If the profit of 45% is already very high, then if we change the payment method, it may make you even more jaw-dropping, don't believe you continue to watch.

Since the Matsumae clan had a certain amount of gold mines in Ezo and produced a large amount of placer gold every day, they had a lot of gold in their hands. If the people of the East Coast demanded that they pay for the copper coins in gold, it would be even more akin to robbery. For no other reason, because at this time, the gold and silver ratio between 1:5 and 1:6 in Japan was too cheating, and the copper coin of 25,000 kanwen needed to pay 2,848 Japanese gold judgments (one tael, 60 grams), totaling 170.87 kilograms. If so much gold is calculated according to the European gold and silver ratio of 1:14.5, it is equivalent to about 82,600 yuan of silver dollars on the east coast, and if you do not count the freight (from Daming to the mainland of the east coast), the profit margin in this reaches 280%!

What an amazing profit!

Of course, you have to keep a certain profit for the Matsumae Domain, and it's really stressful for people to get a bunch of fake money from you and use it back. In particular, whether in terms of quality, fineness, or appearance, these fake coins have all exploded the seventeen or eighteen streets of real money minted by the shogunate, and a discerning person can see the problem at a glance. Fortunately, at this time, the demand for copper coins in Japan was in tens of millions of yuan, and it was really not a matter for the more than 20,000 copper coins stamped and manufactured by the people on the east coast to circulate to the market.

Moreover, based on the law that bad money drives out good money, ordinary people will inevitably keep the counterfeit money of the East Coast in full condition at home, and continue to use the low-quality real money minted by the shogunate on hand. As a result, this has further reduced the influence of counterfeit money on the East Coast.

When a full 500 boxes are neatly stacked on the ground of the Kushiro Port Pier. Yoshinosuke Imamura had calmed down at this time. He and his men randomly inspected twenty or so boxes and were not interested in looking at them any more. It is impossible for the people of the East Coast to deceive them, their skills in minting money have always been very good, and they cannot be fooled by them, and the contents of these boxes must be real money. In that case, it's time to talk about the price.

"It's not impossible for you to ask for payment in gold, but we don't have enough gold on hand at the moment, so I want to pay in the form of half gold and half silver. How is it? Yoshinosuke Imamura asked.

"Yes." After a slight silence, Wei Boqiu nodded slightly, which can be regarded as giving permission to the Japanese mention.

"Then, the total price you proposed is 25,400 taels of silver from the treasury, which is fair. If the gold and silver are paid in half......" At this point, Yoshinosuke Imamura turned his head to look behind him, and then an attendant walked up and told him the results of his calculations.

"Half of the gold and silver were paid, and the feudal clan had to pay you a total of 142 catties of gold (Japanese catties, about 85 catties) and 783 catties of silver. Right? Yoshinosuke Imamura continued.

"Imamura-kun is right." After Wei Boqiu and the others repeatedly calculated on the paper, they nodded in approval. Half of the gold and half of the silver. The income from the minting of this amount of money by the people on the east coast should have been more than 27,000 taels of silver (calculated according to the exchange rate of gold and silver in Europe), and the profit was almost 150% on this trip.

It is no wonder that the Dutch desperately used their goods and silver to buy gold and copper in Japan, and the profits were so great that the Dutch East India Company thought that the profits from the Japanese copper trade exceeded the profits from the sale of silk and porcelain from China to Japan, and that they did everything possible to make up for the deterioration of relations with the Japanese so that they could continue to trade in Japan.

"But ......," Imamura Yoshinosuke's words took a sharp turn at this point, and then he continued in a stiff tone: "In view of the high risk of our use of these currencies, as well as a number of other problems, we have the right to ask you to give us a certain discount rate in accordance with the agreement between our two parties. ”

Not again! Wei Boqiu sighed helplessly, and then negotiated with Imamura Yoshinosuke and others of the Matsumae Domain, and talked for more than an hour, and the two sides finally determined the discount rate: seventy-five discount! This makes a quarter of the profit and the fact that the other party has been slaughtered when buying copper from the Matsumae Domain of Japan, and the profit of the Matsumae Domain this time is really not small, about 30% to 40%. After such a toss, the profits of the people on the east coast this time were almost only about 95% (more than 16,700 taels of silver), less than double the profit. However, considering that this was just the beginning and that the climax of the copper coin business with the Matsumae Domain was still to come, Wei Boqiu suddenly felt that the finances of the Far East Blackwater Pioneer Team had begun to become much brighter.

After the copper coins were traded, the Matsumae clan spent money to buy about 4,000 pieces of leather that had been processed from Miaojie to Omari, and in addition, they also purchased a large number of high-quality metal farm tools, a small amount of high-quality cloth, and some luxury goods such as soap, whale oil candles, and pendulum clocks from the people of the east coast, and they also sold grain, sulfur, lead, and other items brought with the ships to the people of the east coast.

