The Imperial Age with the Resurgence of Han Style

Chapter 362 Secret War
September 9, Cape French.

"Eight twenty. Oh, another beautiful day has begun!"

Louis Laberie, the Governor of French Saint-Domingue, took out a gold watch made in Qi from his pocket, looked at the time, then walked to his desk and sat down, ready to start the day's work.

He took the hot coffee handed to him by the servant and sipped it slowly while looking through the documents that the secretary had sorted out early in the morning.

The sun shines through the window lattice, scattering mottled light on the carved mahogany table, with yellowed maps and graffiti-covered logbooks spread out on the corners. On the bookshelf by the wall, neatly arranged files and books are placed, and a globe rotates quietly beside it, as if telling the intricate international relations and distant homeland behind this colony.

The Governor's fingers tapped lightly on the table, as if following the sound of waves in the distance, with a clear rhythm. His eyes suddenly became firm, as if he was deciding on a major decision.

"Damn Qi people! It's all because of them that hindered the further expansion of the great French Kingdom on the Island of Saint-Domingue." Governor La Berry complained softly.

In 1492, when Columbus first arrived in the Caribbean, his flagship ran aground and he could not bring all the crew members of the other two ships back to Spain. So he built the Navidad Castle at Cape French, which is currently occupied by the French, as a temporary shelter.

When Columbus returned here the following year, he found that no one was alive in the fort. Although he was sad, he did not forget his business. He chose to establish the Isabela Colony on the north coast of the island. The colonial rule of St. Domingo Island began.

In 1544, a terrible smallpox outbreak led to the near extinction of the island's indigenous Arawak people, causing the Spanish to abandon plantations, ranches and mines in the western part of the island. The western part of the island then became a deserted no-man's land and gradually became a stronghold for pirates from England, France, the Netherlands and other countries.

By 1640, with French immigrants outnumbering the western part of the island, French colonists took the area for themselves.

Although the Spanish had carried out several expulsion operations, they were unable to spare much energy because they were involved in disputes on the European continent, and were all repelled by the French.

In 1665, the French government declared the western part of the island a French overseas territory and named it Saint-Domingue. In 1697, Spain and France signed the Treaty of Ryswick, formally ceding the western part of the island to France.

The French government considered establishing a colony in the area, so it not only paid attention to stopping pirate activities, but also persuaded those pirates to "reform", move to the colonies and become settled farmers.

By the end of the 17th century, with the continuous influx of French colonists, Saint-Domingue had become one of the richest colonies in America.

The main crops of Saint-Domingo were tobacco and indigo at first, and later cotton and sugar cane. All available land was cultivated, with sugar cane planted on the wet plains, indigo planted on the dry hills, and cotton fields distributed on the dry plains. Remote and uncultivated areas were also used to raise cattle and pigs.

But sugarcane was Saint-Domingue's main cash crop. In 1730, it exported 1500 million pounds of raw sugar and 1700 million pounds of white sugar to North America and Europe, providing the French royal family and government with an income of million livres. During the same period, the fur trade in the vast territory of New France only provided the French government with an income of to million livres, making it the most dazzling pearl of the French Kingdom.

However, in order to save costs to the greatest extent possible, sugarcane plantation owners in Saint-Domingo basically adopt an extensive production model. They rarely build complete farmland water conservancy facilities like the neighboring Qi-controlled Ruian area. They rely entirely on the weather and do not perform any soil maintenance or fertilizer management on the sugarcane fields that have been operated for several years. It is purely predatory planting.

You should know that sugarcane is very damaging to the soil. If it is not properly maintained, the soil fertility will decline over a few years and may even cause the land to be completely abandoned.

But the plantation owners didn't care about this. There were plenty of forest spaces in the New World, and if the sugarcane production decreased, the worst that could happen was that they would just move on to another piece of land.

This led to the plantation owners having an extreme desire for expansion, hoping to seize more land under the leadership of the colonial government to meet the greedy needs of the sugarcane plantations.

Originally, relying on the powerful strength of French Saint-Domingue, it was possible to gradually nibble away at the Spanish and eventually squeeze out the Spaniards, thus dominating this rich island.

However, we never expected that the damn Spaniards would actually bring Qi forces into the island and lease the port of Barahona to them in order to counterbalance the expansion of our France.

In just a few years, the Qi people continued to extend from the coast to the inland hinterland, and in October last year they established a stronghold southwest of Lake Enriquillo, blocking France's further eastward advance.

This made those plantation owners who were eager to expand their land very dissatisfied. They advised the Governor's Office to take necessary strong measures against the Qi people, forcing them to retreat to the seaside and give up all the "unowned land".

