1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 4028

Ilhan beamed as he looked at the gift list. Two years had passed, and the Haihan people were still as particular about etiquette as ever, and the gifts they sent were even more numerous than those from their meeting two years prior.

A set of 108 exquisite bone china tableware pieces can be used to set up a banquet for 16 to 20 people, making it an absolute must-have for entertaining distinguished guests.

This is an absolute rarity in Suez. Ilhan had seen a caravan transporting such items in his younger days; it was said to be a gift from a Portuguese overseas governor to the Portuguese royal family, and naturally, the price was astronomical. Even with Ilhan's wealth, buying such a set of porcelain tableware would have been a painful expense for a long time.

A pair of floor-standing celadon vases, almost as tall as an adult, are quite impressive. Ilhan decided to place them in the living room, where anyone who comes in will immediately be drawn to these large vases.

Twenty catties of top-quality tea from the East—something Ilhan had been longing for. Qian Tiandun had given him a few catties when he visited last time, and it suited Ilhan's taste perfectly; he finished it in less than six months. Ilhan later asked someone to buy some more from the East, but it wasn't the same taste at all. He later realized that the top-quality tea sent by the Haihan people was simply unavailable on the market.

And those dozens of exquisitely handcrafted silks—the incredibly smooth feel of them against my fingers was an unparalleled pleasure to Ilhan. If these things were shipped to Istanbul, they would surely become treasures that high-ranking officials and nobles would fight to acquire.

Besides these signature products of the Eastern Empire, there are also all sorts of Haihan industrial products, such as glass mirrors, lighters, kerosene lamps, soaps, and so on, all of which are irresistible.

Having received so many benefits, Ilhan was all smiles when he met Takahashi Minami. He took the initiative to ask about her recent situation and also inquired why Qian Tiandun hadn't come this time.

However, Ilhan would not let greed cloud his judgment and forget his position. After some pleasantries, he asked Takahashi Minami about the real reason for his visit to Suez again.

Takahashi Minami said frankly, "The port that our country has built at the southern end of the Red Sea has taken initial shape, so Commander Qian hopes to open up the trade route from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea as soon as possible. Lord Ilkhan's jurisdiction is a necessary route, and Lord Ilkhan is an old friend of ours, so we must come and pay him a visit no matter what."

When Ilhan heard Takahashi Minami refer to him as an "old friend," he was quite pleased, since he was a local official but rarely received attention from outsiders.

The Suez region, which he governed, was considered a remote area within the Ottoman Empire. It produced no valuable goods and had no external enemies nearby to offer opportunities for advancement. Although it was an important area connecting the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, there wasn't even a decent official road running through these hundreds of miles, limiting the capacity of land transport and thus greatly restricting the scale of cross-sea trade. As a local official, he naturally had little to show for his efforts and was virtually unknown in the domestic political arena.

The foreigners entering and leaving Suez were almost all European merchants from the Mediterranean region and Arab merchants from the Red Sea region; very few foreign officials visited. Although Ilkhan looked down on those foreign merchants, the merchants probably didn't take him seriously either. However, the Haihan people repeatedly offered him generous gifts, a level of courtesy he had never experienced before.

However, Ilhan remained somewhat uneasy about the "trade route" that Takahashi Minami mentioned.

Unlike the usual local merchant caravans, the Haihan people always arrived in Suez with the air of an impending siege, a whole armed fleet with more cannons than the local garrison. To say that Ilhan felt no sense of crisis would be a lie. But Ilhan didn't understand: the Haihan people went to such lengths to come to Suez, yet each time they brought relatively little cargo. Using these warships to escort goods must be far more expensive than using merchant ships. Could they really recoup their costs?

Ilhan couldn't help but offer a suggestion: "If you want to arrange caravans to travel between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, you don't actually need to go through all this trouble. Just buy a few hundred camels here, hire a group of local camel drivers, and send a few capable managers to lead and oversee the caravans. Set up a trading post in Suez and Port Said to receive and send goods and settle payments. That would be enough."

Ilhan was very familiar with the trade along this route, and he had his own fleet of trucks and camel caravans. He was not worried about the competition that would arise if the Haihan people wanted to join in, because the land transport capacity here was far from meeting the needs of trade.

If the land transport capacity were large enough, European merchant ships wouldn't need to circumnavigate the entire African continent before heading east; they could simply pick up and deliver goods at the port of Suez, saving a considerable amount of freight costs.

However, the capacity of land transport and sea transport is far too different. The cargo capacity of a camel caravan is even less than that of a small merchant ship, which is far from meeting the ever-growing scale of trade.

Even if the Haihan people came, how much could they increase the transport capacity of this land route? Ilkhan was not optimistic about it. After all, this trade route had a history of thousands of years, and countless shrewd merchants had set foot here, but in the end, they could only succumb to the limitations of the natural environment.

Takahashi Minami said, "If we have a way to increase the shipping capacity here a hundredfold and make Suez the most important port in the Red Sea region, would Lord Ilkhan be willing to cooperate?"

Ilhan chuckled and said, "I remember when I met Commander Qian two years ago, he said something similar, but isn't that just a pipe dream?"

Takahashi Minami solemnly said, "Man can conquer nature. As long as we dare to think and act, there is always a way to achieve our goals."

Ilhan said, “Even if you build a smooth road in this desert, the improvement in transport capacity will be very limited. Whether you use camels or mules, the animals that carry goods will eventually need to be replenished. If the number exceeds the carrying capacity of the natural environment, then it cannot be sustained in the long term.”

Since most of the surrounding area is desert and the lakes along the way are mostly salt lakes and salt marshes, the fodder needed for livestock is mostly transported from the Nile Delta. However, if the number of livestock increases and the demand for fodder becomes too high, the price of fodder will rise sharply, leading to high freight costs. Merchants will then prioritize sea freight, which is slower but cheaper.

This is why, whether it's building roads or digging rivers, large-scale projects that require a large number of livestock have extremely high construction costs, so for thousands of years no one has stepped forward to take the lead.

Takahashi Minami said, "We've traveled all the way to Suez to clear these last few hundred miles. How will we know if we can succeed if we don't try?"

(End of this chapter)