February 2, 1653, Daxing Port.

The prairies on the east coast are always drier in summer, as can be seen by the steep drop in water levels in the reservoirs outside the city. However, it is not far from the Wujiang River, with rivers and lakes, and more than one small reservoir has been built by the people on the east bank after transforming the terrain, so whether it is agricultural irrigation or industrial and agricultural water, it is basically unaffected.

As an important town in the northwest of the Republic of China on the east coast of China, after several years of development, as well as the key investment of the Executive Committee and the Wujiang District Administration, Daxing Port has not only slowly increased its population to more than 3,600 people (including the surrounding villages), but also gradually prospered in commerce - of course, this is relative.

"The border wilderness, but a few years to prosper, this East Coast country court is also a bit of a real ability, no wonder in the Ming Dynasty is like a ......bamboo" Sun Chengren, who has lost a full ten pounds, sat in the "Sun Chunyang South Store" in Daxing Port City, and said thoughtfully.

He is going to return to Daming today, but not all the time, but after returning to discuss with his family the operation of several stores on the east coast, and at the same time make a report to the shareholders (mainly the military and political officials of Heishui) in order to completely finalize some things. In addition, he also plans to take this opportunity to bring two more descendants from his family to help here, and his own family would better take them over if possible, and simply settle down on the east coast in the future.

Sun Chengren came to the East Coast in early March last year and has been living on the East Coast for 10 months now. The reason for the delay for so long, in addition to the complicated business of opening the store, is more to recruit enough sailors who can carry out ocean voyages. In the middle of last year. Sun Chengren spent 30,000 yuan to auction off four "dirty ships" that the navy disposed of at a low price. The end of its local tyrants has become a topic of conversation among the residents of Yancheng Port on the streets and alleys. After this. He spent another six or seven thousand yuan to carry out a thorough overhaul of the three ships, and the equipment on the ships was replaced with new ones.

But it's easy to buy and keep a boat -- as long as you have the money -- it's hard to get the people to drive it. You know, this is in the East Coast Republic, where there is a great shortage of sailors, not in Amsterdam or Genoa, where a large number of sailors are unemployed at all times, and it is not easy to gather seven or eighty sailors on four ships. As a last resort, Sun Chengren played the signboard of Shao Shude, Wei Boqiu, Mao Desheng and other military and political figures in the Far East. Begging Grandpa and Grandma everywhere, digging two walls here, recruiting two over there, and then using Mendes, a labor broker, to kidnap some bitter Scots from Europe, this will be the minimum number of sailors required for four ships, and reluctantly declare that it can be opened.

On his return trip this time, the four boats naturally could not be empty, except for one boat that was commissioned by the War Department on the East Coast to transport a whole shipload of munitions, the other three boats were full of luxury goods that were not common in the Ming Dynasty: such as ivory products from South Africa, gems from New China, ambergris from Baleen Whale Harbor, some rare wood from the east coast, some high-grade dyed silk cloth, and other commodities that were estimated to be able to sell in the Ming Dynasty. However, with the amount of these goods, it was clear that the cabins of the three empty ships could not be filled, so Sun Chengren accepted the task of transporting more than 100 soldiers from the Corps Fort and 1,000 Guarani to New Australia. It's kind of a good tie with the Department of Immigration.

After doing these things, Sun Chengren planned to return to Daming for the time being. The return date is set in a few days. In the past few days before leaving, Sun Chengren also took the time to visit the "Huo cadres" who had given him great help in the past six months, and then visited several local "yamen", and finally entrusted the shop that was still empty to a familiar businessman to take care of. The South Equatorial Warm Current (in the southeast trade wind belt) returns to Ningbo all the way, and the whole journey takes more than 100 days - if you are a qiē shun lì.

"At the same time, this eastern coast country also attaches great importance to commerce, and the status of merchants is far from being comparable to that of the Ming Dynasty, which is really enviable!" Although he had already made up his mind to move to the East Coast, Sun Chengren's subconscious did not seem to regard himself as a person from the East Coast at all, so he continued to say to himself: "In order to develop business, he has spread out roads throughout the country, spent a huge amount of money on the imperial treasury, and also taught the sons of good families to learn about business, which is really ......."

Speaking of this, Sun Chengren couldn't help but shake his head, if he hadn't been in business for many years and didn't have too much prejudice against the businessmen themselves, I'm afraid he would have to be like those old masters who sighed and swept the floor, and the world was declining.

