The benefits of maritime trade have now become one of the important financial sources of the Great Song Dynasty, and it is naturally Zhao Yu's cash cow, but it is precisely with the large wealth brought by the sea trade that the remnant Song regime was able to survive the most difficult times in Qiongzhou, and accumulated the necessary economic foundation for the restoration of the country, otherwise they would only rely on the small land of Qiongzhou to feed 200,000 troops. And most of the military expenditure of the Northern Expedition also came from the income of sea trade, which supported Zhao Hao to fight all the way to Yingtianfu, but did not let the national economy collapse after only returning to Jiangnan for two years.

Now, even though the Great Song Dynasty has seized Jiangnan and Lianghuai and mastered the money bag in the traditional sense, it still needs to invest a lot of money to make this money bag full. In addition to harnessing the Yellow River, building water conservancy, reclaiming wasteland, dredging canals, and expanding ports, it is also necessary to relocate the population and resettle migrants. And with the expansion of the territory, it is necessary to support the growing bureaucracy and army, which requires the continuous investment of funds by the imperial court, and it will take at least a few years, if not a decade, to reap the benefits.

Therefore, the Great Song Dynasty also needed to obtain a large amount of funds through sea trade to maintain development and accumulate for the continuation of the Northern Expedition in the coming days. The Song Dynasty's quest for wealth could not be met by the tributary trade methods of the past, which required the opening of new shipping routes, the expansion of trading countries, the fight against rampant piracy, and the ability to win in the increasingly fierce trade frictions.

Zhao Hao thought of a trade method pioneered by the West in modern times, the British East India Company. For those who know the modern history of China, when we think of the British East India Company, we think of the opium trade, and then of the humiliating Opium War. In fact, the opium trade was only one of the activities of the East India Company, but what other business did this company have?

From the mid-to-late sixteenth century, England was anxious to embark on the route of overseas trade. Queen Elizabeth of England once vowed to say, "We too have the freedom to engage in overseas trade, and all beings in the world are equal before the sea and the sky." She shared her sentiments with the Tudor princes and nobles, who actively supported the establishment of chartered companies and the development of overseas trade. Elizabeth granted the East India Company a royal charter granting it the privilege of trading in India, which was established under these circumstances for the purpose of establishing direct trade relations with India, the South Seas, and China.

Of course, the East India Company was not only in Britain, in fact, other European countries also formed East India Companies specializing in Oriental trade, namely the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Austria, Spain, Sweden, etc. The Dutch East India Company was the most powerful trading company in the world at that time. The Dutch East India Company firmly controlled the trade markets in East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. In comparison, the British East India Company was small in scale and had a small number of ships, and the two sides had a huge disparity in strength.

In order to compete with the Dutch, the British challenged the spice trade. When Britain did not yet have the strength to compete directly with the powerful Netherlands, they chose to temporarily cooperate with the Dutch against the Portuguese in order to get a piece of the spice trade. After gaining a foothold in the spice market, the British East India Company began to adjust its trade thinking, gradually shifting its main imports from spices to Indian chintz. The printed cotton trade of the British East India Company expanded rapidly, and the Dutch, relying on their abundant capital, began to suppress British merchants in Asia, which soon caused discontent in the British.

Dissatisfied with the loss of the market, the trade rivalry between the two countries soon developed into an armed conflict, and the British East India Company soon established an armed force of its own. After three Anglo-Dutch wars, the Netherlands was defeated, and Britain eventually replaced the Netherlands as the new maritime hegemon. From then on, the British East India Company began to dominate India and get involved in China, and its main business was based on the South Asian subcontinent, and the main profit was obtained through taxation.

At that time, the Mughal Empire had never realized what the existence of the British East India Company meant to them, but instead provided it with various conveniences for the sake of various immediate financial and commercial interests and military aid. The East India Company was granted the right to trade freely, to set up permanent trading ports at will, to garrison troops in commercial ports, to build forts, and later, the scope of these rights was even derived from the right of inland navigation. The East India Company even took control of the finances of the richest part of Bangladesh, which was tantamount to getting the keys to India's treasury.

If the shipment of iron, copper, tin, ephedra, grain, and timber out of India, and the importation of silk, cloth, industrial products, sugar, salt, etc., into India were colonial activities within the scope of trade, then the robbery of the national treasury was really an act of piracy that could not be put on the table. But the British East India Company did just that, robbing not only the Bangladeshi treasury, but also the royal treasures worth more than a million pounds when it captured the capital of Mysore.

Later, King Charles II of England granted the East India Company administrative, coinage, military and diplomatic powers in the form of law. From then on, this joint-stock company, which owned the army and its subjects, essentially had the character of a "state", a colonial government in the true sense of the word, and became the de facto ruler of India, and it also acquired the functions of assisting in the rule and the military.

