New Shun 1730

When you are poor, you must change. Change leads to success. Success leads to longevity.

Liu Yu, who had simply dealt with the affairs of Macau, said the same words as in Fazaklai's diary to the wealthy merchants he invited to visit Nanyang, next to the new base near Longya Gate in the Strait of Malacca.

In the distance, a large number of Dutch prisoners of war were working there to build a new castle fortress.

Dashun was a benevolent country, and they were not captured to serve hard labor. Instead, they had to earn their own tickets to go back.

In these days, it was not a small amount of money to send people back to the Netherlands from Malacca by sailing ships.

They were not employees of the Dutch government, and the Dutch government certainly would not pay for this.

They were employees of the East India Company. The problem was that although the East India Company had not been dissolved legally, it had gone bankrupt. How could it have the money to send them back?

In this case, they had to work here to earn money. The Dutch called it debt slavery, and Dashun called it working to earn tickets, which was not much different.

Dashun did not choose the old Malacca as the center of the Nanyang Protectorate, but chose a place not far away, which was called Longyamen and Lion City at that time.

There were profound realistic factors for choosing this place.

In the final analysis, it was still a word of "change".

With the increasing tonnage of Dashun's merchant ships, from the original 200-300-ton ships to the current large merchant ships of thousands of tons such as the Free Trade, Malacca, which originally rose in the era of small boats, at the mouth of the Malacca River, has been somewhat out of date.

There is a natural deep-water port near Longyamen, and the Malacca River is not like the Yangtze River and the Pearl River that can connect the upper reaches and integrate the trade zone, so the advantages of Malacca no longer exist.

Moreover, there are broken islands to the south of the channel, which is very suitable for building a fortress area to guard the strait.

At this time, Dashun was definitely not as good as the sun that never sets in the Celestial Empire, which could take out 110 million ounces, about 60 million taels of gold, to build this place into the so-called "Gibraltar of the East". But if the emperor gave 200,000 or 300,000 taels of silver, it was still possible to build a port first.

This place will be used as the base of the forward fleet, and the old Malacca city will be used as an ordinary military town, and no fleet will be stationed.

Because when Dashun conquered Malacca, it was discovered that the broken place was not suitable for a fortress area at all. The river mouth separated the military area and the urban area, which was too easy to attack.

The Dutch prisoners of war were still building the port fortress here, and the Dashun cruisers had already started routine patrols and anti-smuggling in the strait.

The merchants invited by him saw the cruising warships and the dangerous strait terrain, and they felt more at ease about investing in Nanyang.

Since the court spent money on the project here, it means that the court will not give up easily. They don’t know anything else, but they often hear Liu Yu talk about how much money it costs for the coastal defense fortress and the military port fortress group. This is not the kind of fortress that can be easily abandoned.

They also knew that Liu Yu invited them to Nanyang this time, and even though such a big thing happened in Macau, Liu Yu did not stay in Macau for a long time and still came to Nanyang, just to allow them to invest in Nanyang.

In the past few days, they also saw the fleet, the army, the reorganized Guiyi Army stationed here, and the large-caliber fortress cannons that the court kept sending here. These are all things that make them "invest if it is beneficial."

But whether it is beneficial or not is the key.

"When you are poor, you must change. Change will lead to success."

"I also know that this poverty is not the same as that poverty. If you are talking about that kind of poverty, you are definitely not poor. But if you are talking about another kind of poverty, there is another story."

"In fact, I don't need to tell you the attitude of the court on policy. You know it in your heart. Suppressing mergers is a long-term national policy."

"Now Songjiang Prefecture is also going to try out the real one-whip law, which will convert silver into eleven taxes per mu of average yield. You should also know what it is for."

"In short, the court is convinced that as the head tax is evenly distributed among the mu, if the previous taxation method is followed, the land price will be too low, the rent will be too high, and mergers will inevitably intensify."

"You all have money, especially money. The court is afraid that I am afraid that you will spend all your money on buying land, and then the poor will have no place to stand, and you will be connected by roads and paths. "

"But then again, you make money from trade, but the trade volume is always limited. The remaining money is used to buy delicacies from the mountains and the sea, but how much can you eat? There are also etiquettes for building houses, and you cannot exceed the rules, so how much can you spend?"

"Money must go somewhere. If you still have the old idea of ​​buying land and hoarding land after making money, then you don't know how to change."

"When doing things in the Celestial Empire, be careful not to go against the will of heaven."

"What is heaven?"

