Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1522 Shandong Earthquake ([-])

"So, Mr. Hendelman, I hope you can return to Batavia as soon as possible and report the situation on our side to the upper management of your company. In terms of food, we are open to purchase. There is no doubt about this. For this reason, we can sign The supply contract lasts for three years, and the price is as far as possible to satisfy both parties." In Jiaozhou City, Liang Xiangjian and Liao Xiaoyao, on behalf of the Denglai pioneering team, said to Handelman, the business representative of the Dutch East India Company.

Hendelman has been in Jiaozhou for a while, and he is very familiar with the hunger for food on the east coast. He clearly knows the huge profits in it, and understands that it is very important to improve the profit structure of the East India Company, so he I am in favor of this, not to mention that Handelman has always been one of the advocates of the new trade system within the East India Company.

The so-called new trade system is actually proposed in contrast to the old Eurocentrism, which regards the European market as the main source of profit, and is still the mainstream trade thought of the East India Company.The core idea of ​​the new trade system is to focus on trade in the East and the Indian Ocean. To put it bluntly, it is actually Asian trade. This reached its peak 40 years ago when it was established in Persia, India, the East Indies, Taiwan, Japan and other places. The trading station of the East India Company provided a lot of profits every year.In particular, the Taiwan trading station provided more than one-third of the company's profit source at most, and provided sufficient cash flow for the East India Company's trade in the Far East.

In the golden age of the new trade system, commodities such as ivory, leather, gold, and rhinoceros horns from East Africa were transported in large quantities to West Asia, India, and even China; livestock, horses, dried fruits, and blankets from West Asia were imported to India; Textiles, perfumes, and precious stones were imported to the East Indies; special products such as spices, sandalwood, and ambergris from the East Indies were imported to China; finally, tea, silk, porcelain, and sugar from China (including Taiwan) were imported to West Asia , East Indies.Even, they also developed some short-distance trade, such as the trade between China and Japan, such as the coin trade between Vietnam and Japan, such as the grain trade between the East Indies and Myanmar, Thailand, etc.

The scale of the above-mentioned trades is quite large, and most of them are traded within Asia, and have nothing to do with Europe, but they have gained a lot of profits for the East India Company.What's even better is that these trades often do not need to use the large ships of the East India Company, but only need to use their large number of offshore small boats (mostly operated by Malay sailors hired by the company). What could be better than investing too much and making a huge profit?

However, with the rise of British sea power in the Arabian Sea and India, and the expansion of the East Coasters in the West Indian Ocean, the Dutch East India Company's "new trading system" suffered serious setbacks. After the business stations in Armuz, Aden and other places were closed one after another, the trade in the Indian Ocean has almost come to a standstill except for Persia, which is very sad.

What's more, more than ten years ago, with the intensification of the expansion of the East Coast people in the Indian Ocean, Persia, the only commercial base of the Dutch in West Asia, was also lost, because most of the local raw silk was bought by the East Coast people, and sugar The market is also contributed by the cane sugar produced in Xinhua Island. The Taiwanese cane sugar from the Dutch has been completely expelled from the market. At present, it can only rely on some spice trade to survive. The tragedy is that there is basically no wave.

This setback in trade and colonization prompted the East India Company to quickly change its policy focus, that is, they put more energy on the development and colonization of the East Indies, and began to shrink to a certain extent in other places. In addition to some strategic points such as Malacca, Ceylon and other places.This change in policy greatly reduced the influence of the "new trade system faction" within the East India Company, and a group of activists also died down. For example, Hendelman's father was one of them.

Later, it was the people from the east coast who had robbed them of their influence in the western Indian Ocean. These guys bypassed New Holland to colonize the east, and they controlled a large area of ​​tea and raw silk in Ningbo Prefecture. At the moment when wars were raging in the Eastern Continent and trade was cut off for a time, they insisted on exporting the above two commodities and made a lot of money. Of course, it also saved the Japanese trade of the East India Company to some extent.Otherwise, do you think their Taiwanese bank can easily establish a business station in Zeelandia Port?

