The advantage of having strong fists.
Great Ming had the strongest fists, thus Great Ming had the final say. Even if others harbored dissatisfaction, they could only swallow their grievances.
What else could they do?
Unite and wage war against Great Ming?
Their weaponry and equipment were inferior to Great Ming's, and Europe was rife with internal strife. Among them were arch-rivals like England and France, who wished each other dead. Could these nations truly be expected to unite, form an expeditionary force across the sea, and travel thousands of miles from Europe to Great Ming to cause trouble?
Rather than engaging in a war that would likely be lost, it was better to seize this opportunity to foster good relations with the Great Ming Empire and extract more benefits from other nations. The barbarians of Europe also understood the strategy of "dealing with distant states on friendly terms while attacking neighboring states."
Therefore, the envoys from various European nations could only dispatch personnel to relay messages back home, informing them that the Great Ming Emperor had invited all monarchs to gather in Great Ming and would host the first world-class sports event in four years.
However, compared to the problem of "whoever has the strongest fist calls the shots" in some nation, and the "little ball" sports event, the numerous issues with the Southern Ocean vassal states were the truly vexing problems.
To give the simplest example—Yunnan.
Whether during the Tang Dynasty's Nanzhao period or the Song Dynasty's Duan regime, Yunnan was essentially considered an external vassal, no different from Jiaozhi or Burma.
It wasn't until Zhu Yuanzhang established Great Ming and enfeoffed Mu Ying as the hereditary Duke of Qian to perpetually guard Yunnan that Yunnan truly transitioned from an external vassal to a direct administrative province under the court.
In this process, Zhu Yuanzhang not only instructed the Great General Fu Youde to reject the submission and allegiance of the Dali Duan clan but also launched a large-scale book burning campaign. All books accumulated over six hundred years of Nanzhao and Dali history, whether "official archives" or "scholarly compilations in the wild," were reduced to ashes. Subsequently, through stringent laws and harsh punishments, local powers were suppressed, uprooting the centuries-old Nankang and Dali civilizations.
In addition to the extensive burning of books and destruction of history, Great Ming spent decades carrying out a massive migration and assimilation program in the Yunnan region. First, a portion of the local residents were forcibly relocated to Shandong, and then approximately three million people from the central plains, including Jiangsu, Jiangxi, and Huguang, were migrated into Yunnan, with these migrants occupying the land with relatively convenient access to transportation.
For instance, on July 28th, the twenty-first year of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang issued an oral decree to Fu Youde and Mu Ying: "Of the households under the Yunnan Provincial Administration, numbering over fifty-nine thousand, and individuals numbering over eight hundred and sixty, all except those serving as horse station couriers are to provide one able-bodied male per household, equipped with their own weapons, to join the army in the campaign against the Bai Yi. Those who refuse will be apprehended and relocated by the commander after the army returns from campaigning against the Bai Yi."
Simply put, Elder Zhu used the method of "whether they were willing to bring their own provisions and follow the Ming army to fight the Bai Yi" to assess the reliability of the local residents. Those who were unwilling were deemed untrustworthy and were forcibly relocated to other areas of the Central Plains administration.
Following this, Great Ming also tacitly allowed the local influential families to "falsify their origins"—that is, to acknowledge that their ancestors were originally Han Chinese who had migrated to Yunnan with the imperial army. Most of them falsely claimed Han lineage from regions like Jiangnan and Sichuan, with the Dali Duan clan even falsifying their origins to Wuwei Commandery in Hexi.
Concurrently, Great Ming spared no effort in promoting Central Plains culture in Yunnan, eliminating the possibility of the local populace becoming alienated again.
This process took Great Ming over a hundred years in total.
The same logic applied to Jiaozhi, Burma, and Siam.
Although the entirety of Jiaozhi had declared pacification, and Burma and Siam had also submitted, from a legal perspective, they were no different from administrative provinces like Shandong and Henan. The remaining tasks essentially involved establishing prefectures and counties in the Southern Ocean and then initiating large-scale border settlement through migration.
However, the pacification of Jiaozhi and the submission of Burma and Siam only legally completed the transition from external vassals to directly administered territories. From a practical standpoint, there would inevitably be a host of problems.
While Jiaozhi might be relatively easier to handle, the influential families in Burma and Siam would certainly not be pleased with Zhu Jinsong's version of "Gaitu Guiliu" (reforming native officials and returning territories to the central government). If it were Zhu Yuanzhang's version of Gaitu Guiliu, they might have been more amenable, as altering family genealogies and clan registries was considered an ancestral skill among these Southern Ocean influential families.
The problem was that Zhu Jinsong's version of Gaitu Guiliu involved attacking corrupt gentry and redistributing land. While this would result in wealth redistribution for the Great Ming court, it would be disastrous for these aristocratic families.
There was also the matter of confiscating local books—whether "official archives" or "scholarly compilations in the wild"—these must be collected. They could be stored in the Royal Library of Great Ming, but their retention by the local populace absolutely could not be permitted.
Furthermore, the complete abolition of their original scripts and languages, and the full implementation of Great Ming's language and script…
In short, there were a myriad of issues.
Of course, other problems were not really problems. Even if the monkeys revolted constantly, it wouldn't matter, as Great Ming's military strength was undeniable, and they had no fear of suppressing these monkeys.
What truly gave Zhu Jinsong and the high-ranking officials of the Great Ming court a headache was border settlement through migration—
Zhu Yuanzhang's handling of Yunnan was a clear precedent. Zhu Jinsong and the Great Ming court officials would naturally choose to migrate large numbers of people, leveraging Great Ming's demographic advantage to overwhelm the local indigenous population.
The question was, how to get people to migrate.
