1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 370 Open up a new salt field
Considering the safety factor, the smuggled salt sent from Shengli Port to the mainland will not stop at the Pearl River Wharf outside Guangzhou to unload, so as not to be caught by the salt department.In the early days when "Furuifeng" was the exclusive agent, the cargo ships departing from Haihan basically pulled the goods to the wharf outside Lijiazhuang, Panyu for delivery, but now with the increase of agents in the mainland, private salt The main delivery location was also moved southward from Lijiazhuang to Wanshan Port at the mouth of the Pearl River.From Zhangzhou in the east to Leizhou in the west, many salt merchants from the coastal areas of Guangdong, Guangxi, including Fujian came here to buy high-quality and cheap "Sanya Refined Salt" at Wanshan Port.

After the market opened up, more and more powerful and wealthy merchants of the Ming Dynasty were involved in this profit net.These salt merchants who cooperate with Haihan are not small-scale private salt dealers. Distributors who are too low-level are not qualified to establish direct trade relations with Haihan. Most of the distribution channels are dominated by local tycoons. The wealthy gentry, and even some local government officials and salt officials also participated in it and got a share.

Haihan privately supplied salt to Daming by dumping it at a low price. The most obvious effect was not to lower the salt price in the market, but to make a large number of small and medium-sized salt farms in coastal areas go bankrupt in a short period of time.In the past, salt merchants used salt to resell private salt, and the source of their supply was still these official salt farms. However, after the Haihan private salt appeared on the market, it quickly took away the market share of the official salt farms. The shipping price of Haihan people, The production cost is even lower than that of most salt farms, but the quality of the salt is obviously higher than that of the official salt farms. As long as the salt merchants are not out of their minds, they will naturally choose Haihan to purchase.

Due to its state-owned nature, the official salt farm has a single industrial structure and business model for a long time, and has no ability to resist market risks at all. After the product is unsalable, it will soon affect the production process due to the inability to return funds.The only business strategy that can change this situation is to increase sales to reduce production costs and regain the market. However, no matter how hard these salt farms try, they cannot compete with Haihan Salt Farm, which has cross-generational production capacity.Just one Shengli Port Salt Farm, the annual output has already exceeded the salt needs of the entire island of Qiongzhou Island, plus a Tielu Port Salt Farm, its production capacity is almost equivalent to the combined production capacity of all salt farms in Guangdong and Guangxi, and the two salt farms The total number of salt workers is less than one-tenth of that of Daming Salt Works. There is no chance to fight a price war by reducing costs.

In addition to the advantages in production and cost, the advanced business philosophy brought by the traversers from later generations also contributed a lot.After the establishment of Haihan Salt Industry Company, almost all of its overseas distributors operated with the theory of corporate management of later generations. Under the advanced management system, the operating efficiency of the entire sales system was almost as high as that of private commercial firms in this era. It's not the same.

It took nearly 200 years for "Furuifeng" to grow from small to large, and to distribute its business organizations to various state capitals in Guangdong and Guangxi. Counting down, the number of branches is actually no more than ten. Just a few places.However, Haihan Salt Industry has developed dozens of large and small channel distributors in various places in more than a year, and the coverage area has almost reached the county level. The speed of building sales channels is far faster than that of "Fu Ruifeng ".Faced with such a huge sales network, without an efficient management system, it would be difficult to achieve such a large sales volume of salt, and the plan of the executive committee to suck blood from Daming's finances through the private salt business will also be greatly slowed down. .

The sales of Haihan's private salt are booming, but the sales of official salt are plummeting. After this rise, the momentum of Haihan's private salt sweeping the southeast coastal salt market is even more irresistible. This year has just passed In nine months, the current monthly sales volume has doubled compared with that at the beginning of the year.

However, this did not satisfy the executive committee, because Qiongzhou Island and Yinggehai had entered the executive committee's field of vision early, but due to various reasons, there was no super large salt field officially developed.If this area can be fully utilized, then besides its own consumption and supplying Qiongzhou Island, North Vietnam, and Guangdong and Guangxi regions, Haihan Salt’s salt production will even have spare capacity to export to Fujian and even further Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions.

Since the local coastal areas are full of saline-alkali tidal flats with very little vegetation, all daily necessities including building materials must be transported by boat from Sanya in order to develop and build salt farms there, which requires a lot of manpower The resources and resources are quite large, and the relevant departments are silently preparing for this matter.However, with the arrival of a large number of immigrants from Guangdong, the manpower gap was suddenly alleviated, and there were thousands more laborers waiting for job assignments.After careful consideration, the executive committee decided to settle in Yinggehai and develop the local salt industry resources.

While the relevant departments were intensively preparing for the development of Yinggehai, Macau finally sent back good news.With the cooperation of Wang Tom and Enrique, the local Portuguese council finally agreed to add military cooperation on the basis of the original trade and interoperability agreement.

