New Shun 1730

This statement is very clear.

It's almost like saying: You fight the Netherlands in Europe, and I fight the Netherlands in Nanyang. Dashun will contain the Dutch navy, and France will deal with the Dutch army.

Count Maurepa seemed to understand why Liu Yu had to use the new rifled gun bullet technology to exchange for French battleship technology when he was in Weihai.

After all, the Netherlands has no straits.

France and Dashun are too far away, and this kind of alliance can only be achieved in this very clever way.

Dashun did its best to improve the French army, and France tried its best to help Dashun build a navy to challenge Britain and the Netherlands.

Britain is fine, but Southeast Asia is the main artery of the Netherlands. Once it is cut, the strength of the Netherlands will be greatly damaged, especially since a large amount of Dutch funds and stock transactions are centered around the East India Company, a big treasury.

Europe is now showing the shadow of war, but no one can fully predict that the War of the Austrian Succession will be fought to that extent, and it even became a preview of the Seven Years' War.

France signed and recognized the State Edict that changed the Austrian succession law to allow women to inherit, and the peace faction in France did not want to make too many enemies in the future.

However, the war faction had the upper hand at this time. This time, the War of the Polish Succession was that the French king hoped to use the war faction to weaken the power of the cardinal, which caused great damage to the cardinal's policy of improving the diplomatic situation in the surrounding areas.

Count Maurpa was a war faction, and he also hoped to be prepared for war.

The Dutch are no longer good now. With a population of one million or so, they are no longer the Netherlands a hundred years ago.

It's just that the residual power is still there, and people's consciousness always lags behind reality.

In addition to the existence of the Anglo-Dutch Alliance, if Dashun can really contain the Netherlands in Southeast Asia, it will undoubtedly be extremely beneficial to France.

In any case, as long as Dashun goes to war with the Netherlands, the stock market in Amsterdam will plummet, and it will seriously affect the trade business of the East India Company. It is not an exaggeration to say that the aorta has been cut.

However, alliances are alliances, and Dashun is impossible to be a rich man.

Liu Yu must also remind the French about this.

"Mr. Count Maurepa, I must make it clear that under Dashun's free trade system, any sanctions against Britain and the Netherlands are actually sanctions against Dashun. Although it may damage its East India Company, Dashun will not get any benefits. Instead, it may cause tens of thousands of people to lose their jobs and lead to a backlog of porcelain, silk, tea, etc."

"Therefore, the situation in Europe has nothing to do with Dashun. Once a war breaks out, there is only one choice, which is to restore the natural border of the Ming Empire in Southeast Asia during its heyday. This is the only benefit that war may bring."

"Dashun will not sanction a country tens of thousands of miles away for any ally, but if this ally has a common enemy with us, that's another story."

"What I want to say is: Dashun will choose a wartime ally, not a commercial ally that joins a tariff sanction agreement. Dashun does not need import tariffs or mercantilism."

In fact, Dashun has few cards to play now, except for going to war to occupy land.

Trade sanctions are actually sanctioning themselves

After all, the Nanyang trade is the first central bank of the Dashun Empire, and the Dongyang trade is the second central bank. The second central bank may be replaced by the copper mines in Yunnan in a few years, but as long as Dashun still pays taxes with silver, the first central bank cannot be closed.

So Liu Yu hopes that the French will not have unrealistic fantasies, such as Dashun and France reaching a very close alliance, being a slave to France, and sanctioning the British and Dutch East India Company.

France has taken all the benefits, but Dashun has no benefits at all.

At the same time, it also tells France that Dashun is eager for war, and the basis of Sino-French cooperation is war, not trade.

France is not qualified to discuss trade issues with Dashun.

Count Maurepas thought about what he had seen along the way, and the unsolvable trade deficit with China that Dupleix said, and finally understood what Liu Yu meant.

Obviously, Dashun is likely to go directly to the Southeast Ocean to fight at some time in the future, such as when the Netherlands is involved in a war in Europe.

And the most likely opponent of the war that the Netherlands may be involved in is France.

However, does Dashun really have the ability to defeat the Dutch East India Company in a short period of time? Or, can Dashun maintain its war against the Netherlands until the end of the Franco-Dutch War?

This is related to how much France is willing to pay for Dashun's naval construction and the closeness of cooperation.

"The Dutch East India Company is still very powerful."

Count Maurepa reminded Liu Yu.

Liu Yu knew about the Dutch East India Company, and now even the term "skinny camel" cannot be used.

From some old data on Dutch trade in China collected by Tian Ping, and the intelligence collected by the trading company in Southeast Asia, the vulnerability of the Dutch East India Company has been fully seen.

About twenty years ago, when the Austrian Ostend Company had not yet closed, a very special trade war broke out in Guangdong.

The Ostend Company, which had just arrived in Guangdong, taught the Dutch a lesson with a fierce dragon crossing the river.

It raised a large amount of funds and bought out all the tea in Guangdong that year and shipped it to Europe for dumping.

At that time, there were Chinese merchants going to Batavia. The tea smuggled there would be cheaper than the customs duties of the Dutch buying it directly in Guangdong. In addition, they could also get some return goods such as spices.

The sudden intervention of Ostend Company led to a sharp drop in the price of tea in Europe that year: for Ostend Company, it may not have sold such high-profit products before, so it was enough to make a little profit; but for the Dutch East India Company, which had a huge organizational structure, the crew carried smuggled goods, had been addicted to corruption for many years, and the bosses made high quotations for the public and the private, if there was no huge profit, there would be losses.

In order to deal with it, the Chinese merchant ships that went to Batavia that year were tortured by the Dutch in various overt and covert means. They did not rob them directly, but dragged their feet and forced the merchants to lower their prices.

