Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1046 On the Bank of the Wujiang River ([-])

The time has entered September, and it is already the end of winter and the beginning of spring in the eastern prairie.In Daxing County, which has a relatively warm climate (the No. 18 county-level administrative unit in the country, it was just established earlier this month and has four townships under its jurisdiction: Daxing Town, Juegang Township, Fu'an Township, and Yidu Township, with a total population of more than [-] people. ) and its surrounding areas, spring seems to come earlier - the subtropical marine climate makes the weather here all year round very mild, no hot summer, no cold winter, a lot of precipitation, green trees, farmland everywhere, cattle and sheep Group, there is no reason why it developed into the second largest city in Uruguay in history.

It has been more than a year since Sun Chengren came to Daxing County again. This time, he not only brought his own family over, but also a few single young people from the tribe who came to help, which can be regarded as laying the foundation for the Sun family to take root in the east bank.Sun Chengren even thought that after a few years, when the business here reached a certain scale, he would ask Ningbo or even Suzhou to find a way to get some old masters to come over and sell the pickled products and candied food that the Sun family was famous for. The promotion to the east coast has made Sun Chunyang's South Store more and more famous and its position more and more stable.

In fact, the reputation of Sun Chunyang Nanhuo Store is already very good now, not to mention the four major towns in Daxing County—after more than two years of development, Sun Chunyang Nanhuo Store has become a place that is not as famous as the state-owned department store here. The similar famous shops are in Yuexi Township, Fangniugou Township (a newly established settlement with a small population, located near the small town of Ballenting), and Two Tree Township (located in later generations) Near the small village of Quintana, the population is also small) In these three places, Sun Chunyang Nanhuo Shop is also quite well-known, thanks to the fact that they have a large number of special products from the Far East—mainly bear fur, green fox fur, mink fur There are also high-grade furs not found in South America, such as tiger skin, silk, brocade, silk and other fine textiles, tea, medicinal materials, jewelry, jade, oriental handicrafts and other gadgets.

From the products sold in the store, it can be seen that the shop owner actually produces mid-to-high-end products, and the target customers are mostly high-income people in various villages and towns. Therefore, the two are currently in peace and can coexist at the same time.What's more, Sun Chunyang Nanhuopu experienced another capital increase and share expansion at the beginning of this year. The Wujiang District Administrative Office gave some preferential policies. At the same time, it also took out three old merchant ships auctioned by the navy and some cash and goods. % of the shares became the third largest shareholder, and its largest shareholder is still the Heishui Pioneering Team Government in the Far East (accounting for 20% of the shares), and the second largest shareholder is the children of the Sun family (accounting for about 35% of the shares together) ), Shao Shude, Wei Boqiu, Liang Xiangjian and other military and political officials in the Far East combined accounted for about 30% of the shares. In addition, they also sold 10% of the shares in the East Bank to raise funds. The proportion of state-owned shares is also quite high, which has injected new impetus into their development.

After the capital injection by the Wujiang District Administrative Office, Sun Chunyang Nanhuopu now has five old sea-going ships, including two-masted ships (about 200 tons) and three-masted ships (300-400 tons). After the refurbishment, the ships are currently in good condition, and they are all ships capable of oceangoing voyages.They have almost finished recruiting sailors now, three or five poor students who graduated from the nautical school, seven or eight down-and-out European sailors, a few good pirates, and more than a dozen Bezimisaraka recruited from New China The sailors, together with the Ming sailors secretly recruited by the Sun family from Nanzhili (they still need to learn how to operate a Western-style sailboat), can almost fool five half-old and not new merchant ships.

Among the five ships, two three-masted merchant ships photographed at Yancheng Port in 1652 had already made an ocean voyage from Araucan Port to Ningbo Fuding Seaport—with good luck, they returned safely and did not It sank on the way, and brought a large amount of in-demand oriental goods, as well as about a hundred immigrants from the Ming Dynasty.These immigrants are the servants, tenants, villagers and clansmen of the Sun family in Suzhou Prefecture. Taking advantage of the last battle of the Yangtze River, when the East Bank army "ravaged" the south of the Yangtze River and the chaos, they took the opportunity to come to Ningbo Mansion under the control of the East Bank. , After a little rectification, they all boarded the ship and went to the east bank to settle down.

At present, these more than [-] people are roughly distributed in Araucan Port, Jingjiang Port and Daxing Port, serving as clerks, bookkeepers, laborers, merchandise salesmen, and purchasers of Sun Chunyang Nanhuo Store (there are only these three branches in South America at present). Waiting for various jobs, he is still working for the Sun family.The behavior of the Sun family certainly attracted the attention of the local syphilis patient statistics and investigation bureau, so under the interference of these spies, many of the Sun family's former domestic slaves were forcibly released from their personal vassal relationship and became East Bank slaves. Then they moved to other villages and towns, so as not to form a local powerful clan with the Sun family as the core after development-this obviously made Sun Chengren, the head of the Sun family here, quite helpless. He even had to recruit Two bankrupt Italian businessmen came to work as bookkeepers.

