When Chongzhen sent Isabella, who was confused by himself, out of the door, he let Wang Chengen and Lu Qi return to the room. He immediately instructed Wang Chengen to let the pirates recruited by the Maritime Association contact the Portuguese government-in-exile formed by Antonio in a private name.

Since he recruited the largest group of pirate and smugglers in the southeast, and opened up overseas trade between the northern and southern provinces, the growing number of Chinese maritime merchants has begun to affect the income of the original maritime group.

As of August this year, the volume of goods exported has doubled compared to the same period last year, but the value of goods exported has increased by just over 50 per cent, and the income has increased by just over 20 per cent. It is entirely due to the increase in export goods, which has led to the saturation of the nearest overseas market, and therefore the continuous decline in the price of goods.

In the Japanese market, where profits are the highest, the price of Chinese goods fell the most. This state of affairs has aroused uneasiness among the current members of the Maritime Association, and many representatives of the Maritime Association have made a euphemistic proposal to the Emperor on whether to set a threshold for the constant influx of merchants into foreign trade, so as to prevent the prices of commodities in overseas markets from falling too fast, resulting in the loss of the interests of the members of the Maritime Association.

Although the proposals put forward by these maritime representatives were greatly approved by the overseas trading companies controlled by the inner government, they did not conform to Chongzhen's ideas. It is true that the scale of overseas trade in the Ming Dynasty has expanded too quickly, resulting in the loss of the interests of the original maritime group, and this loss also includes the overseas trading companies under the name of the inner government.

However, behind the damage to economic interests, Chongzhen also saw the continuous growth of the number of new maritime merchants, which made the maritime merchants who originally controlled the Japanese and Manila markets began to shrink their power.

The former Eighteen Zhi Pirate Maritime Group, even after being recruited, still firmly controlled the external routes along the southeast coast of the Ming Dynasty. However, in the past year, the imperial court has increased its trade policy of opening up to the outside world, so that many small and medium-sized businessmen have begun to devote themselves to Japan and Manila, two overseas markets that are closer and easier to travel.

Although the ships built by these small and medium-sized businessmen are not large, only 1 or 200 tons, they are numerous. After the imperial court relaxed the restrictions on the construction of ships and changed to a quality policy to supervise the construction of ships, a Chinese-style sailing ship of 1 or 200 tons immediately became the type of ship with the largest number of ports in the south.

This kind of sailboat can be handled by 1 or 20 people, and the way of construction is relatively convenient, as long as you find a flat land near the shore to start construction. A skilled craftsman can complete a finished ship in 3 or 4 months, and a slightly worse craftsman can complete a finished ship in only 6 or 7 months.

Of course, the durability of such ships should not be expected too much, but many Chinese merchants do not plan to use them for a long time, and after they ship their goods to Japan or Manila, they like to sell them with their ships.

As an island nation, there is no upper limit to the demand for ships, but although Japan has timber in the country, it lacks some important shipbuilding materials, such as tung oil. Although there is a type of tung oil tree in Japan, the yield is low, and the quality is not as good as that of tung oil produced in China.

In addition, although Japan is an island country, but the country's shipbuilding technology is quite backward, the representative of Japanese shipbuilding technology, Ataka ship, although the size is large and known as the castle on the sea, but the lack of proportional model of the ship type can not withstand the wind and waves at all, it is easy to capsize at sea, can only sail in the calm offshore sea or bay.

The most criticized thing is that the Japanese craftsmen who designed the Ataka ship only considered the defensive power of the sea battle, and forgot how to make the ship move forward, so the Ataka ship used the wind power extremely inefficiently, and mainly relied on manual rowing. Therefore, the larger the size of the ship, the more difficult it is to move.

The Ataka ship, which claims to be the highest level of Japanese shipbuilding technology, is just such a standard, and the quality of other Japanese civilian ships can be imagined. The vermilion ships used in Japan's foreign trade are basically purchased Chinese sailing ships, and a few are European ships, and there are basically no ships built by Japan itself.

Even with such backward shipbuilding technology, the Edo shogunate was still afraid that the feudal domains possessed more large ships than the shogunate, and in the Keicho period, they issued a "large ship confiscation order" to confiscate all the large ships of each domain. Under such circumstances, the daimyo and merchants of the feudal domains did not dare to build large ships that could cross the ocean.

The ships brought by these Chinese merchants were just below the size of the ships allowed by the shogunate, and the operational performance and safety of the ships far exceeded those of Japanese ships, and the prices were not too high, so they soon became the merchant ships used by the Japanese feudal lords to replace the cargo ships, or simply rebuild them as the seat ships of the daimyo.

As for Manila, the demand for Chinese ships is stronger than that of Japan. Southeast Asia was originally an archipelago of waters, and ships were a necessary means of transportation. The ships that can be built by the kingdoms of Southeast Asia are larger canoes. Even the Spaniards built galleons by shipbuilders recruited from China, not locally.

Therefore, with the continuous growth of overseas trade, the shipbuilding industry has begun to become the fastest growing industry in the southeastern coastal provinces. And the prosperity of the shipbuilding industry, in turn, contributed to the rapid growth of the number of merchants involved in overseas trade.

As a result of this mutual reinforcing, the markets in Japan and Manila began to become the domain of small and medium-sized merchants. In such a situation, the original maritime merchants had to either open up new markets or find ways to limit the number of merchants entering the Japanese and Manila markets in order to protect their own interests from loss.

