable, they were not as valuable as jade after all.

Moreover, the silver standard system was to be adopted in the Ming Dynasty, which had actually begun to be reflected in official documents.

All localities reported to the treasury in silver, instead of using the unit of "guan", which was very telling.

So, Li Chengliang and Mu Changzuo began to mobilize the main force of the Ming army to continuously attack central Myanmar to completely eliminate the remaining Burmese army, while on the other hand, the left governor Li Chengliang and the Duke of Qian Mu Changzuo also began to fight over the Burmese mines.

Mu Changzuo won because he was well-informed and was often one step ahead of Li Chengliang.

Li Chengliang had a greater advantage in power. Even if he was a little slower, as long as he demanded it by force, Mu Changzuo was often passive.

Although Mu Changzuo recruited many people from the Duke of Qian to guard the mines, Li Chengliang did not follow the moral principles of the army and directly used military orders to forcibly occupy them in the name of changing guards.

This move made Mu Changzuo very uncomfortable.

If he did not give it, Li Chengliang would send troops to encircle and suppress them in the name of disobeying military orders.

After all, many of Li Chengliang's soldiers at this moment came from Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi, not Yunnan soldiers under Mu Changzuo.

They only had a slight impression of the Duke of Qian and did not really take it seriously.

The competition for several mines soon made these military leaders realize that it was the two commanders who were fighting for resources.

In this regard, these military leaders had no choice but to be jealous, and they were not qualified to share the spoils.

Fortunately, Li Chengliang was very generous to them. He generously gave them a share of the many goods he had confiscated before, and even the minerals obtained from the mines.

But it was limited to these things. It was impossible to want the mines.

In less than ten days, the "good cooperation" between Li Chengliang and Mu Changzuo fell apart.

Li Chengliang used generals from other provinces in the southwest, and left the Yunnan generals to Mu Changzuo, who had no power to command them anyway.

As long as Mu Changzuo didn't hinder him, Li Chengliang would ignore him. (End of this chapter)