Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 838 Lingao Trade Agreement
The first business negotiations with the Dutch ended "in a warm and friendly atmosphere".Skade secretly laughed. Many of the things the Dutchman was arguing for were actually not worth mentioning to him, but he got a lot of conditions in exchange.The Dutch people's most resolute "can't buy in a contract" has practical lessons, so van der Laantelon insisted on giving the Dutch the right to sell goods freely in Lingao.

Skade "reluctantly" finally agreed to the request.In Lingao, there is probably no one who needs so many Dutch goods, and there is no such a large amount of working capital to buy Dutch goods.Of course Gu Baocheng's Qionghai ship has this strength, but Gu Baocheng would never do such an unsightly thing.In terms of foreign trade, no one in Lingao dare not obey the baton of the Ministry of Colonial Trade.

The two sides reached a preliminary agreement on the trade:

The goods transported by the "Magdeburg" have been taxed and entered the customs. All the goods in this batch are purchased by the foreign trade company under the Ministry of Colonial and Trade at a certain price. The guide price is that the East India Company sells them to Chinese maritime merchants s price.The goods that are not sold in Dayuan Port shall be negotiated by both parties.

After this trade, the two sides will conduct bilateral trade under the new trade agreement.The conditions are as follows:
The Dutch East India Company has the right to sell goods freely at the two ports of Lingao and Sanya under the control of the Senate. Anyone can buy goods from the East India Company. Australians do not sell goods to the East India Company except for the tariffs approved by both importing parties. Other fees are levied on imported goods.

The Dutch East India Company can send unlimited batches and unlimited numbers of trading ships to trade in various trading ports designated by the Senate every year.The specific trading ports will be revised once a year.At present, the Senate has granted permission to open the two ports of Lingao and Sanya for trade. If necessary, the Senate can increase or decrease the opening of ports at any time, but at least one trading port should be reserved for the company.

Vessels from the Dutch East Indies entering these ports must fly designated signal flags, and after entering the port, they must fully obey the command of the port officers and pay all port charges-these charges are not deductible.Otherwise, the port authority has the right to confiscate the equivalent imported goods as compensation.

After the company's ships enter the port, all weapons must be sealed up, and all quarantine and disinfection measures must be taken, and those who refuse to accept them will be immediately expelled from the port.

Half of the deadweight tons shipped by the company to Qiongzhou must be commodities designated by the Ministry of Colonial and Trade, and specific catalogs will be provided for such commodities.If not enough designated commodities are delivered on this voyage, they must be replenished on the next voyage.Otherwise, related trade will be suspended.

Companies can rent commercial buildings built by the Ministry of Colonization and Trade in designated open ports.Merchants and sailors must live together in commercial halls or on ships.Not allowed to sleep out.The rent of the shop is five hundred guilders a year.Meals and daily necessities are purchased from the market by the company personnel themselves, and the Ministry of Colonization and Trade provides convenience.

The last item is jurisdiction.Van der Laantelon agreed to Lingao's jurisdiction, but claimed judicial privilege in commercial disputes.The so-called special rights are not extraterritorial rights, but require that once a commercial dispute occurs between the company and local businessmen, the Ministry of Colonial and Trade must give certain preferential treatment, mainly in terms of recourse to accounts and bankruptcy liquidation.He asked Skade to guarantee that the company would give the company priority in the event of such an event.At the same time, the company is allowed to send consulates in Lingao to protect the company's commercial interests.

Skade said that enforcement is not a problem, as long as the East India Company recognizes that Australians have jurisdiction over commercial activities in Qiongzhou, once the Lingao Maritime-Commercial Court makes a judgment, it will be implemented in place.

The Dutch East India Company allowed Australian ships to sail in the waters of the East Indies and Taiwan under the same conditions. Australian ships had the right to enter Batavia at any time to trade with officials, and Australians could also establish commercial offices there. Appointment of consular staff.At the same time, Australian ships are guaranteed to enter Banten safely and without harassment at any time.For all the privileges that Lingao granted to the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch East India Company also granted Lingao.

Finally: Both parties agree to send consulates in Batavia and Lingao to protect their commercial interests.

Of course, according to Lingao's situation, it is impossible for many ships to go to Batavia in the short term-the current problem of Lingao is the lack of capacity, but through this step, we can gradually attract those who are willing to go to Batavia The Ming merchants belonged to Lingao under the banner.Historically, Batavia was a place in Southeast Asia where Chinese sea merchants often went to trade.The Zheng family and Liu Xiang basically do not directly get involved in this route.Skade is going to squeeze the control of this route from them first, and then collect traffic protection fees.After all, the Lingao regime already has a minimum concept of protection for overseas business people, instead of just staying at the level of king of the mountain to collect tolls by monopolizing routes.In other words, the Lingao regime has the awareness of "collecting money for protection", while other sea owners are just "collecting money and not looking for trouble".The ups and downs among them can be seen at a glance.This is actually why the Lingao regime is more popular than the Ming regime.

