The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 535 North Korea, Japan, Australia and the Black-Hearted Emperor

Negotiations continued, but after Mo Zibu expressed that this was not enough, he left.

Because once the tone is set, it’s up to the people below to talk.

If he, the emperor, were to engage in direct verbal exchanges with a deputy envoy who was a member of the House of Commons, it would not only be a loss of status, but if the situation reached a deadlock, there would be no room for maneuver.

Moreover, Mo Zibu had been planning for such a long time. He built 16 imperial academies and translated more than 300,000 volumes of European books. He spent 7 or 8 million taels of silver. There must be some results.

This peace talk, which has all the advantages and is quite easy to negotiate, should be given to the people below to practice their skills.

William Pitt the Younger certainly knew this, so when the audience was over, when he saw a cabinet minister and officials from the Ministry of War, Ministry of Rites, and Ministry of Rites coming to negotiate with him, he knew that the time had come for a real test of experience and even endurance.

Because at this time, England could not offer much to China. The two most important points were to persuade China not to let France dominate the world, and to use trade advantages to persuade China not to colonize India itself.

"You, the Chinese lord, can earn clean money standing on the shore, but we, Xiaoying, are willing to exploit those black Indians ourselves."

However, as they talked, young William Pitt suddenly felt something was wrong.

"What? You need a self-propelled spinning mule, a water-powered loom, a steam-powered cannon borer, and allow James Watt to come to the East to lecture and introduce the latest steam engine?"

Little William Pitt screamed in surprise, then shook his head rapidly.

The last two are easy to deal with, but the steam barrel boring machine cannot be blocked for long. Sooner or later, spies from various countries will get it and everyone will know how to use it.

The English government could also allow James Watt to come to the East and even sell all the patents related to the steam engine.

But the mule spinning machine and water-powered loom could not do that.

This mule spinning frame is a super-improved version of the famous spinning jenny. The cotton yarn woven with it is softer, finer and stronger, while greatly reducing the number of manual operation steps. The efficiency is dozens of times higher than that of traditional spinning.

If the spinning jenny marked the beginning of the First Industrial Revolution, the spinning mule marked the beginning of its rapid acceleration.

It was the key to England's victory over all rivals in industrial competition and its dominance. English capitalists valued the spinning mule more than their own eyes.

Twenty years later, the Americans wanted to steal this technology and take away the engineers who could manufacture and repair self-propelled spinning machines. They secretly offered huge salaries, hid the engineers in empty wine barrels, and finally managed to get them to the United States.

As for the water-powered loom, it is also easy to understand. After the spinning is accelerated dozens of times, weaving cannot remain the same. The mule spinning machine and the water-powered loom are often paired together.

At this time, it was still water power, but soon the English would use steam looms.

Little William Pitt, who was always known for his calmness, finally changed color and beads of sweat appeared on the tip of his nose.

The self-propelled spinning mule had only been invented for less than three years, and even the French were still not quite sure what it was, or what its significance was. How did the Chinese, who were on the other side of the world, know about it?
"Impossible, this is absolutely impossible. Even if the Kingdom of England loses the whole of India, it will never agree to such conditions!" William Pitt the Younger refused very firmly.

This is not bluffing, but that's what he thinks.

Because England made money in India in two ways: collecting per capita fees through zamindars and using India as a source of raw materials and a distribution base for goods.

The latter seems very miserable to the locals, and it is indeed very miserable.

But there is still a little bit of good in this tragedy. It is a policy that is constantly and frantically testing the boundaries between killing the chicken to get the eggs and draining the pond to catch all the fish.

It is precisely because of this little bit of benefit that the English can get some good meat from the egret legs of ordinary Indians.

In order to collect poll tax, you have to have some money from others. In other words, the poll tax collected by England in India was complementary to its definition of India as a source of raw materials and a dumping ground for goods.

If there had not been the latter's pitiful return of gratitude in history, and the English had allowed the local Indian Zamindars to collect taxes so crazily, British India would have collapsed long ago and would not have been able to survive until World War II.

It can be said that if these two technologies flowed to China, they would probably be used by China to dump them in India. Then what would be the point of the English people's crazy colonization in India? It would be better not to spend this energy?

"Your Excellency, I want to know why China needs a self-propelled spinning machine. You clearly have an endless supply of manpower and a vast market. You don't need to invent this kind of machine to disrupt the stable economic model that has been running for thousands of years.

I can assert that if the self-propelled spinning machine were to arrive in China, it would definitely disrupt the original operating model of the Chinese Empire.

I think tens or even millions of people who make a living by handicrafts in big cities will lose their jobs. They will start rioting, and even start a rebellion!

Although the words were dead, after William Pitt the Younger calmed down, he began to patch himself up again and pretended to care very much about the Chinese Empire.

