1635 Han style rises again

Chapter 950 Colonial trade in South Africa

On January 1679, 1, Longchuan Fort (now King Williamtown, South Africa).

"Let's rest here tonight!" Zhuo Lianghong raised his head and glanced at Longchuan Fort not far away, and greeted loudly: "Go to a few people, go to the village to buy some drinks and come back....Remember, don't cause trouble Damn, I can finally breathe a sigh of relief for a while! Hey... don't let everyone rest, leave a few people to watch the animals!... Such a large group of animals should not all run away, they are all in vain money!"

Chen Songlin, who turned 16 this year, immediately got off his horse when he heard the greeting, took out a water bottle, raised his neck and poured it into his mouth.

"How?" Zhuo Lianghong led the horse to Chen Songlin, and asked with a smile, "Can you bear it this way?"

"Uncle Zhuo..." Chen Songlin stretched out his right hand and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, with a nonchalant expression, "It's nothing, but it's only a hundred miles away, so my nephew can bear it!"

"That's right, a boy of fifteen or sixteen years old, if it had been more than ten years ago, he would have been able to go out to fight with the master of the Eight Banners!"

"Uncle Zhuo, we are now Qi people, but we are no longer... Qing captives." Chen Songlin said softly.

"Qinglu?...Do you want me to remind you?" Zhuo Lianghong's mouth twitched, and then he gave him an annoyed look, "Although we now say that we are from Qi, where is this place? Damn, let's not say that this place is far from Shenzhou The mainland is 1 miles away, even the mainland of Hanzhou is more than [-] miles away. Huh, Qi people, we can be regarded as half Qi people at most, and we are pawns who open up territories for others!"

"..." Chen Songlin listened, his expression was a little tangled, and he said anxiously: "But..., but our life...is not bad now! Those officials who came from the mainland to inspect and businessmen who came to trade, also Didn't treat us like...inferior servants."

"Go, go..." Zhuo Lianghong raised his foot and kicked Chen Songlin a few times, "What do you know, you son of a bitch!... Hurry up and feed the horse!"

Chen Songlin led a few horses and walked towards the distant river bend.In front of him were hundreds of cattle and sheep traded from the natives, who were being driven by his companions, and they were also heading towards the river.

In 1498, the Portuguese da Gama bypassed the Cape of Good Hope and opened a new sea route from Europe to India and China.However, this new waterway centered on the Cape of Good Hope port did not become popular quickly, but was neglected and lonely for 100 years.

According to rough statistics, in the more than 1498 years from 1612 to 100, there were more than 800 seagoing ships sailing from Europe around the Cape of Good Hope to India and East Asia, with an average of only 7 ships per year, and fewer ships passing through the Cape of Good Hope on the return journey, with a total of only 425 ships. , an average of less than 4 ships per year, because 285 ships were left by Portugal to garrison the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, and 96 ships sank to the bottom of the sea before they rounded the Cape of Good Hope on their return journey.

Since the Portuguese occupied the port of Mozambique on the southeast coast of Africa, in order to avoid the westerly storm that frightened the sailors in the waters of the Cape of Good Hope, they simply bypassed the Cape of Good Hope and sailed straight to Mozambique.

Before the 16s, Portugal did not use the Cape of Good Hope Port itself, nor did it allow European ships such as the Netherlands, Britain, and France to enter the Indian Ocean through the route it discovered.For this reason, the Portuguese kept the charts of the new route very strictly confidential, and even punished the ship owners and navigators who leaked the secrets and defected to other countries as "traitors".

It was not until 1580, when Portugal and Spain merged to become "one country", that the Netherlands, which took the lead in opposing Spain in Europe, had an opportunity to take advantage of it.The Dutch took the lead in attacking the new routes that had been blocked by Portugal with seagoing ships one after another, followed by British and French ships following the same pattern and set foot in the Indian Ocean one after another.

In a very short period of time, the Dutch became the most powerful trading power in the Asian seas.The company's business rapidly expanded to India, Ceylon, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, Japan and China, forming a vast Asian-African trade network.

As a result, a large number of Dutch ships sailing to the east increased.At the same time, more and more goods were transported to Europe by Dutch ships—pepper, spices, textiles, tea, coffee, and cotton cloth, and the Cape of Good Hope port’s status as a relay station increased rapidly.

By the 17s, the Dutch East India Company felt it necessary to establish a sea supply station on the Cape Peninsula in order to reduce the mortality and morbidity of the crew.Thus, on April 50, 1652, the Dutch East India Company's fleet of three sailing ships, the "Dromedary", "Egret" and "Cape of Good Hope", landed at the Cape of Good Hope.