Now, with the increasingly stable rule of the East Coast people in Ningbo, even though the Dutch East India Company has been able to purchase some raw silk, porcelain, sugar and tea from Fujian Zheng, Guangdong and Guangxi, it is still used to come to Ningbo every year to shop for goods. This shows the stability of this trade.Even though Ningbo has aggressively "destroyed mulberry to replace grain" in recent years, and the export of raw silk and tea has dropped sharply, the Dutch still traveled thousands of miles to trade, because the bulk trade of grain has begun to flourish again, bringing to the East India Company What's more, the people on the east coast later added high-grade furs, whale products, and wine from Yantai to the trade , which further deepened the trade relationship between the two sides, and made the "new trading system" faction's voice in the East India Company rise again.

Even later, some radical people began to openly discuss whether to cut off the trade with the Qing Dynasty, so as not to be discovered by the people on the east bank and affect the current trade between the two countries in Ningbo.It's just that their "brain-dead" remarks were not accepted by other members who were still very sober, and His Excellency the Governor even sneered at it. After all, trade with the Qing Dynasty is also very profitable, and they only need to send some soldiers to teach them new styles. Sending some craftsmen to teach them how to make muskets and cannons popular in Europe, and sending some engineers to teach them how to build fortresses, they can get a lot of special products such as raw silk and tea as rewards. They will not give up, and of course the people of insight in the "New Trade System" faction will not give up either!

Well, the topic is far away.After a few years of good times supported by grain trade, the Dutch East India Company certainly wanted to continue this trade, so they sent a not-so-low-level business representative like Hendelman to follow the four ships. The grain ship arrived at Jiaozhou Port together, and discussed with the people on the east coast to see if there is no other possibility of trade cooperation.After all, the East Coast people are now the largest buyers of Nanyang rice, Taiwanese sugar, and East Indian spices in the Far East, and they are also the main fur suppliers of the Dutch East India Company (they have lost New Netherland, and naturally The local Indian trade network), the additional whale products it provided also brought some profits to the East India Company (although whale oil is not suitable for bringing back to the Netherlands for sale), so it is still necessary to deepen the connection.

After Hendelman arrived in Jiaozhou, he found that God loved the Dutch so much that they seized another opportunity to make a fortune.Yes, that's right, that is the super-large earthquake that occurred in mainland China, which caused serious damage to local agricultural production. People on the east coast basically confirmed their intention to continue purchasing large quantities of grain after taking precautions. Handelman is very satisfied, the good times of the East India Company will come again, and his own pocket will also become bigger, there is really nothing better than this, praise God!

However, after talking about the pleasant topic of trade, the people on the east coast also raised some sharp questions—or questions are more accurate—for example, their military chief from the north asked: "We found that the Qing Dynasty There are a large number of musketeers in the infantry formation. Judging from its type, it seems to be the Sur-style arquebus that was popular more than ten years ago. We can't tell whether this is an old gun that was eliminated in Europe or whether it was made by the Chinese themselves. New guns, but we are leaning towards the latter, as we have also found many brand new muskets, from infantry of the Qing Army who surrendered to us. Mr. Handelman, as a representative of the East India Company, can you give me a reasonable An explanation? People from the Qing Dynasty—how did they get this technology!”

"This must be the fault of the British!" Hendelman blurted out after hearing the words, and then he might find that his attitude was a little too excited, and then he explained with a blushing face: "As you know, since the severance agreement with your country was signed, After the trade agreement with the Qing Dynasty, we have strictly restrained the merchants under our flag, warning them not to carry weapons to the Qing Dynasty port for trade. And we are sure that this kind of warning is very useful-well, at least most of the time it works (this At that time, Hendelman remembered the Dutch smuggling ship detained by the East Coast Navy at the mouth of the Yangtze River, so he quickly changed his words...) - it will not cause damage to the interests of your country. On the other hand, the businessmen under the British East India Company are all Those who are obsessed with profit and want to enter the Eastern trade, they usually settle in the Portuguese in Macau, and then wait for the opportunity to trade with Ming and Qing merchants. The scale of this kind of trade is quite large. I believe your country must have seen it The artillery unit in the army of Lord Li Chengdong, the Duke of Guangdong, right? They are all army field artillery produced in Birmingham. There are a lot of them and their power is not bad. This already explains the problem. Who is destroying the mainland? The military balance..."

