Forty-three years after Chengshun, the internal development of the Chu Empire was stable and continuous. Benefiting from the opening of the European market and the West Asian market, a large number of industrial goods from the Chu Empire continued to pour into West Asia and Europe.
The large-scale export of these industrial commodities also promoted the development of domestic industry and commerce in the Chu Empire to a certain extent. Of course, the extent of the promotion was not large. After all, Europe and West Asia only have a total population of more than 100 million, and although these population bases Not small, but the consumption power is not that great, so the market size is not large.
The development of industry and commerce in the Dachu Empire, especially the development of manufacturing, relied more on the huge internal demand.
The Chu Empire, with a population of more than 600 million at home and abroad, was not only a producer of industrial goods, but also the largest consumer market for industrial goods.
In terms of the consumption of the two core commodities of steel and coal, first of all, the Chu Empire's continuous large-scale railway construction, ship construction, and urbanization will consume massive amounts of steel products every year.
Then there are the coal used by residents for cooking and heating, industrial coal used in steam engines for industrial production, coal needed for steelmaking, and coal used for powering ships and trains. The demand for these three major items is extremely huge, and the demand It’s getting bigger and bigger.
Stimulated by huge demand, the Dachu Empire's steel and coal industries have maintained a relatively high growth rate every year.
The corresponding export markets, including the colonies controlled by the Chu Empire and the economic colonies controlled by the indigenous people, demand very little steel and coal.
The industrial goods of the Chu Empire were exported to these colonies. It mainly focuses on some national defense products, agricultural and handicraft production tools for civilian use, and consumer goods.
Such as smoothbore weapons and equipment, ammunition, cold weapons, military tents, clothing, and medical supplies.
Such as iron farm implements, tools, kitchen utensils, etc.
Such as cotton fabrics, woolen fabrics, silk fabrics, rubber products, furniture, paper, cans, salt, MSG, etc.
There are also processed products of traditional economic crops such as tea, coffee, cocoa, spices, and sugar.
At the same time, the Chu Empire also imported wheat, fur, wool, cotton, frozen meat, various primary cash crops, minerals, etc. from Europe, West Asia and other regions.
It seems that the Great Chu Empire has many types of import and export trade, but in fact, limited by local output and consumption capacity, the amount of import and export is not too large.
At least compared to the internal economy of the empire, it was only a few percentage points.
The economic system of the contemporary Da Chu Empire is different from any industrial country in history and in the original time and space.
The economic system of the Dachu Empire was strictly an internal circulation economic system... Although there were colonies, the economic proportion contributed by the colonies was very small and could not affect the overall economic situation of the empire.
To exaggerate, even if all the colonies were lost instantly, it would not have much impact on the economy of the Chu Empire.
Because the Chu Empire was a global empire that spanned Asia, Europe, Africa, America and Oceania, its own homeland and overseas territories were rich in various resources and could produce almost all kinds of economic crops and minerals. At the same time, the internal consumption power of the people of the Da Chu Empire was very strong.
To put it bluntly, the empire does not need any colonies to live well.
Of course, you can live well without it, but you can live better if you have a large number of colonies. And the large colonies in India, Africa, West Asia, and Europe are still in a state of development and have not been well integrated. Into the economic circulation system of the Great Chu Empire.
The Dachu Empire has always used military and economic guidance and other means to continuously promote the integration of many colonies into the empire's economic system.
This so-called guidance is to implement a single agricultural and animal husbandry economic system based on the local geographical environment, climate or resources.
If a piece of land is suitable for growing sisal, then all of it will be planted with sisal... If a piece of land is suitable for growing cotton, then all of it will be planted with cotton. If a piece of land is suitable for growing coffee, then all of it will be planted with coffee...
This was used to expand the supply of various economic crops. At the same time, this single economic model also had another major benefit, which was that it could better control the colonial economy and ensure that the Dachu Empire could obtain these economic crops at a low cost.
This kind of single economic model has no problem when you are within the economic system of the Da Chu Empire. After all, all kinds of materials in the Da Chu Empire are circulated globally. If you grow cotton in one country, then after selling the cotton You can purchase grain, cloth and other daily necessities transported from other places.
But once it breaks away from the economic system of the Da Chu Empire, for example, one day the colonies become independent, the Da Chu Empire does not need to do anything. It only needs to implement an economic blockade and prevent other materials, including food, from coming in. Then the indigenous people in the colonies themselves have to starve.
Moreover, this single economic model will have a very strong continuity. When farmers in a place are accustomed to growing a certain kind of economic crops, such as cotton, and have been planting it for several generations for hundreds of years, you will let them grow it a hundred years later. If he were to plant wheat instead, he wouldn’t be able to plant it anymore…
If certain pricing measures are taken, such as making the local income from growing cotton slightly higher than paying attention to food, then the farmers themselves will actively choose to grow cotton. In this way, even if it takes one hundred or two hundred years, the entire colony will be truly independent. , in fact, it is impossible to get rid of the economic system of the Dachu Empire.