The merchants could not leave or sell, so they could only stop the loss and sell the tea at a very low price.

Batavia's reputation in the hearts of Chinese smugglers was ruined, and since then, no ships have shipped tea to Batavia.

No matter how much the Dutch said, the merchants in Fujian and Guangdong were not fools. After suffering losses, they would not go there anyway.

In addition, the Dashun's open-trade policy forced the Netherlands to send ships directly from Amsterdam to Guangdong for trade, bypassing Batavia as a transit station.

Batavia's status is not as good as before, and the garrison and prosperity are very different from before.

The Chinese who immigrated there generally cut sugarcane, or were separated to be lackeys. They were exploited less before, but now the status of the transit station has dropped sharply, so they will try every means to make money to maintain the system, especially from the local Chinese.

The local Chinese are now quite dissatisfied with the Dutch, which is a human heart that can be exploited.

Another thing is that the Dutch East India Company is composed of seven provincial chambers of commerce.

The company's board of directors clearly favors Amsterdam, and the tea trade with China was handed over to Amsterdam. Later, in order to attract people to join, Zeeland was added.

Batavia was jointly funded by the seven provincial chambers of commerce. Now you Amsterdam and Zeeland have secretly bypassed the other five provinces and directly transported tea to Guangdong. Then you two provinces have made money, but what about Batavia, which we seven provinces have jointly funded?

Indeed, the tea from Batavia was old tea because it had to be transported here first and then returned to the Netherlands. The Ostend Company used the new tea of ​​that year to suppress the price in Europe. The old tea was indeed not good.

Indeed, Batavia’s tea was more expensive and lost. The crew brought more private goods and the governor stored some in the small warehouse. In theory, it was more cost-effective to transport tea directly, but wasn’t this "competing with the people for profit"? How many people’s interests were involved?

Indeed, sometimes in order to ensure the monopoly of the European market, it was necessary to transport tea at a loss to ensure that there would not be a market vacuum that was squeezed out by companies like Ostend. This was beneficial to the company in the long run, but it was quite disadvantageous to Batavia. The company was stingy and did not subsidize Batavia. Now the financial path was cut off again. What was going on?

Besides, this was equivalent to Amsterdam and Zeeland robbing the tea trade of the original seven provinces.

Amsterdam and Zeeland transported tea without passing through Batavia and without using pepper and spices from Batavia, so they could only use the company’s cash.

Because China didn't want woolen cloth, but pepper and silver, but pepper was in Batavia, which was jointly managed by seven provinces, and Batavia was not allowed to transit. If Amsterdam sailed directly from the Netherlands to Guangdong, it could only use silver.

The company's silver flowed out quickly, and the crew on the tea-carrying ships in Amsterdam were frantically bringing their own goods and borrowing the company's ships to sell their own goods.

After a long time of tossing, they could only use a compromise: it was obviously very profitable to transport tea directly in Guangdong, but they had to hand over Guangdong's tea imports to Batavia.

Batavia sent ships to Guangdong, half of which returned directly to the Netherlands, and the other half returned to Batavia first, first ensuring the private goods and small treasuries on the ship, and then loading some private tea from Batavia's small warehouses, and then returning to the Netherlands, selling at the company's fixed price.

It was this compromise that made Liu Yu see the fragility of the Dutch East India Company.

Once a company does not pursue profit as its first priority, but chooses internal quarrels and compromise, and ultimately does not have the courage to thoroughly rectify Batavia, it proves one thing: this once efficient company is now finished, no different from the end of the Ming Dynasty.

It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a paper tiger.

How rotten it is cannot be seen from the outside, but it can be seen from the degree of policy compromise.

If this is still the East India Company that was born a hundred years ago, this situation would never happen.

This compromise also proves one thing, that is, the company's cash flow is definitely a big problem.

If there is no problem with the cash flow, it is very profitable to buy tea directly with silver. It is impossible that there is not enough money to buy tea every year, and it has to use Batavia's tropical goods and tin blocks to make up for it.

The company may still have many assets in theory, but the cash flow is definitely insufficient, and there is a problem with capital turnover. Otherwise, it would not be possible to compromise with Batavia to this extent.

If it were not for the huge space left by Britain's high tariff policy on tea for Dutch smuggling; the Netherlands avoided the war and traded with all its strength during the Seven Years' War and continued its life for a few years, it might have gone bankrupt long ago.

Now this paper tiger is still used to scare the French. This paper tiger is also the basis of the Sino-French cooperation that Liu Yu has promoted this time.

As long as the French make bigger moves in Europe, Liu Yu will take the opportunity to attack Japan and go to Southeast Asia, and destroy the cash flow of the Dutch East India Company in a two-pronged way. If it doesn't go bankrupt, it will be a miracle.

If a company goes bankrupt, the Netherlands is still in the interregnum period, there is not even a dictatorial prince, and each province is independent. No one can save this company.

For this reason, Liu Yu took this opportunity to make a secret promise to the French delegation.

"Count Morpa, Dashun can guarantee that as long as there is a war in Europe, as long as France declares war on the Netherlands during the war, Dashun will immediately find an excuse for war and declare war on the Netherlands alone, rather than participating in the European war as an ally of France."

"But this does not affect the substantive issue. As long as Dashun declares war on the Netherlands, it will never make peace alone and withdraw from the war before destroying the entire rule of the Dutch East India Company in Southeast Asia. Because for Dashun, it is either to take back the political legacy of the Ming Empire in Southeast Asia, or to invest millions of taels of silver in military expenditures in vain and gain nothing. There is no middle option."