Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 2020 Upheaval ([-])

Dengzhou in September is the busiest season of the year.

Shiploads of grain arrived at Yantai Port along the northeast wind, and large grain wholesalers sat in teahouses, waiting in full force.The guys and middlemen hired by them ran around, constantly asking for instructions, and finally set a price acceptable to both buyers and sellers, changed hands of the grain, and transported it to a warehouse not far away.

These are all grains shipped from North Korea, the price is not expensive, there are both wheat and rice, very popular with the people of Dengzhou.Of course, for the sake of protecting local agriculture, people on the east coast have quotas for grain imported from North Korea, except in years of bad harvests.If this quota is exceeded, the import tariff will become very high, and the price advantage of North Korean grain will be lost.

The grain carried by the ships that will enter the port is within the quota, and the price is only about [-]% of the local grain, so the profit margin is relatively high, which has caused the looting of grain wholesalers.

The difference from the scene here is that at Yantai Railway Station, which is more than a hundred meters away, the order of purchasing grain is much more orderly.These are local grains transported along the Jiaoyan Railway. The output is huge and the quality is excellent, so they are purchased by a large number of classes with consumption capacity in Yantai and the surrounding areas.

The largest distribution center for local grain is at Taocun Railway Station.All the major grain merchants in Dengzhou have set up points there, and have selected smart and capable shopkeepers to be on duty for a long time to be responsible for the purchase of grain.Thanks to Tianzun, although the weather in Denglai has not been smooth in the past few years, the weather has been helpful. The food production of the two prefectures is stable, and the production and sales of various vegetables and fruits are also booming. The market is booming, and everyone is smiling.

The increase in food production has unsurprisingly brought a torrent of life.The birth rate in Denglai has been stable at a high level for many years. According to a researcher from the civil affairs department, "children are everywhere". Almost every household has raised several children. The population of Denglai is continuously growing After entering, it is already on the verge of an outbreak, and the natural population growth rate is catching up with the mainland on the east coast, and it may reach a level of 4%-5%, which is very alarming.

In order to ensure that the children can grow up normally and not die halfway (this was too normal in ancient times), the Denglai pioneering team government is also trying every means to improve the sanitation of the two prefectures.The peace agreement signed with the Qing Dynasty gave them a good external environment, so they cut some military investment and began to build modern sewage facilities in many major cities to ensure that urban residents would not be violated by polluted water bodies.At the same time, a more hygienic way of life was also taught to many urban or rural residents by the medical propaganda team, which made cholera, dysentery and other diseases that frequently occurred in the Qing, Shun, and Ming states a lot less in the east coast jurisdiction. The number of residents who died due to these has been greatly reduced.

Take this crowded pier as an example.All kinds of wastewater generated by the teahouse are dumped into a small culvert beside the road, instead of being directly splashed on the road as it was decades ago.The culverts are also regularly cleaned to ensure that they will not be clogged and silted up by various types of domestic waste, which will cause sewage to overflow to the road.

Residents in Yantai, Jiaozhou and other places have basically gotten used to this way of life, and have truly realized that these good living habits are indeed helpful to their lives.As the leading big city in Denglai, the residents of Yantai and Jiaozhou can be said to be no worse than the residents of many local cities in this respect.Their per capita monthly income has reached 4-5 yuan, and they have passed the early stage of ignorance and backwardness. They have begun to lose more of the medieval color and entered the ranks of more modernization.In this regard, Yantai and Jiaozhou already have the characteristics of many local cities on the east coast. If they build more hospitals, factories, schools, libraries and research institutions, and improve their infrastructure, then they will have the same characteristics as the local cities. The city is no different.

Of course, the Denglai pioneer team government has been working hard in this direction over the years.In addition to the expenditures that must be spent on immigrants, the Denglai pioneer team has reduced military expenditures for three consecutive years, stopped hostile activities in Qingzhou and Liaodong, and the navy rarely wandered around the Yellow Sea. put into construction.And this seems to be the main reason why the local people of Denglei are increasingly supporting this government—financial taxes are collected from the people and used by the people, which should be the case.

Therefore, someone once joked that the Qing and Shun kingdoms had always fantasized that when their armies entered Denglai and Ningshao in the future, the local people would support the old and the young and kneel down to welcome the master of the king, but the reality might surprise them. Not only will the common people not welcome them, but they will respond to the call of the pioneering team government, joining the army and fighting against them.The Qing and Shun countries had no choice but to win militarily if they wanted to conquer these places. Even raising the banner of nationalism would have little effect, because the government of the Denglai Pioneering Team played the banner of the Miao people of the former Song Dynasty, and they were also of the Chinese lineage. , Naturally, most of them are immune to nationalist ideology.