Although Chongzhen advocated recruiting pirate and maritime merchants on the southeast coast of Zhao'an, it did not mean that he was willing to let these people monopolize the overseas trade channels of the Ming Dynasty. In that case, he would simply foster another interest group. Interest groups and interest groups may have a common language with each other, but they certainly will not have a common language with him, the Ming Emperor.

The formation of this pirate group was mainly due to the refusal of some unprivileged smugglers to let the gentry bureaucracy on the coast monopolize the foreign trade of the Ming Dynasty in the name of the sea ban. Chongzhen's recruitment of the Eighteen Zhi Pirate Group was able to be implemented, which did not mean that the gentry bureaucracy on the coast agreed with the emperor's idea of opening up overseas trade.

Rather, it was because the force possessed by the pirate and maritime merchant group of the Eighteen Zhi exceeded the force under the control of the gentry bureaucracy along the coast, and without the support of the imperial court, they could not resist the power of the Eighteen Zhi on the sea. Therefore, when the emperor took the initiative to propose Zhao'an, these gentry and bureaucrats adopted a tacit attitude.

In fact, even if the emperor did not make this claim, they would have to persuade the local officials in Fujian to propose a recruitment of Shibazhi. Since they can't play Eighteen Zhi in terms of force, they are completely familiar with the routine of bringing these pirates into the system of the imperial court and using the power of the system to deal with these pirates who have been recruited.

It's just that things didn't turn out as they expected. Although Chongzhen recruited Eighteen Zhi, he did not force these pirates to go ashore, and still let them control a section of the sea. As a result, coastal interest groups have lost the conditions to control these pirates.

If things continue like this, then these interest groups on the shore will inevitably seek a compromise and extend a hand of friendship to the leaders of the Eighteen Zhi families. If the bureaucracy in the system joins forces with the maritime groups that are on the fringes of the system, the interests of overseas trade will have little to do with the imperial court in the future.

Therefore, Zhu Youzhen had no intention from the beginning and kept the interests of foreign trade in the hands of a few large groups. It is his goal to let the small and medium-sized merchants of the Ming Dynasty share the profits of the mature overseas market, and force the maritime merchants to sail to the ocean, so as to break the monopoly of a few large merchants on the overseas trade of the Ming Dynasty.

Of course, the cooperation between the Inner Government and the Maritime Association is still in the honeymoon period, and Zhu Youzhen has no intention of destroying the relationship between the two sides so quickly.

It is naturally undesirable to restrict the way Ming merchants participate in overseas trade, otherwise it would be another disguised maritime ban policy. But limiting the number of merchant ships in East and Southeast Asia is a proposal worth considering.

After all, there were not only Chinese merchants in these markets, but also a large number of European and indigenous merchant ships. If the Japanese market was restricted by the shogunate's restrictions on the trade of European ships, Chinese merchants were in an advantageous position.

Then in Southeast Asia, it is European merchants and * merchants who have more advantages. The former relied on great force, while the latter relied on religious ties. Chinese merchants can only occupy a third of the market here.

Since the beliefs of Southeast Asia were originally brought by Zheng He when he went to the West, these countries still had a certain sense of closeness to the Ming Dynasty, which is also the reason why Chinese merchants were able to freely trade with these Southeast Asian princely states without the support of the state.

In addition, these businessmen from the Middle East and Africa do not conflict with Chinese businessmen, but are one of the main customers of Chinese goods procurement. Therefore, Chongzhen had no intention of expelling them from this region, destroying friendly relations with the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.

The scale of commerce of European merchants in Southeast Asia was led by the Dutch, followed by the Portuguese, then the Spaniards, and the British and Danish were almost negligible.

Although the Netherlands is a small country, but now the sea is the world of the Dutch, even in the Southeast Asian waters so close to China, the sea power of the Ming Dynasty does not exceed Batavia much. Moreover, once the sailors of the Ming Dynasty left the coastal sea, their combat effectiveness would basically decrease dramatically.

Zhu Youzhen had no interest in fighting the Dutch in the Eastern Netherlands, so he quickly skipped the Dutch. British and Danish merchants were too small to be worth the Ming Dynasty's dealing, so they were again excluded.

Then the only ones left were Portugal and the Spaniards, although the Kingdom of Spain had annexed the Kingdom of Portugal for almost 50 years. Overseas, however, Portuguese and Spanish merchants remained distinct groups. No matter who Da Ming chooses to deal with, the other side will be happy to see it.

However, the Spanish governor of Manila was very interested, and not only signed a trade agreement with the Ming Dynasty, but also intended to cooperate with the Interior Government in the smuggling trade to New Spain. However, the Portuguese governor of Goa not only rejected Chongzhen's proposal to buy the city of Malacca, but also sent a governor to Macao, wanting to officially include Macao as a Portuguese colony.

Politically, the Portuguese in Goa provoked the Ming Dynasty. Commercially, the Portuguese-run Sino-Japanese trade and the Indo-Southeast Asian spice cloth exchange trade inadvertently challenged the interests of Chinese merchants.

Therefore, cracking down on the Portuguese merchants in Goa and expelling the Portuguese merchants from Southeast Asia and East Asia was undoubtedly the best choice for the Ming Dynasty. But as the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, he could not issue this order for no reason, because it was not in line with the values of the Ming Dynasty.

The establishment of a Portuguese government-in-exile, through Princess Isabella, to attack the Portuguese merchant ships in these Goa with the call of restoration, is the best choice for both Chongzhen and Daming.