Ding Guofeng doesn't like the British at all. In terms of dislike, they are second only to the Japanese.
Just like the "Co-Prosperity Sphere" in another time and space, the British scholar Edmund Burke at the end of the 18th century took the lead in constructing an academic trap based on Christian universalism and proposed the so-called "civilization mission theory."
According to this argument, the British colonial rule promoted the historical progress of Asia and Africa, brought Asia and Africa away from the barbaric era, and brought peace, humanity and a way of life consistent with civilized standards to Asia and Africa. The Chinese were labeled as dirty, lazy, dishonest, lacking in originality, a nation that had not invented any civilization, and lacked cultural achievements or grand religion.
This statement still makes many Chinese people talk about it and even express their gratitude. I really don’t know what it means!
A country that relied on piracy and plunder, relying on the achievements of the Great Navigation and the First Industrial Revolution, sold opium to China with one hand, launched two Opium Wars, and stole huge amounts of silver; and cultivated black tea in Ceylon with the other hand. Reducing dependence on Chinese tea has turned China, a country with a trade surplus for more than two thousand years, into a deficit country.
Mere robbery is not just robbery, but they also shamelessly use the achievements of religion and the industrial revolution to beautify themselves, create a world for themselves according to their own appearance, and call it "democratic and advanced"; they use political power and scholars to justify their aggression. Behavioral endorsement, and even systematically created the theory of "closing the country behind and being beaten", so that even the invaded party believed it a hundred years later.
If the country really closed itself off, how could massive amounts of silver continue to flow into China? How does the trade volume between Kyakhta and Guangzhou increase year by year? Why did the Portuguese, Dutch, and British have to go to Guangzhou to traffic opium?
As the understanding of this time and space continues to deepen, the 29-member committee in Beihai Town has now reached a consensus that Zhao Xin will leave the Manchus alone and not attack Zhao Xin. They will first deal with Tsarist Russia and then the Netherlands, and then deal with the British East India Company, and even forcefully take advantage of the Spanish. The strategy of seizing food was unanimously agreed upon.
The wolf cub must be cleaned up when it is underage, and it must be destroyed even if it cannot be killed. We cannot wait until the other party becomes stronger and come out to cause harm to others. On a larger scale, this is a war between civilizations, so the British must not be allowed to unify India.
Ding Guofeng didn't want to talk nonsense to Dundas anymore. What he couldn't get on the battlefield couldn't be obtained at the negotiation table. What's more, he wasn't good at talking, otherwise Zhao Xin wouldn't let him come.
Thinking of this, the corner of his mouth turned up, he hummed slightly, and then said: "If you don't agree, then we will mobilize another five thousand troops, and next time we will go directly to the Governor's Palace in Madras to talk."
When Dundas heard such naked words, his face instantly turned ugly. He was extremely confused by Ding Guofeng's unabashed hostility. You must know that neither the Guangzhou office nor the company had ever had a conflict with this group of guys who called themselves "Serris people." If anything, the company had sold several sail warships to the Qing Empire and sent a corps of officers to provide training.
But that’s business! Don’t you make money if you have money?
Neither of the two Dundas mentioned by Ding Guofeng can be accepted. If Mysore is not killed, the company's plan to annex the entire South Asian continent will not be realized, and thus it will not be able to plunder more wealth through taxes and industrial products.
Tell the company not to sell opium to the Chinese in Guangzhou and Southeast Asia? As God testifies, the company has always been just a middleman that collects taxes. Where to sell it and to whom it is sold is the business of those merchants, and the company has no control over it.
As for banning opium cultivation, it is even more impossible. The company's revenue from the opium trade last year was as high as 1.9 million rupees. This cannot be easily given up. Once opium cultivation was banned, not only would tens of thousands of people be unemployed, but even government subsidies would not be able to fully compensate for the losses of the landowners and tenant farmers who grew opium. More importantly, there would be no other means to profit from the Guangzhou trade.
To explain this problem, we must start from twenty years ago. From this we can also see clearly how the British East India Company established a large and sophisticated opium trading system in Bangladesh.