This situation was very obvious in Africa in the original time and space. Even if a large number of African countries became independent, they were still economically controlled by the former sovereign state. However, the iron head was not under control. They wanted to be independent but could not find new ones. If the situation is tight, even the food problem cannot be guaranteed, and it is easy for large-scale famine to occur.
It’s not that local farmers don’t want to grow food, it’s that they don’t have land to grow food, or they have land, but they don’t know how to grow food, or they know how to grow food, but the income from growing food is not as good as growing cash crops, so local farmers would rather grow it. Cash crops are not grown for food either.
These are the sequelae of the colonial single economic model.
Of course, the European colonists in the past did not think so much. After all, they would not have thought that they would lose these colonies more than a hundred years ago, nor would they have considered how to use the economic system more than a hundred years ago. Take control of these colonies.
The reason for this is simply that the demand for various economic crops in Europe and other markets at that time was extremely huge, and the colonial farmers in these colonies would choose to plant rubber, sisal, cocoa, etc. according to market demand. Various economic crops such as coffee and tea, as well as large-scale planting of single crops, are more conducive to increasing output, forming standardized planting plans, and even market gaming capabilities.
Over time, this has resulted in the economic model of many African countries being very single.
After the wave of independence in Africa, the local people discovered after independence that a large number of commercial crops grown in their own countries could not be eaten or worn... they could only be exported to the European and American markets, but they were all trying to be independent, and they also killed the descendants of local colonists. From now on, you have to rely on yourself for everything. It is not easy to sell this economic crop at a good price in the international market...
You can't make money from exports. Without foreign exchange, you can't purchase equipment for industrialization. You can't even buy food. Coupled with the explosive growth of population after independence, it's easy to fall into famine, which in turn leads to all kinds of unrest...
The situation is turbulent, and the emergence of warlords has a prerequisite. Everything else is nonsense. Lack of food is the cause of all turmoil.
It’s just that the more turbulent the situation, the less likely it is to have enough to eat, leading to a vicious cycle... In this case, unless some powerful figure appears to resist external interference and forcibly reverse the local situation, this vicious cycle cannot be broken.
This is why before and after World War II, Africa looked pretty good, with huge exports of agricultural products and local colonists living a good life.
When African countries became independent one after another in the 1950s and 1960s, some African countries were able to live a good life at the beginning, but then they got worse as time went on.
Behind this is not only the various provocations and interferences of major powers, but more importantly, the single economic system left over from the colonial era.
But it is very difficult to change.
So the reason why Africa is poor is not because the land is poor, nor because the locals are lazy.
The land is barren? This is true in a few places, but in quite a few places, especially after entering modern society, many places in Africa have fertile land that can be developed on a large scale and have considerable arable land resources. For example, the land in Central Africa is quite good. During the non-federal period, there were bumper harvests every year, and a large amount of food was exported.
And if people are lazy... no ethnic group can be universally lazy. Most people work hard and live hard, and only a few people are lazy.
When you see a large group of young people sunbathing in a daze, it may not be that they are lazy, but that they have no job opportunities!
I can't find a job, I don't have my own land to farm, I don't even have the opportunity to do odd jobs... I don't even have the chance to work hard.
In this regard, perhaps you can watch the documentary Odebiao, which fully reflects the current situation of the working people at the bottom of Africa. One comment can describe it: you can't brake if you put on the banana, and you can't live if you put the banana down.
But despite working so hard, he still lives in poverty.
There are many reasons, but the source is very simple. Most of them are due to the economic system left over from the colonial period - only bananas are grown in that poor place.
Can you imagine that most of the cultivated land in an entire country is planted with bananas?
That's what that place is.
The Chu Empire implemented this single economic system in Europe, India and Africa.
Of course, this is not because the Chu people are bad, they did it deliberately and then waited a hundred or so years to rely on the economic system to control these colonies... It is not necessary.
The reason why the Chu people did this was simply to obtain more and cheaper economic crops without so many twists and turns.
Overseas colonization is often highly consistent. There will not be any big difference just because the colonists are from Chu or Europeans.
The current economic development momentum that overseas colonization has brought to the people of Chu is not great, but if it continues to be promoted, changes will occur in a few years. These colonies have a population of hundreds of millions after all. If done well, they can bring great benefits to Chu. provide a huge impetus for economic growth.
However, while promoting the cultivation of economic crops and animal husbandry in these colonies, the Dachu Empire also continued to strictly implement the industrial technology blockade plan to prevent these colonies from engaging in independent industry, and then one day produce rifled guns.
