The Imperial Age with the Resurgence of Han Style

Chapter 30 India is the India of Qi people
February 1723, 2, Yunchuan (now Kozhikode, southwest India)
"What are you looking at! A group of untouchables, hurry up and finish unloading the cargo on the ship."

Several merchant ships from the north docked at the dock berths one after another. The coolies carrying goods nearby stopped what they were doing, straightened up, and looked over curiously.A large number of arriving guests were disembarking from the ship, including many veiled women with graceful figures. They couldn't help but stare at them for a while. This move immediately attracted loud scolding from the supervisor.

These ignorant low-class people find everything new when they see it!At this pier, no two ships arrive at the port on any given day, and each of them works so carelessly. If Master Qi sees it, he will definitely make them unhappy.

Furthermore, the ships that arrive here on weekdays are either merchant ships transporting various goods or Qi warships patrolling the coast. Most of the people who land here are rude sailors and mighty soldiers. Where can there be What woman?
So, it is obvious that the woman arriving in Hong Kong today must be a guest of Qi State and must not be offended.

The coolies working on the dock are also a group of poor people, with dark skin, stooped waists, and frowning. They carry the goods unloaded from the boom to the freight carriage one by one, and they have no time to relax for a moment.After being scolded by the supervisor, they carefully peeked at the arriving guests over there while moving the goods, as if they were afraid that they would be beaten with sticks if they showed even the slightest disrespect.

In Yunchuan Port, it is not news that supervisors tortured and beat coolies.Beatings with sticks were commonplace, and it was not uncommon to be hung without food. The coolies' life was far less easy than that in rural villages, but the only advantage was that they could have enough to eat without making any mistakes.

However, the "murderers" who tortured the coolies were mainly local aborigines who were the first to surrender to Qi. Qi nationality management and security personnel at the port were rarely involved. They only focused on the work efficiency and basic safety order of the terminal.

Except for a small number of these coolies who were sentenced to hard labor by the Yunchuan City District Court for committing crimes, most of these coolies came from landless farmers in the hinterland and refugees from war conflicts.

Yunchuan City currently has two areas under its jurisdiction. The south city is the new city and the core area. It was expanded based on the earliest trading station established by Qi State after annexing the Kingdom of Kozhikode more than 40 years ago.More than ten primary industrial enterprises and a large number of commercial facilities, including wood processing plants, building materials factories, rice mills, flour mills, oil pressing plants, copra processing plants, and paper mills, are located here, with a population of about 2. .North City was the original capital of the Kingdom of Kozhikode, and was home to more than [-] local indigenous people. The king who lost his right to rule was still allowed to retain his title, but his "ruling area" was limited to the palace, and he was subject to the government affairs dispatched here by the State of Qi. Official surveillance and control.

Every year, Indian trading companies can harvest a large amount of primary agricultural products such as grain, wood, pepper, cardamom, and coconut here.In addition to personal use, these goods are also sold in large quantities to Persia, Arabia, Africa, Europe and other regions.

Of course, we must not forget the exclusive trade rights on the west coast of India owned by Indian trading companies.This trading company purchases or resells a large amount of daily necessities, cotton textiles, hardware products, machinery and equipment, chemical products, cane sugar, and tea from the country, ships them to the west coast of India for sale, and then purchases pepper, coffee, minerals, indigo, and saltpeter locally. , copra and other commodities are shipped back to the country to earn another sum of money.

This back-and-forth trade has brought huge profits to Indian trading companies over the past few decades and also supported their colonial activities on the west coast and southern regions of India.

However, since more than ten years ago, many domestic businessmen who are jealous of the profits of Indian trading companies and Bangladeshi trading companies have had strong opinions on the large quantities of tropical products dumped into the country. They have joined forces with many parties to accuse these two trading companies of dumping tropical products that have seriously squeezed the Southeast Asian, The market share of similar products in Weiyuan (New Guinea Island) and Luzon and other regions poses a serious threat to national economic security.

The energy of these people's up-and-down connections is still very great, because it involves many places and departments, and is related to the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people.Therefore, even though the Indian Navy Fleet has repeatedly endorsed these two trading companies, it is still somewhat unable to withstand it.

In the end, a compromise had to be reached, and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and the Customs restricted the import quotas for tropical commodities from India and Bangladesh. This undoubtedly had a very serious negative impact on the profits that the two trading companies could obtain.

In view of this situation, Indian business companies are now paying more and more attention to "overseas" markets.They tried every means to recruit agents from Persia, Central Asia, the Ottomans, and Europe, trying to sell tropical goods from the region through their channels.

Their efforts should be said to have had a certain effect, causing the profits of trading companies to rebound to a certain extent, and they have enough power to support trading companies to continue to incorporate one kingdom after another into their colonial power along the coastline and inland rivers. scope.

