New Shun 1730

Time goes back two months.

Early October.

The Bahamas in the Caribbean.

Five Dashun merchant ships loaded with tea, cotton cloth and other commodities, and a regular navy cruiser, found a harbor with fresh water in the intricate shoals of the Bahamas.

The former black and white mixed-race pirate who was piloting expressed his sigh in French. Thirty years have passed, and the waterway in his memory still exists.

The pilot pirate was hired by Dashun in Madagascar. This pirate was very interesting. He just asked Dashun to leave the hiring fee to his descendants, and he asked Dashun to take him to the Bahamas, where he would die.

Thirty years ago, the legendary pirate Olivier Leusser was captured in Madagascar and eventually executed in the Indian Ocean.

Before the execution, he threw his code necklace into the sea and said the famous saying: "Want my treasure? Go find it, the secret is hidden in the code of the necklace."

Such words are tempting, after all, he grabbed dozens of large ships going to Mecca for pilgrimage and Portuguese treasure ships. The pure gold cross of Goa Cathedral alone weighs more than 400 kilograms and requires three or four people to lift it.

But, people are just insignificant dust in the tide of history.

Against the background of the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht-Madrid and the reshuffle of Atlantic trade, the former first pirate country became the country that could not tolerate the existence of pirates overnight, and a vigorous global pirate roundup kicked off.

Leusser's words did not open the great pirate era, but were regarded as a symbol of the end of the pirate era.

The old pirate who now guides Dashun was also one of the former pirates who witnessed Leusser's execution. The former pirate partners went their separate ways. Some went to Madagascar to hide for a lifetime, some were recruited by Spain to become anti-smuggling ships, some took their treasures and transformed themselves into Puritan merchants in North America, and some drowned in rum every day and missed the days before they were recruited.

The fleet on the Dashun side did not care about the past of this old pirate. In fact, Dashun knew very well what some strange people in Madagascar did before.

As for the romantic legends of those pirates, these ships were not interested either. They just used the memories of these old pirates to solve some problems that sextants and star charts could not solve.

When the Pirate Republic was destroyed with the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, the Bahamas became a paradise for smugglers.

No one can completely control this place, whether it is the British, the French, or the nearby Spanish.

They can wipe out the Pirate Republic because there must be a town, a water fort, and a hilltop.

But they can't wipe out the smuggling or selling of stolen goods here day and night.

The merchant ships and cruisers of Dashun arrived here with the help of several Dutch merchants to meet with some famous merchants in Boston.

The Dutch played a more "intermediary" role in the North American trade.

Although, from a reasonable point of view, it seems that it is a meeting between Dashun and North American smugglers, and kicking out the middleman seems to be quite unruly in terms of the rules of the road.

But as long as the money is enough, these Dutch working for the intermediary company do not mind taking a little more money, directly helping the buyer and the seller to thread the needle, and fly away after getting enough money.

The meeting place agreed by both parties is here, and the old pirate's task is not only to lead Dashun to this harbor, but also to rob British merchant ships with Dashun's ships after the transaction.

After waiting for a few days in this secret harbor, at the agreed meeting time, several North American merchant ships also arrived here.

In the future, the most famous person on the North American smuggling ship that came here this time was John Hancock.

He was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence in North America and presided over the meeting.

In addition, he and Samuel Adams co-directed the famous Boston Massacre.

However, at this time, he was just a young man, and the real boss of the family was his uncle, Thomas Hancock, who had no offspring.

John Hancock came here with his uncle this time mainly to gain experience.

And his uncle, after learning the news of Dashun's participation in the war, was sure that the East India Company was going to end. As long as he seized the opportunity, the tea business of the entire thirteen states might be taken over by their family in the future.

As the richest man in Boston, Thomas Hancock became the first target for Dutch brokers to find with his strong political and business connections.

If you have to say how their family started, it is actually very easy to compare. It is a bit similar to the Shaanxi-Jin-Zhong-French merchants or Shanxi merchants in the Ming Dynasty.

After obtaining the right to operate the logistics supply of the army, they quickly became prosperous. It was mainly by providing logistics for the army that they got the first pot of gold.

In recent years, he has made a fortune by relying on wars.

With the outbreak of war between Britain and France, the French living in Acadia became a major concern for Britain. In the War of the Spanish Succession, Britain seized Acadia.

But the local French still believed in Catholicism and refused to sign the letter of allegiance.

With the outbreak of war, Britain chose to expel all the French in Acadia.

It was called the "Great Expulsion" in history.

It is also the originator of the concept of "concentration camp". During the whole process, about 12,000 Acadians died in concentration camps or on the way of forced migration.

