I'm sure of the prosperous age of Kangxi and Qianlong!

Chapter 691 China East India Company

Hongluji Temple was busy recruiting the natives of Ezo according to the order. It was difficult to find officials who came to Ezo in the interior, but there were a lot of them in Liaodong.

Especially here in Seoul, many Korean officials who can speak Chinese and write Chinese characters are very willing to come to Ezo.

After all, who wouldn’t want to join the ministry?

When the Ming Dynasty expanded its territory in Ezo and Kagoshima, the envoys from St. Petersburg, Tsarist Russia, finally arrived in Nanjing again.

royal palace.

Zhu Yijiong said to the Tsarist Russian envoy: "You don't need to say any more. Go back and tell your Rakshasa Emperor that as long as the Cossacks do not withdraw from the Yenisei River area, the war between Ming Dynasty and Tsarist Russia will not stop. I will Fight all the way to your Volga!"

The head of the mission this time was no longer Biron, but another Russian named Ivan.

Ivan prostrated on the ground: "Your Majesty, the great Emperor of China, if Ming China asks for Lake Baikal, I will return to Petersburg and report to His Majesty Tsar Anna. But if Your Majesty, the Emperor, asks for Yeniseisk, the Russian Empire will not surrender to China. , the war will continue!"

"What Lake Baikal? That's the North Sea of ​​my Ming Dynasty." Zhu Yijiong sneered: "Since you guys are so courageous, why not stop at the North Sea? The names of the Yenisei River and the Volga River are too difficult to pronounce, so we should change them all to The Chinese name is better.”

Ivan was speechless and felt extremely angry.

If it weren't for the fact that Tsarist Russia's current energy was all held back by the damn Ottomans, those Ottomans didn't know what medicine they took. This time, they actually fought with Tsarist Russia in the west instead of submitting obediently.

Of course, it is impossible to succumb. Behind the Ottomans, there is the support of the old empire and the European overlord, the French.

It was also this battle that gave the newly crowned Queen Anna a big blow.

In fact, neither Tsarist Russia nor the Ottomans were victorious in the end. The Ottomans might have been even worse, but Tsarist Russia's losses were so great that it was difficult to support both the east and west fronts.

The war on the Western Front continued, and suddenly news came that Lake Baikal had been occupied by the Chinese emperor, and the Yeniseisk warlord also died in Nerchinsk.

Yeniseisk is now leaderless. When Ivan's envoy reached the Yenisei River, the Cossacks there were in chaos, with no control or supervision.

Tsarist Russia really had no choice but to send troops, and even Yeniseisk had no time to worry about it, so it sent envoys again to see if they could intimidate the Chinese emperor into backing down.

Ivan was still thinking, but Zhu Yijiong sent out another message: "I have contacted the Ottoman Empire through Turgut. Aren't you at war with the Ottoman Empire? Just in time, I can also help the Ottomans on the Eastern Front. Support some artillery and ammunition, and if the Cossacks do not retreat from the Yenisei River, the Ming Dynasty will become allies with the Ottomans and jointly attack Russia."

These words were more of a threat, but Ivan didn't dare not believe it.

Because the Turguts had openly rebelled against Tsarist Russia and occupied the lower reaches of the Volga River.

If the powerful China forms an alliance with the difficult Ottomans, Ivan doesn't even dare to think how the Russian Empire can fight.

Unfortunately, he was just an envoy and did not have much authority, and the Chinese emperor obviously did not want to hear his nonsense, so he directly issued an order to expel him.

Including the Tsarist Russian envoys at the Dabaoen Temple vassal headquarters, they will also leave Nanjing within three days. The Ming Dynasty will send ships along the way and watch them be sent out of the country.

There is no way, the two countries are at war, and even trade is prohibited. The small countries that Tsarist Russia once conquered in the Far East and Central Asia have now all rebelled against Tsarist Russia.

Or they can act against the will and get stuck in the necks of Russian businessmen in various ways.

After all, for these small countries, Tsarist Russia is too far away and China is too close.

Zhu Yijiong always declared war so strongly with Tsarist Russia, not only because he was interested in the vast land of Siberia, but also to consolidate the border defense in the northern border. Without pushing the front to the Yenisey River, there will be no peace in the Baikal Basin, because Lake Baikal and the Yenisey River are connected, and the Cossacks can take a boat from the Yenisei River at any time to attack the Ming Dynasty's Beihai Protectorate eastward. .

Moreover, the source of the Yenisei River is in the northwest region of Mobei. Only by completely controlling this area can the Ming Dynasty connect all the Mobei and Beihai regions.

……

Just this year, the imperial court launched a major external war in the southern coastal provinces.

A true "Chinese company" was born in the coastal cities of Fujian and Guangdong.

Although the imperial court had long had regulations on "companies", all major commercially prosperous towns had a few "companies" registered, but these "companies" were in fact official shells of businesses, and were mainly used to facilitate control by the imperial court.

The "Chinese companies" established in the coastal areas this year are different. The original "companies" generally have one family name. Most of them are former large landowners who have re-raised funds to invest in business after their land was divided and their properties were divided.

But it is difficult to get rid of the nature of a business name. Even the "Yangzhou Merchant Gang" that once joined forces and was split up by the imperial court was not actually a company. It was just a group of big businessmen who joined forces to engage in monopoly trade.

But now this "company" is different. It has maritime merchants as its main business, and countless small maritime merchants have gathered to raise funds, and even established the concepts of shares and stocks.

Don't think it's too advanced, because this is already something the Dutch, British, and Portuguese are playing.

Chinese businessmen have been in business for so long, so it’s natural that they don’t know what their company is doing.

It has been more than 20 years since the Ming Dynasty opened the sea, and the crabs have almost been divided up by various families. Even if a thorough customs inspection was done before, there was only a slight tear, and the leftovers that leaked out were mostly wealthy people from the mainland. .

The small maritime merchants along the coast were still miserable, and even the imperial court had no way to control them.

In the first ten years of opening the sea, those large-scale maritime merchants were also very honest and did not go too far. However, more and more maritime merchants formed secret alliances to squeeze out and monopolize the maritime market.

Those small maritime merchants who were squeezed out were naturally not weak-minded. Those who could make a living at sea would have a few good people to get along with.

These people could not compete with the large merchants, so some of them followed to the Yinzhou waterway thousands of miles away, and successfully broke out a market in Yinzhou.

There are still some companies that continue to survive here in Asia. This year, a Guangdong businessman finally couldn't stand it anymore. He didn't want to go to Yinzhou Venture Capital. It's too late to go now. The Yinzhou market is already somewhat saturated.

Then simply do something big, and he happens to have a Dutch friend.

The other party told him the operation mode of the European East India Company and the important points to pay attention to.

To sum it up, we need to make profits together and lose money together.

Different from a partnership business, you must actually invest funds and cannot withdraw midway, otherwise all funds will be included in the company's accounts.

When the Guangdong local official reported the news to Nanjing worriedly, Zhu Yijiong was surprised at first when he saw it, and then wrote a written reply: "Normal registration is enough, no need for too much interference."

If Europe can establish a joint-stock East India Company, then China can naturally establish a Chinese version of the "East India Company".

It just depends on what these businessmen can do. Whether they lose or make money depends entirely on them.

Of course, the European East India Company could buy and sell slaves, fight wars and occupy land, but this was definitely not possible in China. The most it could do was dump goods to foreign vassals with official support.

(End of this chapter)