In 1772, when Hastings took over as Governor of Bengal, the East India Company's financial situation deteriorated seriously. At home, the company could only rely on debt to survive. In order to save the company, the British government chartered the company to ship the inventory of Chinese tea to North America for dumping.
Everyone on earth knows what happens next. New Englanders who were accustomed to drinking smuggled tea stopped drinking it. The East India Company's tea was more than twice as expensive. So they shouted the nonsense slogan "No taxation without representation" and poured the tea leaves into the sea.
The tea could not be sold, causing the East India Company's debt to triple in just a few years. In addition, due to famine, plague, and poverty plaguing Bengal, employees are all busy filling their pockets, and the governments of the three major districts are on the verge of bankruptcy.
When Hastings took office, he was asked to maintain peace in India and ensure the security of corporate taxes and property. In order to survive the financial crisis, the implementation of the opium monopoly system became inevitable.
In 1772, when the company purchased a batch of opium from the clerks in Patna, the clerks believed that the company's bid was too low and the purchase quantity was too large, and they conflicted with the company. This incident eventually became the trigger for changing the opium system.
In Hastings's view, ordinary commercial activities may flourish to their greatest extent without government intervention, but free trade is not suitable for non-necessities such as opium. The opium market at that time was extremely small, so if you wanted to make huge profits, you had to limit its output; and the most effective way to limit output was monopoly.
So by the end of 1773, the Bengal Senate agreed to his plan and decided to let middlemen take over the purchase of opium through a series of contract systems. This will standardize industrial order and increase corporate taxes.
To put it simply, this method relies on designated indigenous merchants as contractors to purchase opium from farmers, then transport the opium to Calcutta, and then sell it to bidders according to a pre-allocated quota. During this process, an export tax of 30 rupees was paid for each maund (a unit of weight in India, 1 maund is equivalent to 37.32 kilograms). For opium shipped to Calcutta by non-designated contractors, in addition to the 30 rupee export tax In addition, there is an additional 80 rupees per box (60 kg).
The above is the beginning and end of the opium system reform carried out by the British East India Company in 1773. In another time and space, many people mistakenly believed that the British made great efforts to develop the opium trade with China after occupying Bangladesh in 1757. In 1773, they established a policy of planting large quantities of opium and importing large quantities of opium to China, and gave the East India Company manufacturing and monopoly rights. privileges.
In fact, the East India Company increased production and monopolized the Chinese opium market, which happened later and had nothing to do with the restructuring in 1773.
Incidentally, the company asked the British government for help in 1773 when its financial situation was deteriorating. Help was obtained, but it also created the dual administration system of British India. The British government became one of the shareholders, and Hastings became the first Governor-General of British India.
In 1775, the East India Company obtained another famous opium producing area - Benares from the Oudh state in northwest Bengal. The opium produced here was later called "Raban Tu" in China, and it was very popular in the Chinese market after the 1830s. As a result, the British completed full control of the opium-producing areas of Bengal.
In 1785, the Canton Select Committee was unable to invest in Chinese goods due to lack of funds, so the East India Company began to make a fuss about the opium trade. The Senate decided to continue to implement the contract system, but it must be done through tendering. The purchased opium was publicly auctioned in Calcutta and paid in cash to the company taipan in Guangzhou before a specified date.
After Cornwallis took over, he continued to implement the contract system, refined many terms, and increased the protection of the company's interests. In particular, it lowered the purchase price of opium, thereby obtaining more profits from the opium auction. Historically, by 1800, the East India Company's revenue from opium was as high as 2.73 million rupees.
In this way, the British finally established a monopoly system on the opium trade in Bengal. Since the Mawa opium production area was in the Sindh region of northwest India, the company was temporarily unable to reach it, so it adopted a simple blockade policy on the export of Mawa opium to limit the supply in the external market.
