The World's Wealth and Grain Have Their Own Numbers; Who Ultimately Benefited from Maritime Trade?

"The Great Ancestor established the laws, the Great Ancle fixed the capital, and our dynasty takes the north as its foundation... This... is!... Your Excellency's lesson is right! This student truly is... suddenly enlightened... suddenly enlightened!..."

In the study, faced with Provincial Administration Commissioner Wang Zhe's guidance, Shi Wende wore a look of sudden understanding and nodded again and again, unable to say a single unnecessary word.

The Great Way of the sages, the Great Ancestor and Great Uncle, Great Ming's state policy—all of them pressed down together. How would he dare utter half a "no"? Yet in his heart, it was still hard for him to fully agree.

After all, the Provincial Administration Commissioner kept saying "agriculture is the root, commerce the branch," "north and south are one body," and then "the common people chase profit," "merchants and traders are crafty"...

But over all these years of the Shi clan's maritime trade, he had dealt plenty with farmers, merchants, sea bandits, gentry, officers and soldiers, officials, and all sorts of people. The direct experience he had gained, what he had seen and heard, was utterly different from those so-called "sagely great principles" in the Provincial Administration Commissioner's mouth!

The Provincial Administration Commissioner spoke of "encouraging agriculture and settling the people." But in the Zhe Region, the population was multiplying, while the gentry were also annexing land on a massive scale. This caused more and more farmers to have no land or little land, and the suffering commoners numbered in the tens of thousands. The people had no fields to farm anymore, so how were they supposed to "encourage agriculture," and how were they supposed to "settle the people"?

Just like the "sailors" his Shi family recruited—weren't they all forced to go out to sea and seek a way to