Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 956 Enterprises and Competition ([-])

On February 1653, 2, Daxing Port.

The eastern prairie in summer has always been relatively dry, which can be seen from the steep drop in the water level of the reservoir outside the city.Fortunately, it is not far from the Wujiang River, where there are many rivers and lakes. People on the east bank have built more than one small reservoir after transforming the terrain. Therefore, whether it is agricultural irrigation or industrial and agricultural water use, it is basically not affected.

As an important town in the northwest of China's East Coast Republic, after several years of development, Daxing Port has not only slowly increased its population to more than 3600 people (including the surrounding villages), and its business has gradually prospered. Get up - of course this is a relative term.

"It's a despicable wilderness, but it has flourished like this in just a few years. The court of the East Coast Kingdom is quite capable, and it's no wonder that it can be as powerful as a bamboo in Daming..." Sun Chengren, who had lost a full ten catties, was sitting in the city of Daxing Port Inside the "Sun Chunyang South Store" in the shop, he said thoughtfully.

He is going to return to Daming today, but it is not that he will never go back, but that he will discuss with his family the operation of several stores on the east bank after returning, and at the same time, he will also inform shareholders (mainly military and political officials from Heishui) ) to make a report in order to finalize some things thoroughly.In addition, he also planned to take this opportunity to bring two more youngsters from his family to help here. If possible, his own family would better take them along with them, and he would simply settle down here on the east bank in the future.

Sun Chengren came to the East Bank in early March last year and has lived in the East Bank for ten full months.The reason for the delay for such a long time is that apart from the complicated business of opening a store, the more reason is to recruit enough sailors who can sail on the ocean.In the middle of last year, Sun Chengren spent a whopping 3 yuan to buy four "dirty ships" disposed of by the navy at a low price.After that, he spent another 3 yuan to completely overhaul the three ships, and replaced the equipment on the ships with new ones. Can't recognize the side.

But it is easy to buy and maintain a boat—as long as you have money—but it is difficult to gather the manpower to sail the boat.You know, this is the east coast republic where there is a shortage of sailors, not Amsterdam or Genoa where a large number of sailors are unemployed at any time. It is not easy to gather seventy or eighty sailors on four ships.As a last resort, Sun Chengren used the names of Shao Shude, Wei Boqiu, Mao Desheng and other Far Eastern military and political figures, begging his grandfather to sue his grandmother everywhere, digging two corners here, and recruiting two there with a lot of money, and then through the labor broker Mendez from Europe After abducting some bitter Scotsmen, the minimum number of sailors needed to make up the four ships was finally announced, and it was barely announced that they could sail.

For his return trip this time, the four boats cannot be left empty. Except for one boat that was entrusted by the Army Department on the East Coast to transport a whole boatload of munitions, the other three boats were all loaded with luxury goods that were not common in Ming Dynasty: such as South African ivory products, new Gems from Huaxia, ambergris from Baleen Whale Port, some rare woods from the east coast, some high-grade dyed silks, etc. are estimated to be able to sell in Daming.However, with the quantity of these commodities, it is obvious that the cabins of the three empty ships cannot be filled. Therefore, Sun Chengren accepted the task of sending more than 100 soldiers from Bingtuanbao and [-] Guaranis to Australia. Bring the immigration department.

After finishing these things, Sun Chengren planned to return to Daming temporarily, and the return date was set in a few days.In the past few days before leaving, Sun Chengren also took the time to visit "Huo Cadre" who had helped him a lot in the past six months, and then visited several local "yamen", and finally entrusted the currently empty shop to An acquainted businessman took care of him, so he rested his mind and waited for the return date—according to the plan, he will arrive at Qingdao Port tomorrow by a small steamer returning, and then take a regular liner to Yancheng Port, and then depart from there Go south around Cape Horn, and finally return to Ningbo along the Peruvian cold current and the southern equatorial warm current (in the southeast trade wind belt). The entire voyage will take more than [-] days—if all goes well.

"This country on the east bank also puts a lot of emphasis on business, and the status of merchants is far from comparable to that of Ming Dynasty. It's really enviable!" Although Sun Chengren has made up his mind to move to the east bank, it seems that Sun Chengren doesn't regard himself as an important person at all in his subconscious mind. He is from the east bank, and he continued to talk to himself: "In order to develop business, we have built roads all over the country, spent a huge amount of money in the imperial treasury, and even taught good family members business knowledge, this is really..."

Speaking of this, Sun Chengren couldn't help shaking his head. If he hadn't been in business for many years and didn't have too much prejudice against the businessman himself, I'm afraid he would be like those old masters who sighed and said that the world has declined.

