Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1318 The little demon in the temple is very windy ([-])

The sea breeze is blowing and the sun is shining brightly.

In the beautiful harbor of Palermo, Mr. Zheng Yong, the special envoy of China East Coast Republic to Europe, met a special person here, Frederick from the Principality of Courland, the successor of Grand Duke Jacob, Crown Prince of the Duchy of Courland, lord of New Courland Duke Town.

Frederick is a young man in his prime, just in his early twenties. He was born in an aristocratic family and studied abroad in Krakow, Lübeck, Hamburg and other places for many years. He has good skills in swordsmanship and equestrianism. He also inherited his father's business talent and is very good at doing business.At present, Grand Duke Jacob has not only conferred a town in New Courland to him as the fiefdom of the prince—Zheng Yong even heard that Grand Duke Jacob planned to use the entire New Courland as the fiefdom of the prince in case of accidents. The fact that Courland was annihilated by Sweden really frightened him—and he also planned to let Frederick be the director of the country's ocean-going merchant fleet, that is, not to intervene in daily affairs, but to supervise and learn from the sidelines, thinking that in the future Prepare for full succession.

Frederick attaches great importance to his new position. Not only did he spend a lot of money to invite many experts who are experienced in ocean trade from Amsterdam, Lübeck, Hamburg, etc., as his consultants and objects of advice, but he also stepped up learning Chinese. In order to better communicate with the East Coast Republic of China, the largest trading partner of the Principality of Courland in the future.

By the way, thanks to the development of overseas colonies and the rapid development of trade, the Principality of Courland currently has 28 large and small ships, almost double the size before the colonization.These ships are of different types, new and old, and the tonnage is not small. Among them, there are four 4-ton flute-shaped transport ships ordered from the east coast, and three 650-ton Galen ships ordered from England; Most of them are transport ships ranging from dozens of tons to more than 3 tons. Ocean-going ships and small offshore ships account for about half each. tonnage.In the Baltic Sea, it is already quite good, and it is estimated that those Lübeck and Hamburg merchant groups that have frequent trade with the east coast can compare with it.

It can also be seen from this that after the failure of the Grand Duke Jacob to colonize Tobago Island (squeezed away by the Dutch), he took out his wealth to gamble on how miraculous the New Courland Colony at the mouth of the Congo River was.With a firm will and colonial ambitions, Grand Duke Jacob has brought great benefits to the small Baltic country of Courland with a population of only 20. This is not only a commercial benefit, but also a political retreat. The Duchy of Courland, among the tiger and wolf countries such as Poland, Sweden, Russia, and Prussia, especially needs this overseas retreat, and this is obviously why New Courland can become the country's prince fiefdom (once the prince ascends the throne, the fief is automatically passed on to the next one heir) important reason.

Frederick came to Sicily to meet Zheng Yong on this adventure, but he still came for his own affairs.Without him, the Kingdom of Portugal has declared war on the Principality of Courland before. Although it has not yet launched a weapon, the Principality of Courland, with its small population and power, is really unable to compete with the old colonial country Portugal, so it is eager to ask Zheng Yong for advice. What to do—to be honest, almost all of the small standing army of the Principality of Courland are in overseas colonies (transferred after the war broke out, so as not to be annihilated by the Swedish army), and the mainland is simply unable to resist any enemy attack. People came to force them to send troops. Presumably they did not have the guts to send more than 1000 musketeers to attack the port of Luanda. To them, war with Portugal was really something that they never even dared to think about before.

"Governor Hewitt de Beveren is a man of integrity and a good friend of mine, with whom I often hung out when I was working in Riga. He wrote me a while ago and introduced the current situation in New Courland. development, and also briefly described the heroic demeanor of your country’s army led by Knight Crivitz in Angola. Please rest assured that we people on the east coast will remember your country’s position at the critical moment. Between your country and the Kingdom of Portugal The peace issue will also be included in the existing peace negotiations between East and Portugal, and your country will not suffer. Perhaps, we can get some war compensation for your country..." In the apartment, Zheng Yong and Frederick said in private.