The supply station established by the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope did not arouse a strong confrontation from the declining Portuguese, but acquiesced in the presence of the Dutch there.

Following the Dutch, the Qi people also came to the southern tip of Africa in 1657.However, in order not to over-irritate the sensitive and suspicious Dutch, the Qi people chose to establish a colonial stronghold on the southeast coast of South Africa, and named it Changning Fort (now Durban, South Africa).

Although the people of Qi came later than the Dutch, they developed very rapidly. In less than ten years, they established five or six strongholds, with a population of more than [-] people, and their strength far exceeded that of the Cape established by the Dutch. colony.

After more than 20 years of development, the entire South African colony now has expanded more than ten times in terms of population size and territory it controls, and has become the most powerful force in the region.

From Xinningbao (now Mossel Bay, South Africa), which is less than [-] kilometers away from the Dutch Cape Colony, to Zhenningbao (now Richards Bay Port, South Africa) in the southeast, this vast coastal area and interior There are more than [-] large and small strongholds established by the Qi State in tens of hundreds of kilometers on land, and they have basically firmly locked the sea hub between the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean.

Every year, hundreds of ships pass through the South African region, and the required supplies are also a very alarming amount.The food most needed by those merchant ships docked for supplies is increasingly fresh meat, live sheep and live cattle, rather than general agricultural products.Because fresh vegetables and fruits are extremely perishable on tropical oceans, they cannot be brought or stored in excess, and commodities such as grains and wine are generally purchased at the cheapest ports without spending too much gold and silver. Purchasing from ports in South Africa that are relatively expensive.

In the past ten years, an average of more than 120 merchant ships have been moored in various ports in South Africa every year, and nearly [-] live sheep need to be supplied every year.In addition, tourists who went ashore to rest and merchants and local residents living in the port also consumed a lot of meat.

Where do the large quantities of cattle and sheep that supply a market of this size come from?
The Dutch's Cape colonial stronghold was provided by the local Khoi people who ran livestock in the earliest period.The cattle and sheep needed for the various port strongholds of the Qi people came from the Bantu and Xhosa people who were half-agricultural and half-pastoral.

In South Africa, generally speaking, the number of livestock will become the standard for local aboriginals to measure social wealth and become the most important part of their social economy.Whether it is the Khoi people near the Dutch Cape Colony or the Bantu people in the territory controlled by the Qi State, they love livestock very much. Except for the livestock used for sacrifices, they generally don't often slaughter them, and they don't want to have too many animals to maintain the reproduction of livestock. sell livestock.

The local aborigines exchanged surplus livestock with foreigners only to meet the necessary needs in life and production, such as in exchange for copper, iron metal, and daily necessities of clothing, spices, and wine. There is limited demand for luxuries, glass beads, and other rare items on offer.

However, for those colonists who arrived, trading livestock with the local natives was a very lucrative business.To buy a sheep, you only need to pay the natives 2 grams of tobacco leaves and 12 grams of copper wire, or two knives. Even if you buy a cow, you only need to pay 15 grams of tobacco leaves or a few handfuls of spices, worth about 500 Han. Hanzhou silver dollars, and resold to those merchant ships that replenished supplies, the price was as high as 600-[-] Hanzhou silver dollars, making a net profit of [-]%-[-]%.

In order to plunder the livestock of the nearby aboriginal tribes to the maximum extent, the Dutch and the Qi people who colonized South Africa took all despicable means to lure the aborigines who had never been in contact with tobacco and alcohol to become addicted to alcohol and tobacco. Alcohol and tobacco became luxuries consumed in large numbers by the natives.Through these "means of exchange", these outsiders seized a large number of livestock from the indigenous people.

The livestock of the Khoi tribes in the area around the Cape Peninsula began to decline rapidly.In recent years, this exchange "trade" has become the "Sorgon" operation of the East India Company against the Khoi tribe.This made the Khoi tribe try every means to avoid the livestock trade with the Dutch. When the tribal leaders saw the white man coming, they would hide the livestock or drive them into the mountains.

With the depletion of livestock resources of the Khoi, the Dutch procured large quantities of livestock from neighboring Qi colonial strongholds, and at the same time used various means of violence to directly plunder the Khoi tribe and rob livestock.

The "Livestock Trading Expedition" organized by the Dutch set out from Cape, carried firearms, entered the inland mountains and grasslands, and turned into a gang of murderers and robbers, burning stockades, robbing livestock, and that woman.