After the trade agreement was reached, the two sides negotiated the details of trade goods and tariffs.Van der Laantelon knew that the company was most interested in dumping spices from the East Indies, one of the few commodities the Dutch could dump on a large scale.The Dutch had formed a tight network of crop acquisition, storage and sales in the East Indies.Compared with rice and wood, the most convenient thing for the Dutch to supply to China is spices.And Lingao is obviously not interested in spices.Moreover, it has been confirmed in the previous agreement that the general freight volume must carry the goods in the Lingao designated catalog-there are no spices in it.That is to say, at most he can only spend all the remaining shipments on spices, and a 24% tariff can completely make the spice trade unprofitable.

The low-level businessman tried his best to ask for a substantial reduction in the tariff on spices, at least to 5%, but Skade was indifferent to this. Although spices can be used as a useful re-export product, after all, Lingao has never been in the mainland. Those who have not sold spices may not necessarily be rivals of existing distributors in terms of competition.If the spice trade became profitable, the Dutch would not bother to ship other goods.

In the end, the two sides reached a compromise, that is, the import tariff on the spice trade was 12%, which was cut in half.Van der Laantelon knew it would be difficult to make enough money from spices.For this reason, he had to consider what kind of goods to export to Lingao.If a suitable commodity cannot be found, the company has to consider the amount of silver quota allocated to Lingao.In the trade with Daming, the main commodity exported by the East India Company was actually silver.

The silver transported by the company from Japan, Persia and Europe disappeared in the trade with Ming Dynasty like a black hole.The East India Company has been hoping to reverse this situation.Judging from the current situation, Australians have much more demand than Ming, who doesn't need anything. Just judging from this designated cargo catalog, the East India Company can transport and sell a variety of commodities.The timber and rice in the bulk cargo are all materials that can be effectively obtained from the East India.Although there is no great export potential for rice in the East Indies, the company owns a trade port in Siam, and the local rice is very abundant, so it is completely possible to open up a Siam-Lingao rice trade route.

Judging from the list made by the Australians, they need a lot of metal products.But the Dutch can't do anything about it.In East Asia, except for copper, which is Japan's bulk export commodity, the main exporter of other metal products is Ming Dynasty.But it is difficult to import copper directly from Japan at the moment.The Netherlands-Japan trade has actually been in a state of suspension recently.It seems that it is necessary to ask the Council of Batavia whether the channel for obtaining Japanese copper can be opened up as soon as possible.

The Australians also specified that they shipped fine woolen cloth, linen and leather in many colours.Not only are there deerskins that are popular in the region, but they are also interested in rough goods such as cowhide and sheepskin.Except for woolen cloth and linen that need to be shipped from Europe, leather can be shipped from Basra in Persia-Persia has enough leather supply.

As for imported products from Lingao.Van der Laantelon has already made a decision, starting with the glasswork.Lingao's glass products, including mirrors, have many styles and good quality, and the price is cheaper than European products shipped all the way.There are markets in the East Indies, throughout Southeast Asia, and Persia, and can be used as trade goods to be shipped everywhere.Followed by Lingao white sugar.In terms of the quality of the Lingao white sugar that the British shipped to the East Indies, this was a high-grade product that they had never seen.Not only is it far better than all kinds of local sugar products in Southeast Asia, it is even better than Fujian and Guangdong sugar from Daming, which is always known for its high quality.Shipping to Persia and Europe fetches high prices.Then there are Daming products resold by Lingao.

Van der Laantelon and Skade hit it off in the field of reselling.Since both Zheng Zhilong and Liu Xiang have the problem of high prices in trade with the Dutch in Dayuan, the Australians in Lingao can replace them.Skade stated that they had an "open supply" of all kinds of silk products and raw silk, as well as all Ming goods that the Dutch were interested in.

Van der Laantelon was intrigued, for no businessman from any country, except the Portuguese, who had the right to enter Canton regularly, would have dared to boast such a feat.It was difficult for the Europeans to obtain enough Chinese goods without relying on the Chinese merchants' own ships to transport them out of the port for trade.You must know that all the efforts the Dutch have made on the coast of China so far have not been able to achieve this goal.

(End of this chapter)