The difference in ideology mentioned by Sun Chengren did objectively exist between Daming and the East Bank.What's more, this difference still exists between the countries of the Old Continent and the East Coast—this is by no means a joke. In fact, although the mainstream public opinion in many European countries does not despise industry and commerce as much as Daming, it is true. less hindered the development of industry and commerce in these countries.

For example, Spain, Portugal, and France. It is no exaggeration to say that these countries are in a feudal society. Their outdated concepts and rigid ideologies have completely hindered the normal development of enterprises and economies in these countries, thereby preventing They make the transition to capitalist society.Take France as an example. Although the country's elite began to pay attention to industrial enterprises under the strong impetus of the upper class (Richelieu, Mazarin, etc.), the process was still too slow and there was no Majority.

The most common situation in France today is: every successful businessman will quickly leave the highly competitive and risky industrial and commercial fields, and then invest in noble titles (at this time, French noble titles can be bought, but just like donating officials in the Qing Dynasty, They are despised and have little real power), and then obtain an official position for themselves and their descendants; at the same time, they also invest heavily in land that can bring them continuous and stable rental income, which can be regarded as leaving a way out for themselves.

This situation has intensified in France, so that most French people regard business as a springboard to jump up the social class. Once they achieve their goal, they will do everything possible to elute their identity as a businessman, and then try to mix into the upper class.Their descendants generally seldom inherit their father's business, and most of them enter public institutions and hold some official positions. Relying on the rich inheritance left by their ancestors, they become local gentry, and they no longer have the ability and consciousness to be an entrepreneur.

People of insight in French society once expressed anxiety about this. Some of them once said: Most of the children of Dutch businessmen will inherit their father’s business and start learning relevant knowledge at a very young age. So powerful that they control most of our country's commerce, our merchants can't compete with them, they always look like rookies, almost for generations.

Even in Britain, where merchants have relatively high political and social status, this kind of contempt for industry and commerce has a large market.The representative of mercantilism and the famous East India Company merchant Thomas Meng once said: "Our richest merchants suddenly disappeared. Their sons gave up their wealth, laughed at his father's career, and imagined becoming a more honorable gentleman (although how he squandered his fortune ignorantly, in name only, and ended up following in his father's footsteps by becoming a diligent businessman and running a solid business in order to preserve and enhance his fortune..."

This situation, which worries Meng very much, has almost become the fate of many outstanding British businessmen. Their descendants will often give up business and business, and give up the business that their fathers have run for most of their lives, and then have a bad luck in their delusion to squeeze into the upper class. flow.This has led to the lack of high-quality enterprises in the UK that can compete with the Netherlands. The country's commercial sovereignty was once controlled by the Dutch, and the lesson is not insignificant.

It can be said that in today's Europe, except the Dutch Republic, most businessmen in all countries, after their success, tend to invest their wealth in non-commercial affairs (usually land) in pursuit of status and prestige. return.Only in a place like the Netherlands with a small land and a lot of people, businessmen have no way to invest in land after earning money, so they can only continue to invest in industry or commerce. Over time, a unique business atmosphere in Dutch society has been formed—in this part of the Netherlands In the country of merchants and technicians, commerce is respected to the highest degree, and the society allows merchants to become high-ranking figures. The prestige, social status, and political status of merchants are all very high, which is in stark contrast to other countries.

And this unique social atmosphere has obviously created a large number of well-known enterprises in the Netherlands, such as: De Haier Trading Company, Tripp Trading Company, Amsterdam Exchange Bank, Saldan Shipyard and so on.These long-established and large-scale enterprises are extremely competitive across Europe, defeating countless opponents for the Netherlands and bringing back untold profits.

Fortunately, under the continuous 20 years of "tune-up" by the members of the East Coast Republic, the overall social public opinion has no obvious discrimination against industry and commerce, and many people even have the courage to start a business in order to make money. It can be seen from the popularity of the market that the entrepreneurial impulse of the whole society is very strong.

This may be related to the fact that the immigrants on the east bank were mainly low-level people in Ming Dynasty (mostly farmers, plus a few craftsmen and low-level scholars). They were not as stubborn as local gentry and insisted on old ideas. The place is easier to accept transformation from the physical to the psychological, so the shackles of the old ideas and old systems have been reduced, allowing the East Bank to travel lightly and achieve extremely rapid development-and all of this, if it is in Daming, is obviously It is completely impossible. A single idea to transform the entire society will not be effective for decades or hundreds of years, and the success rate is not very high.

A piece of white paper is good for drawing, not just talking, but it does have its own unique reason!

(End of this chapter)