Those who were informed by Liu Yu in advance and the court was going to let them contract the grain transport actually had a bottom line in their hearts.

Nanyang is not all dense forests as they imagined. On the contrary, there are still some flat terrains in northern Java, Malacca and other places. Moreover, many of them are sparse grasslands and grassland swamps, not all of them are dense rainforests as they imagined.

The land around here is very good. Although not as fertile as Java, it is also very flat and has some muddy water.

Take the minimum contract of 10,000 mu for example. How big is 10,000 mu of land?

A square of 5 miles long and 5 miles wide is 10,000 mu. It is more than enough to run around 10,000 mu of land in one hour.

They will not consider other developments for the time being, but the grain contracted by the court will definitely make money.

10,000 mu, three or four crops a year, plus if it is a volcanic ash land like Java, 10,000 mu of land can produce at least 100,000 shi of rice a year, which is equivalent to 120,000 taels of silver.

After investing in the land, it will be enough to employ three to five hundred people. Especially after the Dashun Academy of Sciences promised to produce simple steam threshing machines and other equipment, it was enough.

Of course, this thing is not that kind of harvester. It just saves the process of hammering the rice ears with a flail. It cannot be moved and can only be used intensively. It is exactly suitable for this plantation model.

The merchants also knew that the imperial court could agree to Liu Yu's rice purchase system just to facilitate management.

The difficulty of collecting six million stone and rice from six million people is completely different from that of collecting several million stone and rice from hundreds of big businessmen. Moreover, when there was a canal, 4 million was often transported, but in reality more than 40 million was collected in a mess.

Now that the merchants have seen the situation in Nanyang with their own eyes, they know that it is a sure-profit business.

As for development and investment in other directions, they are still considering it.

Liu Yu added: "Actually, there are various modes of hiring workers. Of course, the Celestial Empire does not allow slaves, but you can engage in contract labor."

"It is true that the buying of slaves by the barbarians is one of the three things in Macau. But the key is not 'slaves', but 'buying by the barbarians'. Do you understand?"

These people nodded quickly and said, "The Duke said this, and we feel at ease. To put it into perspective, for example, I hire someone to only eat and drink, and work for seven or eight years, and I promise to give him some farm tools and a few pieces of land." ...I'm afraid that if someone really thinks about it, they will say that this is a slave."

Liu Yu said with a smile: "Don't worry about that. Only those who are sold for a lifetime at once are called slaves. Those who are sold by days, months and years, how can they be called slaves? They are obviously hired workers. I don't want to do it. Now, you can leave. If you leave, you will starve to death and have to come back. You are not forcing me to come back. How can you call me a slave? "

A kind of wealthy businessman says it is true. I thought that since the imperial court meant this, it would be easy to say.

After giving reassurance to these businessmen, Liu Yu said again: "To do business, especially big business, you must know the general trend of the world. Just like when you are speculating on Liaodong soybean futures in Songjiang Prefecture, you must send someone to Liaodong is watching. Is it a harvest? A crop failure? Waterlogging? "

"The same goes for going to Nanyang. Just remember that this is a critical time for the imperial court to change if it is poor, to make things easier if it changes, and to make things more general for a long time."

“It’s no longer enough to stay the same.”

“Isn’t it because the people have been suffering for a long time when regulating the Huaihe River, controlling floods, and reforming the tax system?”

"The theory of equalizing fields and well fields has been talked about for thousands of years. It has become even more popular in recent years. But if it could be done, the imperial court would have done it long ago, so why wait until now?"

"Since we cannot equalize farmland and minefields, if there are more and more people but no increase in land, what do you think the court's attitude will be towards the immigration to Nanyang?"

"The imperial court began to try to incorporate the poll tax into the mu tax more than ten years ago, and it is exactly what it is doing today. Without the trouble of the poll tax, the local officials would also like you to transport all the local landless people away."

"The court hopes and local officials support it, so what else do you have to worry about?"

He didn't make an empty promise, but told some facts in a roundabout way. In fact, it was completely illogical. He insisted on pretending that there was an internal logic in it.

Let these businessmen follow his guidance and deduce that the imperial court will definitely have a looser control on Nanyang issues.

Moreover, Liu Yu also made it very clear that the imperial court did not have so much money for official immigration, and the limited fiscal revenue was used to stabilize the basic market. Is Nanyang the basic market? It's definitely not the basic plan. The court can't spend too much money on this.

This seems to be a logical truth, and these businessmen nodded frequently. The more they thought about it, the more they felt that this was indeed the case.