In the colonial area controlled by the Qi people, the native Qi people and mixed Qi-Indians were naturally free people and ran their own industries in the form of family farms or commodity agents. Some of them were even the second generation living in India. The third generation, even the third generation, not only has a high political status, but also has a relatively comfortable life.

As for the large number of local indigenous people in India, life is not so easy. In addition to paying countless taxes to the princes of the princes (a large part of which has to be transferred to the supervisory agencies stationed by Indian trading companies as protection fees and commission fees), in In the process of selling agricultural products, they had to be exploited by Qi merchants. Their lives were miserable and their living standards were just like that.In certain famine years, they would face even more tragic situations. It is not an exaggeration to say that their children would be sold and their children would starve to death everywhere.In fact, as far as Indian business companies are concerned, they are unwilling to spend money to build so-called colonial strongholds or new settlements, because this involves a series of issues such as initial investment in infrastructure and later defense costs.Moreover, these new colonial settlements are not profitable in the short term. The pitiful land tax alone is simply not enough to offset the huge investment. It is completely a black hole that swallows up funds.

On the other hand, even though a large amount of capital investment was used to build a number of "model" colonial sites and expand Qi's colonial power, in the end it was just a wedding dress for the government.Don’t you see, Anfeng (now Cochin, India), Shanghai (now Mumbai, India), Ningyang (now Pondicherry, India, also translated as local governance), Fengyuan (now Chennai, India, also known as Madeira) Several cities with increasingly prosperous industry and commerce, such as Sri Lanka) and Rongze (now Chittagong, Bangladesh), were unceremoniously taken back by the cabinet government after they successively achieved fiscal surpluses and were directly included in overseas territories.

But no way.

Many domestic businessmen are jealous of the ultra-high profits that trading companies have gained due to their monopoly on trade, and have criticized them collectively. This has forced Indian trading companies to reluctantly open more colonial strongholds in order to please some high-level people who are focused on the layout of the Indian mainland and reduce the risk of being attacked. pressure.

The Navy Ministry, which acts as a platform for Indian business companies, also actively supported this and adjusted its deployment and sent a considerable number of Marine Corps officers and non-commissioned officers to help various colonial strongholds form security groups with certain combat capabilities.

Up to now, the Qi State has more than ten large and small port strongholds on the entire west coast of India, extending from the northernmost Jinmen to the southernmost Nanding Fort in India (today's Gurmali, India), firmly controlling India. Western trade access route.

The two colonial settlements of Diu and Goa held by the Portuguese seemed a little embarrassed when facing the increasingly powerful Qi people.Otherwise, Qi's South African territory and its vassal state in South America, Qingguo, had close trade exchanges with Portuguese Brazil, and their economic ties were deepening day by day, making it difficult for Qi to attack the Portuguese Indian colonies.Otherwise, Qi would have expelled the Portuguese from India long ago.

India is the India of Qi.

Oh, by the way, in view of the increasingly prosperous trade in the Malabar Coast area (that is, the southwest coast of India), some well-informed local Indian businessmen once lobbied Indian business communities and local colonial governments to build one or more roads leading to the hinterland. Railways to speed up the movement of people and materials and further promote trade in the region.

In this regard, Indian business companies are non-committal, or in other words, they are not very interested in it.

Are you mistaken? Our Indian trading company is a trading company. We are here to make money, not to develop the economy for you Indian natives.If it weren't for the many domestic cross-examinations and too much pressure, they wouldn't even plan to carry out major construction of cities and colonial strongholds.Many domestic investment shareholders are extremely sensitive to the operating conditions of trading companies. Spending a large amount of money to build a railway to the inland is an investment behavior that comes at the expense of reducing shareholder dividends, and will be criticized by countless people. .

However, the colonial government stationed in Anfeng showed a strong interest in this, believing it to be the most effective means of encroaching and controlling the inland areas.Therefore, a suggestion was made that Indian trading companies and many local businessmen could pool funds and form joint ventures to build a railway to the hinterland.Of course, the right to operate the railways must be controlled by the colonial government.

After weighing the pros and cons, many local businessmen were hesitant and did not respond.Out of a natural distrust of all rulers, they worried that the colonial government would embezzle or squander the funds they raised.Even if the railway is eventually built successfully, will the government ignore the rights and interests of shareholders and transfer the annual profit funds to other uses?

Just when the Malabar Coast area was hesitant to build India's first railway, news came from Bangladesh that starting from Linchuan (now Howrah, near Kolkata, India), it would lead to the Raniganj coal mining area. Construction of the railway will begin in the near future.

This made the merchants in the Malaba area shocked and shaken.

How about building a section of railway first to test the waters?

(End of this chapter)