Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1587 West Indian Ocean ([-])

Sir Montagu stood on the newly built pier in the port of Beira and whistled excitedly.

This is the first trading station set up by the British East India Company on the coast of Mozambique—of course it is the only one—it is not small in scale, and there are at least a hundred permanent residents on weekdays. There must be hundreds of them, far and near can be regarded as a very powerful force.

Before the arrival of the British East India Company, the port of Beira, located at the mouth of the Pon River, was just an inconspicuous small fishing village. There were some Bantu blacks under the control of the Portuguese who lived by growing sorghum and fishing.The reason why it was favored by the British was that two British merchant ships sailed into the Peng River to escape the storm. At that time, the sailors on the merchant ships appreciated the excellent conditions of the port and believed that the water flow here was gentle (meaning they could avoid big waves. ), deep channels (meaning access to large ships), and dense forests on the shore to provide effective protection from high winds, so it is an ideal anchorage, very suitable for conversion into a port - a foothold of the British East India Company in East Africa .

The Portuguese are now increasingly connected with England, and they don't take it seriously at all to lease a small piece of land to the English.In addition, they are facing the aggressive high-pressure situation of the people on the east coast in the West Indian Ocean, so they are also happy to bring the British over to share the pressure, just as they opened the port of Angola to the English.

In this way, the port of Beira was handed over to the English a few years ago, and then the British East India Company invested a huge amount of [-] pounds every year for several years to gradually transform it into a small fortress-style trading station, A port city of wharves, ship repair establishments, dedicated to the use of British ships passing by.

In addition, they also opened up trade with some black tribes in the interior-this may make the Portuguese a little unhappy, but in the face of the pressure of the East Coast people who are so powerful that they can hardly breathe, these are nothing - which slightly subsidized the huge expenditures of the East India Company over the years.Moreover, what is surprising is that there are actually quite a lot of black people in the inland areas. Gold, ivory, leather, herbs, dried fruits, slaves, which one is not wealth?Especially the slaves produced by the vendettas and strife between the tribes surprised the businessmen of the East India Company, because the demand for "this thing" in the Caribbean and North America is still quite large, and the profits are very rich. No wonder The Portuguese were about to express their dissatisfaction.

Sir Montagu, as one of the top managers of the East India Company, was sent by the London headquarters to inspect the port of Beira to see the operating conditions here, so as to determine the effect of the company's huge investment of 30 to [-] pounds in the past few years.He has lived in Port Beira for two weeks now. As far as his impressions of the two weeks are concerned, he is dissatisfied, but more pleasantly surprised, because he feels that the potential of this commercial station is quite large, and the geographical location is also very good. It is extremely critical, especially for an ocean-going trading company like the East India Company.

Needless to say, after the South African colony was plundered by the people on the east coast, the East India Company generally has only two routes when it bypasses the southern tip of the African continent.One is to stop at the Cape Town colony of the Dutch for supplies, but this can only be applied in peacetime, and it also depends on the face of the Dutch, which dislikes many conservative old British businessmen; Angola under control docked for supplies, then looked for an opportunity to bypass the Cape of Good Hope, then replenished and repaired ships on the Portuguese coast of Mozambique, and finally sailed to India-they can only go to India now, because in the Second Anglo-Dutch War In the treaty signed at the end, the British East India Company has been forced to withdraw from the spice trade in the East Indies. Although they are still trading secretly, they cannot be aboveboard, resulting in a much smaller scale than before. It can be seen that there are two paths Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. After much consideration, the British East India Company decided to walk on two legs, that is, continue to stop at the Dutch South African colony for supply and maintenance, and at the same time step up the construction of its own foothold, so as not to have nowhere to go in case of enmity with the Netherlands in the future. can go.

Obviously, the Port of Beira is one of the key nodes selected by the British!However, in the face of the powerful real threat and the threat of Mozambique being completely lost, the Portuguese quickly compromised and reached an agreement with the English to give up such a barren land as the Port of Beira to the British East India Company. It is to hold together to keep warm, and to deal with the threat of the East Coasters together, just as they did in Angola.

As one of the representatives of England's domestic hatred of the East Coast, Sir Montague is happy to see the success of the construction of Beira Port.In his view, the existence of Beira, a port with ship repair capabilities and the ability to shelter a large number of ships, was unimaginable for the East India Company.Therefore, he now really felt that Beira Fortress only kept dozens of white soldiers too few, and they couldn't even fill a corner of the empty fortress, and had to rely heavily on low-quality black soldiers. This is simply intolerable!He has already sent a letter to England, requesting that the company headquarters either recruit locally or go to the German region to recruit "at least [-] professional soldiers" to station in Beira Port, and help the store expand the business of East African specialty products. It is reported that So far, London has received a positive response.

"Soon everything here will be on the right track, and our merchant ships will no longer have to go to the ports of the people on the east coast to resupply." Sir Montagu, who was satisfied with his inspection, returned to his office and picked up the A letter that has been opened, I began to review it while drinking coffee.

"...since we were supplanted by the Dutch in the spice trade, and lost much of the pepper trade to failure on the Indian coast, our principal commodities from the East Indies (including the Indian subcontinent) have been cotton cloth, Silk, medicinal materials, saltpeter, raw silk, cotton, cotton yarn, tea, porcelain, goat hair or wool, fine tapestries, perfume, etc., the trade volume has fallen sharply. But in any case, the East India trade is still indispensable, still An important supplement to our treasury, for the greater part of these commodities, except a small part for our own use, were brought in in time of peace for the consumption of France, Germany, the United Provinces, Spain, Italy, and our colonies .”

