The Da Chu Empire's exploration of America began very early, but the efficiency of this early exploration was very low.
Because heading east is a vast sea with few islands.
Although sailboats can theoretically keep sailing as long as they are not broken down, the fresh water and food stored on the ship are limited, which means that the crew's time on the ship is also limited.
If the island cannot be found for a long time to replenish food and fresh water, the end will be very tragic.
Therefore, the early exploration of the Americas by the Chu Empire was a continuous exploration of routes for many years, constantly heading east to find islands for supply. After finding an island, they established a preliminary supply station on the island, and then used this The island serves as a base and continues to sail eastward.
After many bumps and bumps along the way, we found a route to North America, and finally landed in North America. The specific location was probably around San Francisco in later generations.
On the way, they also discovered and controlled the Sandalwood Islands, because a large area of precious sandalwood wood was discovered on this island. This allowed the Oriental Trading Company, which had been investing but had no returns at all, to get a small return.
After landing in the San Francisco area, they began to trade with the local indigenous people. After obtaining a large amount of furs, gold, gems and other materials from the indigenous people, the most important thing was the discovery of gold mines in the San Francisco area. The Oriental Trading Company relied on the local gold mines to It has entered a period of profitability.
Then they were able to continue their colonial activities, opened more than ten colonial strongholds along the coastline, and began to organize immigrants.
Up to now, the Chu Empire has established two large-scale colonial settlements in North America. The first is San Francisco and the second is the Seattle area. In addition, there are also a number of small colonies mainly focusing on supply and trade strongholds. The total local population is only about 10,000 people, and more than half of them are crew members or armed employees and trading personnel of the Oriental Trading Company.
The other half are official immigrants!
As for free immigration, there is none at the moment!
After all, America is still very unfamiliar to the Chu Empire. At the same time, the distance is too far. A single voyage takes several months. The voyage is long and risky. More importantly, people are too unfamiliar with this place.
People are always wary of unfamiliar places.
So for the time being, only officially organized immigrants will run over.
Because of the long distance, people are not familiar with the Americas, and the indigenous people in North America are quite fierce... The indigenous people here are not farming indigenous people, but mostly hunting people.
Herding and hunting are the main ways of survival, and the organizational structure is not a country, but a tribe.
This kind of nomadic people is not easy to deal with!
All these resulted in the Great Chu Empire’s immigration in North America not going smoothly.
But... North America is currently a very good dumping ground for industrial goods!
There are many indigenous people in North America today, and these indigenous tribes are full of conflicts and often have wars. This means that there is a huge demand for weapons in these places.
No guns are needed, even cold weapons can be sold for a very good price in these places.
There is no need to worry about the paying ability of these local indigenous people. These hunting tribes have a large amount of animal skins on hand, especially cowhide.
The Da Chu Empire basically accepted all kinds of animal furs, and the more the better.
In addition, you can also pay for it by hiring local labor to help the Dachu Empire mine... Dongyang Trading Company has discovered gold mines in the San Francisco area, but there is a serious shortage of mining labor. In order to solve the labor problem, it has reached agreements with multiple nearby tribes. Labor dispatch agreement...
According to the labor dispatch agreement signed between the Oriental Trading Company and the tribes, the indigenous tribes organized their own labor force to mine, and the Oriental Trading Company paid remuneration based on the amount of minerals dug out (usually various industrial commodities, especially weapons).
As for how these indigenous tribes squeezed the labor force during the mining process, and where the labor force came from, the Oriental Trading Company has no regard. Those are the problems of the indigenous tribes themselves.
The reason for this labor dispatch system is that the laws of the Chu Empire clearly prohibit slavery... In order to avoid violating domestic laws, many companies or individuals who go overseas generally do not directly purchase or use slaves or other slave labor. And so on, they often adopt the labor dispatch model.
Others will also engage in commissioned mining and planting models. In fact, it is similar to labor dispatch, but the name is different and the procedures are slightly different. But in essence, it is to avoid violating the Dachu Empire's own anti-slavery laws, and at the same time, it wants to use Obtain labor at the lowest cost to mine minerals and develop various plantations.
Through this labor dispatch, commissioned production and other models, these commercial companies or individuals can avoid violating the slave-prohibiting laws of the Dachu Empire.
Because from the legal perspective of the Dachu Empire, Dongyang Trading Company has nothing to do with these workers. Dongyang Trading Company only reached a labor dispatch agreement with a certain tribe. How to do it specifically is the business of these tribes themselves, and Toyo Trading Co., Ltd. has nothing to do with it.
Toyo Trading Company only pays a certain amount of remuneration based on the quantity of minerals produced.
Relying on the labor dispatch model, Toyo Trading Company has opened many gold and silver mines in the Americas. It has also organized and opened many wheat plantations in the Seattle area, and opened several irrigated plantations in the San Francisco area for large-scale cultivation. Food met the colonial local food needs.
Moreover, since the labor dispatch system was established in the local area, the local indigenous tribes have become more willing to fight with each other in order to obtain more free labor for dispatch.
Therefore, Toyo Trading Company's sales of various weapons in North America have also increased significantly.