The British monopoly on Bangladeshi opium prepared the conditions for large-scale production. In addition, the opium market in Southeast Asia has now matured. The increase in demand in the Chinese market due to changes in smoking methods ten years ago eventually led to the grand triangle trade of opium. Initial formation.
In today's Guangzhou market, the wholesale price of a pound of opium is four taels of silver, while the retail price is as high as more than seven taels of silver. What was the retail price in the year Liu Zheng went to Guangzhou? 1.9 taels of silver.
"General Ding, I want to take the conditions you proposed back to discuss with the Governor. As you know, the Lord has no right to make decisions on many matters. They must be approved by our government and the Bangladesh Senate."
Now that the stick has been given, the carrot must also be taken out. Yu Guofeng stood up, shook hands with Dundas, smiled and said: "Grow cotton."
"What?"
"I mean you shoveled up the poppies and planted cotton. We need a lot of cotton."
In fact, Beihai Town needs cotton not only for clothing and quilts, but also for making nitrocellulose. In addition to fighting, there are so many roads to be built all over the world, and mountains and rocks to be blasted. The amount of cotton required is simply overwhelming! Although Ding Guofeng had previously placed an order from Thanjavur to purchase 200,000 pounds of long-staple cotton per year, it was still far from enough.
Dundas said nonchalantly: "How much do you plan to buy?"
"How much did you export to Guangzhou last year?"
Dundas turned around and glanced at his assistant, who hurriedly opened the notebook he had brought with him, shuffled through it for a long time, and then whispered a few words softly. So Dundas said in a blink of an eye without blushing, "Two hundred thousand pieces."
What a lie!
According to data collected by the intelligence station stationed in Guangzhou in Beihai Town, the East India Company exported 30,780 bales of cotton to Guangzhou in 1793, while the export volume of British overseas port ships was almost 150,000 bales. , the total of the two is only 180,000 packages.
Ding Guofeng smiled slightly, did not refute, and nodded: "If you agree to our two conditions, then we will sign a ten-year supply contract based on 300,000 packages per year with an annual increase of 15%. . You bring the goods to Bacheng, and we will give you cash. But the price can no longer be 15 taels per pack. Bacheng is much closer than Guangzhou."
Dundas suddenly felt dizzy and couldn't help but reach out and grab his assistant's arm to avoid embarrassing himself. This can no longer be said to be pie-in-the-sky, it is simply like smashing big meat buns down! This matter was so big that he had to quickly return to Calcutta to meet the Governor.
It is said that from the late 18th century to the early 19th century, except for a few countries such as Britain, the United States and Russia, most of the Western countries that originally traded with China have faded out of the Guangzhou market. One of the main problems is that trade between China and the West is one-way, and China has a trade surplus with all Western countries.
Westerners are in urgent need of Chinese tea but cannot provide corresponding exchange items, while the Chinese want nothing but money.
For example, between 1721 and 1740, 94.9% of the British's trade volume in Guangzhou was gold and silver coins, and only 5.1% was offset by goods.
Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the largest source of silver flowing into China has been the Americas. The problem is that silver production in the Americas began to decline at the end of the 18th century. In addition, Spain's participation in the American War of Independence after 1779 caused the European silver dollar market to be closed; so in the six years from 1779 to 1785, not a single silver dollar was shipped from the UK. to China. Due to several attacks, the gap in European silver is getting wider and wider.
I have to pay money to buy tea from you.
Okay, I don’t have any money. Can we trade cotton spices for a new career?
oops! The quality of your cotton is much better than that of the British, and it’s also cheaper. I want it!
What? Do you want more money? I go! This business is out of business.
The reason why the French Revolution broke out was because Louis XVI ran out of money. Why did Louis XVI have no money? In addition to aiding the great cause of the New England Revolution, there was also the fact that there was no money to be made from China trade.
Throughout the late eighteenth century, except for Britain, Spain and the United States, everyone was short of cash, and every household had tea, cotton, spices and so on. To put it bluntly, as long as it is a country doing business normally, anyone will go crazy if they encounter a change like China.