This part of the agreement is mainly based on the arms trade agreement. Although the two parties have not clearly defined the position of military allies in the agreement, they still stipulate the corresponding bottom line, that is, the two parties shall not assist or cooperate with a third party in any way to threaten with military means. Or damage the interests of the other party, if such a situation occurs, the cooperation agreement will be automatically terminated immediately.

The reason why this item was added to the trade is because both sides still fear each other. Haihan is afraid that the Portuguese will backtrack and contact other western countries to attack the Sanya ruled area; while Portugal is also afraid of the Haihan people. If they don't keep their promises, they might unite with Daming or North Vietnam one day to completely drive the Portuguese out of the Far East.As a supplementary clause of this agreement, the two sides have also reached an agreement not to send armed ships to operate near each other's ports in principle, so as not to cause unnecessary tension.

As for the arms trade, which is regarded as the highlight by both sides, the rules and regulations are much more complicated.A series of issues such as pricing power, delivery cycle, delivery location, payment method, etc. need to be finalized one by one. The second time the verbal sword.

Although Tom Wang does not belong to the business department, under the influence of a group of black-bellied old fritters, he seems to know a little bit about business.In addition, he already mastered Portuguese and didn't even need an interpreter, so there was no big obstacle in communicating with the Portuguese Council.Judging from the content of the final agreement, although Haihan's side did not get much advantage due to the prudence of the opponent, it basically did not suffer.

Regarding the whereabouts of the exported weapons, Haihan only listed one condition for the Portuguese, that is, not to sell a single gun or bullet made by Haihan to Daming.That's right, the executive committee doesn't plan to find any more agents in the arms trade in the Far East, especially the Ming Dynasty, a market with huge consumption potential, can't tolerate the intervention of Western countries.As for whether they bought the weapons and shipped them back to their colonies as a means of defense, or shipped them back to Europe as lucrative commodities for sale, that was their freedom, and the Executive Committee would not send anyone to interfere—at most Just to provide some references.

Of course, during this process, Wang Tom did not forget the instructions of Tao Donglai and others, and made a little magic stick in front of the Portuguese Council, and made some predictions about the recent results of the European battlefield-of course these The predictions were sorted out by relevant departments based on relevant historical data and let him memorize them in advance. The purpose was actually to convince the Portuguese that the path Haihan guided them was the most correct.

Although Wang Tom memorized the historical materials compiled by the staff department and was very expressive, but because the Portuguese merchant ships between the Indian Peninsula and Macau took several months or even half a year to go back and forth, some of the information he leaked about the The "secret" of the European war situation must wait until the next time a ship comes from the Indian Peninsula before it can be verified.

On this issue, Enrique helped Tom Wang a lot. He used what he saw and heard in the Sanya area as a reference, and tried his best to convince the council to believe certain situations that Tom Wang said would happen.For example, Wang Tom accurately stated that three years ago, the Danish King Christian IV, who believed in Protestantism, launched an attack on the Holy Roman Empire with the support of Britain, France and the Netherlands, and occupied northern Germany and western Bohemia. , this is true news that has been verified.Wang Tom also revealed that in April this year, the Holy Roman Empire launched a counterattack and defeated the British commander Mansfield in Saxony. Not uploaded from the European theater to the Far East, the council is not quite convinced by such baseless predictions.

The victory or defeat on the European battlefield has no direct relationship with the Haihan people tens of thousands of miles away, but Wang Tom reminded the Portuguese not to miss a good time to do business, because according to the inference of Haihan's exclusive technology, It can be clearly seen who will gain the upper hand on the European battlefield in the next few years.

For the Haihan people, it doesn’t matter even if these countries play a dog’s brains, but for the Portuguese, the victory or defeat will directly affect their long-cherished plan to restore the country. You must know that Spain is one of the two sides, the Habsburg dynasty. The main character is at least a powerful actor with a lot of roles in the whole European process.If there is a way to take advantage of the war situation and consume Spain's army and national power, these grape people will definitely spare no effort to do so.

So in the end, the Portuguese Council chose to listen to Wang Tom's guidance and clever strategy dubiously, and followed his guidance to target the sales of weapons to Denmark first.In the original history, Denmark proposed peace to the Holy Roman Empire in May 1629, signed the "Contract of Lübeck", and promised not to interfere in German affairs.And this contract can be regarded as a sign of the end of the second stage of the 5-year European War. In this stage, the Holy Roman Empire should be regarded as the winner, because its power has extended from the hinterland of Europe to the northern Baltic Sea through the war.

At this stage when the Danes can't stand the offensive, if you sell Haihan's powerful weapons to them, I believe it will help them fight the Spaniards longer - the more the Spaniards die, the more the Portuguese are eager to restore their country. The better the news.