However, the scale of plundering wars launched by the company sometimes is much larger than that of private merchants. Whenever the return fleet of the Netherlands berths at the port of Table Bay and the supply of livestock in the market is short of demand for a while, and the fleet cannot anchor, the company's expedition team often rushes into the interior to rob the livestock. supply ships.

The trade method of the East India Company, coupled with the armed plunder of the company and private businessmen, is a two-pronged approach to suck the livestock resources of the Khoi people to the maximum extent.

The livestock resources of the Khoi are depleted year by year, so that they often cannot keep part of the sex animals as necessary reserves in the production process, making simple reproduction unsustainable.

Livestock is an important link for the Khoi to maintain the tribal social structure. The gradual loss of livestock not only made the Khoi society increasingly impoverished, but also brought the tribal organization to the verge of collapse.When one tribe's livestock are drained dry, companies and private traders turn to other tribes

So far, the Khoi tribes within 100 kilometers of the Cape Peninsula have lost almost all their livestock.The Khoi tribe lost the entire land, and lost a glimmer of hope to restore the pastoral economy. The Khoi people who lost their herds could not make a living, and became increasingly impoverished. Society joins the workforce.Many Khoi women have no livelihood and are forced to become "tools of lust" for white people.

Compared with the Dutch Cape Colony, the control range is only a hundred kilometers. Not only are the indigenous tribes sparsely populated, but the livestock resources are also tending to be exhausted. However, the dozens of coastal and inland strongholds occupied by Qi State control There are no less than hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land, and there are thousands of indigenous tribes in the jurisdiction, so the livestock resources that can be obtained are naturally extremely rich.

For this reason, in order to fully supply the meat supply needs of the ships, the Dutch East India Company purchased a large number of live animals such as cattle, sheep, chickens and ducks from the colonial strongholds of South Africa every year, which effectively stimulated the economic exchanges between the two sides.

Zhuo Lianghong and his team of more than 20 people took advantage of the summer (South Africa is summer from October to February of the following year) to gather together and go deep into the mountains and grasslands in the interior to find local aborigines, trade livestock with them, and then resell them. Resell to those passing merchant ships who are docked for rest to earn some extra income.

After more than 30 years of continuous encroachment and invasion, almost all the aborigines within tens of kilometers around the coastal strongholds of Qi State have been wiped out.The livestock were plundered at an extremely unfair price, and all the land was occupied. In the end, these miserable natives were taken to the port by greedy colonists and sold overseas one by one.

This makes the livestock trading teams organized by Zhuo Lianghong and others often have to go more than 100 kilometers or even [-] kilometers inland to find some indigenous tribes.

Strong shochu, glutinous sweet mead (sugar cane wine), strong tobacco leaves, sharp knives, tough iron nails, and pieces of soft cotton cloth will make those indigenous people love it.After struggling for a while, he would reluctantly trade the livestock he raised with these Easterners who came from afar for a "fair" transaction.

In just ten days, Zhuo Lianghong and his team bought more than 120 cattle and more than 260 sheep. As long as these livestock are successfully driven to Hekoubao (now East London, South Africa) by the sea, they can earn 500 yuan. More than 2000 Hanzhou silver dollars, excluding costs and expenses along the way, there is at least 100 yuan in profit, and everyone can share [-] yuan.

This income is almost catching up with the annual wage level of an ordinary worker in Hanzhou.If the income from selling the food, vegetables, and fruits they grow is added, it will completely kill the income of the vast majority of people in Hanzhou.

However, although the residents of South Africa's dependent territories earn a high income, the prices here are far higher than those in the mainland, especially those industrial products and various commodities imported from overseas. The prices are at least two or three times higher than in the local area. The local people complained.

Four days later, Zhuo Lianghong and his group returned to Hekoubao with more than [-] head of livestock.Just as he was about to go to the port to inquire about the purchase price of cattle and sheep regardless of the exhaustion of the itinerary, he saw dozens of carts along the way, filled with fresh vegetables, melons and fruits, and various local specialties, and he was very happy to the city.

"What's the matter? Is there a convoy at the port?" Zhuo Lianghong stopped a cart with a look of hope on his face.

"Damn it, you deserve it, old Zhuo, is going to make a fortune!" The man pushed Zhuo Lianghong away and muttered, "Yesterday, a fleet of ships did come to the port. There are eighteen ships in total. , and there are quite a few navy warships among them.... You have brought so many livestock, you can definitely sell them for a good price!"

"Navy warship?" Zhuo Lianghong looked at the man suspiciously, "What is the navy warship doing here in our remote place?...Could it be that there is going to be a war?"
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(End of this chapter)