Qian Daxin, who was in charge of the negotiations, chuckled and said, "Your Excellency, the Chinese Empire's manpower is not infinite, and there is a serious waste of manpower. This seriously restricts the strength we can invest in the northwest."

Qian Daxin's words were half true and half false. On the one hand, the truth was that Mo Zibu wanted to use the self-propelled spinning frame to destroy the fixed economic model that had been formed in China for thousands of years.

Because people are needed everywhere, it is too slow to wait for the people who have more than one acre of land per capita to go bankrupt in their hometowns.

The endurance of Chinese farmers is absolutely unique. They can survive tenaciously by eating wild vegetable porridge in their hometown. As long as they can survive, few of them are willing to risk their lives to go out and colonize.

Therefore, our black-hearted Emperor Mo wanted to make sure that the people under him could not even eat wild vegetable porridge in their hometown, and finally had to obey the court's arrangements and go to the Western Regions, Southeast Asia, and Guandong.

In order to completely eliminate the possibility of survival for the large number of people struggling on the brink of starvation, the most direct way is to destroy the women's weaving in a society where men farm and women weave.

When the cloth woven by women cannot be sold and the family loses a large part of its income, they can't even eat wild vegetable porridge and have to leave their hometown.

The false part is that the Northwest was not the main destination of the large-scale immigration of the Dayu Dynasty. Now the main destinations are still Southeast Asia and the Northeast.

At the same time, Mo Zibu had established the Steam Locomotive Power Department under the Ministry of Industry in Nanjing Yingtian Prefecture and Chengtian Guangzhou Prefecture.

Steam engine majors were established in four universities: Nanjing Imperial College, Purple Mountain Imperial College in Jiangnan Province, Guangzhou Imperial College, and Sanzhongci Imperial College in Guangdong Province.

Just waiting for Ma Sheng Abu!

Waiting for Watt Watt to come and open source and license the steam engine patent.

Then, when the technology matures a little and can drive sailboats weighing dozens of tons, we can cross the equatorial doldrums southeast of Java Island and head to Australia.

At this time, Australia had already been discovered. In 1642, the Dutch discovered Tasmaria Island, southeast of the Australian continent, and named it New Holland.

In 1770, the crazy English navigator, explorer, and famous Captain James Cook landed in the southeast of Australia. He named this continent New South Wales.

In other words, this continent had already been discovered by the world's powers a long time ago, but it was not colonized because there was not much benefit.

Mo Zibu really wanted to colonize, but China's new generation of navigators was just starting out and had not yet figured out the route to Australia along the ocean currents from the other side of the ocean.

Of course, even if you understand it thoroughly, the cost of colonization is too high, so it is more convenient and cost-effective to directly cross the equatorial doldrums after you have a steam engine with sufficient horsepower.

There are not enough people!
Before Nanyang was completely taken over, Guangdong's population had already dropped from 19 million to 16 million, and Fujian's from around 13 million to 9 million. Over the past 15 years, these two provinces have lost over 600 to 700 million people, most of whom went to Nanyang.

This is an exaggerated proportion, so much so that Guangdong has experienced a labor shortage and is recruiting large numbers of workers from Hunan and Jiangxi to the Pearl River Delta.

But even so, it is far from enough to fill up Australia, let alone the South Pacific.

Therefore, in order to occupy more territory for future generations, a wave of artificial and largely controllable bankruptcy of the people is needed to drive out the people who are hanging on to their lives by drinking wild vegetable porridge in their hometowns.

Instead of having to endure the hardship of eating wild vegetable porridge at home, they were forced to take their meager belongings and go out to suffer the hardship of fighting the natives with knives.

This is also an important feature of the colonial era. If you want to colonize in a gentle way where everyone benefits, that is impossible.

If you want to colonize, you must first be cruel to your own people, force them into a desperate situation, and then drive them out.

Then, these people who have no way out will be cruel to the indigenous people of the colonies and the complex geography and climate of the colonies, and ultimately help the entire ethnic group gain a foothold.

In addition, there was another small reason, that is, Mozibu was going to use the self-propelled spinning machine to produce a large amount of cheap and high-quality cloth, and at the same time, bankrupt the domestic economy of the two unfilial descendants, the Koreans and the Japanese, where men farm and women weave.

Officially, Joseon had approximately 1.2 million households and 6.6 million people. If slaves and hidden households were included, the total number would be around 8.5 million.

Japan was much larger, but due to the relative chaos of the Tokugawa shogunate's rule, its actual population was impossible to count. The shogunate's rough estimate of its population was 22 million, but in reality it was definitely close to or even more than 30 million.

If we make them bankrupt and then madly extract human resources, we can probably get four to five million people.

Now there is a big problem in Nanyang, that is, the contract farmers who came to Nanyang later changed jobs too easily. Many of them did not fulfill their contracts at all and ran away after adapting to the environment.

