Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 899 Public Relations ([-])

On December 1651, 12, the temperature in northern France dropped sharply and there was heavy snowfall. A thick layer of ice also formed on the surface of the canal from southern France to the northwest to the sea.So far, the road from the waterway to Paris has been blocked. As a last resort, Frank and Contin could only take a carriage to Paris.

Traveling on a poor road in a carriage without a shock-absorbing system is simply a disaster for travelers. Now Contin, Frank and others are in this disaster.The potholed road stretches all the way to the end of the sky, making everyone passing by want to die and full of resentment, but they can only curse in vain the officials who managed this once-good arterial road, curse them and Mazaran was arrested and put in prison together to receive a justice trial.

"There is a joke in Paris. The Viscount Tibury, who is in charge of road construction, once applied to Prime Minister Mazarin for funds to maintain those potholed roads. As a result, the Prime Minister gave him [-] livres. Haha, God, in a year In a great country with an income of [-] million livres, less than [-]% of the money is spent on roads.” Although Frank’s youngest daughter is already engaged to his old friend, the eldest son of Mo Ming, the president of the Southern Railway Company, Born in France, he still feels embarrassed by the chaos in his homeland, so he can only point out in a joking tone that the road conditions are so bad and he still has no money after all.

Kang Ding also smiled when he heard the words. Of course he knew that 1 livres could not do anything.You must know that when the war has progressed to this day, both France and the Habsburg dynasty have been exhausted, financially impoverished and poor, and the exchange rate of France's main currency, the livre, has plummeted all the way in the Amsterdam market—— The current livre is no longer the "franc" that was strictly minted before the war broke out (4 livre was about 5-4.5 East Bank silver dollars, commonly known as franc), and the inferior currency minted by the monastery of Tours in recent years has become popular (commonly known as Tourliver), the silver content of each Tourliver has plummeted to a shameful 5-[-] grams.

Therefore, now you can easily understand what kind of concept is 2000 Turlives, and what is the actual financial capacity of the Kingdom of France with an annual income of 400 million Turlives!The so-called 2000 million "liver" is only 5000 million "yuan" at best. In the eastern republic (most of which is trade revenue) where the government's fiscal revenue has exceeded 2000 million yuan, the annual revenue of [-] million yuan is actually It's nothing.Today's Spaniards still ship gold and silver bars worth [-] million yuan from the American continent every year, [-] million yuan?hehe!

France is really enough. Although the first half of the 30-year war did not end directly, it kept sending money and goods from the rear to act as the big benefactor behind the scenes; Defeating Spain greatly pushed the border of the eastern region forward.

Of course, what corresponds to the infinite beauty of the French army on the battlefield is the countryside that is increasingly dilapidated due to the blood drawn by the war.For example, as Canting and others have seen along the way, the lands of the provinces in Brittany have begun to be gradually eroded by nobles, hereditary gentry, and emerging gentry.However, most of the land occupied by them by various means was in the hands of small gentry and self-cultivating farmers more than 30 years ago. However, the scale of land in the hands of the emerging country gentry is getting bigger and bigger-unfortunately, the land in the hands of these people basically never pays taxes or only pays a very small part of the tax. This is obviously not a good thing for France's finances. good news.

The situation of French small landowners and self-cultivating farmers is really getting more and more difficult now. They bear the tax burden that has been repeatedly increased due to the war, such as the increased "measurement tax" when buying and selling, and so on.They were powerless against the vicious tax collectors, and many were forced to sell their ancestral property and use the proceeds to rent a large piece of land to grow (obviously, these lands in the hands of the nobles had very little taxation), or simply joined the business—— But in France, where the economy is declining and the leading power of trade is still in the hands of Dutch businessmen, it is also a very risky move to join the business.