However, despite being warned by the Mei agency, Sun Chengren still intends to continue transporting people from the south of the Yangtze River to the east bank, because this kind of behavior of transporting people to the east bank is not only profitable (the officials of the immigration department will count it, a young and middle-aged Men and women will be rewarded with 60 yuan, children will be rewarded with [-] yuan, and the elderly will only be given [-] yuan unless they are valuable ("meaning"). Going to open a branch to buy special products such as precious ambergris (a by-product of whaling) and whale skin will naturally require a lot of manpower.After all, it is said that the Nantie Subsidiary is a "land outside the culture", and the policy is different. They completely allow the Sun family to come here to live in groups, which is undoubtedly extremely beneficial to their family's development.

Sun Chunyang South Cargo Shop is not far from the wharf, and it is also the most prosperous place in the area, where river transport, railway transport and road transport meet, businessmen from all over the country gather here, and all kinds of goods at home and abroad You can probably find it here too.With such conditions, commerce developed unsurprisingly. Metal products, fuel (low-quality coal), grain and livestock in the Northwest Reclamation Bureau area, building materials, logs, paper, rubber, etc. Products and foreign goods transshipped from Qingdao Port are all enthusiastically sought after by the people here. From this we can also see how important the excellent location advantage is for the development of a city.

The three merchant ships of Sun Chunyang Nanhuopu are moored in a river bend not far away at this moment.The river bay was cleared by the Port Authority with dredgers day after day for two or three years. For medium-sized sea-going ships with a draft of about 3 meters, there is no pressure at all to berth and drive.Of course, if it is a large sea-going ship with a draft of 3-4 meters, then it has to be weighed. They sail to Fuguo Port without pressure, because the water depth of the Wujiang River there is generally between 4.3-4.5 meters; but in Fuguo ——The average water depth of the Wujiang River in this section of Daxing is only about 3.6 meters. Therefore, it is not a small risk for large sea-going ships of more than [-] tons to sail in, because they will run aground if they are not careful.It is also because of this that the three major domestic shipyards have begun to develop large-tonnage, shallow-draft flat-bottomed inland river/offshore transport ships, just to strengthen the handling capacity of Daxing Port. After all, this is the end of the Northwest Railway, and its location is extremely important. .

The merchant ships of Sun Chunyang's Nanhuo Shop were naturally not large sea-going ships, so it was very smooth to sail in safely with the help of the southwest wind.At this moment, the cabins of these three ships have been loaded with various commodities, mainly high-quality metal utensils, printed cloth, dyes, soda ash, dyed leather goods, and special foods that are easy to preserve, and other miscellaneous things that cannot be bought in the Far East. In addition, there are even some livestock ready to be pulled to the Far East for breeding, which can be described as a dazzling array of everything.

These merchant ships will pull anchor and set sail in these two days, and then go south along the mighty Wujiang River, enter the broad La Plata River, and then go directly to Xingnan Port, a subsidiary of the South Railway—where it is gradually It has become a very prosperous place - after unloading all kinds of goods, some local specialty products (mainly Peruvian products) are shipped back to the east coast for domestic sales. After all, the ship can't run empty when returning. .

In principle, the goods unloaded by these three small merchant ships are transported to the port of Araucan on the Pacific side via the Southern Cone Railway. Because this is a single-track railway, the train failure rate is high, and the amount of goods to be transported is too large, so it is simply too busy. Now the Southern Railway Company is seriously considering further raising funds to double-track it— —, then it can only be transported to the Port of Araucan via the Xingnan Highway, which is roughly parallel to the railway line, and then the local Sun Chunyang South Cargo Shop will receive it, and finally find a way to ship it (the other two merchant ships are usually parked here, Specially run the Pacific route) to Ningbo in the Far East.

And when they return from the Far East (the voyage period is generally one and a half to two years), they will also carry a large amount of in-demand oriental commodities with them, as well as the Ming immigrants who are most valued by the Executive Committee—the private shipping of the East Coast Republic of China. Business is accumulated bit by bit from here.It is believed that with the passage of time and the rapid economic development of the East Coast Republic, Sun Chunyang South Cargo Shop and its affiliated ocean shipping fleet will also grow stronger in the rounds of economic tides, and eventually become a dazzling large-scale enterprise.

(End of this chapter)