The two brothers started working together with the family patriarch and the old shopkeeper. They are very familiar with the grain business in Qing Dynasty.
After thousands of years of agricultural development in the Central Plains, the potential of the land has long been exhausted. The desertification of the Guanzhong Plain has become more and more serious. The drought trend in Shanxi has also become more severe. The population of Zhili has grown and the output of farmland is no longer enough for the locals. The situation in Henan and Shandong, the major Central Plains provinces, is not optimistic either.
Sichuan's Land of Abundance was blessed by the ancestral water conservancy system, and the people's lives were relatively decent. However, due to the difficult road to Shu, it was difficult for the grain from the Sichuan Plain to be integrated into the Central Plains grain trade system, and it could only be digested locally.
Now the food lifeblood of the Qing Dynasty lies in the Lianghu region and the Jiangnan region, and only these two areas can still have some grain production surplus.
However, these excess grains were so precious that the Manchus would not feed them to the Han people. Through the canal system, a large amount of grains were transported to the Gyeonggi region. The huge banner group relied on these grains and local taxes like parasites. Sustain.
The two major grain trusts, Sihai Trading Company and Mijia Grain Company, had long followed Xiao Letian's orders and conducted a survey of the grain industry throughout the Qing Dynasty, and the results were shocking.
Once a natural disaster or war occurs in China, it will definitely cause a very serious famine, which will sweep across the country as soon as it occurs.
In the face of the revolution, the Sichuan Tianfu Kingdom quickly closed the Shu Road and locked the grain in the basin. In fact, it didn't matter if it was not locked. With the transportation system of the Qing Dynasty at that time, the grain could not be transported out even if it wanted to be transported.
Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places are relatively safe areas in the famine. The vast and sparsely populated areas outside Guan are still in the undeveloped stage and need not be considered for the time being. The rest are some narrow areas that can be covered by sea and river transportation, and some high-priced grains can be obtained through imports.
There are only a few safe places in the Qing Dynasty. All the remaining provinces and regions will suffer from super famine, and the number of people who will starve to death will definitely be counted in the hundreds of millions.
The results of the investigation horrified everyone. After Xiao Letian closed the file, he even walked up to the investigators and bowed deeply to these humble businessmen.
"Thank you for your hard work, thank you for uncovering the cruel truth... The Chinese people's food ration problem is no longer something that the Qing Dynasty can solve, let alone those corrupt government-business colluders in the Manchu Qing Dynasty who can save lives!"
"Besides you, hundreds of millions of people in China will have no hope! Only you, only you, the emerging Confucian businessmen of the Chinese ethnic group, only you, the Chinese businessmen who still have justice and morality in your hearts, can save them..."
"On behalf of hundreds of millions of people, I ask you to use all your strength to develop Nanyang and seize every moment to accumulate life-saving rations. If that day comes... I just ask that the tragedy of exchanging children and eating them will not happen! Even if you are trying to accumulate merit for your children and grandchildren, please work hard!"
Confucian businessmen or Chinese businessmen? These two names were so heavy that all the executives of the two grain trading trusts present knelt down. They had been working hard to develop the market in Nanyang, and now that the prime minister had entrusted them, how could they not dare not work hard.
Recalling the situation at that time, Tian Lin and Niu Jincai's eyes turned red. After taking out their handkerchiefs to wipe their tears, their eyes returned to the vast hectares of farmland in front of them.
On the horizon, black smoke is rising. It is the pioneer team burning wasteland. The Chinese have an unusual love for transforming the land. They have collected a lot of fire oil from Brunei, which is what Westerners The familiar petroleum is made into a variety of combustion-supporting tools.
In the primitive rainforest, these fierce fire oils that cannot be extinguished by heavy rain have become a weapon to open up human territory.
The monkeys in South Asia will never understand why these Chinese people are so diligent. They only sleep for three and a half hours a day, and the rest of the time is spent working. Obviously, the rice production in the farmland is enough for them to feed them for a hundred years. , but they are still cultivating new land.
The flames burned out patches of land, and then these Chinese workers immediately built further water diversion ditches, leveled the land and built villages with strong defenses. Often in a few months they could create hundreds of hectares of rice fields out of thin air.
In Nanyang, rice doesn't require people's diligent cooking at all. People don't even bother to weed after transplanting, because there are three crops a year, and the yield is really high.
During the harvest season, Sihai merchants and Mijia grain merchants would go out in full force, exchanging roll after roll of Ryukyu banknotes for cart after cart of rice. Then they would gather at merchant ships on the sea and head for the far north.
At first, Tian Lin, Niu Jincai and others were very skeptical. They didn't know whether the land of Nanyang could support the people of the Qing Dynasty. But after they saw the harvest with their own eyes, everyone was relieved.
Tens of millions of years of siltation in tropical rainforests have made the soil full of humus fertility, and common volcanic eruptions in Southeast Asia have provided fertile volcanic ash to the soil. The rice here grows like crazy when planted.
More importantly, there will never be a drought here. There are rivers and streams everywhere. The worry about farmland irrigation is definitely not that there is not enough water, but that there is too much water.
What happened in Borneo is just a microcosm of the many Chinese settlements throughout South Asia. Under the protection of Xiao Letian, the tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia are shrinking at a rate that far exceeds real history.
Maybe some people in future generations will scold Xiao Letian as an ecological destroyer, but now he doesn't care so much. As long as he can feed China's hundreds of millions of mouths, he will not hesitate to burn down all the forests in Southeast Asia.
Another benefit brought by the reclamation plan is the increase in the number of immigrants. Because there is enough food to eat, many extremely poor refugees in the country are guided here. Through the company's centralized resettlement, many large Chinese towns with a population of more than 10,000 have appeared in Nanyang.
Moreover, the armed forces of the Chinese themselves are gradually taking shape. For example, the more than fifty burly men around Tian Lin and Niu Jincai are the armed forces formed by the Chinese themselves.
The latest Mauser rifles, Arabian war horses that have never been seen in Southeast Asia, and a few melon grenades imported from Ryukyu around their waists. These Chinese guards, armed to the teeth, have smashed the harassment of the indigenous monkeys more than once, and snatched them away by the way. gave them a lot of land.
Niu Jincai looked at this fertile land and said with great emotion, "This is really a rich and oily treasure land. From now on, this is the territory of our Chinese people. Whoever dares to rob it will fight with his life!"
Tian Lin also gritted her teeth and said, "Yes, I will talk to the village chiefs tomorrow. In the future, the self-defense tax will be increased by 30%. Our guards will have to expand our army! They will not object, as long as they agree to increase it by 30%." , our company considers itself to be 35% higher!"
"I heard that Tanggu will soon be able to produce small warships of five to six hundred tons. Let's buy a few more by then... If we can't defeat the foreign devils, how can we defeat those indigenous monkeys? We have to live and die in Borneo. Chinese?”
"Yes, yes... increase taxes! Everyone has money in their hands now, so they won't complain!"
Just as the two of them were looking forward to the future excitedly, suddenly the captain of the guard outside the carriage shouted, "Look, shopkeepers... look at the sea! There is the shadow of a fleet. How can I rely on so many sails? They are all warships... "
