In the Song Dynasty, there was no law. Chapter 268: The first step of industry begins here! There were many poor people in Bianliang, and there were even more poor people in the world.
Zhao Jun can't take care of everyone, he can only do what he can.
The Song Dynasty was still too short of money.
But making money is not something that can be done in a day or two. The domestic cake is so small. The right way is to make the cake bigger and expand business overseas.
However, ancient maritime trade and land trade were always limited by one condition - transportation.
Before the productivity improvement, the annual export volume of tens of millions of guan was the limit for Quanzhou and Guangzhou to do business with Central Asia.
The only major buyer now is Japan, which has suddenly become rich after discovering silver mines.
According to the book "Silver Capital" written by the later Western scholar André Gunder Frank, in the 100 years from the 14th to the 16th century, in addition to the Iwami Silver Mine, there were other silver mines with considerable reserves on the four islands of Japan.
Among them, the Iwami Silver Mine has the largest reserves, producing 30 tons of silver annually and 38 tons of silver at its peak. It has been mined for more than 400 years, and the total reserves are estimated to reach 12,000 tons, worth about 300 million taels.
Together with other silver mines, the amount of silver produced and supplied from Japan to the Ming Dynasty reached about 200 tons each year.
But it has just begun. Although the Iwami silver mine has been discovered, the mining volume is still too low. Only about 15 tons were mined last year. Even if the Song Dynasty brought advanced production technology, the development there has just started. How can it be built so quickly?
So in fact, although a large silver mine was discovered, the annual import volume of the Song Dynasty was actually mainly copper and sulfur.
Silver, combined with silver from other already discovered sources, only supplies about 50 tons to the Song Dynasty each year. The amount of silver flowing between the two sides is currently only a quarter of that in the Ming Dynasty.
Calculated in proportion, it is equivalent to about 1.3 million taels of silver per year.
There was indeed a lot of gold. According to Japanese scholar Katsumi Mori in his "Continued Research on Japan-Song Trade", from the Northern Song Dynasty to the Southern Song Dynasty, Japan imported more than 10,000 taels of gold to China every year.
Now, with the help of Song Cai, Japan has "discovered" the Sado Gold Mine, and this gold mine also has a large number of associated silver and bronze mines. If developed, it can provide more gold and silver for the Song Dynasty.
Such gold, silver, copper, iron, sulfur and other large quantities of minerals made up the trade between the Song Dynasty, Japan and Goryeo, with the bilateral trade volume reaching nearly 40 million strings of cash.
According to historical records, during the reign of Emperor Renzong, the Ming Dynasty Maritime Customs collected 500,000 strings of cash. With a tax rate of 10% on maritime trade, the private trade volume between the Song Dynasty and Japan at that time was only 5 million strings of cash. It was not until the Southern Song Dynasty that it exceeded 10 million strings of cash.
However, since the two sides signed the free trade agreement in the first year of the Kangding period, the output has increased eightfold in two years, thanks to active communication with Japan to help them expand their domestic gold and silver mineral resources.
Together with the trade with Goryeo, from the first year of Kangding to the third year of Qingli, more than three years later, more than four million taels of silver were brought to the Song Dynasty.
Moreover, as time goes by, the trade volume between the two sides will only continue to grow, thereby driving a large number of industries and allowing Japan to upgrade its technology, which will naturally continue to expand the inflow of silver.
According to scholar Wan Ming's "Study on the Quantity of Overseas Trade in the Ming Dynasty", an average of 7 million taels of silver flowed into the Ming Dynasty every year in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, of which about 5 million taels came from Japan each year, and another 1 to 2 million taels came from American silver.
Therefore, as long as the Song Dynasty continues to engage in trade, in the future, the Song Dynasty will be like the Ming Dynasty, with a trade volume of 70 million taels of silver and an annual income of 7 million taels of silver, which will no longer be a dream.
But what we lack most now is time.
In January, Zhao Jun celebrated his 29th birthday, and Zhao Zhen planned to hold a grand ceremony to celebrate it.
But Zhao Jun refused.
He just had a meal with his family and then continued to deal with state affairs.
In February, there was good news from the research institute.
The ammonium sulfate fertilizer provided by Zhao Zhen was finally successfully developed.
This thing belongs to the field of chemistry, and Zhao Jun has no idea about it, but he remembers that his grandfather made it when he was a child.
He was from the countryside. When he was a child, his family raised pigs. The pigpen and the toilet were in the same room. A big pit was dug underneath and covered with wooden boards. The pigs stayed in the pigpen, and the feces of humans and pigs fell into the big pit below through the gaps between the wooden boards.
I didn’t understand these things before, but later I remembered that my grandfather once poured white powder into the cesspool. I just didn’t know what it was at the time, and I mentioned it to Zhao Zhen and others.
However, composting technology like this had already become popular in the Song Dynasty, and many rural areas were built in this way, so there was no need for popular science education.
The only problem is that I don't know what the white powder is.
Unexpectedly, when Zhao Zhen asked Zhao Jun for a notebook at the beginning of this year, he actually found the recipe in a history book.
Take 50 catties of human urine and feces, 5 catties of calcium sulfate (gypsum powder), add 20 catties of water, stir well, and leave it for 10-15 days.
That is, human urine and feces, gypsum powder and water in a ratio of 10 to 1 to 4.
There is even a formula for ammonium carbonate fertilizer in that history book, which is made from human urine or cow, sheep, pig and chicken manure, soybean powder and gypsum powder in a ratio of 100 to 1 to 8.
Only then did Zhao Jun realize that the powder was actually gypsum powder.
However, the formula of ammonium carbonate fertilizer requires soybean powder, which was not only eaten by people in ancient times, but also a strategic material. The cost of soybean feed for horses was too high, so it naturally could not be used.
Therefore, ammonium sulfate fertilizer is the best.
My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!
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