Many years ago, in the name of national defense and security, the Dachu Empire formulated a series of lists of prohibited export products, including food, advanced weapons and equipment, equipment that can make weapons, etc.
And this kind of export ban is not a new product, but a tradition of the Central Plains Dynasty of China: Over the past thousands of years, the Central Plains Dynasty of China has attached great importance to the export control of strategic materials, especially prohibiting the unauthorized export of horns and ironware to grassland areas. tea and other strategic materials.
If people in the grassland area want to exchange for these strategic materials, they can only exchange them with horses.
In the early days of the founding of the Great Chu Empire, strict strategic material blockade measures were also implemented on the grasslands, Dongdi, and Moxi areas. Subsequently, according to the development and growth of the empire and changes in the surrounding situation, the blockade objects and the types of blockade materials continued to change. .
For example, the export of flash cap percussion guns has been banned since the equipment entered service in the 1920s.
Incidentally, there were also copper flash caps for making flash caps and related technologies, gun barrel manufacturing technology, etc. Later, steam engines were listed as controlled export commodities, and the export of steam engines to the indigenous people was prohibited.
With the development up to now, the export control regulations in the Dachu Empire have been very complete, and there are different commodity export control restrictions according to different regions.
Generally speaking, the export of modern machinery and equipment is prohibited, as is the export of rifled weapons, and the export of related technology is also prohibited.
The most common example is the steam engine.
So far, the Chu Empire has not exported even a single steam engine... Of course, this does not mean that there are no steam engines flowing into the indigenous countries.
In fact, there will always be people who take risks because of the high profits and use various methods to smuggle equipment to overseas indigenous countries.
When the Chu people attacked Russia before, they discovered a small Russian arsenal in Tsaritsyn, which already contained several old-model steam engines.
It once triggered an official investigation by the Chu State. Unfortunately, the investigation ended in vain because the inscriptions on these equipment had been worn away, and no documents were found from Russia. It is only known that these steam engines were acquired by Russia from a Chu State. It was purchased by a smuggler at a high price, but it is no longer possible to trace who this Chu smuggler is.
Similar situations actually occur all over the world, especially some ordinary machinery and equipment. Many small machinery workshops in China can produce them, and then secretly disguise them as other goods and transport them to overseas areas. If they are disassembled and transported again, they will be transported to overseas areas. If you assemble it after the destination, it will be more difficult to insert the buckle.
Even many of the smuggled equipment were not sold to the indigenous people, but were purchased by Chu people who opened local factories.
In contemporary times, many Chu people actually live and do business in indigenous-controlled areas, and some Chu people will also open some simple factories there. However, the Chu Empire explicitly prohibits the export of any modern machinery and equipment to indigenous-controlled areas. , these Chu people will obtain equipment through various smuggling methods.
It is very difficult or even impossible to comprehensively and completely ban the export of various industrial equipment.
During the Cold War, the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union was so tense and the defenses were so tight, but the Russians were still able to obtain five-axis machining centers from the Japanese through smuggling.
One can imagine how difficult it was to implement comprehensive export controls on industrial equipment in a global empire in the late seventeenth century.
And this also brings about a general situation: that is, the diffusion of technology is unstoppable, and can only delay the speed of technology diffusion.
However, for the Chu Empire, it is impossible to comprehensively ban the spread of industrial technology, but it can be achieved by slowing down the spread of industrial technology. At the same time, it will also strictly control some sensitive technologies and products.
This is also the reason why the Chu Empire has never opened up its defense industry to private capital for so many years.
Because the control of national defense industry technology is extremely strict, in order to avoid the leakage of national defense technology, the Dachu Empire does not even have any plans to build any arsenals in its overseas directly administered territories.
All the production factories and research institutions of the five major weapons companies in the Chu Empire are all located in the mainland, not even in the Americas.
The Dachu Empire would rather spend thousands of miles to transport materials, equipment and ammunition to fight overseas at high prices than build arsenals in America, South Africa, India, and Europe.
The purpose is to prevent the leakage of national defense technology.
In addition, although the imperial officials cannot control small-scale smuggling of industrial equipment, they can control the large-scale outflow of industrial equipment and directly crack down on indigenous-controlled areas.
The equipment has been smuggled over, so you natives must build factories to use these equipment.
The Chu Empire also has more or less intelligence sources in these indigenous-controlled areas. Once banned equipment is discovered on a large scale, military operations often follow.
In the past few years, the Chu Empire has carried out many such military operations in the Indian region. Many of the factories were built locally by Chu people in India. However, the official attitude of Chu State towards this is very unified. of: Discover together, attack together.
However, there are also some factories that are very secretive and even the Chu people don't know about them. Then they produce a lot of industrial products, and most of these so-called industrial products are mainly weapons and equipment.