The reason why Tsarist Russia was an exception was that they relied on fur, so they desperately expanded eastward, all the way to Alaska. The same goes for the United States. In addition to trading in furs, American ginseng, and a small amount of opium, they also have the convenience of having access to the Spanish American colonies. They can get silver from the Americas and send it to China.
Britain, on the other hand, first tried to rely on cotton from India in exchange for tea, and then relied on large-scale opium exports to rebuild its trade structure with China, which not only kept its trade with China intact, but also turned it into a surplus in one fell swoop.
The reason why Dundas was confused by Ding Guofeng's statement that the company exported opium to China was because the main commodity exported by the East India Company to China was actually cotton.
In the history of another time and space, the status transformation of opium and cotton began in 1820. The total value of opium exported to China that year was 6.486 million silver dollars, while the cotton was only 3.24 million silver dollars.
On the surface, it was because the British had a complete monopoly on opium in India and increased production and import. At the same time, the British demand for cotton also increased significantly. But the actual situation is that the cotton fabrics produced by the British are of poor quality and high price, and cannot be sold in Guangzhou; and the cotton imported by the Chinese is not just for their own clothing - the poor cannot afford to wear it anyway, and most of them will be woven. Cloth is re-exported.
After finishing talking, others will talk about the Manchu issue.
First of all, cotton production is insufficient. Although the planting scale has increased a lot compared with the Ming Dynasty, the shortage is still common, so cotton is imported.
However, a common problem in farming societies is that, except for the urban population, rural areas adopt a barter trade method for agricultural and sideline products and are self-sufficient. Even though the Manchu and Qing courts opened their doors to importing cotton, people in rural areas still couldn't afford it. A pound of cotton costs seven cents of silver, a suit of cotton clothes costs two pounds of cotton, and three pounds can weave a foot of cloth; so even if you have money, you will buy cotton to weave cloth, and then sell it to support your family.
Furthermore, all goods imported from Guangzhou must be handled by merchants from the Thirteenth Line of Business. It is said that there are thirteen businesses, but in fact there are only seven or eight businesses in total. It is a fantasy for merchants to rely on this to get a huge amount of cotton. Looking at the quantity of cotton imported at Guangzhou Port from 1785 to 1833, it never exceeded 500,000 bales. And due to transportation costs, cotton arriving in Guangzhou rarely crosses the Yangtze River and enters the northern provinces.
Five days later, Dundas arrived in Calcutta. After listening to his report, Cornwallis was livid with anger at first, but then he couldn't help but be stunned, thinking that this matter might actually be done. The East India Company has been trying to develop trade with Beihai Town over the years, but Beihai Town has ignored them. After the "Battle of West Java", the Dutch were driven out of Southeast Asia. The British were just about to make contact with Beihai Town again when the battle for local governance broke out.
The war with the French is now unwinnable, and it is difficult to take advantage of the war with Mysore. It is better to stop the losses as soon as possible. If he could really vigorously develop the cotton trade and reach an agreement with the Seris people, it would be a barely perfect ending for his departure.
Originally, Cornwallis's achievements during his tenure as Governor-General of India were highly recognized by the British government and the public, so his experience of the defeat at Yorktown was gradually forgotten by public opinion. Unexpectedly, a North Sea town appeared out of nowhere and put him in danger at the end of his life; The local government's siege was so frustrating that even Tipu Sultan, the defeated general, had his tail pouted - he was full of energy.
In fact, had it not been for the intervention of Beihai Town, Cornwallis, who had finished local governance, would have resigned and returned to the country. The position of director of the Royal Ordnance Department was beckoning to him.
Only two days later, Cornwallis eagerly submitted the "Cotton Plan" to the Bengal Senate, intending to end this frustrating war in a "dignified" way.
The Indian rupees of the 18th century were issued by the Mughal Empire. They were all silver coins. Each coin weighed 11.36 grams and contained 91% silver. 33 rupees is equivalent to ten taels of Qing silver. In addition, each bale of Indian cotton at the end of the 18th century was 25 pounds, which is approximately equal to 11.34 kilograms.
