And the god king Pasai Thong bixia as usual up chuáng, open the window of the dormitory and look out the window The entire city of Ayutthaya is still filled with sunlight, Ayutthaya, the Chinese are used to call it "The Great City", located on the island in the middle of the river KC kilometers northeast of modern Bangkok. Ayutthaya means "City of Eternal Victory". It was the center of the Ayutthaya dynasty, which ruled for 600 years in Thai history.

Although the current Kingdom of Siam has not yet been unified, the city of Ayutthaya has become magnificent, and the urban area has expanded to 5 square kilometers. According to the British, the population is roughly the same size as London, that is, at least 200,000 people.

Even by the standards of the Ming Dynasty, a city with a population of 200,000 is very large. By its heyday, it was said to have a population of one million.

The royal palace in the city is magnificent, the pagoda is like a forest, and the prosperity of commerce is second to none in Southeast Asia. Since the city of Ayutthaya was built on a large island where the three rivers meet, water transportation was very developed, and seafood from the south and agricultural products from the north were gathered and traded here, and even products from as far away as China were transported from the sea.

But the god-king had no intention of admiring the magnificence of his capital: early in the morning he heard a report from the palace that five days earlier a fleet had come from outside the mouth of the Chao Phraya River, and it was quite large. The point is to fly a flag that they have never seen before. They are currently moored on the banks of Thonburi on the Chao Phraya River.

Pasaitong had been cautious of outsiders during this time, and last year, Yamada Nagamasa, a great merchant in Ayutthaya, died of wounds and infections after a rebellion with the Siamese army on an expedition to Liukun, and although he repeatedly assured Yamada's Japanese that he had not poisoned Yamada, he still did not gain their trust. His ministers had long been jealous of the Japanese business in Ayutthaya, so they instructed the army to burn down the Japanese town at the south gate. The conflict was further resolved, and the Japanese volunteers and merchants fled to Cambodia, and just before the mess could be cleaned up, an envoy had sent news from Edo a month earlier: Shogun Iemitsu, angry at what had happened to merchants with shogunate backgrounds in Siam, had officially terminated trade with Siam, which made the young king's life even more sad: the Burmese had become more and more aggressive in the west, having conquered Chiang Rai and then Chiang Mai.

Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai were not part of the Ayutthaya dynasty, although they were not part of the Ayutthaya dynasty, although they belonged to the Ayutthaya dynasty. The two sides were closely aligned, and the Chún was not difficult to understand for the rulers of the Ayutthaya dynasty of Chinese descent.

The native Siamese natives were brave but did not have high-quality weapons. Metallurgy and handicrafts in Southeast Asia have always been backward. In the past, swords were imported from Japan for export, and Japanese silver was used to buy gunpowder, arquebuses, and cannons from the Portuguese and Dutch. As soon as Japan's trade was cut off, it was gone.

Thonburi knew that there were only a few small fishing villages, and a small number of overseas Chinese merchants from the Ming Dynasty. Compared with a large port like Pattani, where merchants gather, Thonburi is relatively much more cold. This is because most of the products that can be exported here are rice and timber. Foreign merchants are more keen on the spices of the South Seas.

He began to ask the messenger for information about the group.

He had always learned that this group of people was different from the overseas Chinese merchants of the Ming Dynasty, although they had the same faces and used Chinese characters, they did not look like the Ming people in terms of speech or body shape, not to mention the short hair, which was very similar to some of the Siamese generals.

"They said they came here to buy our rice, and they were willing to trade with us with silver and weapons if we wanted to." After speaking, the messenger presented the sample given by the Australians to the god king: a standard machete, and the god king Bixia carefully played with the knife, this knife was not much better than the Japanese knife.

This knife is the standard machete of the 1631 type mass-produced by Lingao. Used to replace the Model 1629 Machete. It is widely used in the army and militia, especially in the navy and navy, and is also used in agricultural production, and is a dual-use product. Except for a few differences in the shank, the blade is identical.

Because it is a practical tool for mass production, the materials and processes are simple. The blade is a blade that is directly stamped out, and after heat treatment and bluing process, the blade is re-shaped and fitted with a handle. Wrap it in oiled paper and put it in a wooden box.

In terms of cost and process complexity, such knives are far inferior to the Japanese swords that were shipped to East and Southeast Asia for sale, but thanks to the high-quality steel manufactured in batches, heat treatment, and chemical treatment, the quality is no worse than that of inferior Japanese knives for three taels of silver.

Pasaytong took care of his officers and took out the knife for "trial" and compared it with the various imported Japanese knives.

After a while, the officer came to report that the quality of the knife was no worse than that of the sword. The weight is much lighter, too.

This made Passetton moved and asked for the price.