His words undoubtedly made the young heir to the principality frowned, and he was even more happy after hearing that there would be war reparations.You know, the war in the Baltic Sea has just ended. Sweden, Poland, Brandenburg-Prussia and Emperor Leopold I signed a peace agreement at the Oliwa Monastery together, but the wounds caused by the war can’t be so fast recover.In particular, a series of rich food-producing regions—such as central Poland—through which the locust-like armies of Sweden, Russia, and Prussia passed, food production plummeted. These people poured into other cities in Poland that were less affected, and even Courland and East Prussia.

In the entire Livonia that was clearly ceded to Sweden in the "Oliwa Treaty", a large number of small farms were abandoned due to both war factors-the destructive robbery of the Swedish and Russian troops, and non-war factors- The Kingdom of Sweden, which acquired these lands after the war, took away a large number of Livonian lands and rewarded them to Swedish aristocratic families. This also believed that a large number of landless refugees were created, and a considerable part of them fled to the east bank through remittances from overseas relatives. In addition, many flooded into the Courland Peninsula, and were taken in by the Grand Duke Jacob Klett and placed in Wendao Port, preparing to find an opportunity to send them to the New Courland Colony—these Livonians seemed to the Grand Duke They are naturally closer and are "relatives" of the Courlands, so after being shipped to the Congo River area, it will help New Courland maintain its own culture instead of becoming more and more like a Polish province.

Grand Duke Jacob had a reason to do this, because New Courland was hot and humid, the environment was harsh, and he had to fight the natives continuously—the people on the east coast almost bought Congolese slaves openly, so that Courland People themselves don't have enough black enslavers - so although immigrants are constantly replenishing, the population has never risen, and even if the people on the East Coast have not provided a lot of medicine and helped them design urban planning, their population will still be very large. is likely to decline.Therefore, this will catch a large number of Livonian refugees-although they may not be very adapted to the climate of Congo-Grand Duke Jacob immediately wanted to send them overseas to grow tobacco and cotton for himself, and cut down large trees , arrest black people.

However, immigration naturally requires money, and if the number of immigrants is large, the amount of money is not a small amount.The Archduke Jacob, who had just been plundered by the Swedes in the country, was a clever woman who could not live without rice. As a last resort, he used his old connections to Hamburg and Lübeck to borrow a sum of money and mortgaged the land of New Courland; at the same time, the British People also extended an olive branch to him. Now that the shipping industry is entering a period of rapid development, the English people are extremely short of all kinds of boats. Therefore, in recent years, a large number of merchant ships have been sent to Riga to transport hemp and flax, and to Sweden to import wood tar and boards. As far as Courland, a traditional timber exporting country, the British merchants did not forget, they signed an agreement with the Grand Duke, using a thousand pine masts as collateral, and loaned Courland a sum of money for its restoration of domestic production and development. migrant.

After receiving funds from these two channels, the immigration work that had been interrupted for some time was finally restarted, but the Principality of Courland was also burdened with heavy debts (don’t forget that they still owed the East Bank several sums of more than 50 Yuan loan), and now Frederick heard that the people on the east coast would help them obtain a certain amount of war reparations. Well, how can this not be exciting?

"Mr. Special Envoy, I am about to sail to New Courland on the warship 'Mitao'. It is great to hear such exciting news before I leave. The Kelet family will always be good friends of the East Coast people. , let us join hands in the South Atlantic. Those barbarians do not deserve to enjoy the vast and fertile land of Rui. We should expand the living space of civilized people there. Please rest assured that the Congolese slaves that our friends on the east coast need, we have been there. Keep arresting, I believe that the supply will be even greater in the future." Frederick Klett said excitedly, after solving the major issues that had been on his mind for many days, he felt refreshed for a while now.

The heir of Archduke Jacob left the port of Palermo two days later, and the three-masted battleship "Mitao" escorted four merchant ships towards New Courland.When they flow along the north wind and the ocean to the waters south of Cape Verde, it is already summer in the southern hemisphere. From the Gulf of Guinea to the south is the famous "big wet season". The northeast wind is dominant, and it can just go to New Courland (Because it is against the current, you must wait for the northeast wind).

