Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1409 Potatoes and Centripetal Force

For the time being, Dashun's policies in Xinyizhou are mostly successful.

Because the market is small, large-scale agricultural capitalization is temporarily impossible.

And because of the vast land, it is impossible to forcibly build all capitalist farms, manors, etc.

Therefore, this very characteristic approach was adopted.

On the whole, it is dominated by self-cultivating farmers.

As for the core position, the core is the capitalist farm and agricultural product processing industry.

Just like now, the means of transportation and transportation capabilities are here.

Indeed, Xinyizhou is located on the 450 mm precipitation line, and it is rainy and hot at the same time, and the land is fertile. Later generations are famous as wheat and rapeseed producing areas.

The problem is, now who grows wheat and rapeseed, who should they sell to?

The traffic situation is here. Down the river, it is the east coast of North America and the thirteen states. Where are you going to sell food?What is the difference between this and pulling a cart of salt to sell in Haizhou or Zigong?
Therefore, the mobile capital has no interest in the merger here for the time being.

The policy of Dashun is to support a small number of large-scale farms and Junker cooperatives to produce spirits.

The cornerstone of stability is the self-cultivated peasant economy under the land grant system.

The centripetal non-separation and the currency circulation like taking off your pants and farting are based on this kind of capitalized large-scale farm.

There are three prerequisites for this policy.

One: Can small farmers make wine?

can.

Can the cost be compared to a large workshop with division of labor?
No.

Therefore, small farmers may be able to make their own wine and drink, but they don't want to participate in this business cycle, and there is no room for them to survive.

Even if Dashun does not have a liquor franchise or regulatory policy, or does not have a preferential tax policy, the private wine brewing of small peasant families cannot compete with large factories.

Second: It requires a large wage labor force.

This is the easiest.

Third: need a specialized market.

And this specialized market can and can only be French.

Because of the First World War, Dashun won the war and won free trade for the thirteen states in North America.Cheap rum, or rather, cheap French honey, filled the thirteen states.

And France is also a winner.

France does not need to engage in free trade, so France has always adhered to the brandy protection policy.The brandy protection policy also means smuggling.

Or, the French in North America take the treacle rum from the Thirteen States.

Or, the French in North America have to use Dashun's potato shochu.

From the perspective of cost, transportation, river direction, ginseng production area, beaver skin production area, etc., it is the most economical choice to choose Dashun Xinyizhou potato shochu.

Even if there is no trade agreement between Dashun and France, and only relying on "free trade", in fact, Xinyizhou's potato shochu policy will win.Moreover, in the Sino-French negotiations after World War I, Dashun got the privilege of selling wine in North America, because France knew that it could not control it anyway.

The potential of potato shochu is huge.

When Engels evaluated the rise of Prussian shochu, he described a classic "process". It can be said that bad money drives out good money, and it can also be said that making alcohol from potato starch was the cheapest option at that time.

[To make a "fine" and cheap rum, about one barrel of really fine Jamaican rum is mixed, three or four barrels of cheap and poor Bobbis rum, and two or three barrels of Prussian potato spirit], Inexpensive, so the real sugar and wine that hit the market is ruined.

[In the non-Prussian North of Germany, no one who knows a little about wine is reluctant to buy French white wine from Hamburg, because everyone knows that this wine is sweetened with lead sugar there].The vodka characteristic of potato shochu makes it very convenient to forge blending, because it has no miscellaneous taste.So, isn't white wine sweet?Then add some grape juice and a little lead acetate to it, and after reconciliation, it will have an absolute taste of French white wine.Adding sugar is not acceptable, as soon as you add sugar, you can taste it, and the taste of blending is wrong, so you can only add lead acetate.As for the poisonous lead acetate?It's none of my business?Just make money.Your real French white wine must go bankrupt, and whoever does not blend it with lead acetate will go bankrupt.

[After 1848, after the brief reign of the French bourgeoisie, French industrialists and businessmen began to understand that the casks of Prussian potato alcohol had an extraordinary magical power.They began to counterfeit brandy at home, instead of sending the real thing abroad; especially the brandy intended for domestic consumption was improved with a strong mixture of Prussian potato spirits.]

All of this shows one thing, or it can be deduced in reverse: at least in the middle of the 19th century, using potatoes or sweet potatoes to make wine was the cheapest way to obtain alcohol in the world at this time.

And Dashun chose to grow potatoes and make wine in the upper reaches of North American rivers. I dare not say that it can completely bankrupt the traditional wine making industry in Europe, but in North America, especially in North America outside the thirteen states, it is no problem to completely obtain the market. .

After all, France's protection policy makes the molasses left over from French sugar production very cheap.After Dashun won free trade for the thirteen states, at least on the east coast, considering the distance and transportation issues, potato shochu could not gain an advantage.

The French government also knows that if they can't stop it, even if they can control the estuary, the east coast, and the bay, can they control Dashun from the west?
That being the case, it is announced that French wine will basically not participate in the fur trade in North America.Of course, relying on Dashun, the French government obtained the monopoly right to trade fur and ginseng in North America, which can be regarded as a profit.France does not have the ability to eat alone.

