Outside Nanjing, because of the Tanglu Rebellion, and the workshop that was seriously damaged, now with the injection of new funds, most of them have recovered, but the most developed area of the textile industry in the Ming Dynasty still belongs to the Susong area.

The entire territory of the Ming Dynasty was vast, and there were workshops in many other regions, such as Huguang, which was originally the second largest province in taxation, and there were many workshops, but after the recovery of Jiangnan, it was immediately left behind.

In some areas, even if the imperial court invested a lot to stimulate commerce, the development was still slow, while in some areas, as long as the policy was slightly better, commerce would immediately flourish.

Sometimes Wang Yan is also puzzled by this, but on the surface he thinks it is due to geographical location and other reasons, but later when he heard Chen Yonghua talk about another thing, he realized that it was not as simple as he thought.

For example, in Susong, Zhangquan in Fujian and other places, even if it is a loan between relatives and friends, it is necessary to set up a document and indicate the annual interest, which can be said to be black and white, and everyone thinks it is normal, but if you are in Huguang, Sichuan and other places, you can borrow from relatives and friends, and the other party will charge interest, which will make people feel that some people are not human and too unkind.

Why there is such a big difference, most of them are because of the differences between the two societies, Susong, Zhangquan and these places have hundreds of years of commercial traditions, and the people here are wondering how to make money, they are good at this way, and gradually evolved into a commercial society, while Huguang and other places are still traditional agricultural societies, so there will be differences.

In these areas with commercial traditions, if someone wants to set up a workshop, then they can immediately recruit the bookkeeper, craftsman, shopkeeper and other talents, and they can do it immediately, and they know how to operate, but in other areas, it will take a period of exploration to play, and the disadvantages are obvious.

In addition to the convenience of the places they occupy, the main reason is that these places have hundreds of years of commercial traditions, and the genes are deeply buried in the local soil, and other regions want to form this kind of genes, I am afraid that it will take at least two or three generations.

Su Song re-became the cotton spinning and silk weaving center of the Ming Dynasty, and paid more taxes than the southwestern provinces, which shocked Wang Yan.

As a prisoner, Wang Yan is very concerned about the living conditions of the people, only when the people are rich and healthy, and as the actual controller of the Ming Dynasty, can he have a sense of accomplishment and happiness in his heart.

Some people love money, some people love beauty, and some people like power, but Wang Yan likes the world's support for him and has a good reputation.

In March, for the commercial development of the entire Ming Dynasty, Wang Yan led many officials to inspect the two prefectures of Susong to learn from experience.

Susong and the two provinces are located in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River at the mouth of the sea, belonging to the impact plain, the land is fertile, the products are rich, the sea ships of more than 1,000 materials can sail directly, and the Grand Canal passes, the traffic is very convenient.

Since the Song Dynasty, Su Song has been the textile center of China, and since the Ming Dynasty, Su Song's taxes have been said to be half the world.

Nowadays, Susong's taxes are also very high, but mainly from the commercial taxes brought by the textile workshops.

Suzhou's status in the Ming Dynasty was very different from today's, it was the largest commercial center of the Ming Dynasty, with a population of more than 600,000 households and a population of nearly 3 million at its peak.

Suzhou had a population of more than one million in the Song Dynasty, while Paris and London were just rural towns of more than 50,000 people at the same time, and Suzhou was still one of the top ten most populous cities in the world during the Ming Dynasty.

The Ming Dynasty's "Suzhou Prefecture Chronicles" recorded: "Four or five out of ten people live in the city, three or four out of ten people live in the town, and one out of ten people scatter in the countryside." This shows that the Jiangnan region of the Ming Dynasty was highly urbanized, and the Ming Dynasty recorded that "Su County Wuchang to Fengqiao, the city is twenty miles." It is to show off his prosperity to future generations.

The market stretched for twenty miles, which is unimaginable today, so much so that many people, unable to believe that China was so developed during the Ming Dynasty, blindly worshiped the West, which had only risen by plunder in recent centuries.

If anyone doubts this, there are also records of the Ming Dynasty in Western sources, such as the Matteo Ricci Chinese Notes, Volume 5, Chapter 18, "Father Guo Jujing and Xu Baolu in Shanghai", which mentions the size and population of the city of Shanghai during the Ming Dynasty.

"The name of the city is due to its location near the sea, and 'Shanghai' means close to the sea. The city was surrounded by two miles of walls, and there were as many houses in the suburbs as there were in the city, 40,000 in all, usually by the number of stoves. There is no need to make a fuss about the large number of people in the cities of the Chinese, because even the countryside is overcrowded. The city is surrounded by a flat plateau that looks more like a large garden city than a rural one, with towers and rural cottages and farmland as far as the eye can see. There are more than 20,000 households in this periphery, and more than 300,000 people together with the urban and suburban populations, all of which belong to the same urban management."

The population of Shanghai and its suburbs is 300,000, and the population of the entire county is actually 500,000 in the 24th year of Hongwu, and Shanghai is not a particularly important city in the south of the Yangtze River.

Suzhou is a big city in the south of the Yangtze River, and in the Ming and Qing wars, he was relatively affected by relatively small problems, and did not fight against each other like Kunshan, Jiangyin, and Jiading.

