Africa in the 17th century was a wilderness. On this continent, except for North Africa, there is hardly any modern civilization, let alone a country with a sense of modern civilization, there are only tribes and so-called emirates in the rainforests and grasslands, and the people here still live a life of gathering and hunting, and their lives have not changed much compared to humans millions of years ago.

In fact, change has always existed, and on the Atlantic coast, the emerging European countries exchanged muskets, cloth, glass beads, and other items from the native tribes for captives in order to meet the demand for labor in the colonies, and shipped them to the Americas as slaves. And in the Indian Ocean, the slave trade, dominated by the Arabs, has been going on for more than ten centuries. They were more brutal than the Europeans – they would castrate slaves.

For Europeans, Arabs, and Turks, Africa was just a place to provide slaves.

When the Ming Dynasty replaced the Dutch in Cape Town over the Cape of Good Hope a decade ago, almost everyone felt that it was just another game participant, nothing more. But to their surprise, from the day Cape Town was renamed the "Colony of Siping", the slave trade was banned - merchants from all countries were forbidden to export slaves from Cape Town.

Prior to this, the Cape Town Colony was the most important port of black slave trading for the Dutch, and most of the tens of thousands of black slaves owned by the Dutch East India Company came from here, and they even traded slaves with the Arabs through it, exchanging black slaves for horses and other goods.

Now, it's all over. At least the slave merchants could no longer transport a single slave from the Xiping colony.

When autumn enters the northern hemisphere, Xiping, located in the southern hemisphere, is entering spring, spring comes early, accompanied by a few warm spring rains, and the city of Xiping is almost overwhelmed by jacaranda, a blue flower native to Brazil, into a blue-purple fairy tale world, which can last for a month.

After leaving the city, pink peach blossoms decorate the roadside fields and hills. At this time, the spring ploughing was almost over, and the moist black soil was ploughed into a long, straight furrow under the plough of the iron plow. Ditches divert water from the river into the fields to ensure irrigation of cultivated land, although the limited rainfall and water resources severely restrict the development of agriculture in Xiping. However, after ten years of renovation, a large area of farmland has still been built around Xiping City.

But more often than not, there are large pastures, some of the best in the world, with thousands of sheep on the pastures, creating a lot of wealth for the immigrants. In this land, scattered with animal husbandry-based farms, each farm, there are similar structures of houses, in front of the house is a ploughed field, the edge of the field is the slow flow of yellow mud river, and the open space in the distance is a pasture that stretches for dozens of miles, on the pasture, sheep are scattered like clouds.

Dressed in a short fight, the house slave smiled and rode on a horse with his chest bare, soaking up the sun. Amid the sound of horses' hooves, the grazing slaves burst into laughter. They are free to enjoy life here.

When the house slaves on the pasture were grazing there, in the big yard, several black women were preparing food, and at noon, someone would bring the food to the pasture and give it to the house slaves who were grazing.

Just as the servant in charge of transporting the food was loading the food into the wagon, suddenly, a burst of horses' hooves came out of the stable, and several horses galloped out of the stable.

"Young master, young master, you slow down......"

The maid who was cleaning the yard shouted loudly, and in her shouting, the three teenagers rushed out of the compound like tigers out of the cage, and galloped between heaven and earth on horseback. On horseback, they laughed happily and galloped unbridled across the pasture.

It seems that this world is their world, and when the grazing house slaves saw the little masters passing by, they all shouted with concern to the little masters to be careful, but the little masters obviously ignored them. Soon they rode across a small river, and on the other side of the river, after another half an hour of running, they reined in their horses, and in front of them was a primitive tribe of natives. Hemispherical adobe buildings are scattered among them, and some dark figures can be seen among them.

Less than half a mile away from the Turen tribe, Zhang Nanlin reined in his horse and stood in a yellow and white daisy that stretched to the horizon. Zhang Nansen and Zhang Nanmu followed, and a black boy who followed behind also reined in his horse and stopped a foot away from them. The three horsemen felt that the reins were loose, so they stretched out their necks to nibble on the tender spring grass, and the hounds lay down again in the dust.

"Do you think we can buy back a few house slaves this time?"

Zhang Nanlin looked at the tribe of the natives and said.

"At past prices, one piece of cloth can be exchanged for two."

"I heard that a few days ago, they just fought a battle with another tribe, and if they go over now, they should change to three, after all, they won."

"Don't you think we can negotiate with them?"

"Indeed, after all, we are their only buyers."

The three brothers, you and I are chatting there, and the black boy in the back is just following behind with a smile, and it is his mission to protect the master.

Although the slave trade is now prohibited in Xiping, on the other hand, in order to develop agriculture and animal husbandry, immigrants also need a large number of domestic slaves - this is the tradition they brought from the Ming Dynasty, according to the Ming law, the Ming people are forbidden to use the Ming family slaves, but in Xiping and other colonies, the native people have naturally become the source of domestic slaves, many countries in Zhuxia even allow the slave trade, but the Ming colonies have banned the slave trade, however, this does not prevent them from obtaining a large number of domestic slaves through the way of "contract".

In Xiping, as long as it is a normal family, there will be at least a few native family slaves. This is also one of the reasons why Xiping Colony has become a "model colony" in just ten years - a sufficient number of domestic slaves, providing sufficient labor for agricultural development.

"We're not the only ones."

Zhang Nansen looked into the distance, and then said.

"Don't forget, in Mozambique, the Portuguese sell tens of thousands of blacks every year, and further north, the Arabs continue to come ashore to plunder slaves."

Although it was difficult to get to Mozambique, they could learn from the newspapers about the slave trade that took place on the northern coast.

