The Imperial Age with the Resurgence of Han Style

Chapter 360: A "Flower of Evil"

"The Caribbean Trading Company is also engaged in the slave trade?"

Relying on his military background (in Qi, the Black Guards were also seen as an important part of the military-political system), Maynard easily got a comfortable and warm room in the largest Oriental Hotel in Qing'an City (now Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas), and had a good sleep.

It was not until noon that he lazily left the soft big bed, then had a quick lunch in the hotel and leisurely walked to the street, ready to tour the small town.

Qing'an City was first built in 1660 and was originally named Charlestown. In 1690, it was named Orange-Nassau after the family of King William III of England. It was not until the State of Qi took over that it was renamed to its current name.

Before this, there were some lawless villains and pirates living in this city. They engaged in piracy, plundering ships, and killing people for a living.

In order to stop the constant occurrence of pirates plundering ships, Spain and France once regularly sent their own fleets to severely strike. However, after being completely destroyed, the pirate city would always make a comeback and rebuild the port city again.

It was not until 1718 that England declared the Bahamas its crown colony and appointed Roger Wood, a former pirate raider, as governor.

Roger Wood's family later drove all the pirates out of the city, reestablished laws, restored social order, and built a new fortress.

In 1730, after England was defeated by Qi, it signed an armistice treaty and ceded the entire Bahamas to Qi.

At that time, after the Qi naval fleet carried out a sweep of the Bahamas to show its power, it solemnly announced to the surrounding forces and pirate groups that the area was officially incorporated into the jurisdiction of Qi, and outsiders were not to cause trouble again.

In view of the fact that the social order in Nassau was relatively stable after the governance of the English, the Qi military did not station troops there. Only a guard team formed by the Caribbean trading company maintained the daily public order in the city.

Except for the Governor's Palace, artillery batteries, fortresses and important warehouses which are brick and stone structures, most of the buildings in the city are made of wood. Some are European in style, while others are traditional oriental in style. The short streets are lined with shops with flags fluttering in front of the doors, making the city look bustling and lively.

Climb up the commanding height of Qing'an City - the bell tower, and overlook the whole city. It is only a few hundred meters in radius, and two vertical and two horizontal blocks and hundreds of houses make up the structure of the entire city.

A merchant ship flying the red yellow dragon flag of Qi State and the logo of the Caribbean Trading Company had just entered the port and was parked on the west side of the dock, unloading "cargo". A long line stretched from the side of the ship to the dock, and under the drive of armed guards, they entered the dock warehouse quarantine area one after another.

Although the distance was too far to see clearly, against the backdrop of the sunlight, one could still vaguely make out that those people were black slaves from Africa.

Seeing this, Maynard was greatly surprised.

In his impression, it seemed that only South African and Mediterranean trading companies were sporadically operating the "population transfer" business. The former mainly dealt with black Africans, while the latter mainly resold white slaves from Crimea and the Maghreb.

The Caribbean Trading Company, as a rising star, seemed to be mainly engaged in sugar and smuggling trade.

But unexpectedly, they saw their slave ships in Qing'an Port.

"It's nothing strange." A fellow villager from Qianzhou said disapprovingly: "Not only are the 'sugar islands' in the Caribbean extremely in demand for black slaves, but even the English in southern North America also have a relatively large demand for black slaves, which naturally led to the opening of this business by the trading company. Oh, all the merchants from various countries doing business in the Caribbean are engaged in the slave trade. After all, the profit is huge. Just pulling a boat of people over can make at least tens of thousands of dollars. You may not know that the world's largest slave trader is the English, who sell more than 100,000 black slaves from Africa every year."

Since 1698, when the English Parliament passed an act declaring the transatlantic black slave trade open to all English citizens, only a % tax was required to participate in this lucrative "industry". The whole of England became a huge "slave trading group", and countless English merchants joined the slave trade. Black slaves became the main commodity in the African trade.

According to rough estimates, in the 1700 years between 1715 and 15 alone, English slave traders transported as many as black slaves to Jamaica.

By 1710, the Royal African Company, headquartered in London, was no longer as powerful as the private slave ships sailing from Bristol, which eventually led to the English Parliament formally repealing the previous bill in 1712. From then on, all English people could participate in the transatlantic black slave trade without any restrictions and did not have to pay taxes to the Royal African Trade Company.

