The French don't know that the reason why Marin has the confidence to go to France to open a large-scale cooperage is not only that he has the intention of consuming French oak resources, but also that Marin has enough confidence to open a cooperage in France!

Why? Because the North Sea Mint can mint fake French Deniers small silver coins on a large scale! Marin minted a mixture of nickel, copper, lead, and other metals without silver, and the cost is very low.

Thanks to Cuba's laterite nickel mines, Marin has access to nickel ingots, which are much cheaper to mine and smelt than copper. The use of nickel and copper, as well as the use of lead for balancing density, is not very valuable, and the overall cost is lower than that of pure copper.

In other words, the cost of the nickel white copper "French Denier small silver coin" minted by Marin is probably not even one-tenth of the French silver Denier coin, or even lower.

However, the "silver Dniere" minted by Marin at the North Sea Mint was almost as authentic as a fake, making it impossible for the French to distinguish the real from the fake. Even, because it is machine-minted, the quality is much better than the artificial coinage of the official French mint. This is also the reason why Marin deliberately used inferior molds, if he did not deliberately release water, the coinage is estimated to be very exquisite, hanging the original French Denier silver coin.

In other words, Marin wanted to spend money in France to build a cooperage and purchase timber at a very low cost, just ask the North Sea Mint to mint more fake French Denier silver coins.

So far, Marin has ordered the minting of tens of millions of fake "French Denire small silver coins" made of nickel and white copper, with a total value of millions of gold coins. The cost of casting is less than one-tenth of that of France.

In other words, Marin can earn more than 90% of the windfall profits by minting this kind of bad coin, which is recognized by the French market! If it weren't for the inability to keep up with the production capacity and the limited supply of nickel ingots, Marin would have wanted to mint more and more nickel cupronickel "small silver deniers". At the very least, we must also complete the small goal set at the beginning - to mint 100 million French counterfeit silver coins!

Let's think about it, suppose the average daily wage in Germany is 2 pfennigs, which is equivalent to 100 yuan in later generations. The French Denier small silver coin is estimated to be discounted because of its low silver content, but it is also worth about 25 yuan. And minting 100 million fake "silver Denire coins" is equivalent to minting almost two billion worth of currency!

With this money, purchasing wood to make oak barrels in France is not only cheap, but also can be sold for money, which not only hits the shipbuilding potential of France, but also makes a lot of profits, which is like killing two birds with one stone!

……

As for setting up a cooperage in the Netherlands and harvesting local oak resources, it is not very profitable. Because, without the windfall profits of minting counterfeit money, the profits of the cooperage are very limited.

However, because furniture factories had been established in Amsterdam and other places long ago, Marin's spies had already figured out - the Dutch had not many oak resources!

Unlike France, which has a lot of land, the Netherlands is small and densely populated. Therefore, the Dutch region is also like the Central Plains of China, where a lot of trees have been cut down. Although it is not as exaggerated as the difficulty of finding trees in the Central Plains, the area of forests in the country is far from comparable to that of France.

Therefore, Marin did not need to invest too much to fully consume the local oak resources and hit the shipbuilding potential of the Netherlands......

Moreover, Marin clearly remembers that the oak and pine used for shipbuilding in the Netherlands during the period of "sea coachmen" were not domestic, but mainly harvested from the forests of southern Norway and southern Sweden.

Originally, there was no decent shipping industry in the Netherlands, and there were few merchant ships. In the beginning, the Netherlands relied mainly on the wool textile industry in Flanders. Later, in the mid-to-late 16th century, the Dutch maritime industry developed for many reasons.

For example, England's crackdown on the Dutch wool industry! Because Britain strictly restricted the export of British wool to Flanders, forcing the decline of the wool industry in the Netherlands, local capital had to shift the direction of investment. And the highly lucrative maritime trade became an important choice for the Dutch.

Of course, this is inseparable from the support of external conditions......

First of all, around 1500, the Portuguese chose Antwerp in the Netherlands as the wholesale center of the North Sea region of Indian spices, which greatly stimulated Antwerp's economic development. At the same time, it also promotes the development of the local shipping industry. After all, the transportation of spices is also a good business!

Not only that, but the Hanseatic League, which originally dominated the maritime trade in the North Sea and the Baltic region, also committed its own death, and fought many wars for hegemony with the Danes, dragging itself down.

At the same time, Britain also turned against the Hanseatic League, depriving the Hanseatic merchants of their privileges and competing with them......

Thus, in the midst of military conflicts with Denmark and trade conflicts with England, the Hanseatic League, once the hegemon of the North Sea, gradually declined in the 16th century. Of course, Denmark, which fought against the Hanseatic League, did not reap the benefits, and the result of the confrontation between the two companies was to decline at the same time. And this happened to be cheaper than the Netherlands, which had just begun to develop maritime trade at that time.

In other words, the important trade routes in the North Sea and Baltic regions, which the Dutch later controlled, were simply taken from the declining Hanseatic League.

Of course, there is also the fact that in the 16th century, herring stocks were transferred from the Baltic Sea region to the North Sea region near the Netherlands. In short, there are a number of reasons that have contributed to the rise of the Dutch nautical industry, which is full of accidents.

……

That is, it was not the Dutch who wanted to dominate the seas in the first place. It was because the Dutch's former rivals had died on their own, and in the end they cheapened the Dutch.

In terms of their own shipbuilding potential, the Dutch are not qualified for oak resources alone!

Not to mention oak, even other wood resources are also scarce. As a result of the scarcity of wood, not only is shipbuilding restricted, but even salt is boiled.

Just like the situation when Marin first crossed over, the Dutch region was obviously close to the sea, but because there was not enough firewood, it could not develop the salt industry, so it could only choose to import salt from England, which was across the sea. Alternatively, import Lüneburg's mineral salt from Germany.

Because of the lack of firewood as fuel, the Dutch even have a tradition of eating herring raw. Even in the 21st century, the Dutch have a savage way of removing the head and bones of the whole herring, and then "stuffing" it into the stomach, which is much more violent than the Japanese eating sashimi.

This is also related to the lack of firewood fuel in the Netherlands. Who wants to eat cooked food? Or do you want to swallow it whole......

There is no way, the price of firewood is higher in the lowlands, and the fishermen by the sea are very poor and cannot afford to buy too much firewood. Therefore, sometimes when I am hungry, I directly scrape off the internal organs with a Dutch fish cutting knife that has been blown into the sky by later generations, and after removing the head and bones, I swallow the whole fish raw, which is very violent.

Therefore, Marin wants to limit the development of the shipbuilding industry in the Netherlands, which is actually much less difficult than in France. Because, there are really not many local forest resources!

Also, note that the Dutch imported timber from Norway and southern Sweden, which were under Danish control, to build ships. This is not difficult, as long as Marin suppresses any shipyards that appear in the Netherlands in a timely manner. In addition, it is necessary to suppress those local ship owners. In particular, the merchant ships of the Dutch could not be allowed to open the routes between Norway and Sweden, lest they have a source of timber for shipbuilding......