At the other extreme of Denglai are Lianzhou, Wuzhou, Xunzhou and other places that the people from the east bank had just occupied.The East Bank government has never ruled any areas, and local ordinary people know little about the East Bank, or even know nothing about it.The scholars who hold the right to speak understand more or less, but basically they are all negative things. With their three views, they naturally cannot have a good impression of Dong'an.Therefore, when the army on the east bank captured these areas with lightning speed, the local gentry and scholars were actually very unwilling and tried their best to restore the old order.Even those chieftains who are not very harmonious with the gentry class are not very interested in the East Bank, because the people on the East Bank have always advertised equality, and they are not very interested in the slave-like life attachment relationship (although they also enslave black people). These chieftains can no longer control a large number of population and means of production, because the people on the east bank will definitely liberate them and invest them in the production of the whole society, so this is an irreconcilable contradiction between the two sides.

The gentry disliked the people from the east bank, and the chieftains didn't like them, so it was normal that the people from the east bank did not get the support of the local people in Lianzhou, Wuzhou and other places.Compared with them, although Dashun is also suppressing the Tusi forces, they have at least partly supported by scholars, so the situation is much better than that of the people on the east coast, and they are more at home in the local area.

Some upper classes in Denglei also learned more or less about the situation in the south from the newspapers.To be honest, their perception of this is very complicated, because it is not only related to the fact that they may have to spend money to send troops (some new troops have already boarded at Jiaozhou Port and went south), but more importantly, the construction of places that may be affected And disappointed.

You know, the news that the local government has approved Denglai, Ningshao and other places to introduce various local technologies has been flying all over the sky, and everyone has been gearing up and eager to try.At the same time, the success of the Jiaoyan Railway also made everyone have great expectations for the Pingrong Railway, which is undergoing preliminary survey work, and asked around when it will be launched, so that they can make corresponding preparations.

But what's going on now?There is going to be a war, how can this be possible!Lianzhou, Wuzhou, and Xunzhou are thousands of miles away, so what does Denglai have to do with us?Why use Dunley's tax revenue to go to these places to fight?And let Denglai's disciples go to die. Isn't it good for these people to work locally?If it doesn't work, North Korea, a vassal state, can help send troops!

It can be said that the views of the social elite in Denglei on this matter reflect that their localized thinking is becoming more and more serious.That is, after gaining a certain social status and the right to speak, they no longer keep silent on things that harm their own interests, but make suggestions through various channels, although they may not necessarily be adopted by their superiors.

Compared with them, the Ningshao area, which has always attached great importance to business, may not be so resistant.Some local businessmen regard the occupation of Lianwu area as a rare opportunity to expand their commercial capital to Guangdong, Guangxi and northern Vietnam, so as to get out of such a small place as Ningbo and grow freely in a wider space.Although the gap between the rich and the poor in Denglai, a place dominated by small farmers, is not as wide as that of Ningshao, it is indeed inferior in this kind of expansion ambition, which is quite interesting to say.

Well, let's get down to business.All in all, the colonies in the Far East have different attitudes towards the expansion in the Lianwu area. Generally speaking, Denglai opposes it, Ningshao is neutral, and Heishui supports it. Manmeng has no feeling.Of course, the above is only in terms of the middle and lower classes of society, but it is obvious that power is not in the hands of these people, so the occupation of the Lianwu area should become a reality for a long time.After the approval of the local government, it is unknown whether a new development team jurisdiction may be established, because the location here is really critical. If it is in hand, the influence in the Guangdong and Guangxi regions in the future will not be so great.

Of course, the above things also reflect the ambiguity of the guiding ideology of the East Coast people in mainland China.On the one hand, the local people are afraid that these feudal towns will grow bigger and become difficult to control. On the other hand, they hope that they can maintain considerable influence and deterrence on the surrounding forces, so as to maintain the interests of immigrants and businesses in the local area.The former requires that the Far Eastern vassals should not be too strong, while the latter requires them to have a certain strength. This kind of guiding ideology has led to the current situation, that is, the colonial residents know that you have no idea of ​​​​unifying China—— Of course, both the Qing and Shun countries can pull out hundreds of thousands of well-equipped troops. In fact, the people on the east coast do not have the strength to unify China-then it is better to close the door and live a happy life by yourself, and don't live in a hundred and eight thousand It is a waste of life and money to kill people inside and outside.

This kind of thinking cannot be said to be common, but at least it exists objectively.In order to reverse this situation, it depends on how the guilds of the local executive committee formulate a new Far East policy.

Recently, my family members were hospitalized for surgery, and I also worked overtime every three days, my energy was almost exhausted, and my mind was in a daze all day long.The update may be unstable in the next two days, sorry for that.

(End of this chapter)