The difference in ideology and concepts mentioned by Sun Chengren really objectively exists between the Ming Dynasty and the East Coast. This discrepancy still exists between the countries of the Old World and the East Coast - this is by no means a joke, in fact, the mainstream public opinion in many European countries is not as contemptuous as the Ming Dynasty, but it is also real, which more or less hinders the development of industry and commerce in these countries.

Spain, Portugal, and France, for example, are not exaggerating to say that they are in feudal societies, and their outdated ideas and rigid ideologies have completely hindered the normal development of enterprises and economies in these countries, and thus prevented them from making the transition to capitalist society. In France, for example, although the country's elite began to pay attention to industrial enterprises, strongly promoted by the upper echelons (Richelieu, Mazarin, etc.), the process was still too slow and not in the majority.

If the most common situation in France is that every successful merchant will quickly leave the highly competitive and risky field of industry and commerce, and then invest in a title of nobility (at this time, the title of nobility in France can be bought, but like the donors of the Qing Dynasty, it is quite despised and has no real power), and then obtain an official position for himself and his descendants; At the same time, they also invest heavily in land that can bring them a stable rental income, which can be regarded as leaving a way back for themselves.

This situation has intensified in France, so much so that most French people see business as a springboard to the social ladder, and once they have achieved their goals, they will do everything possible to clear their identity as merchants and then try to blend in with the upper class. Their children and grandchildren generally rarely inherit their father's business, and most of them enter public institutions, hold some official positions, and rely on the rich inheritance left by their ancestors to become local squires, and no longer have the ability and consciousness to be an entrepreneur.

Men of insight in French society have expressed their uneasiness about this, and some of them have said that most of the children of Dutch merchants will follow their father's business and begin to learn about it at a very young age, and they are so powerful that they control most of the commerce of our country, and our merchants cannot compete with them, and they always look like novices, almost from generation to generation.

Even in Britain, where the political and social status of merchants is relatively high, this kind of disdain for industrial and commercial thinking has a large market. Thomas, a representative of mercantilism and a famous merchant of the East India Company. Meng once said, "Our richest businessman suddenly disappeared." Their son gave up his wealth, ridiculed his father's profession, and imagined how he would squander his fortune in ignorance after becoming a more honorable gentleman (though only in name), and in the end he would follow in his father's footsteps by running a diligent merchant running a reliable business in order to maintain and improve his wealth......"

This situation was so worrying to Meng that it was almost the fate of many prominent British businessmen, whose children and grandchildren would often abandon industry and commerce, abandon the business that their father had run for most of his life, and then run into the upper class in a delusional squeeze. This led to the lack of high-quality enterprises in Britain that could compete with the Dutch, and the country's commercial sovereignty was once controlled by the Dutch, and the lesson is not profound.

It can be said that in today's Europe, most merchants in all countries except the Dutch Republic, after their success, tend to invest their wealth in non-commercial affairs (usually land) in pursuit of the return of status and prestige. It was only in a narrow and populated place like the Netherlands that merchants could not invest in land after making money, so they could only continue to invest in industry or commerce, and over time a unique commercial atmosphere of Dutch society was formed - in the Netherlands, a country of merchants and craftsmen, commerce was respected at the highest level, and the society allowed merchants to become high-class figures, and the prestige, social status and political status of merchants were very high, which was in sharp contrast to other countries.

This unique social atmosphere has obviously created a large number of well-known companies in the Netherlands, such as the de Haire comptoir, the Tripp comptoir, the Amsterdam Exchange Bank, the Saldan shipyard and so on. These long-established and large-scale companies are extremely competitive across Europe, beating countless rivals and bringing back countless profits for the Netherlands.

Fortunately, under the "training" of the East Coast Republic for 20 years, there is no obvious discrimination against industry and commerce in the overall public opinion, and even many people will have the courage to start a business in order to make money.

This may have something to do with the fact that the immigrants on the east coast were mainly low-level people in the Ming Kingdom (most of them were farmers, plus a few craftsmen and low-level scholars), who were not as stubborn as the local gentry who insisted on the old ideas, and in addition they crossed the ocean to a strange place, it was easier to accept the transformation physically and psychologically, so the shackles of the old ideas and the old system were reduced, so that the east coast could travel lightly and achieve extremely rapid development - and this qiē, if it was in the Ming Dynasty, it was obviously impossible to do it at all. 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 blank sheet of paper is good for painting, not just talking, but indeed has its own unique truth! (To be continued......)