The history of Fujian Province is still very strange. Before the Tang Dynasty, this place was a barbaric land. In ancient times, it was called Baiyue, a huge area.
Mountainous, coastal, and impassable roads... Agriculture cannot develop here at all!
However, due to the gradual rise of maritime trade in the Tang Dynasty, a series of trading cities sprang up along the coast of Fujian! And the name Fujian started from the Tang Dynasty.
Since the tall and continuous Wuyi Mountains blocked the expansion of the Central Plains here, the wars in the past dynasties did not affect it much. During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, Fujian was still very quiet and peaceful.
In the Song Dynasty, the development of navigation technology once again promoted Fujian's business atmosphere. At that time, Quanzhou was respectfully called the City of Light by Arab merchants. This honorific title continued until the Yuan Dynasty.
The wars that Fujian has experienced since the Tang Dynasty were only for a few years when the Southern Song Dynasty collapsed. The rest of the time was very peaceful, and the peaceful environment stimulated the development of business.
The scale of ocean trade in Fujian during the Yuan Dynasty was even more unprecedented, and the scene of thousands of sails gathering was constant all year round!
But the good times did not last long. When China entered the Ming Dynasty, the closed-door policy completely destroyed China's ocean trade. Since then, no Chinese caravan has taken the initiative to go abroad for trade.
China's trading rights over the ocean have fallen into the hands of Western merchants and even pirates!
Without the support of ocean trade, Fujian's economy has suffered devastating damage, and even its population has dropped sharply. This is really not a good place to develop agriculture. Without the blessing of ocean trade, the Great Depression is inevitable.
It started to go downhill from the Ming Dynasty, and it was even worse in the Qing Dynasty!
In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the forces of the Southern Ming Dynasty fought against the Qing Dynasty. Later, Zheng Chenggong's forces joined in. After the San Francisco Rebellion, there was also the Battle of Platform Bay. During the early Qing Dynasty, Fujian became a major battlefield.
The Manchus really did not have the ability to fight at sea. Facing Taiwan's Zheng family's navy, they could only be passively beaten. In the end, they had to rely on the power of Han general Shi Lang.
In order to defend against the Zheng family's fleet, the Manchu Qing Dynasty issued a very strict sea ban. Not only were no sails allowed to sail into the sea, but all the people on the coastline were moved away.
This is the controversial sea ban and sea relocation order in history!
These two bans were so cruel that they directly destroyed all the foundations of Fujian's ocean trade. Especially the sea relocation order drove away people from dozens of kilometers of coastline. They would rather let those coastlines be deserted than allow people to inhabit them.
This is such a desperate move!
During the previous maritime ban, people could still engage in some smuggling business for profit. Although it was illegal, at least the vitality of commercial trade was preserved!
There are merchants, mature sailors and captains, and a group of skilled shipbuilders!
These foundations of ocean-going trade may lie dormant for a while, but they will surely rise easily when opportunities arise in the future!
However, this move to the sea destroyed the population structure and destroyed the foundation of ocean trade. It can be said that all the foundations of Fujian's foreign trade were completely destroyed.
Poverty, only poverty was left. The Qing Dynasty regained Taiwan and the result was complete abject poverty in Fujian Province. The foundation of commerce and trade accumulated in the previous thousand years no longer existed.
It was not until after the First Opium War that Xiamen and Fuzhou were forcibly opened and closed by the British, but by that time they had long lost the glory they had during the Song and Yuan Dynasties.
It has been decades since Fujian opened its ports, but economic development is still very slow, and the recovery of basic things does not happen overnight.
When the Westerners saw that this place was too poor, with no good goods to buy, not many industrial products to sell, and not much oil and water except for selling some opium, they were even less willing to invest.
Over the years, except for Zuo Zongtang’s strategic vision of choosing Mawei Shipyard in Fuzhou, there has been no other government support and investment at all.
The economic scale of Fuzhou city is not comparable to that of Shanghai and Hong Kong, it is even incomparable to some cities on the Yangtze River!
Shen Baozhen is well aware of the economic scale here. Although there are more than a dozen ticket companies of various types in Fuzhou City, their scale is very small. Together, they are not as big as a medium-sized ticket company in Jiangnan.
Not to mention compared with Chinese banks, this is also an important reason why it is difficult for him to raise funds in Fuzhou, because the local economy is really weak and the private sector has no money.
Are there any foreign banks? Of course there are, but they are all very small semicolons, and many large-scale businesses cannot be handled. These small bank semicolons can only provide some basic financial services to foreign merchant ships. The significance of these semicolons to test the water is far greater than making money.
And the most terrible thing is that there are no foreigners in the branches of foreign banks. Instead, they hire businessmen from the Qing Dynasty to handle business on their behalf.
As you can imagine, Shen Baozhen took a promissory note from the Bank of England to exchange for cash, but encountered obstacles again and again.
I originally planned to exchange one million silver dollars in cash, but I didn't expect that 90% of these ticket numbers and bank storekeepers didn't know each other.
We can't blame them for being ignorant. The scale of the economy here is really beyond the reach of the Bank of England, which is the note-issuing bank of the British Empire!
The scale of a serious central bank is unimaginable, and small businessmen can't even get in!
The British military aid given to Emperor Tongzhi never expected him to come to such a small place to exchange it. The huge sum of money in Zai Chun's suitcase could be exchanged in all Asia except Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. It is difficult to exchange money anywhere else.
"Long live my Lord! For these 400,000 silver dollars, some merchants heard that His Majesty was in Fujian and reported it. They all thought that they were taking huge risks by accepting these promissory notes!"
“More merchants didn’t dare to accept the offer at all. They were so anxious that they knelt down, kowtowed to their heads, cried and begged me to let them live...”
"What's this? They thought I was trying to steal money!"
With a bang, Zai Chun punched the table. "Damn it! Damn it!"
Upon hearing this, Da Sixi quickly answered, "That's right, damn it... Lord Shen! Is this how you do your errands? Why don't you arrest such a bastard who has no king or father and behead him?"
"Kneel down! You bastard!" Zai Chun yelled and Da Sixi was so frightened that he immediately knelt down.
"Long live Lord, calm down...Long live Lord, calm down...I said the wrong thing again...I opened my mouth..." This big Sixi didn't know what happened recently. He couldn't see things anymore and he said the wrong thing several times in a row. His face was beaten into a pig's head.
"Am I a foolish king who kills innocent people indiscriminately? If the people don't know me, then they don't know me. This means we didn't do our job well before! Can we blame the people?"
"Who made the Qing Dynasty keep closed to the outside world? It's not their fault that the people are ignorant!"
"What I want now is a solution! If I don't listen to complaints, I want a solution! It's going to be dawn, and 30,000 tigers are waiting for me to fulfill my promise!"
"What are you doing with 400,000 yuan? Are you going to lose my face to Java?"
At this time, Sanbao suddenly spoke, "Your Majesty...I...I remember that there is a branch of the Chinese Central Bank in Fuzhou City...They should be knowledgeable!"