It was this series of measures that allowed the Oriental Trading Company to initially gain a temporary foothold in North America and have the funds and ability to continue to organize immigrants and build various immigrant settlements.
The last step is to march into the interior of North America and dump industrial goods on a large scale.
The Chu Empire came to North America initially to open up markets. As for large-scale immigration and development, that was all a later matter.
Of course, not just any place can become a dumping ground for the industrial goods of the Great Chu Empire;
First of all, the local area must have a certain level of civilization. There will be a large demand for cloth, iron products, weapons and equipment, and the ability to pay.
This payment capacity can be the industrial raw materials needed by the Chu Empire, such as high-quality cotton from the Indian peninsula, sulfur from the Fuso region, or specialties from some places, such as spices, precious woods, sea pearls, and tropical economic crops from the Nanyang region. , some animal skins from other places, etc.
Of course, it can also be the simplest and most direct gold and silver. For example, in the large-scale trade between the Spaniards and the Chu Empire, Spain used gold and silver to pay.
Therefore, the Nanyang region, the Indian Peninsula region, the Fuso region, and even West Asia, North Africa, Europe and other regions are very good dumping grounds for industrial commodities.
In North America, the local civilization level is too low, and in addition to animal furs, the local indigenous tribes also lack sufficient ability to pay... Of course, the indigenous force value of this place is not low, most of them are nomadic This kind of nomadic people is actually very incomprehensible to the early colonists... These indigenous people are too mobile and have no fixed residence. For the colonists who rely on colonial strongholds and have limited scope of activities, in fact, Very difficult to deal with.
This is why the Indians in North America were able to survive until the 19th century... because after the 19th century, advances in trains and ships, coupled with gun technology, enabled colonists to easily deal with nomads.
Roughly speaking, it is similar to that in East Asia since modern times, many ethnic groups have become good at singing and dancing... Nomadic peoples have to become good at singing and dancing in front of machine guns... Those who cannot dance and sing will die.
As for things like gold, silver and gems, those indigenous tribes also lack the ability to mine minerals on a large scale.
Therefore, in history, when European colonists went to places such as the Americas and Africa and found that it was not profitable to engage in trade there, they adopted another way to obtain profits, which was to set up plantations of various economic crops and conduct large-scale mining to mine gold. silver.
To put it in simpler and more straightforward terms: squeezing the value of labor!
Other methods are difficult to do, but squeezing labor can always be done. This is why during European colonial activities, the indigenous population in the Americas, especially in areas controlled by Spain and Portugal, decreased rapidly in a very short period of time.
The foreign smallpox virus is just a trivial matter. The real reason is labor exploitation, and it is a very short-sighted exploitation, so that the local indigenous people quickly become extinct, and finally had to import labor from Africa to maintain the operation of the plantations.
This led to today's delta trade, that is, the slave trade. European merchant ships transported various commodities from Europe to the west coast of Africa, exchanged slaves from local tribal leaders or simply slave traders, and then transported them to the Americas, which were mainly controlled by Spain or Portugal. Brazil and Mexico were sold to local colonist plantations. The plantations used these slaves to grow various economic crops such as tobacco, and then sold them to these European merchant ships. Finally, the merchant ships carried tobacco and other crops from the Americas back to Europe for sale.
This forms a closed trade loop.
This is the delta trade.
However, this method of the Spanish and Portuguese was not easy to deal with in the Dachu Empire, because the Dachu Empire banned slaves.
As long as it is in the area controlled by the Da Chu Empire, whether it is the mainland or overseas colonies, and the slaves are not allowed whether they are nationals or indigenous people.
Slavery is completely prohibited in the Chu Empire.
However, in order to obtain indigenous labor resources, the two major armed trading companies, Western Trading Company and Eastern Trading Company, adopted a labor dispatch or commissioned production model, and the results were quite good.
The main business of the Oriental Trading Company in the Americas is not only various forms of trade with local indigenous people and active development of the local area, but also trade with the Spanish in Mexico.
The scale of trade between the Chu Empire and Spain was very large. In the early years, the Spaniards themselves came to the Luzon Islands to trade with the Chu Empire.
Later, the Eastern Trading Company of the Dachu Empire took the initiative to transport goods to Mexico and sell them to the Spanish.
This trade route also allowed the Oriental Trading Company to obtain considerable profits, further maintaining its colonial activities in North America.
The above is the result of the colonial expansion of the Great Chu Empire in North America over the past many years, with the Oriental Trading Company as the main body.
The results are not very great. At most, they are the opening of two relatively large colonial settlements in Seattle and San Francisco, plus a dozen small coastal trade and supply points. All immigrants and staff of the Oriental Trading Company are all Counting it all together, it only amounts to ten thousand people.
However, this still laid a solid foundation for the colonial expansion of the Chu Empire in North America.
At least with the tens of thousands of immigrants or armed employees in the early stage, and the food plantations in Seattle and San Francisco, there would be less trouble in organizing subsequent immigrants.
When organizing immigration in the early stage, not only must the immigrants be transported, but also a large amount of rations must be transported. Otherwise, it will be difficult for immigrants to survive on a large scale in North America.