The actions of the East India Company, and the opium trade that led to a century of humiliating Opium Wars, made the people of the country very disdainful and hated its actions. However, it cannot be denied that this business model has made great contributions to Britain's becoming a world hegemon, laying the foundation for British colonization of the world, and also verifying that 'a big fist is the truth', thus influencing the world political pattern for a hundred years to come......

At present, the royal ocean-going trading fleet formed by Zhao Yu has the shadow of the East India Company in terms of trade methods, and it also starts with the most profitable spices, and uses the method of controlling the origin to compete for the market, and expel the Persians who control the spice trade from South Asia; the establishment of permanent commercial ports in the shipping hub in the form of assistance and export benefits, which will become a stronghold for the control of the waterway and a bridgehead for further market development; The establishment of an armed fleet was determined at the beginning of the implementation, not only to deal with pirates, but also to deter countries that are not 'long-sighted'.

Now the ocean-going fleet has gained a foothold in South Asia, seizing most of the spice trade in the region, monopolizing the traditional trade in silk, porcelain and tea by virtue of the advantages of the country of origin, and heading west into the Arabian Sea region to seize the Central Asian market. And Zhao Yu's ambition does not stop there, he also wants to continue to open up the African market to the west, but unfortunately the Suez Canal was abandoned hundreds of years ago, and the ship cannot continue to move forward. To Europe, they could only reach it by land transport into the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and they had to stop there as wholesalers.

Compared with the vigorous development of the Nanyang and Western maritime markets, Zhao Yu's Oriental markets are basically at a standstill. One is to go to Japan and Goryeo through the Mongol and Yuan ruled areas, and it is difficult for the fleet to replenish along the way; Second, Goryeo, as an important trading place, was a vassal state of the Mongol Yuan and was a hostile state to the Great Song Dynasty in principle; The three Oriental markets are much smaller, accounting for a very small proportion of maritime trade. Therefore, Zhao Yu mostly smuggled in this trade, and the transaction was mainly barter, in order to obtain Oriental special medicinal materials and sulfur, which was in great demand.

But now it's different, since the Oriental pirates are happy, they take the opportunity to recruit all kinds of pirates, use them to open the market and establish colonies, so that the devils can taste the taste of being colonized 800 years earlier. And the timing is not bad, Zhao Yu knew that Meng Yuan attacked Japan twice, although he was defeated and did not return, and was not able to set foot on the land of Fuso, but their invasion became a catalyst, which made the Japanese shogunate rule turn into decline and once again entered a period of long-term turmoil.

The economic foundation of the shogunate was derived from the "Kanto Imperial Success" and the meaning of "disposition" in this case refers to the territory that the shogun had the power to manage and could dispose of at will. These domains included the "Kanto Imperial Domain", "Kanto Imperial Division", and "Kanto Shojo Prefecture", and the shogunate had the power to set up land chiefs in many estates and prefectures. By the way, the guardians of the countries do not have a salary, and they generally also serve as the head of the land, and receive a reward from the land.

After the War of Resistance Against the Yuan, the shogunate did not receive land confiscated from its political enemies, so the shogunate was unable to satisfy the royal family who had come to Kamakura to ask for a reward for their military exploits, thus destroying the foundation of the relationship between the shogunate and the imperial family, which had been rewarded by the "bonong". As a result, the division of the landlords and officials from both the "honsho" and the "lords" from the shogunate was accelerated, but most of the imperial families were impoverished by the burden of the war and began to pawn or sell their land to usurers.

This led to economic chaos, and the decline of the imperial family's poverty accelerated the collapse of the imperial family system, weakening the shogunate's economic base and leading to a decline in control. As early as before the Anti-Yuan War, some of the "Hundred Famous Lords" rose to the rank of samurai. In order to develop their own power, these new lords used the power of the poor people who rebelled against the lords, the fugitive subordinates, and the subordinates to gather them around them and arm them with bows and arrows to fight against the shogunate and the lords, and became the 'evil party'.

The activities of the evil party constituted a serious threat to the rule of the shogunate, but there were also some members of the imperial family who were dissatisfied with the shogunate, and out of their need to oppose the shogunate and build up their own strength, they often tried to win over the tactics of the evil party, so that the contradictions within the shogunate also deepened. Until now, in order to prevent the imperial family's territory from being divided too carefully and causing poverty to the imperial family, the shogunate changed the inheritance system of property separation that was common in the inheritance of the imperial family's property to the inheritance system of the imperial family, and the concubine was supported by the eldest son.

Some royal families strengthened their unity with the "so-collar" as the center, formed a strong guardian, formed a new force, and the contradictions of all parties intensified, leading to the outbreak of civil war. The civil war further exacerbated the conflict between the royal family, and most of the samurai, whether they were external or non-royal families, also rebelled against the shogunate and waited for an opportunity to rebel. Zhao Hao calculated the time, and the time for the outbreak of the rebellion was not far off......