They said that every hundred handfuls of silver, a hundred taels of silver, were a little astonished. You must know that Japanese swords are really not cheap, and the inferior Japanese swords are 100 300 taels, and the most inferior ones, the last Japanese swords, which are "ordinary self-defense weapons for the common people, not the weapons of the militaristic state", are sold for one or two pieces of silver.

In contrast, the price quoted by Ping Qiusheng was very conscientious, one hundred taels per hundred knives. Equivalent to the price of the worst Japanese sword. The price ratio of xìng was so high that the god king Pasaitong asked the price twice in a row.

"The Australians said, "There are as many knives like this, and spears like this." Just give them enough rice and the privilege of suggesting trading posts and trading in Thonburi. The envoy received the benefits of the Australians, and seeing that the king was thoughtful, he quickly explained.

"Then let Voron do it." Even if the quality of the Japanese sword is not as high, as long as there is enough supply, it is what the kingdom needs most, and the rice is here, and if the Burmese from the west continue to attack, it will be cheaper for them.

Thonburi was on the west bank of present-day Bangkok, but due to the resources and geographical conditions of Pattani, it did not develop in this time and space, and his rise was still after the fall of the Ayutthaya Dynasty. Now, with the exception of the Ayutthaya region, the core of Siam, the southwestern provinces can only be counted as a federation or confederation under the Siamese banner.

In the 16th century, there were three kingdoms in Thailand: Sukhothai, Lannatay, and Phayao. According to Chinese customs, it can be called Santai. Santai is an alliance relationship. Later, the Ayutthaya (Ayutthaya) dynasty, founded by King Um hang, a descendant of Chinese merchants, replaced Sukhothai and defeated the Khmers, making Sukhothai a vassal of Ayutthaya, and Lannatai survived as a vassal of the Siam dynasty until the 19th century.

The area of Bangkok in later generations was still a jungle and did not exist in Bangkok itself, and the only port available was Thonburi on the west bank of the Chao Phraya River. However, it is the outlet of the Chao Phraya River, and its geographical location is very important to absorb the large amount of rice from the Chao Phraya River basin.

The northeastern part of Thailand is a plateau terrain, which is not suitable for cultivation due to the mountainous barrier, which has formed a rainy climate, dry summers, and excessive water volume in the rainy season. Thailand's rice exports in the world's top three in the original time and space are entirely due to the banks of the Chao Phraya River, as long as the outlet of the Chao Phraya River is controlled, then the energy will continue to absorb Siam's rice, and when the engine operation is completed, the layout of Southeast Asia will begin, and the food problem in South China can basically be solved once and for all. According to the data found by Ping Qiusheng from the Great Library, in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, 10,000 stone of rice was exported from Siam to Guangdong every year, which is equivalent to half the height of all Japanese stones! Even if only one-third or even one-quarter of such resources are controlled by the crossing group at this time, it is enough for the population of Hainan Province to eat for a year, and the rest is only a matter of capacity.

In addition to surveying the hydrology and surrounding terrain, the survey team also sent a survey team to investigate other local resources, and the team sent out a surprise to Ping Qiusheng within two days.

"Lao Ping, what do you think this is?" Liu Zheng of the investigation team shouted in a tone of surprise, and a piece of yellow sè irregular crystals in his hand was in his hand.

"Amber? Where did you get this thing? ”

"This is potash to be exact, carnallite. There's a lot of land around here, so it's no wonder the ground here is so fertile. "Liu Zheng has been in the exploration team for a long time, and he is also very familiar with ore, and he is not as simple as he used to be.

"That's good stuff." He said. Liu Zheng has a lot of dealings with the industrial and agricultural sectors because of his prospecting. The elders of the agricultural industry often mentioned the problem of chemical fertilizers.

Fertilizers are not just nitrogen fertilizers, but also potassium and phosphate fertilizers. The supply of potash has been in short supply relative to phosphate fertilizers, which are supplied with struvite and phosphate rock. This shortage cannot be solved by simply upgrading the industry, not only in Lingao or Hainan, but also in the whole of East Asia, where there is a shortage of sufficient potash mines. Lingao's source of potash is from the refined salt industry in Mayuan. However, the production is very low. For every 100 tons of refined salt produced, two tons of potash can be produced. It's a drop in the bucket.

If a stable potash industry could be obtained from Siam, it would be of great help to the whole agricultural production. If it can be mined in batches, as a gift to the Ministry of Agriculture, and processed into potash fertilizer and all used in the cooperatives in Qiongshan, the more sensational the immediate effect of the cooperatives, the more successful the series of agricultural reforms carried out in Qiongshan will be.

At Liu's suggestion, potash ore was added to the list.

Potash mines in Thailand are mainly located on the Nakhon Ratchasima Plateau, and there are many scattered mines. However, potash deposits are generally buried deeper, mostly 300 meters underground, but due to the karst terrain, there are still some veins out of the ground, and the mining conditions are okay.