In addition to these goods, the "goods" brought by the Matsumae clan were about 300 Japanese wild samurai and their descendants, who had just disembarked from the old astaku ships of the Matsumae Domain, and were now standing on the dock in unison, ready to meet Wei Boqiu, the new head of the family.

Of course, Wei Boqiu didn't dare to treat these warriors who had been bought with public money as his retainers, so he asked Zhou Zuoding to take these people to settle in the back first. The Stand Up team fought continuously outside, and the attrition was not small, and it was in urgent need of replenishment of soldiers, and these Japanese samurai could be replenished after a few months of training. Anyway, they are cannon fodder, and they don't need to master complex tactics or skills, as long as they dare to make a white spurt at a critical moment.

Moreover, most of these so-called wild samurai are also selected by the people of the Matsumae Domain, and after several years of trade, the Matsumae Domain's economic strength and military strength have increased significantly, and now there is some capital to recruit some more wandering samurai to serve the domain. Therefore, there is really no need to care too much about these selected remaining samurai, just treat them like those Ming and Korean soldiers, they are all cannon fodder.

After the transaction was completed, Yoshinosuke Imamura of the Matsumae Domain came to say goodbye. Wei Boqiu saw that he wanted to talk and stopped, and guessed in his heart that he was going to talk about Kushiro Port again, so he simply didn't give him a chance, and directly said that he still had something to deal with, and then walked to the cabins behind, leaving Imamura Yoshinosuke and others on the dock to stare at Zhou Zuoding and Huang Yi.

When Yoshinosuke Imamura saw this, he understood what was going on, so he sighed deeply, and then took his leave and boarded the ship. The business between the feudal lord and these people from the east coast is getting bigger and bigger, and now they are even involved in the copper coin trade, which has gradually exceeded the scope of the Shandan trade that the shogunate acquiesces to, which is equivalent to playing the side ball of the shogunate's lockdown order. According to the current state of affairs, things such as the invasion of Kushiro Port by the people on the east coast are actually trivial, and the real trouble is that the Matsumae Domain is weak, and it may not be able to control the situation that is getting bigger and bigger.

"It seems that after going back, I will have to deal with the lord of the feudal lord and bring the surrounding Dewa Domain over as well, otherwise I won't be able to keep the fruit in my hand at all. If that doesn't work, the Date family, which is the most powerful in the Tohoku region, will also be dragged into the water. The Date family is also so poor that they are bitter haha, the black eyes are the most unsightly of white flowers, if the Date family can be successfully pulled in, then this business can be stable for a long time. Yoshinosuke Imamura sat on a boat sailing southwest with the north wind, still thinking about the situation facing the Matsumae Domain today.

After Yoshinosuke Imamura and the others left, Wei Boqiu also considered the situation facing the Blackwater area now. In general, the situation in the Blackwater region is quite okay - except for the financial problems. As soon as he thought of this financial problem, Wei Boqiu felt a headache, Mo Dashuai set up a forward team with 7,500 soldiers in the Heishui area, and a series of other troops such as the security team and the cavalry brigade, in addition to sending guns, cannons and armor to Li Chuang's rest (these could have been sold to Korea and Japan for money), which was an astronomical monthly expense.

Not to mention anything else, a month's military salary alone costs 63,000 yuan, and if you count other total expenses, the total annual expenditure in the Heishui area is about 1.15 million yuan (including 340,000 yuan for grain purchases), which is almost 51% of the total local financial expenditure in 46 years. It's not that I don't know, it's shocking, a small Blackwater Pioneer Team, the annual expenditure has reached half of the local level, it is really speechless, and the hole that Mo Dashuai poked is really big enough.

As for income, in the past, the Far East was a military region, and the material rationing system was practiced, and the income was very small. It is only in the past year that there has been a trace of commercial activity within the various regions under the jurisdiction of the Heishui region, which has led to a certain increase in the general fiscal revenue of the local government. Last year, the general financial income of the Blackwater Pioneer Team was about 30,000 yuan, an increase of 80% over the previous year; In addition, the special fiscal revenue (loot income) is not easy to calculate, probably around hundreds of thousands of taels. Moreover, there are still a large number of livestock, books, works of art and other things in the loot that are not easy to value, so they can only be stored in the zài warehouse and slowly digested later.

In general, if the Blackwater region of the Far East can operate safely and healthily, then economic development has become an inevitable choice, after all, raiding alone is not a long-term solution at all. Wei Boqiu has a deep understanding of this, and this is exactly what he is doing.

At the end of last month (September), three new steam engine sailing ships from the mainland brought with them a large number of mechanical parts, weapons and ammunition, as well as many thick glass cans. These glass cans were specially requested by Wei Boqiu to be transported from the mainland, and he was going to make some cans by using the rich fishery resources and meat resources in the Heishui area, and then began to sell them in the surrounding areas, and more or less returned some funds. The cannery is located at the port of Da Bo, and will start next year (48) in the spring after the port thaws. (To be continued......)