The Ming Shines on Every Land

Price Analysis of Red Cannons Imported in the Ming Dynasty According to "European Shipwrecks and Western Cannons Spread to China in the Late Ming Dynasty" (written by Huang Nong, a scholar of the history of the late Ming Dynasty and a scholar of ancient artillery in Taiwan) - book display: The first year of Tianqi (1621) During Xu Guangqi's military training period in 2001, Xu Guangqi's friends asked the Portuguese in Macau to purchase a Portuguese artillery weighing four thousand pounds. After many efforts, they finally succeeded in purchasing it. The price was said to be one thousand taels per gun. Huang Yinong pointed out that the cannon donor here exaggerated the price in order to falsely claim credit, and the actual price should be less than 1,000 taels. Huang Yinong calculated that if the cannon were made in Britain, the cost of each gun would be just over two hundred taels of silver. I can't find the weight data of artillery in the seventeenth century at the moment. Based on the historical calculation of artillery based on the weight of four-pounder cannons in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the weight of four-pounder cannons in the seventeenth century should not exceed 1,200 pounds. In other words, the cost of the four-pound cannon manufactured in Britain at that time was no more than sixty taels of silver. After subtracting factors such as false reports and purchase requests, I think the selling price of a four-pounder gun should be around one hundred taels to one hundred and fifty taels. If it is a small-caliber artillery such as a four-pounder, which is easy to manufacture and has low confidentiality, its purchase difficulty should be lower than that of the red-coat heavy artillery. Therefore, the price of two hundred taels can completely buy a Portuguese or Dutch four-pound cannon. However, the red cannon is different. The red cannon is a typical ship-borne long heavy artillery. The main difficulty of the red cannon lies in the long barrel technology. The length of the 130 mm 18-pounder gun is about 3 meters, which is about 22 times the diameter. What was popular at that time was the idea of ​​barrel proportional modulus, which gradually thickened from the muzzle to the barrel to the barrel. Moreover, this belongs to the British Coffelin long-barreled gun class. Such a long barrel requires a smooth bore and a consistent caliber. In the late Ming Dynasty, brittle white pig iron casting was the main manufacturing method, which was indeed high technology. Of course, this is not to say that casting red cannons is an insurmountable threshold. The casting technology of the Ming Dynasty was actually very superb. In terms of technical difficulty, casting red cannons, a previously unseen technical task, was not difficult for the skilled craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty. From the initial explosion of cannons to the later iron-body copper core cannons, it can be seen that the artillery technology of the Ming Dynasty has far surpassed the Western artillery technology at that time in just a few decades. As for the reason why large-caliber artillery is difficult to popularize, apart from the technical difficulty (which will be discussed later), the main reason is the cost issue, not the technical issue. In fact, few people know that before the mid-19th century, regardless of whether in the East or the West, the scrap rate of artillery castings was actually quite high. This situation was known when Western artillery manufacturing technology was introduced in the late Ming Dynasty. It is recorded in "Fire Attack and Key Points" that because the quality of casting was not very stable at that time, even in Europe, "Those who can cast ten blunderbuss from one big blunderbuss and get two or three usable can be called a master." In other words, the scrap rate is as high as 70~80%. Naturally, the cost of artillery cannot be reduced. The most important and fundamental reason why the gun casting rejection rate was so high at this time was the cooling rate gap between the inside and outside of the gun barrel. Due to this difference in cooling speed, many gun barrels with poor materials and uneven uniformity will develop cracks in the gun barrel due to thermal expansion and contraction during cooling. And a gun barrel with cracks in the barrel is naturally a waste product. That's not all. Some cracks are not visible on the surface, but are inside the metal of the pipe wall. Therefore, all the artillery built at that time needed to be tested for the first time. That is, filling the gun barrel with gunpowder but not loading the cannonball, and releasing it once. Those with no cracks in the tube wall are qualified. If there is internal damage to the pipe wall, it will crack when it is released and can be eliminated immediately. In addition, when casting super-large-caliber guns, especially multi-ton fortress heavy artillery, the larger the caliber, the greater the difference in cooling rate between the inside and outside. Therefore, in the era of natural cooling, the larger the caliber of the gun, the higher the scrap rate when casting, and the weight and price soared sharply - out of proportion, almost exponentially. Above a certain level, the failure rate is almost 100%. Therefore, it was rare to see iron super-large-caliber artillery at that time. The largest one was only about 8 inches. No matter how large the artillery was, it was difficult to successfully manufacture it; casting- -If only one of a hundred large-caliber cannons can be used, it does not mean that the cost is just the material price of one successful cannon, but a hundred! So the price of a 32-pound or 42-pound heavy cannon can even be equal to the sum of the prices of dozens of 4--6-pound field guns! Of course, dozens of 4--6-pound cannons fired dozens of volleys when attacking a city, which can only leave traces on the city wall. There are some shallow pits but no major damage to the city wall, but a few rounds from a 32-pound heavy cannon may completely destroy a section of the city wall (and this is especially important when dealing with rough-skinned battleships in naval battles). Therefore, the destructive power of a heavy cannon when attacking a city is far from being comparable to dozens of small cannons (of course, against infantry groups, the power of heavy artillery is not as powerful as small field guns). It is precisely because of this that the price of heavy artillery remains high. The American Rodman internal mold water cooling technology in the 19th century can solve this problem. It can ensure that the cooling speed of the inner and outer tubes is the same, or through experiments and adjustments, the speed difference can be controlled within a safe range, so that the body tube will not cause internal injuries. This immediately reduces the scrap rate to a single-digit percentage, or even to zero, thus significantly reducing the price of building a cannon. And because the cannon itself is relatively strong and has no hidden damage, the average lifespan is increased by five times. Therefore, even if this technology cannot actually improve the combat performance such as the range and power of artillery, it is a very valuable technology just because it causes a significant reduction in the cost of artillery. The red-coated cannons from Europe in the late Ming Dynasty traveled across the ocean to come to China. Not only were the material prices and processing costs of a single cannon a problem, but there was also the issue of scrap rate during processing. High-quality British cast iron cannons were sold to Europe for five times the price of their own countries. In addition to their own technical confidentiality issues, they also had scrap cost issues I found this online.