In the spring and March of the 43rd year of Chengshun, the European Army Headquarters and the 27th Army Headquarters received notification from the front line that an Indian servant army suffered heavy casualties while performing a suppressive mission in the Polish region of Central Europe. During the exchange of fire, the firepower was actually suppressed... After the battle, this Indian servant army seized a batch of unusual weapons and equipment.
Among these weapons, there are more than fifty muzzle-loading rifled rifles, but they are not the Type 16 muzzle-loading rifles that the Chu people have served before. The calibers are different, but a type that the Chu people have never produced and served. Muzzleloading rifled rifle.
This means that this batch of rifles cannot be leaked from the military... Although the Type 16 front-loading rifled rifles have been relegated to the second line, they are actually still serving in several domestic C-level troops. Well, there is no precedent for its use in overseas service, and there is no possibility of large-scale leakage.
Moreover, the production process of this batch of front-loading rifled guns can be called an alien airliner compared to the indigenous manual production capabilities.
It is very well made, the barrel is made of steel, and the rifling is also very good. Even the molds for making cavity lead bullets are very precise. The most important thing is that after testing, the bullets of this batch of front-loading rifled rifles turned out to be It can be used universally, with extremely small tolerances. The overall technical level has basically reached the technical level of the Chu Empire fifteen years ago, and is almost at the same level as the Type 16 front-loading rifled gun.
If you only build one such front-loading rifled rifle, then it won't be a big problem. Skilled craftsmen can do it even if they do it slowly by hand.
However, being able to manufacture a batch of front-loading rifled rifles with extremely small tolerances is not something that indigenous craftsmen can solve at all. This requires very high-precision mechanical equipment and unified processing based on steel with excellent performance.
This batch of front-loading rifled rifles, even if they are placed in China, cannot be handled by ordinary small machinery factories.
There can only be two possibilities behind this:
First, someone secretly produced this batch of front-loading rifled guns in China, and then smuggled them to the local resistance forces in Poland.
Second, someone smuggled a batch of high-precision processing equipment and steel to Europe or other places, and then secretly produced this batch of muzzle-loading rifled rifles.
There is no possibility that local Polish natives will make a technological breakthrough and then come up with these rifles... not at all.
This situation quickly attracted the attention of the Army. On the one hand, the Army notified the European Governor and then reported it to the country.
At the same time, the Army's intelligence department in Europe quickly dispatched investigators to Poland to conduct investigations.
Of course, the investigators were irrelevant. The real action was that the European Command quickly mobilized more than 6,000 regular troops and more than 10,000 servants to enter Poland.
Faced with this huge potential threat, the Army in Europe should pay more attention to it than the European governors. After all, the Army does not want the indigenous rebels it will face in the future to have rifled guns.
In this case, even a large number of servant armies will be at a firepower disadvantage.
After all, all the servant armies in the Dachu Empire are still equipped with twenty-one/three-year-old percussion guns.
In the past, it was no problem at all to shoot the indigenous flintlocks and even matchlock guns with a percussion rifle and some retired smoothbore field artillery from the regular army.
However, now that the natives suddenly took out their muzzle-loading rifles, it was more difficult for these servants to deal with them.
Under such circumstances, the Army reacted strongly, and without saying a word, it directly dispatched more than 10,000 troops into Poland and the matter was cleared.
The purpose of the Army is very simple. The complete elimination of local rebels is secondary. The most important thing is to find out the origin of this batch of front-loading rifles. If they are produced domestically and then smuggled over, then they must be investigated. Clearly, destroy the smuggling gang.
If equipment and raw materials are smuggled in for local production, then the factory must be destroyed, the smuggling gang must be discovered, and their ashes must be given to Yang.
A batch of front-loading rifled guns that should not have appeared in the hands of the indigenous rebels directly aroused a strong reaction from the Chu army stationed in Europe. Thousands of regular troops, more than 10,000 servants, and dozens of various artillery quickly Entered Poland.
This also caused panic among many indigenous kings, princes and the like along the march, thinking that the Chu people were crazy again.
They were even more afraid of being harmed by Chi Yu. They all watched with trembling fear as a large number of Chu troops passed by their own territory. They respectfully presented various supplies of food and grass, only begging these Chu men to leave as soon as possible. .
Many local nobles in Poland were also in panic, and a few nobles who had contact with the resistance army fled overnight... This kind of contact organized the resistance army to engage in rebellion. If the Chu army caught it, it would not be a simple mastermind. He would be shot and hanged, but the entire family would be exterminated.
In the past few years, countless so-called millennium nobles have been exterminated in the wave of rebellion against the Chu people.
The Chu people have only been in Europe for three to five years, but the number of nobles in Europe has been reduced by more than half. This shows how much the local nobles hate and fear the Chu people!
(End of chapter)