After the Courlandians left, on November 11, Zheng Yong encountered the east coast convoy returning from the Ottoman Empire trade in the port of Palermo.Anyway, he was fine now (negotiations had come to a standstill since the last time), so he boarded the ship and had a good chat with Wang Tiehammer, who led the team.

The ships returning from the Ottoman Empire have been quite empty this year. In addition to importing a large number of livestock (camels, horses), copper, tin, lead ore, raisins, dates, blankets and tapestries as usual, slaves who accounted for the bulk of the trade in previous years are large this year. In order to reduce it—there were only four thousand female slaves and less than two thousand male slaves—this greatly increased the surplus of the east coast trade fleet.The persons in charge of the various trading stations are both happy and worried about this. The happy thing is that the debts owed to buy slaves in the past few years (including the cost of renting French and Dutch merchant ships) can finally be repaid. Otherwise, the Ottoman Empire's already extremely chaotic and embarrassing economy will only become more and more difficult, and in the end trade will not be able to continue, so a solution must be found.

Gao Wengang, who is fully in charge of Ottoman affairs, once called a meeting with the heads of various trading stations to discuss the issue of trade with Austria. After much deliberation, they finally found that they could only return to the old road of population trade. The Ottoman Empire with a population of 3000 million needs a series of commodities such as arms, textiles, steel bars, hardware tools, agricultural tools, soda ash, soap, medicines, carriages, ships and even technical services on the east coast, but what does the east coast need to import from the Ottoman Empire? Woolen cloth?Strictly speaking, there is a lot of demand, but the quantity is too small, and the export and import are too unequal.

At present, the relatively large ones are livestock trade (mainly imported horses and camels), ore trade (copper, lead and tin that is lacking on the east coast), dried fruits (raisins, dates, etc.), refined blankets, etc., but how big is the demand for these?For example, camels, Patagonia on the east coast, South Africa, Australia and even the west of Xinhua Island need a lot of camels, but the trade volume lasted 20 yuan a year, and there is no more; excellent Arabian horses, Turkmen Horses and Laschek horses are similar, less than 30 yuan a year; dried fruits are only 40 to 10 yuan a year. We can’t force the people on the east coast to eat raisins for every meal in order to balance trade. Blankets Even less, it will not exceed 20 yuan a year; other miscellaneous things add up, and I don’t know if there is [-] yuan.

All in all, the total amount of goods imported from the Ottomans on the east bank is about 140 million every year. If the most bulky commodity, slaves, cannot be used to balance the difference, it is conceivable that in order to pay the national military salaries and official salaries The worried Koprulu Daweizi will definitely reduce the import share of goods from the east coast to balance the outflow of Ottoman precious metals.After all, the country’s finances are relatively difficult. In recent years, the fineness of ducat silver coins has been repeatedly reduced, so that the value of ducats minted in Venice (known as golden geng) is getting stronger and stronger in the Ottoman currency, and the east coast silver dollar is also in a large range. The circulation has begun in the interior, which already explains the problem.

Difficult!Let's get through these two years first.Zheng Yong, who had known about this result for a long time, felt a little helpless. A few years ago, the mainland demanded to reduce the slave import quota. Their European trading station tried their best to fight for a buffer period of two or three years, trying to help the Ottoman Empire find a way.As a result, Ottoman placed more and more orders for various commodities to the east bank, but his own export structure could not be adjusted, which finally led to today's result.

It has already helped the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate to contact the sales of agricultural products and timber (produced in the Balkans, where there were dense forests and a lot of trees at that time), ****, Tuscany, Parma and other places There are also many merchants who have tried to buy goods from them (in fact, there was such a business in the first place, and the east coast just took advantage of the sharp drop in grain production in Poland to expand the trading volume), although it is temporarily impossible to densely cover the land brought by the slave trade. The gap, but it can more or less make their life less difficult.

However, Zheng Yong is also keenly aware that this is not a long-term solution after all. It is estimated that the trade between the East Bank and the Ottomans and even the Crimean Khanate will not be able to get rid of the slavery with an annual trade volume of around 150 million yuan for a long time. Business.

(End of this chapter)