This may be a manifestation of the weakness of the propertied class, and there was no large-scale persecution in the city, but the population was still halved due to the impact of the war, especially the merchants outside the city, and the residents of the suburbs basically fled.

After the Ming Dynasty recovered Jiangnan, in addition to the Tanglu rebellion, it can be said that it was very peaceful in recent years, many people moved back to Suzhou, and there were more shops and restaurants outside the city.

Although the number of new births in the Jiangnan region is increasing rapidly, it will take at least ten years to recover to its heyday, and it will only be until then that there will be an explosion in the population.

The prefect of Suzhou is surnamed Xue, named Zong Zhou, is an anti-Qing righteous man, and he has long been defeated and killed in history, but at this time he was a Tanhua in the first year of co-governance, and he was sent to the local magistrate for four years, with outstanding political achievements, and was exceptionally promoted to the prefect of Suzhou.

Xue Zongzhou is in his thirties, with a mustache, and a thin literati, but he is in good spirits. He received the news of Wang Yan's arrival to inspect, and led Suzhou officials out of the city twenty miles early in the morning to Fengqiao to meet Wang Yan.

"Jianguo, that fertile field is all newly planted mulberry seedlings this year!"

Wang Yan looked at the large farmland under his finger, and saw that there were farmers with hats in the fields in the distance, even the older children were helping to take care of the mulberry seedlings, and the smaller ones were playing at the ridge house, and couldn't help asking: "It seems that there are not many people!" ”

"When I returned to the prison country, many people worked in the workshops in the city, so there were fewer people planting mulberry outside. After all, there is no wind and sun in the workshop, and the harvest is no less than farming, but the Suzhou government is recruiting long-term workers from neighboring prefectures and counties to solve the problem of manpower shortage. Xue Zongzhou saluted and said.

Wang Yan frowned slightly, he had to admit that it was reasonable for dynasties to emphasize agriculture and suppress business, and the commercial society was indeed not as stable as the agricultural society.

As soon as the workshop closed down before, hundreds of thousands of people immediately had nothing to do, and these people were still gathered together, which was very unstable, and now as soon as the workshop is restored, the personnel are a little unable to keep up, and it is really difficult to control.

Wang Yan looked at it and asked again, "Then whose land does it belong to?" ”

"Basically, it is the land of the big families in the city, and some of it is the land of the local silk weavers!"

The current population of the Ming Dynasty is 50 million, half of the population is less, but this land can support at least 100 million people, and if sweet potatoes, corn and other crops are promoted, it will be no problem to feed 400 million people.

At present, we can only wait for the further disintegration of traditional societies in various places and the adoption of more effective large-estate cultivation in the countryside to force more people to pour into the developed Jiangnan area.

"Then let those big families improve their salaries, as long as the salaries are high, they can attract people from other places to work here."

Wang Yan said as he walked, and then he came to the famous shop area outside Suzhou. A group of people walked through the middle of the street, on both sides were lined with cloth villages, merchants from all over the world, after purchasing here, sold to all parts of the Ming Dynasty.

The whole street was extremely prosperous and bustling, at this time Wang Yan and others walked under a bridge, and saw many people standing on the bridge, noisy and shouting, but after a while, they were taken away by several men wearing silk, and the bridge was empty, leaving only a few people standing at the head of the bridge.

Seeing this, Wang Yan couldn't help asking, "What are they doing?" ”

"Back to the prison country, it was the workshop recruiting mechanics, and every morning there was a shopkeeper of the workshop who came to the bridge to recruit people." Xue Zongzhou explained: "Recently, the manufacturing bureau received an order of 500,000 horses of Su weaving, and all workshops are recruiting manpower to hurry up the work, but the current manpower is still slightly insufficient. ”

In the past, the manufacturing bureau was mainly for the palace and was controlled by eunuchs, but now it is mainly in charge of foreign trade. Because the Ming Dynasty did not allow foreign merchants to enter the interior for trade, they could only sell anything through the government to take them to see the samples, and after placing an order, the government would hand over the list to the following workshops for production.

The main reason for prohibiting foreign businessmen from entering domestic free trade is that in this era, everything in China can make money for foreign countries, but foreign countries have nothing worth buying except for very few materials such as grain and spices, so it is necessary to impose certain restrictions on foreign businessmen, so as not to cause a shortage of domestic materials, and making money is not as much as possible.

The current trade of the Ming Dynasty has been somewhat unable to cope with it, if the restrictions are relaxed, there will inevitably be more silver inflow, and the domestic goods will be swept away, especially Spain and other countries themselves hold the silver mountain, so the trade of the Ming Dynasty should be carried out within a reasonable range under the condition of ensuring that the domestic material is sufficient.

Wang Yan couldn't help frowning when he heard that there was a shortage of manpower again, but at this time, Xia Wanchun on the side said: "Prison country, the minister looks at whether it is working in the fields or the hired workers in the workshop, they are mainly men. In fact, there are some things that can be done by peasant women, but on the contrary, they will do better than men, but because of the constraints of etiquette, women cannot work outside. The minister thought that the court could give an order to encourage women to let go and participate in labor······"

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(End of chapter)