Liang Xiangjian and Liao Xiaoyao were noncommittal to the translation.Of course they know that the merchants of the British East India Company have been conducting speculative drilling operations along the coast of China, especially after the establishment of the Haizhu Island trading station of the East Coasters and began to try to control the trade around the South China Sea, a large number of British merchant ships are like a blind flow. try your luck.As long as someone is willing to trade with them, whether you are the Nanming regime, the Guangdong regime or the Zheng family who actually ruled Fujian, they are all the objects of their cooperation, so that a large number of weapons that are free from the East Bank system (even casting, Craftsmen who build ships and guns) have flowed into various regimes, which is a huge damage to the military balance policy that the people on the east coast have been trying to maintain for many years.

However, the British and the Portuguese are carrying out smuggling trade along the coast of China. Are you the Dutch so pure and innocent and resolutely abide by the agreement?Regarding this point, anyone with a little brain will not believe it. It is more appropriate for you, a Dutch businessman, to say that others are mercenary and blinded by profit?Especially when the East Coast Navy once intercepted a smuggling merchant ship between the Netherlands and the Qing Dynasty, how did you make Liang and Liao believe you?Hypnotize yourself?

If it weren't for the consideration that the Dutch East India Company was the most important trading partner of the East Coast people in the Far East, and they had to rely on them for many things, the East Coast people would have turned their backs on it long ago. Why would they still pretend to be false with them like they are now?However, although we have to rely on the Dutch, the necessary warnings are also essential. Gein's smuggling trade has gradually touched the bottom line of the people on the east coast. Innovation will gradually reduce the advantage of the east bank army, which is fatal to the two pioneering teams of Denglai and Ningbo!And Zheng's move to recruit shipbuilders and cannon-casting talents is also alarming (of course, this may not be blamed on the Dutch, they are not so stupid), and if they are allowed to develop like this, how will the people on the east coast get along in the Far East in the future?If you think about it, you will know that when you face tens of thousands of musketeers from Manchu or Dashun, everything will become extremely difficult, so you must kill this phenomenon in the cradle!

Then the two took turns to fight again, until Hendelman was left speechless by the question, and then took advantage of the victory to withdraw, saying that they would strengthen their patrols in the Chinese waters, and hoped that the Dutch would not make mistakes.And after all this, the two sides sat together again and signed several agreements of intent, which were basically related to grain procurement trade, financial loan agreements, and raw silk tea trade intentions.

After the agreement was signed, Hendelman basically had nothing to do. After sending people out to buy some goods, he started wandering around Jiaozhou City.It has been one or two months since the earthquake, but there are still a lot of refugees pouring into Jiaozhou City from all over the world. Hendelman could not come up with an accurate figure, but he felt that the figure was compared with the religious persecution policy implemented by the Spaniards in the Southern Netherlands. Afterwards, many more people poured into the United Provinces from Liege, Brussels and other places. What a pity that this large piece of the world abandoned by God is always shrouded in disasters.

On September 9, two months after the earthquake, a large number of ships returned a large number of refugees from the open sea.Hendelman didn't know where these people came from, but his intuition told him that they might have been sent from the Haizhou region across the sea, where there was a hidden harbor where merchant ships of the East India Company once traded with the Qing Dynasty— ——Weapons replaced with raw silk, tea——This made Hendelman feel more and more that the people on the east coast might really be crazy. Can they afford to bring so many people here?At the same time, it was the first time he doubted whether it was really reliable to lend money to the people on the east coast to buy food?It should be known that the people on the east bank only nominally mortgaged the raw silk and tea output in Ningbo for several years, which is not very safe.

But there is no other way. The situation in Europe is not peaceful now. The East India Company suffered huge losses in the Anglo-Dutch War, and now it is facing the pressure of huge dividends proposed by shareholders. I can bite the bullet and continue to cooperate with the people from the east coast. After all, their reputation has always been good, and there is no record of defaulting on their debts so far.But when it comes to the uneasy situation in Europe, and I don't know what's going on there now, Handelman, who has been away from Amsterdam for 21 months, can't help thinking about it.

(End of this chapter)