In fact, what Liu Yu grasped was that there was also a situation of excessive capital in Songjiang Prefecture in Dashun, and they urgently needed a place to invest their capital.

Of course, this depends on the court's ability in land policy and whether it can solve the strange situation of "low land prices." However, Dashun has always been resistant to mergers and acquisitions, which makes Songjiang Prefecture's overly concentrated capital really have no good place to go.

Dashun has not experienced the 20-year economic crisis, and there is no such thing as the Tulip Bubble, the South China Sea Bubble, or the Mississippi Bubble - but even if there is, it is of no use. Investors do not have a long memory at all. Tulip is only a few years away from the South China Sea. Don’t they have a long memory? So now they are actually in urgent need of a direction for capital investment, and it is a large amount that can accommodate tens of millions.

Otherwise, it would be difficult to name any weird speculative thunderstorms, and it would be just like what happened in Britain and France in 2020, scaring the country away from opening up joint-stock companies for decades, and then it would be in vain.

The speed at which industry and commerce is enriching capital is too fast. This speed cannot be tolerated by the dynasty, which is dominated by small-scale peasant economy. If mergers are not suppressed at all, the speed of capital accumulation of over-developed industry and commerce will directly shorten the period of the cycle by half.

It was almost to the point where Liu Yu felt a little shocked.

Trade with Japan, trade with Europe, Nanyang trade, northern iron ore equity development, Ezo development, glass manufacturing, oil processing industry derived from hunting whales and seals in the Whale Sea... tens of millions of taels of European and Japanese silver are produced every year Inflow, millions of silver deposits in the two countries were accumulated, excluding the emperor's and his, most of them went into the pockets of these people.

Historically, the group of people in Guangzhou's Thirteenth Bank often managed to acquire a maximum total assets of nearly 30 million taels of silver within 20 to 30 years.

Compared to the Thirteen Hongs, Dashun has many more trade and investment channels, including Japan, and some new industries such as glass, alkali, and iron smelting. The speed of capital enrichment is even more amazing.

Originally, there was only European silver in history, and the money was passively earned by the middlemen. Now Japan is forced to open and moderately invest in emerging industries, which can be said to be directly doubled.

Dashun does not have the Thirteen Hongs, but the problem is that the so-called full free competition will definitely move towards monopoly in the end, and these individuals will make a lot of money in the end.

Moreover, after the introduction of the joint-stock system, there is less internal circulation, and it directly rises to become a joint business with strong capital. How can individual merchants beat it?

These people who "seized the trend of the times" actually controlled foreign exports before Dashun established the Western Trade Company.

The establishment of the Western Trade Company only allowed them to change from sitting at home counting money to going out to sell goods and getting the profits from sea transportation.

Now it is time to guide these capitals to where they should go. Relying on the so-called invisible hand, it is easy for Dashun to merge domestic land.

Liu Yu now truly understands why the emperors have to suppress the powerful, relocate Maoling, and emphasize agriculture and suppress commerce.

The declaration says that the productivity created by the bourgeoisie in its less than 100 years of class rule is more and greater than the total productivity created by all previous generations.

In the case of Dashun, the gold and silver accumulated by industry and commerce in less than 20 years is enough for landlords who rely on farming and selling grain to save money and then buy land to work for 100 years.

Since the Qin Dynasty, land can be bought and sold. After the equal-field system is completely disintegrated, I am afraid that the emperor will face such a headache: under the premise that land can be bought and sold, how to prevent big businessmen from hoarding all the land in their own hands?

But the free buying and selling of land is a big problem, and Dashun dare not move at all.

Besides, there is no way to move.

Various schools of Confucianism have given many solutions, from well-field to equal-field to public land to redemption. However, a closer look shows that they are all bullshit, and none of them is feasible.

This is probably why the idea of ​​"if you can make wells, then make them wells, if you can't make them wells, then make them equal" has been popular for a long time. Although the productivity level is not high enough, they have already taken half a step in the land system thousands of years ago.

Since it is impossible to solve the problem of improving productivity and letting capital run to industry, it is better to retreat and return to the well-field era as the ultimate ideal.

Besides, even if the industry starts, as long as the land can still be bought and sold, won't there still be a lot of money running to the land that can maintain its value the most?

Liu Yu invited these businessmen to Nanyang this time to discuss the issue of Nanyang development. He was really forced to do nothing.

If he doesn't solve this problem, the emperor will help him solve it - since it is so fat, since he is worried about running to land annexation, I will take out the knife and cut some meat, won't it be solved?