New Shun 1730

From a personal perspective, Du Feng is more like Clive.

From a national system perspective, Du Feng, the governor of Ceylon, is more like Dupleix.

From a personal perspective, Du Feng wants adventure, title, fame, and wealth. He wants to jump from a poor boy on the border of the Heilongjiang River to a family ranked in the top 200 in Dashun.

From a national system perspective, the King of France can make Dupleix go away with a decree, and Du Feng is the same. A word from the Forbidden City can make him return to Beijing to retire.

Of course, Du Feng does not understand what the historical process is, nor does he understand whether the excellent diplomatic environment that Dashun now has is due to Liu Yu's maneuvers or the hard work of the working people to create the material reality of world trade at this time.

However, he has been with Liu Yu for so long that he still understands the most basic knowledge of business, capital, and trade.

Therefore, Du Feng has more empathy for Dupleix, or for France, at least in India, than the British East India Company.

As for the reason, it is very simple.

Compared with the British East India Company, Dashun can only find empathy with the French East India Company in the difficulties faced by the French East India Company in trade with India.

In short - from a purely commercial perspective, it is uncomfortable!

Before you have a general understanding of the trade issues between Dashun and India, you must first understand some basic data.

The climate conditions in India are better than most places in Dashun.

At this time, India has 278 million biggs of arable land. 1 bigg is equal to two-thirds of an acre, which is equal to 4 mu. India has 1.1 billion mu of arable land at this time.

At this time, the population of India is between 135 million and 200 million.

The number of acres of cotton planted in India is more than that of Dashun, and the arable land suitable for cotton planting is much more than that of Dashun.

Most places in India have a higher per-acre yield than Dashun's North China and Northeast regions, because the Northeast region can only harvest once a year, and the North China region has just popularized three crops in two years, while in India, two crops a year is the basic operation.

India's handicraft industry is not much worse than Dashun.

The labor cost in India is about the same as that of Dashun.

Maybe, because the climate is too balanced, the latitude span is too small, the difference in products is not big, and there are ethnic and religious issues, there is no domestic market with close exchanges and exchanges between the north and the south in the era of the Grand Canal?

So, is commercial trade uncomfortable?

Uncomfortable.

Too uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable all over.

The discomfort that the French can feel, Dashun can feel.

The British East India Company can bear the huge debuff of [for every 100 pounds of oriental cotton cloth, an additional 68 pounds of special tax is required to be sold in the country (another 3.5% general common tariff)], and transport at least 750,000 pieces of cotton cloth to Britain every year.

The French domestic market is strictly controlled, and the ginseng trade makes France choose to buy Songjiang cloth directly, so the French East India Company has no way to buy Indian cloth.

What about Dashun?

Dashun is really "many merchants who want to be compradors but cannot".

Dashun merchants buy cotton cloth in India and sell it back to Dashun. That really means that they think their parents have left too much inheritance and have no place to spend the money.

But the problem is that Dashun's cotton cloth can't enter the Indian market.

It's not that it can't enter at all, but compared with the huge economic volume, the amount of cotton cloth entering is still less.

Liu Yu, who actually controls Dashun's foreign trade in Dashun, now deeply understands the feeling of imperialism such as Britain and France facing China before the Second Opium War - the goods can't be sold!

So, can India be used as a raw material production base?

No.

At least, at this moment, it can't.

Let's take cotton as an example.

Dashun inherited, or robbed, several cities occupied by the Dutch in India. The names are relatively long, but they are basically sandwiched between Ceylon and Bengal, about four or five.

At this time, India has four major cotton producing areas.

Surat cotton near Mumbai is not within the influence of Dashun and faces the Arabian Sea.

Madras, renamed Chennai after decolonization, is in the hands of the British and is very close to Dashun's control area.

Bengal. Needless to mention.

Bhopal, where the pesticide incident happened later, is in the inland center, far from the sea, and in the hands of the Marathas.

The Songsu textile industry in Dashun is based on Mexican long-staple cotton.

In particular, the Nantong cloth, which has been very popular in Nantong in recent years and has increased the weaving efficiency by four times, must be made of long-staple cotton.

Indian cotton has short lint and is not suitable for such wide cloth. In other words, the raw materials of the Songsu Industrial Revolution are based on the long-staple cotton in northern Jiangsu. Dashun’s technical level at that time was not capable of spinning out mechanical textiles based on short-staple cotton.

The only cotton that the Songsu textile industry can use is the high-quality cotton in the Bhopal area.

However, the Bhopal area is in the center of India, and the transportation is not convenient, and it is not available.

The lint of Bengal cotton is too short.

The lint of Madras cotton is even shorter.

The only best-selling cotton in Dashun is Surat cotton.

Because the cotton in Surat and Mumbai is not as good as Bhopal in quality, but it is soft in texture and has slightly longer lint.

It is not suitable for large-scale semi-mechanized textile production in Songsu.

But it is very suitable for the northeastern people in Dashun to make cotton trousers and cotton jackets. They are very good, with very soft texture and good warmth retention.

The climate in India is actually more suitable for growing long-staple cotton than in northern Jiangsu.

But just like the dilemma of promoting long-staple cotton in China in history, it is impossible to promote it in India under the small peasant economy.

What is needed to promote long-staple cotton under the small peasant economy?

Either, as summarized by the promotion of long-staple cotton in the Beiyang era in history: it is necessary to promote it after a major disaster, with thousands of miles of barren land, and the government controls the land, reclaims wasteland and settles the victims.

Or, as Liu Yu did in northern Jiangsu, use bayonets, whips, sticks, and the army to make the original small producers and small farmers live a life worse than death, and capital encloses land and improves cotton varieties.