"Yes, I remember the teacher saying that last year when he was on the northern coast, he witnessed the Arabs plundering slaves, and a large number of locals were very lively in the market during the local assembly. But the next day, suddenly a large number of Arabs came, and they rushed into the bazaar, and killed at least 10,000 people in the bazaar, and the blood flowed like a river. The main purpose of doing this was to intimidate the locals and force them to submit to them and be taken as slaves. According to the teacher's estimates, for every slave they captured, at least three or four corpses were left behind. ”

Some of the school's teachers, who would accompany trading ships along the coast of Africa during the holidays, had drawn a large number of maps in the past ten years, had first-hand knowledge of the African coast, and even established many trading posts and colonial strongholds at their suggestion.

"Those slave traders are really hateful, I don't know how many cities have been destroyed by such slave traders, and many densely populated places have become sparsely populated because of their attacks......

The words of the brothers made Zhang Nanmu smile.

"That's true, therefore, we are still the only one, because we are the only ones who treat each other with courtesy, our domestic slaves, all of whom are voluntarily sold into slavery, and they are not like the Europeans, who are enslaved as cattle as they can say, and they are not castrated like the Arabs, I have heard that the Moors of North Africa send caravans every year to plunder slaves, and they will castrate the men they plunder into eunuchs, and guess what will they take women for?"

"For what?"

The two brothers looked at the eldest brother curiously, Zhang Nanmu, who was already seventeen years old, was older than them, and naturally had more knowledge.

"As a fertility tool."

"Fertility tools?"

Zhang Nansen wondered.

"Well, in addition to plundering black slaves from the south, they will also plunder white slaves from Europe, you know, aren't there a few white slaves bought from Morocco in the Chen family? Those would mate white slaves with southern slave girls, and the little mixed blood slaves bred for their masters, and those people had whiter skin, and it is said that there slave owners had a special breeding program, and after three generations of mixed blood, the descendants of those southern slave girls did not look like blacks......"

The eldest brother's words made Zhang Nanlin laugh and laugh.

"According to you, they don't treat these people as human beings at all, they are just a herd of animals."

"Indeed, when I went to Morocco on a ship last year, I heard from the white slave that his master had about 15-16 moles and black slave girls, and that he always assigned the white slave to breed with them. When it was his turn to "go to work", the master had four slave girls share a room with him and left them a bottle of aged brandy and food. A black eunuch hummed a vulgar ditty and beat a drum outside the door, supervising their man-making labor for the next six days. Just to give birth to a few more slaves for the master......"

Glancing into the distance, Zhang Nanmu said again.

"To them, those people are not human beings at all, they are just animals."

"Master, I've heard of those people."

Suddenly, the black boy behind them spoke.

"When I was very young, my grandmothers used to talk about a kind of man who was dressed in white robes and had a cloth on his head, and they would come on horseback and kill everybody, and they would take people from their homes."

"Zhang Liu, your family seems to be inland, who is listening to this?"

Looking at Zhang Liu behind him, Zhang Nansen asked curiously.

"The grandmothers also listened to their grandmothers, but no one had ever seen them, anyway, everyone knew that they were very brutal."

Zhang Liu, who has been in the Zhang family for ten years, speaks fluent Chinese, if it were not for his skin and appearance, just this official dialect with some Beizhili accent would even make people think that he was from Beizhili.

"When the masters came, the grandmothers were even afraid that you were the traditional white devils, but you wore different robes than them, and you didn't have a cloth on your head."

"Hey, Zhang Liu, how can you compare your master with those barbarians?"

Zhang Nanlin said with a straight face.

"Aren't you afraid of my whip?"

"Little master, please forgive me for saying the wrong thing."

However, Zhang Liu did not feel fear, he knew that the masters were very kind people.

"Big brother, when will your ship depart? Is this time going to Europe, or somewhere? ”

Although he is the eldest son of the Zhang family, Zhang Nanmu did not stick to the farm, as early as three years ago, he was admitted to the navigation school, and in the past year, he has been on the ship, going back and forth.

"Who knows? But I don't want to go to Europe, which means I can't go home. Do you remember what your mom said? Daming is the best place in the world. ”

For every wanderer who is outside, the Ming in their memories has always been the most beautiful, a paradise on earth, and a place that haunts their dreams.

"Well, there will always be a chance to go in the future! Right? However, I bet that Daming's horses are definitely not as fast as ours, and their girls are not as beautiful as ours, and I know very well that in Daming, not all families can use house slaves, but here, even in the poor family, there are house slaves to serve him, so I really don't think like them, I think Daming is heaven, Xiping is not, I dare say, none of them are willing to leave here and go back. ”

Zhang Nanlin's words made the three brothers laugh for a while.

But that's not the truth, although they miss Daming, and even the tombstone is facing Daming, but let them abandon everything and return to Daming, few people are willing, after all, here, even the most down-and-out people live a good life that many rich people in China can't imagine.

"But the teacher said that in Daming, there are the best academies in the world, the best culture, the best music, and there are also very rich natural scenery. Everyone loves Daming. They often talk about the Ming Dynasty, the richness of Jiangnan, and the softness of Jiangnan women......"

"Hmm, you should know what kind of people Mr. Xu's family is. His father was a man of great origin, and he was born with a love for them. Moreover, he is a native of Nanzhili, so he naturally thinks that it is very good there, just like Dad, in the eyes of Dad, Beizhili is also the best! ”

"Because that's our ancestral land!"

Zhang Nansen looked in the northeast direction, then shook his head and said.

"Okay, let's stop thinking about that, let's keep playing, I'm sure I'll win this time!"

Dropping this sentence, Zhang Nansen rode his horse and galloped again......

。 Book Reading House