As for where the war situation will go in the future, Wang Tom did not disclose further.He would not tell the Portuguese that the good days of the Habsburg alliance only lasted for two or three years. With the announcement of the Swedish King Gustav II in 1630 to send troops, a new round of war will start again. And in this five-year period, the intensity of the battle will only be worse than the previous ones.

Although not completely trusting Wang Tom's nonsense, the Portuguese Council decided to purchase a batch of weapons produced by Haihan for research, to see if the Haihan people have any secrets that can be imitated in terms of manufacturing technology , Second, these weapons can also be shipped to Europe to earn economic benefits.

As for whether to quietly sell this batch of goods to the South Vietnamese court, the council did not dare to go into this muddy water.South Vietnam's economy is on the verge of collapse, and there is no cash in the treasury. Even if they want to buy it, they have no choice but to buy it on credit. It is absolutely impossible for the council to take any military risks for a regime with such a poor economic situation.Wang Tom has already stated his position in front of them, and within a year or two at the latest, the Ruan regime in South Vietnam will fall.If the words are so clear, the Portuguese who have just reached a cooperation agreement will naturally be inconvenient to intervene in Annan's internal affairs, otherwise they will really anger the Haihan people, and I am afraid that more than one South Vietnamese will be unlucky.

Of course, this agreement is only approved by the Portuguese Council in Macau and cannot be fully effective. It must be reported to Goa on the west coast of India, and then the news will be sent back to China through a long sea route.However, before this long waiting period, the Portuguese Council in Macau can fully represent the Kingdom of Portugal and implement this agreement first.

On October 1628, 10, Enrique took the "Lightning" sailboat driven by Tom Wang himself, and came to Victory Port from Macau again.And the mood when he entered Hong Kong this time is undoubtedly the most relaxed among the three times he came here. He no longer has specific tasks assigned to him, and he no longer needs to report everything to Macau.At least for a period of time in the future, Enrique will live a very relaxed and comfortable life in Port Victory.

Almost at the same time that Enrique visited Victory Port for the third time, a fleet sailed out from the adjacent Sanya Port.After leaving the port, the fleet turned to the west and traveled along the coastline.The fleet sailed on the sea for a whole day, and arrived at the destination when it was getting dark. It was located in the Yinggehai area in the southwest corner of Qiongzhou Island.

Regarding the situation here, the relevant departments have sent ships to do surveys eight times if not ten times, and they are very clear about the geographical environment here.The fleet sailed into the inland saltwater lake along a narrow channel less than 50 meters wide. Most of the water in this saltwater lake came from the influx of seawater. Coupled with the flat terrain nearby, it was simply Excellent location for building a salt farm.

But there is a reason why no one has developed this place in the hundreds of years since Yacheng was opened as a port.The land here is sparsely populated and the land is highly alkaline. It is basically impossible to grow food and there is no forest nearby that can provide wood for building houses. If you want to develop this place, it will be for the people of Ming Dynasty who need to be self-sufficient in everything and lack a detailed social division of labor. It's just a thankless thing to do.

In the surrounding area, the only one with rich immigration experience and practical ability is the Haihan family.Although the natural conditions in Yinggehai are relatively harsh, Haihan has not been involved in large-scale relocation once or twice, and has very rich experience in handling such matters.After the fleet docked, the laborers disembarked one after another. They needed to build temporary shelters on the shore for hundreds of people to spend the night before the sun set completely.

Most of the first batch of immigrants sent to the front station in Yinggehai area were engaged in construction-related businesses. They would not become residents here. The main task they shouldered was to build temporary residences and various supporting facilities in the local area. living facilities.

Due to the saline-alkali land characteristic of the local area that has been soaked by seawater all year round, the water quality here is somewhat bitter, similar to the taste of seawater.In order to provide healthy drinking water for the people and animals who settled here, the Ministry of Construction also specially moved two derricks here, hoping to drill several artesian wells here.Considering that fresh water is a scarce resource here, several large fresh water reservoirs are specially designed to store those special items that cannot be separated from water.

This group of people has ten days to build the camp. After ten days, the first batch of immigrants transported from Sanya Xingang will arrive here.Regardless of where these immigrants came from and what kind of occupation they were engaged in, they will probably have to deal with salt water in this place for several years to come.

The top and bottom of the Salt Industry Company also attached great importance to this matter. On the third day after the advance team arrived here, Anxi, the person in charge of the Salt Industry Company, also visited the site in person and decided to stay here for several days, waiting for him. It was true that the first settlers settled down and started working in standard salt pan digging before they left.

In mid-October, the group of immigrants who traveled across the sea to Victory Port last month received a transfer order from the Executive Committee. They set off again from the temporary residence of the immigrants and took a boat to their real destination. Songhai Salt Field.Although it is not a pleasant thing to be a salt worker, the immigrants still chose to believe the propaganda of the cadres, and went to experience for themselves what kind of environment the saltworks under the rule of the Haihan people was.

(End of this chapter)