During the slave trade, English slave traders not only exported black slaves to their own colonies, but also wanted to sell black slaves to the colonies of other European countries. They also smuggled black slaves to the vast Spanish American colonial territories and made a fortune.

In 1731, due to the defeat in the Anglo-Saxon War, the English government was burdened with a heavy debt. In order to actively improve its finances and collect more tax revenue, the English Parliament issued a decree, announcing that as long as they paid 10% business tax to the government, all English people would be recognized as legal to trade in various regions and ports in Africa from the port of Salé in Barbary to the Gulf of Guinea. It also authorized private capital to establish a new company, the "English African Merchant Company", to manage strongholds and fortresses in West Africa and other places, to escort the further expansion of the slave trade.

It can be said that in order to make money, the English have completely disregarded their most basic business conscience and moral bottom line.

Seeing that the English and other European countries were making such a booming slave trade, the Caribbean trading companies naturally did not want to miss out, so they took advantage of their powerful network channels and transportation resources to join the slave trade business.

You know, forcing people into slavery or trafficking in human beings is a serious crime in the mainland of Hanzhou. But you would never have thought that when you go overseas, to a foreign land, these trading companies (merchants) would become so unscrupulous that they would follow the European slave traders in trafficking in African people in order to make dirty money.

In the Governorate of Qianzhou, although there were countless black slave laborers in some large farmers and mines, at least they were under the guise of "labor recruitment" and were covered with a legal cloak.

As for the "delivery" of a large number of local Khoisan and Bantu people to the Portuguese and the Dutch decades ago, they did not openly claim that it was slave trade, but instead called it "labor dispatch."

Well, just a small "referral fee".

"The entire Atlantic Ocean, and even the Caribbean Sea, is simply a sinful place without any order or moral restraint."
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On August 8, the Changyuan left Qiongzhou Island and arrived at Matanzas, a remote port in the north of Spanish Cuba, after sailing for several days. It unloaded precious commodities such as tea, hardware, cotton cloth, metal farm tools, clocks, porcelain, and curios from Qing'an Port. This is the most important Spanish colony in the Caribbean, and the demand for goods from Qi is increasing. Whether it is a large number of daily necessities or various exquisite and rare items, they can be sold at a good price here and are deeply loved by people from all walks of life on the island.

The island's military governors and colonial officials at all levels also knew about the Qi people's smuggling activities, but due to the multiple interests involved, almost everyone pretended not to see it and allowed Qi's smuggling ships to enter and exit Cuban ports at will.

It is quite strange to say that Qi and Spain were once at loggerheads in the Mediterranean region over the dispute over Sicily, and the relationship between them was also very tense.

However, Qi and Spain got along very well in the Caribbean region, cooperated closely with each other, and joined forces to deal with the invasion and expansion of Britain and France in the region.

In order to prevent the French from continuing to encroach on the Island of Saint-Domingo (now Haiti), the Spaniards even took the initiative to lease Barahona in the southern part of the island, located on the border between France and Spain, to the State of Qi in order to fight against France.

Of course, the Spaniards were so knowledgeable and tactful in showing goodwill to the people of Qi. In addition to wanting to gain the support of the people of Qi to safeguard their colonial interests in the Caribbean, they also wanted to use Qi to impose some degree of restraint on the South American Qing Kingdom so that it would not always invade Spanish American territories and annoy them.

During the Qi-England War, the Qing Kingdom used Portugal as an excuse to be an ally of England, marched north and swallowed up the Rio Grande region (now Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), thus pushing their northern border to the upper reaches of the Uruguay River.

However, the Qing Kingdom was still insatiable. In recent years, it had set its sights on the Mesopotamian River (between the Uruguay River and the Paraná River), and frequently organized armed expeditions to cross the border for exploration. Its intentions were obvious, causing great tension in the Viceroyalty of Peru.

As the suzerain state of Qing, shouldn't Qi say something to try to restrain its behavior?
Qi State was naturally well aware of the Spaniards' intentions. In order to gain a foothold in the Caribbean, the place farthest from the mainland of China, there was no need to ruin relations with all European colonial forces. It must have at least one or two close partners.

The State of Qi then gave the State of Qing some friendly advice and counsel, warning them that blindly expanding and aggressing would be very dangerous for themselves, causing the national economy to be overwhelmed, people's livelihood to decline, finances to go bankrupt, and even social unrest.