"...the commodities of woolen goods, lead, tin, iron, glass, paper, leather, etc., are the foundation of our trade, but if we rashly confine our trade to the exportation of our own manufactures, we shall have to be serious Examine whether our country can still maintain a strong competitiveness in the sea. We may compare woolen goods to bread. It is true that man can live on bread alone, but his life can only barely support him, weak and unhealthy; the same is true for woolen goods for England. England may, perhaps, continue to exist solely on the export of woolen goods, etc., but to live healthily, to be rich, strong, and powerful, we must have a larger scale than our own commodities can give us. Trade, East India trade is an important part of it, just like West India trade has attracted a lot of investment in recent years."

Seeing this, Sir Montague felt the same way, and with great interest, he picked up a quill and wrote his comment on the letter paper: "Trade has never been deeply concerned by the ministers of our government. , and have not been fully studied by the nobles and high-class people in our country. Many nobles and high-class people lack a correct understanding of the general concept of trade, so they are often lobbied by special business groups or interest groups to formulate regulations that are seriously harmful to general trade activities. law."

Sir Montagu wrote these contents for a reason, because in the past few years, with the intensification of domestic political struggles in England, the East India Company, which once knelt and licked Cromwell and is currently quite profitable, has collapsed. A group of rich members of Congress criticized it one after another, accusing it of harming England, and Sir Montague was also very speechless about this.

In fact, the motives of these congressmen who criticized the East India Company were quite complicated.There are businessmen who have lost their interests because of the East India trade, such as those in the cotton textile and silk industries (importing raw silk from Italy or France); there are also some guys who are jealous of the huge profits of the East India Company. He desperately wanted to squeeze into the board of directors of the East India Company, so he publicly challenged them in the Congress, and at the same time bargained privately with the existing shareholders of the East India Company. There are still a large number of people who are really confused. Most of them are factory owners, traders or rich people who earn income from land rent in England, because they don’t understand the benefits of international trade to England—at least Mongolian That's how Sir Targu saw them--so it wasn't really that much of a dislike for the English East India Company to follow others.

As for the "laws seriously injurious to trade" Sir Montagu wrote of, he meant the prohibition of East Indian and Persian silks, brocades, and silks being pushed by a group of enemies of the East India Company in Parliament. bill.Those "ridiculous and ignorant people" (Sir Charles's words) felt that what England got from the East Indies was not useful items, but pleasure and useless commodities, but what was sent to the East Indies was gold and silver, all of which were in the Buried there and never returning.

Sir Montagu was noncommittal to this statement, because it had a grain of truth.But at the same time, he felt that in the past 200 years, the total amount of gold and silver obtained by Europe from America, gold dust from Africa, and silver produced by European silver mines was close to 100 million pounds, even though [-] million pounds of them were shipped to the East. The rest of the money is still circulating in the European market, and has not caused any serious shortage of money.And because Europeans love that luxury, because the habit of a hundred years has made the spices of the East India indispensable to all classes of people, because Indian silks are greatly loved by the middle and upper classes, because the East Indian Cotton cloth is cheap and good (even comparable to East Coast cotton cloth), so abandoning the East India trade is not feasible at all, and the people will not allow it!What's more, if you don't do this kind of lucrative business, someone else will naturally do it. The Dutch want you to give up completely so that their family can dominate.

Fortunately, there are not many real fools in Congress, and the real many are actually people who pretend to be fools.For these guys, an appropriate compromise is enough. For example, the East India Company’s continuous capital increase and shareholding and equity adjustment activities over the years are because a considerable number of fresh blood has been absorbed into the East India Company’s board of directors. The position of the East India Company has been stabilized, and the criticisms of it from the outside world have repeatedly failed-of course, this cannot be separated from the East India Company's hard work on the new monarch Charles II. They are covered in black spots in order to appease the anger of the new monarch. , in 1660, Charles II gave a gift worth more than 3000 pounds, and then successively presented Charles II with a huge sum of 1661 pounds between 1666 and 17. The industrial capitalists continued to attack, but the pressure has been greatly reduced.

"Hmph, a group of short-sighted guys, there are so many people attacking a high-quality colonial trading company with an annual dividend rate of up to 25%, it's enough! How did the Dutch make so much money? Has no one been able to see clearly for many years? If we English people don’t do this business, then the Dutch, Portuguese, French, and Danes will naturally fill in the gaps in the market. At that time, in order to prevent them from making money, is it really necessary to Are all citizens forbidden to use spices, wear silk, and drink green tea? That’s not a mess!" Sir Montagu put down the quill angrily, stood up, looked at the peaceful river outside the window, and sighed after a long time , muttering to himself: "The construction of Beira Port needs to be further strengthened. The Portuguese only have a few old sailboats stationed in Mozambique, which is not enough for the Omanis, let alone cover the coast and shelter the merchant ships of the two countries." The East India Company must also have battleships stationed in Beira, not many, because the second fleet of the people on the east coast is also very poor, but they must have battleships with more than two decks that can really hold the scene. The reason why the Second Fleet of the East Coasters can dominate the Western Indian Ocean is because of that one ship, and the other miscellaneous ships are not worth mentioning! Now, it depends on the determination of the London headquarters How big is it, especially now that they have established a relationship with the Ming Kingdom, I hope they can come true."

(End of this chapter)