If Saint-Domingo does not have enough land reserves, how can it continue to expand the scale of sugarcane plantations? If it does not increase sugarcane production and expand the amount of sugar exports, how can it cope with the increasingly high tax collection from the royal family and the government?

What made many French plantation owners even more angry was that many black slaves who could not bear the abuse and humiliation chose to flee. In addition to the majority of them hiding in the jungle-covered Central Cordillera Mountains and settling down to form a community called "Maroons", a considerable number of black slaves fled to the areas controlled by the Qi people, where they were taken in by Qi immigrants and plantation owners, and then continued to be used to work with peace of mind. The French plantation owners tried to go to the Qi people's homes to ask for the escaped slaves back, but were unsurprisingly rejected by the Qi people, who also vowed that these black slaves were free people and had the right to choose who they served.

Damn, what a “free man”!
You people of Qi have the ability to withdraw all the armed guards from your own plantations and see if your "hired laborers" will escape?

Because of land, escaped slaves, and unclear borders, Qi and France had been arguing endlessly in recent years, and armed conflicts had occurred from time to time.

However, under the constraints of the top colonial authorities on both sides, these conflicts were small-scale and low-intensity, and rarely caused major casualties.

It's nothing more than catching the border crossers, beating them up, stripping them, or humiliating them, and then letting them go.

Of course, there are also those who take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness, sneak into the enemy's territory, steal cattle and sheep, or destroy the enemy's farmland, trying every means to force the enemy away and seize the enemy's land.

Decades ago, the French used this method to gradually invade and seize Spanish territory and slowly occupy the western part of the island.

However, this tactic does not seem to work well on the Qi people. They will respond tit for tat and never give in. They will resolutely fight back against all kinds of means used by the French plantation owners.

This meant that after years of fighting with the Qi people, the French still failed to break through Lake Enriquillo, and they had to watch helplessly as their own sugarcane fields produced less and less yield year by year due to predatory farming, and their profits were greatly affected, which filled them with endless resentment.

On the other hand, the people of Qi, after going through the difficult initial stage of development, lived an increasingly prosperous life.

Although America and the Caribbean islands produced large quantities of raw sugar, sugar mills rarely refined it further locally. Instead, it was shipped back to Europe and refined in major cities such as Antwerp, Venice, Amsterdam, and London.

Raw sugar can be refined into different categories. In particular, molasses can be extracted from raw sugar, which can be used to make rum.

Therefore, the profits of European sugar mills were almost equal to those of sugar mills producing raw sugar in the New World. Rum, a byproduct of sugar production, also became a popular commodity due to the sugar industry.

After the arrival of the Qi people, the level of integration of planting and processing was raised to a new level. They directly carried out various deep processing of raw sugar on the spot. At the same time, many of the latest technologies and latest machinery and equipment from Hanzhou were also applied to the sugar industry.

For example, when the French and Spanish were still using wooden mills to squeeze sugarcane, the people of Qi not only replaced the wooden mills with cast iron ones, but also replaced the power for squeezing juice with steam engines. These technologies and equipment made Qi the country that profited the most from the sugar trade.

A sugar refinery in French Cape with an annual output of 300 million pounds generally requires more than 200 people, who are responsible for transporting sugarcane, maintaining the presses, cooking rooms, processing rooms and managing warehouses.

A sugar factory in Rui'an Port, Qi, which produces 700 million pounds a year, only needs more than workers, and its overall production cost is more than half less than that of French sugar factories!
Can you imagine? The Qi people produced more than 24 million pounds of sugarcane in a small place like Rui'an (the raw sugar produced by the Spanish was also processed here), and with the related industrial chain, they created a profit of nearly million livres (equivalent to more than gold yuan).

This ability to create wealth really makes the French jealous and crazy.

Jealousy often makes people change beyond recognition.

Naturally, the French would not let the Qi people live so comfortably, so they frequently provoked trouble. In addition to causing some minor frictions on the border, they also secretly contacted the "Maroons" in the Central Cordillera Mountains, instigating them to go down the mountains to plunder the wealthy Qi people.

"Your Majesty the Governor..."

Just as Governor Louis La Béry was leaning back in a soft chair, thinking about what precious gift to give to some big shot in Paris so that he could extend his term as governor and thus gain more wealth, Colonel Evan Fournier, the sheriff of Saint-Domingue, hurried over and told him an astonishing news.

"Five days ago, the Qi people organized an armed force of more than 400 people and raided a Maroon camp in the Central Cordillera Mountains. They killed and wounded hundreds of Maroons and captured Father Matthias and Father Lesor." Colonel Fournier swallowed a few times and said with difficulty: "Governor, the Qi people may have learned that we instigated the Maroons to attack the Qi settlement and plantations."

(End of this chapter)