Who knows why the author didn't write the book "Going to Southeast Asia with the System"? 😫

The women wrote very failed stories, one tried to stop him from buying a concubine, and the other was sent to training. It's just that my brain is not up to par.

It would be better to directly establish a constitutional monarchy and evade all imperial power, which is more serious than that of the United Kingdom. After all, Elizabeth II even fired the Prime Minister of Australia. Then he was given privileges that he didn't have, such as not needing a driver's license to drive, and all the Zhu Ming royal family were recruited to form the Royal Guards. Then we will implement an electoral system. Every position must elect literate people to vote. If you want to be a county magistrate in a small position, you only need to take an exam. The exam content is divided into physics, chemistry, arithmetic, Chinese, agriculture, epidemics, pests and beasts (biology), geography, governance (similar to politics, most of them test how to deal with things). There is no need to learn a foreign language, let those barbarians learn Chinese I am just giving you a suggestion, it doesn't matter if you ignore it.

Until Chapter 7. The author is too sketchy about industry. Refractory bricks and coke are not readily available in modern times. Determine the needs based on the use and build your own kiln for firing. Why is the first generation of iron in Foshan in the south good? Because it mainly uses charcoal instead of coke. Where to buy coke? ? Ask people in the ceramic industry to find suitable clay and build a small kiln mouth. 2. The sealing of steam engines has nothing to do with rubber. You can find out by just searching. Can high temperature sealing rubber be used? Metal pads, oil, etc. Are the right way.

The pace is too slow, there are no guns, and there is no maritime hegemony. How can the Ming West India Company be established?

Did you guys negotiate this?

I'll tell you the number. It's up to you, the author, to update 20,000 words a day.

Your sister can keep it to herself in West India. Why are you making fun of her when she is far away?

Judging from the amount of discussion, I recommend the author to write about foreign countries. There are too many works about the Ming Dynasty. Although the market is large, the competition is more fierce. The style of starting in North America and entering Southeast Asia should be good. I really don't want to read this book now.