"Recently there have been a lot of 'freemen' everywhere - landless freemen - as is happening in some parts of the UK, and these people are now either going to fight in the army, or go out to try their luck, or go sailors, and of course there are people who stay. If you are a beggar in the local area, in short, the current society is much more chaotic than it was more than 30 years ago." Frank looked at the beggars who were often seen on both sides of the road, sighed, and said: "But some people are very happy about it. , such as some handicraft workshop owners, because it means that they can hire workers at a much lower price than before. Richelieu - well, he is dead - and Mazarin, the two prime ministers at this time They should be very happy, they will definitely say, aha, look, French industry has become stronger, their cost is so low, and the products they produce are so many, this is the source of wealth... "

To be honest, the two prime ministers of France—Richelieu in the era of Louis XIII and Mazarin in the era of Louis XIV—had always been very concerned about the development of French industry. They gave those capitalists who responded to the government’s call to develop handicraft factories Great tax incentives, and at the same time helped them solve some raw material problems, and even raised import tariffs on foreign goods to protect domestic industries.Under such a multi-pronged approach, the industry in France finally started stumbling, and is currently concentrated in Paris (arms manufacturing, leather tanning, leather processing, luxury goods manufacturing), Calais (woolten textile industry), Nantes ( Mill milling industry, salt industry), Saint-Malo and Cherbourg (shipbuilding industry), La Rochelle (cotton textile, seafood processing), Le Havre (cotton textile, food processing) and other cities.

And these former self-cultivators who have gone bankrupt and unemployed due to various reasons obviously gave these handicraft factories that require a lot of labor a shot in the arm.What's more, there are still some small landlords who have sold their ancestral property and have brought a lot of money to devote themselves to the handicraft industry, which has injected fresh funds into the country's industry-the funds and labor are available, and now I am afraid that Lack of technology?

"The current handicraft workshop owners are not very concerned about new technologies." Frank said with some helplessness after thinking about it.

His family has a close business relationship with the east coast, and he himself went to the east coast twice by boat. He is one of the rare people in France who "sees the world with his eyes open" in this era.He is very clear that the reason why the industry of the East Coast Republic is so successful is mainly due to the large-scale adoption of new technologies (he has not yet realized the profound influence of the national industrial policy and the social industrial atmosphere on the industrialization process), so he feels that the French capitalists It is completely wrong to give up innovative technology.

However, he also admitted that with the increasingly serious land annexation in France and the increasingly depressed rural agriculture, a large number of bankrupt farmers will definitely provide these factory owners with a lot of cheap labor, which more or less offsets The disadvantages of some French industrial technology backwardness - but at the same time, he also believes that this is not the right way after all. The right way is like the Dutch, who invest a large number of scholars and prestigious technicians, while developing new technologies, and at the same time dealing with various industries flowing from the east coast. (the east coast seems to have a proper term for this called "reverse engineering", because they often "reverse crack" the advanced technology from the old continent that they don't understand), and has achieved fruitful results .

However, the Dutch also have a disadvantage, that is, their labor costs are too high.In the Netherlands, where the land is narrow, the people are poor, and the business is developed, if the profit margin of a certain industrial product is not large enough, it is actually difficult to recruit enough workers to produce it, because the workers can earn more than working in a factory. powerful.And if the factory owners want to raise wages to attract workers, their products will soon lose out in competition with similar foreign products-the Dutch wholesalers are notoriously unscrupulous, they will not be like the British , France advocate the purchase of domestic products.

On the whole, if the Netherlands' technology, sufficient capital, and broad sales channels are combined with France's cheap labor force, then it will definitely be able to burst out with super competitiveness and compete with various foreign industrial products—even With the help of high tariffs, you can wrestle with the goods of the people on the east coast - all of them will be swept out of your own market range, so that you can enjoy the intoxicating and lucrative profits brought by the industry.

"The mill technology in the Netherlands is better than ours. It is said that they imported the gears you produced, and at the same time tried to produce them themselves. Their scholars have deepened their research on your technology. A while ago, they rebuilt a road leading to Breda Fortress. The highways you produced are widely used in your hydraulic machinery, the effect is quite good, and the cost is also greatly reduced. This is a sensation in the Netherlands, and even the consul has heard about it. Now many people are beginning to face up to everything about you. Please be prepared to meet a large number of spies, haha." At the end, Frank said in a half-joking and half-warning tone.

Kang Ding was also silent for a while when he heard the words, and he was already thinking about reporting this matter to Mo San who was stationed in Istanbul.

The weather in the next few days was also surprisingly good. Except for the delay due to the war, Contin, Frank and others were on their way all the time, and finally arrived in Paris on December 1651, 12. Orleans, the river node city in the south.

(End of this chapter)