Or, it requires a regime controlled by commercial capital that does not care about the lives of the people at all, and forced promotion and forced collection.

Or, it requires a strong organization that can extend its ruling power to every village, and a strong organizational force that can make the cotton seeds issued by the province promoted by administrative officials and cadres in every village within a month. Those who dare to continue to plant short-staple cotton will be directly razed by village cadres and people, leaving no one.

There is no other way.

Although cruel, it is just reality.

Otherwise, the good varieties will soon degenerate, hybridize, mutate, and become shorter.

Dashun can import a lot of Surat cotton from Mumbai every year to balance the rising cotton prices caused by cotton trousers in Northeast China.

Let the cotton used to make cotton trousers, cotton jackets, quilts and other fillings be Surat cotton, so as to continue to lower the price of northern Jiangsu cotton as a raw material for weaving, and ensure that every pound of long-staple cotton in northern Jiangsu is used as industrial raw materials.

Another reason is that the emperor was very unhappy with the trend of cotton planting in North China in recent years. He was worried that the core basic plate of the rule would not grow grain but cotton, and something big would happen.

But that's all.

Mumbai and Surat were not the sphere of influence of Dashun at this time, so this problem was not big.

As for business, as long as there is money to be made, there will be business.

As for why Dashun can buy cheap and relatively high-quality cotton raw materials in Surat, and why the locals don't twist these cotton into cotton cloth for sale, or because the local cotton cloth pulls up the price of cotton and makes it worth importing?

This... This has to start from Dashun's attack on Japan and going to Southeast Asia.

Before the Dashun went to Southeast Asia, the amount of precious metals imported by the Dutch East India Company to India each year was quite astonishing.

Before the Dashun went to Southeast Asia and before the Arai Shiraishi reform in Japan restricted the export of precious metals, the highest amount of precious metals imported by the Netherlands from Batavia to India and purchased Indian goods was 4.6 million rupees a year; the amount of precious metals shipped from Persia to Surat for resale trade was about 6 million rupees.

Added together, it was about 10 million rupees.

Although it is not accurate, the approximate exchange rate is 1 pound = 3 taels of silver = 12 francs or florins = 8 rupees.

4 million taels of silver per year. The amount of silver "sent" by Britain to India every year is no more or less. Only France is relatively lagging, and the trade volume has always remained at around 1 million francs, that is, 300,000 taels of silver, which is roughly equivalent to the trade volume of a ship full of ginseng, sable fur and pearls from North America to Songjiang Prefecture.

At the peak of the Dutch, about half of the 4 million taels of silver spent each year was used to buy Surat cotton cloth and sell it to Southeast Asia.

So it is easy to understand.

After the Dashun went to Southeast Asia, it would not foolishly go to Surat to transport cotton cloth, but naturally transported Songsu cotton cloth to Southeast Asia.

The cotton textile supporting industries around Surat were originally export-oriented.

It has been hundreds of years since the Persians went there to trade, and the Portuguese, Dutch and British came in droves, which directly formed an export-oriented economy.

After the Dashun went to Southeast Asia, the cotton cloth industry in Surat suddenly lost about 2 million taels of export volume each year - even more than 2 million taels, Dashun also smuggled to Europe, squeezing out the sales of Surat cotton cloth in the European market.

What will happen if a region with an entirely export-oriented cotton cloth industry loses one-third of its export volume within a few years?

Natural famine, uprising, collapse, rebellion, death, chaos.

And the price of cotton falls.

In the early 18th century, the world trade, the trade between Asia and Europe, was actually completely different from the conventional impression, and the trade volume was actually quite large.

Take precious metals for example. Before the reform of Arai Shiraishi, Batavia's precious metals were mainly obtained from Japan, and in the form of gold, about 1.2 million francs could be obtained each year. Even after the reform, it was still able to maintain one-third of the precious metals obtained.

The Dashun invasion of Japan directly led to the financial collapse of the Dutch East India Company, which was due to the need for the Dutch East India Company to obtain precious metals from Japan, so as to obtain cotton cloth in India, and then transport the cotton cloth to Nanyang for sale. Once the precious metals from Japan were missing, it was not a matter of spending less money or saving a little, but a trade chain was directly broken, and there was no substitute in a short period of time.

The situation in Surat was similar.

After the Dashun went to Nanyang, the Nanyang cotton cloth market that the Dutch helped "open up" was still there.

However, the cotton cloth worn on the body was Songsu cotton cloth, not Surat cloth.

Surat's fragile export-oriented economy can only, or must, move towards providing raw materials, that is, mainly raw cotton, rather than mainly focusing on value-added cotton cloth.

Simply put, those who used to spin yarn and weave cloth are dead, while those who used to grow cotton can still survive.

The problem is that although Dashun can buy cotton cloth from Surat, Dashun's cotton cloth cannot be sold in Surat.

Because...Surat's cotton cloth can also be pushed into London with a tariff of 68.%+3.5%, a total of 72%...Dashun really can't bear it for the time being.

Does that mean that India is unprofitable from a commercial perspective?

Of course not.

Lao Ma taught: when business is used as a medium of exchange of products between undeveloped communities, commercial profits are manifested as embezzlement and fraud.

Lao Ma also taught: commercial capital, in its dominant position, represents a system of plunder and robbery everywhere.

Just practice it in reverse.

The magic of practicing in reverse lies in one's heart, and its magical uses are endless.

What is the most effective robbery and plunder?

Collecting taxes.

It is taxes that do not require water conservancy construction, disaster relief, etc., salt taxes, and forced low-price purchases under monopoly transactions.

Is there a more effective robbery than taxes that have no livelihood obligations? Obviously impossible, otherwise why would Dutch big capital buy tax farming rights first, and then do business.