Therefore, it is time for the Kingdom of Qing to rectify its internal affairs, sort out the many domestic problems, first consolidate the foundation of domestic rule, and then think about expansion.

Although Qing Kingdom has a population of more than 1.3 million, it does not have an absolute dominant ethnic group. In addition to the more than 400,000 Han people, there are Europeans, Indians, Chinese-European mixed-races, Chinese-Indian mixed-races, European-Indian mixed-races, and African blacks... There are a lot of messy races, and each race can be further divided into several regional ethnic groups, and the regional ethnic groups can even be divided into several tribes (Indians).

Although the Qing government forced people of all ethnic groups in the country to learn Chinese, speak Chinese, and write Chinese, the impoverished finances could not guarantee the country's implementation of compulsory education for all. Except for the Han people and Han-Chinese mixed-race people, only a small number of elites from other ethnic groups could receive a complete Chinese universal education.

It's ridiculous to say that during the war, the Qing army even had to be specially equipped with a group of interpreters so that they could accurately convey and receive corresponding military orders.

You say, you haven’t even cleaned up your own butt, so why are you still thinking about occupying more of other people’s territory?
You can't digest too much when you bite off more than you can chew. Don't end up eating too much and then eating yourself to death!

As a close vassal state of Qi, Qing was relatively receptive to advice. In order to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial aid from its mother country every year, it naturally had to be "obedient and sensible." So in April 1733, it signed a ten-year peace and friendship treaty with the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru. The two sides guarded their respective borders and did not invade each other, and conducted regular trade in Rosario, a designated important town on the Paraná River.

In addition to restraining and suppressing Qing's aggressive expansionism, Qi also maintained necessary restraint in the process of developing colonial territories on the west coast of North America. It did not continue to encroach on and squeeze the Mexican region, but instead set its sights on French Louisiana.

In the eyes of the Qi people, rather than having such a vast colonial territory, including the entire American region and the Caribbean Sea, be seized by the Britain and France, whose national strength was steadily rising, it would be better for the weak Spain to keep it temporarily.

Later, when our Qi State's strength in the Americas grows to a certain level, we will be able to take it over perfectly from the Spaniards, and the effort required should be minimal.

Therefore, our Qi State now has the obligation to help the Spaniards "defend" or "maintain" their colonial territories in the Americas and the Caribbean.

During this period, the population of Cuba was about 400,000, of which about 60,000 were Spaniards and native whites, and 340,000 were black slaves. As for the indigenous Indians (Taino, Siboney and other branches), they had almost disappeared after being brutally massacred and exploited.

In order to fill the labor shortage, the Spaniards began importing large numbers of African slaves to the island of Cuba in the 16th century to work in plantations and mining operations.

In view of the bull market in sugar cane, the Spanish opened hundreds of sugarcane plantations on the island of Cuba, producing nearly 6 tons of sugar, second only to Portuguese Brazil and British Jamaica (Brazil produced about 2.8 tons of sugar and Jamaica produced about tons of sugar), bringing a steady stream of wealth to the Spanish royal family and government.

However, the "Changyuan" did not purchase too much sugar in the Port of Matanzas, but instead loaded hundreds of tons of copper ore and a large amount of tobacco leaves, ready to be taken back to the Port of Ruian for refining and processing.

Although the mining industry in Cuba has been declining and has been completely replaced by prosperous sugarcane and tobacco plantations, in order to exchange various rare items from Qi smugglers, a large number of black slaves have to be driven to continue digging and mining in the gradually exhausted mines, and then after selection and processing, they are sold to Qi people at extremely low prices.

There was no way around it. In the entire Caribbean, only the Qi people were collecting copper mines.

It is said that they would smelt and process the copper ore to produce rolls of copper wire, which would then be used for wired telegraph transmission.

Oh, speaking of the telegraph, it is truly a magical device that can transmit information accurately and without error over thousands of miles away with the help of a thin copper wire.

The Qi people seem to have laid telegraph lines to Egypt and planned to extend them to Europe.

It can be imagined that once telegraph lines are connected to all parts of the world, the distances on the entire earth will no longer be far away, and communication and exchanges between countries and people will become unimpeded.
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(End of this chapter)