To force people to migrate, similar to the Qing Dynasty's "filling Sichuan with people from Huguang" or "coastal resettlement," with a knife to their necks?
Don't be absurd. Such direct coercion of people to migrate was something the Qing Dynasty could do, and even Zhu Chongba, Zhu Laosi, and emperors throughout history could do it. Only Zhu Jinsong could not.
This was a predetermined outcome from the moment Zhu Jinsong raised his banner in rebellion against the Qing.
The current situation was extremely awkward: if Zhu Jinsong needed money, grain, or soldiers for war, the people of Great Ming were very willing to support him. They were even willing to offer the last grain in their homes as military provisions and send their youngest sons to the battlefield.
But asking them to leave their homes and migrate to Burma, Siam, or Jiaozhi was very difficult. No matter how the local officials and farmers' associations persuaded them, few were willing to respond.
Providing resettlement funds? Seeds, draft animals, and farming tools?
If such good things were available during the Qing Dynasty, commoners would be fighting tooth and nail to get them. The key was that the commoners of Great Ming were unwilling.
It was too far.
Before the popularization of the miraculous invention of trains, a distance of a hundred li was already considered a long journey. A thousand li away, where one's fate was unknown, was quite normal. xxs1
After all, there was no WeChat, no mobile phones, not even telephones or telegraphs at this time.
Additionally, one had to consider kinship ties.
Where did the saying "a person is cheap when away from home" come from?
Where the clan resided, over generations, the connections and relationships formed were intricate, making many things easier to accomplish.
Once one left the clan's sphere of influence, seeking help for even trivial matters would be a great understatement, unless one had a lot of money to pave the way.
The problem was, if one had a lot of money, who would bother leaving their clan's sphere of influence?
Especially to places like Jiaozhi and Burma.
Once one went there, the hope of returning home during one's lifetime was practically zero. In other words, unless a clan intended to expand its branches, no one would be willing to go.
Unless they couldn't survive—but the commoners of Great Ming were living well in Great Ming; it wasn't as if they couldn't survive without those resettlement funds, seeds, and farming tools.
Therefore, the problem returned to Zhu Jinsong's hands.
It was foreseeable that migrating people to even more distant places like Liaodong and Alaska in the future would be even more difficult than it was now.
Zhu Jinsong, with a grim expression, glared at Zeng Cheng and the other high-ranking officials and began to scold: "We have thirty million people in Great Ming, yet there aren't even thirty thousand willing to migrate!"
"Without enough people migrating, what difference does it make whether Burma and Siam submit or not? And Jiaozhi, with vast tracts of land, yet no one to cultivate it? Is this acceptable?"
Zeng Cheng and the other officials kept their eyes on their noses and their noses on their hearts, thinking to themselves, who is to blame for this? Look at the Qing Dynasty; they could just put a knife to the people's throats and migrate as many as they wanted!
Of course, if they were commoners, it was better to live under the rule of Emperor Zhu Jinsong of Great Ming, at least they could live like proper human beings.
After a period of silence, Zeng Cheng turned his gaze to Zhu Erdan: "How many laborers did your Forward Army Directorate capture in Jiaozhi this time? Are there any women?"
Zhu Erdan blinked and replied, "There were definitely no shortage of laborers captured, plenty of both men and women."
Zeng Cheng let out a hum, then turned his gaze back to Zhu Jinsong: "Your Majesty, how about we offer concubines to the people willing to migrate to the Southern Ocean? After all, Great Ming has plenty of everything, especially single men who haven't found wives."
Upon hearing this, Zhu Jinsong couldn't help but curse himself for being foolish—all those textbooks from an orphanage had written about this strategy, why hadn't he thought of it?
After a moment of calculation, Zhu Jinsong said, "Then we shall offer them. The Forward Army Directorate shall intercept all the women from Jiaozhi who were originally intended for labor. Whoever goes to the Southern Ocean first gets to choose."
"Also, your Five Army Directorate, inquire with the soldiers about to retire if they are willing to go to the Southern Ocean. If they are willing, all their benefits will be doubled—resettlement allowance will be twenty taels of silver, or two hundred Dragon Yuan; two draft animals; two concubines; and two hundred mu of land."
After all the high-ranking officials bowed and acknowledged his orders, Zhu Jinsong then instructed Ke Zhiming: "Go and spread some news for me."
...
Rumors circulated in the martial arts world that a bachelor who had never married, in response to the Great Ming Emperor's call, voluntarily chose to migrate to Jiaozhi and ended up choosing a remarkably beautiful concubine.
Rumors circulated that a gentry official went to the Southern Ocean and took over a dozen concubines, almost marrying a new bride every day and changing brides every night, living a life of great pleasure.
Rumors circulated that an unnamed retired soldier from the Forward Army Directorate, in response to the Great Ming Emperor's call, voluntarily chose to settle in Burma, and discovered a jade mine on the land allocated to him by the government. The court bought it for tens of millions of taels, making him directly the richest retired soldier in Great Ming.
Especially after the Great Ming court announced in the latest issue of "Great Ming Daily" the upcoming construction of passenger steam engine railways connecting Jiaozhi, Siam, Burma, and other places, the bachelors and certain lustful men of Great Ming became restless.
According to the plan announced by the court, Great Ming would take five to ten years to complete the railways in these regions. If the speed of the steam engines could be increased, it would only take two to three days from Siam to Jinling.
With this, the worry of not being able to return to one's roots after death would no longer exist.
Then, the people of Great Ming discovered that the government officials had changed. When they were begging everyone to go to the Southern Ocean, these officials were making all sorts of guarantees and promises, almost kneeling and begging. Now that people were rushing to go to the Southern Ocean, these officials seemed to have "take it or leave it" written all over their faces.