Now, even if thousands of people are transported there every year, the local food output can meet the demand. If it is not enough, the worst possible scenario is to ask the Spaniards in Mexico next door to purchase some food.
These laid the foundation for the large-scale immigration of the Chu Empire in the Americas, and were also the early stage of the decision by the top leaders of the Chu Empire to launch large-scale colonization in the Americas.
At the end of December of the 23rd year of Chengshun, as the Spring Festival was approaching, the Dachu Empire's executive meeting formally approved the resolution of Dongyang Trading Company to recruit and establish six mixed colonial camps.
According to the relevant rules of the Chu Empire in the past when it established the Eastern Trading Company and the Western Trading Company, these two major armed trading companies have the power to organize overseas armies, but they need the approval of the empire.
It does not mean that they can organize as many colonial armies as they want.
At the same time, it is also stipulated that all armed employees of the two major armed trading companies, whether they are soldiers, officers, or generals, must be retired soldiers and must not be recruited from ordinary young people among the civilian population.
To put it bluntly, the corporate armies of the two major armed trading companies are also supernumerary armies under the official jurisdiction of the Chu Empire. The only difference from the regular army is the source of military expenditure...
The military expenditures of the regular army come directly from fiscal appropriations, while the military expenditures of the corporate army come from the operating profits of the companies.
To a certain extent, the purpose of the existence of the two armed trading companies is to feed tens of thousands of colonial troops.
The establishment of six mixed colonial camps directly announced the beginning of the Chu Empire's colonial expansion in North America.
In just one month, the six mixed colonial camps had boarded the ships of the Oriental Trading Company, first preparing to go to Fuso, and then taking the North Pacific route to Seattle via Fuso.
It is worth noting that these six colonial mixed battalions were all active troops of the Army a month ago, from soldiers to officers, without exception...
Because the Da Chu Empire directly transferred six infantry battalions, plus more than 8,000 active troops, including Ruojun sentries, cavalry sentries, and baggage sentries, into reserve forces... and then changed to a colony of the Oriental Trading Company. After getting the name of the mixed camp, he was transferred directly to North America.
In order to reassure these soldiers, especially the officers, who have been transferred to the reserves, the empire also has a complete set of methods to deal with them.
The first is salary. In addition to the original basis and generous overseas subsidies, the salary will not be small. At the same time, when fighting overseas, the regulations for the distribution of various spoils are also very generous.
Many soldiers who went to serve in the colonies returned home with big bags and a mouth full of food.
So going to the colonies to serve is hard work and dangerous, but the benefits are also really great.
The most important thing is the arrangement of military status. Although these people have been transferred to the reserve force, when they return home after completing this dispatch mission to North America, the military will recruit them in the name of recruiting retired soldiers to resume active service. identity.
Then a series of subsequent processing will be carried out as active duty, such as retirement and transfer, promotion and transfer.
At the same time, the military exploits, promotions, and years of service obtained while serving in the colonies will also be regarded as the military exploits, promotions, and years of service in the regular army.
In short...except for the different names and different sources of military expenditures.
The overall model of these six mixed colonial battalions is not fundamentally different from the regular military troops currently deployed overseas. Even the command power is actually in the hands of the military... The relevant laws and regulations of the two major armed trading companies It is clearly stated that the military has authority over their armed employees to direct in peacetime and to command in time of war.
Moreover, the senior management in charge of armed employee affairs in Toyo Trading Company are all military reserve generals.
Not only the six newly formed mixed battalions of Dongyang Trading Company are like this, but all the armed employees of the two previous armed trading companies basically follow this model.
Otherwise, the empire's high-level officials would trust some trading company to hire tens of thousands of armed employees!
Military power is always something that the empire's top officials are concerned about most, and it is what Luo Zhixue is most concerned about.
Along with these six mixed colonial camps heading to North America, there was also Huang Jingheng, the first North American governor of the Chu Empire. Unlike a group of people from the Dongyang Trading Company who were full of hopes for a big fight, after Huang Jingheng boarded the ship, it was He kept a gloomy face and looked at the shore for a long time...
When the steam engine started, the sails were raised, and the ship gradually moved away from the coastline, he still stood on the deck and looked at the receding shore, holding the railing with such force that his fingers turned white.
Although he was defeated and demoted this time, sooner or later, he will come back!
In the past, he was one of the important candidates for the governor of a certain province in Guan Nei, but he lost the competition and was caught by his competitors. In the end, he had to choose between becoming an official or going overseas.
The reason why he did not simply choose to become an official like many high-ranking officials who failed in the struggle, but went to work overseas where nothing was happening is because Huang Jingheng was unwilling to give in!
He wants to persevere, he wants to return to the Central Plains, he... wants revenge!
Huang Jingheng waited until he could no longer see the dock on the shore clearly, then turned around and returned to the cabin, and called his subordinates and staff to discuss the matter.
If you want to return to the Central Plains, and if you want to hold an important position to take revenge when you come back, you must do a good job as governor of North America, especially to satisfy His Majesty...
(End of chapter)