This greatly reduced the attractiveness of the land in Southeast Asia, to the point that the price of docile Siamese serfs was driven up to more than three times the previous price.

The Korean and Japanese people are much more docile than Chinese farmers.

The most important thing is that they are good at farming, but they cannot speak the same language as the Chinese, so when they arrived in Southeast Asia, they could not escape like the Han people.

To put it in a more sinister way, there are still estates in Nanyang that are almost practicing slavery. They put Han people under house arrest, and Mo Zibu has to intervene. This is the "Han Children Should Not Be Slaves" law he himself promulgated, and he cannot open the loophole.

But if there were some Koreans and Japanese people, Mo Zibu would turn a blind eye.

Of course, Qian Daxin didn't need to explain it in such detail to William Pitt Jr., he just gave a brief introduction.

William Pitt the Younger was also a little tempted. He knew that what England needed most now was for China to turn its attention to the northwest.

Then England could use its traditional skills to support and encourage Tsarist Russia to devote its strength to the competition with China.

Let Tsarist Russia serve as a human shield to block the "Yellow Peril", just like Poland and the Habsburg family did before.

But this is just Qian Daxin's verbal statement. Whether it will be implemented or to what extent it will be implemented is completely out of the control of the Kingdom of England. There is a possibility that it is just a bait.

Moreover, even if the Chinese Empire does what it says, it is still not worth the Kingdom of England handing over its most important thing.

This self-propelled spinning machine, also known as a mule machine, had not yet been developed on a large scale in England itself.

"Your Excellency, I believe that the Chinese Empire has no need for the spinning mule technology. Even the spinning jenny is not something your country needs."

What William Pitt the Younger said is very interesting. That is, if you want the spinning Jenny, we can talk about it. Anyway, it is a technology that can be easily broken. It is said that imitations have appeared in France, and China will get it soon.

Qian Daxin understood the hint, but he was not prepared to accept it. This kind of negotiation would never produce results in a short period of time. So let's test our patience and see who can give up first.

At the same time, he did not forget to deceive little William Pitt half-truthfully, "Your Excellency the Envoy, there is something I want you to understand.

That is, India, which is like a gold mine to you, is a stinking mountain of shit to us.

The people of Bharat are the maggots in this mountain of shit. We will not colonize Bharat because we do not want these maggots to crawl into our homes along the channels opened for colonization.

You English people are far away and cannot experience this disgusting feeling, but we will definitely suffer this rather disgusting threat in the future.

So if our two countries can reach an agreement on India, it will be a win-win situation. If we cannot reach an agreement, we will reform it in our own way."

The meeting ended there. As the secret delegation returned to the specially arranged room at the Honglu Temple, Whig Jenkins Cox impatiently asked, "William, do you think what the Chinese cabinet minister said is true?"

"It's fake!" William Pitt Jr. said with extraordinary determination, "It's absolutely fake!

They are deliberately making this gesture because their current strength is not enough to control India or the Indians, and they are even more afraid that we will cooperate deeply with local Indian princes.

After all, their navy is still too weak. As long as our fleet can blockade the Indian Ocean, the Chinese Empire will never be able to possess India."

Jenkins Cox showed a look of disappointment on his face. "Yes, even if Barat is really a shit mountain, the feces can still be used for farming, and the maggots can be used to raise chickens and ducks.

Well, if they really had no interest in India and were willing to open up trade, that would be great. The manufacturers of England need to trade with the whole world.

"So what should we do now? Continue waiting?" Jenkins Cox was obviously not in a good mood.

Little William Pitt didn't look at Jenkins's expression, but his heart was beating fast. He suddenly realized something.

These Whig factory owners, who only cared about profits, were very eager to resume trade with the Chinese Empire.

If it drags on too long and their interests suffer more and more, they may resort to making secret deals with the Chinese Empire.

"William, what should we do next?" Seeing that William Pitt Jr. did not answer, Jenkins Cox continued to ask.

This made William Pitt Jr. even more worried that the judgment he had just realized was accurate, but after hesitating for a moment, he still expressed his true thoughts.

"Wait, keep waiting!" William Pitt the Younger waved his hand vigorously, "The Dutch have agreed to let the fleet stay at Cape Storms.

They were very unhappy about the loss of Batavia, and many of the Dutch sailors who had served in the fleet agreed to join us.

Next summer our fleet will reach the Indian Ocean and stop at Jaffna and Trincomalee in Ceylon.

The Chinese fleet was no match for us, and all they could do was flee."

"Next summer!" Jenkins Cox sighed meaningfully. "That means, if everything goes well, it'll still take nearly another year to reach an agreement."

"Then let us wish Governor Hastings of New Fort William good luck, and hope they can survive until next summer."

(End of this chapter)