Thus, a very strange trade line appeared in the world.

Every summer, Catholic Spanish cowboys, employed by a French fur trade monopoly company, drive a large number of cattle and horses from the Great Lakes to Xinyizhou.

Here, exchange soju.

When the rainy season ends in August, from Xinyizhou, a fleet of simple, almost one-off ships will be filled with alcohol and transported along the river to the French trading post downstream.

The task of the cowboys is to take care of the cows and horses when they come, and release the boat when they go back.Just come and go.

The French then used the shochu in exchange for furs and ginseng.

In the second year, the fur and ginseng were shipped to Amsterdam, where they were exchanged for Dashun's textiles, silk, porcelain, etc. in the Dashun Concession Trade Zone in Amsterdam.

Dashun's merchant ships transported ginseng and fur from Amsterdam back to Dashun's mainland, and sold them to the rich, landlords, nobles, and emerging classes in Dashun.

The wealthy class, landlords, nobles, and emerging classes in Dashun—of course, including the Japanese feudal lords, they are also very enthusiastic about ginseng, especially after Liu Yu killed Korean ginseng, American ginseng became the only choice in Japan— It is equivalent to paying the money to the French.

The French relied on this money to engage in animal husbandry on the east coast, and then drove Dashun to the reclamation area for the urgently needed cattle and horses.

As time passed, the animal husbandry industry in Dashun also developed.This made the trade of cows and horses for shochu gradually require the French to pay with the silver they earned from selling ginseng to the rich in Dashun.

After all, Dashun can engage in animal husbandry, but France cannot engage in winemaking in its controlled area.

Both because of the protection of the grape industry in France.

It is also because the basis of Dashun's doing all this is cheap wage laborers, and this is what France lacks in North America.

Shochu factories, or potato farms that make money by selling alcohol, then use part of the money as wages to pay immigrants who come to work here.

When the immigrant saved enough money, he spent money to buy a piece of land for himself from the imperial court.

The imperial court then took the money to complete the migration of immigrants in the Yellow River area.

The migration of immigrants has enabled Dashun to always be able to guarantee enough cheap labor in Xinyizhou, and it has also allowed Dashun’s potato shochu, represented by capitalist agriculture, to continue, and it has a crushing reputation for alcohol in the entire North American region. Advantage.

Of course, the premise of all this is that Dashun "learned history as a mirror" and directly put an end to the land problems in the thirteen states in North America, and implemented the land nationalization policy in North America directly in one step.

Therefore, although Dashun's agriculture in North America resembles the Prussian road, it is actually an accelerated American road.

However, because of the natural centrifugal nature of the owner farmers in the colony and the petty bourgeois anti-capitalism in the colony, Dashun chose to support a group of "conservatives" as the centripetal force here.

And this group of conservatives must be linked to land, industry and commerce.

This kind of connection requires the support of Dashun's local military forces, otherwise, their interests here will be eaten up by Europe.

The other is that the basis for their existence is Dashun's local labor force and Dashun's formal colonial techniques.

It's very simple, without Dashun's modern colonial policy, who would dig potatoes?Who will make the wine?Who will grow the potatoes?

Relying on those self-cultivated farmers who have completed the land grant, have at least 120 mu of land, and three to five cattle, they can live a good life, but come to your farm to pick potatoes?Make shochu?

Russia can implement the forced serf factory fixed-term service system. You and the yeoman in Dashun try this?Just smashed the winery for you.

So, [capital is not an object, not money.It is a social relationship between people established through the medium of things].

is not an object.

but a social relationship.

In terms of land conditions, climate conditions, agricultural conditions, and population size in Xinyizhou, normally speaking, it is impossible for such a social relationship to exist.He does not have the material conditions for the existence of such social relations.

And all of this is a kind of social relationship created by Dashun's national power and colonial policy.

In other words, all the big farmers, capitalists, and factory owners in Xinyizhou can only be centripetal and unified.

Because the economic base determines the superstructure.The basis of their existence and the basis of their ability to deprive others of the fruits of their labor is the social relationship distorted by the state of the Dashun Empire.

Without Dashun, their large farms and large factories will be wiped out tomorrow due to the lack of wage laborers.

That is the same reason Engels commented on Junkers on the issue of potato shochu: [...then, the Junkers will be dispersed and become an independent peasant class, yeoman...].

However, the problem in Prussia is the market and industry, because Prussia has no shortage of people; while Dashun is short of people here.Although they are all connected by potato shochu, the elements needed to maintain this "social relationship" are different.

In other words, if the centripetal and conservative factions that Dashun cultivated here lack the national power of Dashun, they will be scattered like Prussian Junkers without potato shochu, and become peasants, yeoman.They have to stand firmly on a unified attitude, the ass determines the head.For them, this industry can be potatoes, it can be liquor, it can be anything else, but it doesn't matter what industry it is.Potatoes are just a representative, but potatoes are not to Dashun like potatoes are to Prussia.

(End of this chapter)