A large number of Acadians' children were forced to leave their parents and were sent to different families for foster care or to church schools.

Some French people drowned or starved to death on the ship because they were forbidden to disembark.

At the beginning of the war, after all, Britain and France had fought for so many years. No one expected that Prussia would be so strong and France would be so weak this time, so because of the fear of trouble afterwards, many companies that contracted to migrate these Acadians were still cautious.

However, Thomas Hancock and his partner, the slave trader Apthorp, after a calm analysis, believed that this war would not end so easily.

Especially after analyzing Pitt's tough attitude in the previous Jenkins Ear War, it was confirmed that this time the war between Britain and France would not be a small fight.

These two people deserve to be the richest people in Boston. This political sense and awareness of doing big business are really insightful.

When other ship owners could only carry a hundred people per ship, they could carry three or four hundred people per ship. The two of them worked together to take a big order and made a lot of money.

It is unlikely to make a lot of money in this era if you have a conscience.

Only if you have courage and dare to treat people as animals can you make a lot of money in this era.

Historians say that [Hancock used slave ships to transport Acadians to any place where the British authorities might choose to send them in the form of slave ships for a large number of expected expellees...]

This is exactly the way the bold will die of overeating and the timid will die of starvation.

The other ship owners could carry a hundred people per ship and make little money at all.

And the two of them, with 18 ships, became the two most profitable people in the Acadian expulsion in the form of slave transportation.

Since the two of them could take such business and were engaged in a business similar to the Shanxi merchants, helping the army with logistics, it is natural that the two of them had a close relationship with the British government.

Close, but they did not miss any business that should be done.

In addition to helping the army with logistics, Old Hancock's company was openly engaged in rum, whale oil and fish, building ships, and importing books and luxury goods.

But in fact, the company's real major income was smuggling French and Spanish molasses, Dutch or Swedish tea, paper, canvas, etc. This was the case in history.

Of course, at this time, their smuggled goods inevitably included cotton cloth, metal products, brass, porcelain, etc. from the origin of tea and paper.

The "Molasses Act" of 1933 had little effect on Old Hancock's company.

He only needed to pay 6,000 taels of silver to the customs every year, and the "Molasses Act" of 1933 had little effect on him. It was only 6,000 taels of silver a year. Before, those merchants who went to Nagasaki, Japan to buy copper, paid an annual supply of three to five thousand taels to Nagasaki.

The "Molasses Act" of 1963 eventually led the Hancock family to turn to armed anti-British, and the reason was not the sugar law itself. Because the Sugar Act itself reduced the tax rate of the Sugar Act in 1933 by half.

The main reason is that the British government finally got the hang of it in 1963: it turns out that if you want to rule millions of square kilometers, local officials have to eat royal food, not local taxes...

This can't be blamed on the British side for being slow to react, mainly because they really didn't understand it before.

The purpose of the final series of bills is to collect taxes into the treasury and then use the treasury to pay salaries to local officials in North America, instead of having salaries paid by the original colonial state parliament.

The result is that the Hancock family's business, which originally required an annual supply of 6,000 taels of silver, now has to pay a tax of 120,000 taels of silver. If you don't rebel, what are you waiting for?

Whether taxation is appropriate is a legal issue, a moral issue, and an ideological issue.

The original payment of 6,000 taels, and now 120,000 taels, is a material issue, not involving morality and law, but purely considering interests. If you can rebel, you must rebel.

Of course, the Hancock family did not have such a big grudge at this time, and now was the golden age of smuggling.

The New England Customs Commissioner was a good man. He reviewed 36 reported smuggling cases in two years and finally determined that two were. And these two cases also tacitly allowed merchants to quietly drive away the ship at night.

Some people say that he accepted bribes.

Some people say that this is a person with a true spirit of freedom, who believes that smuggling is a crime without victims.

In addition to the fact that the Customs Commissioner was a good man, Britain also needed to benefit these colonial merchants before, because it had to confront Spain and France, and it was also hinted that they should not be dealt with even if they were caught, and should not cause conflicts.

In addition, with the participation of Dashun in the war, the British fleet went to defend the strait, and there were not many warships left in North America and the Caribbean, and they were even more unable to supervise.

In this good era, after getting the Dutch to match him, old Hancock immediately decided to take a gamble.

He knew the story of the destruction of the Dutch East India Company before.

So, he was sure that the British East India Company, which sold tea, was dead this time.

Dashun is a tea producer, even the only producer at this time. If he can make a successful contact at this time, his business will be able to expand several times or even dozens of times.