Captain Couaite stood contentedly by the dock warehouse and watched as the Charuja workers hauled bales of wheat to the dock by horse-drawn rail train, and then transported the precious grain onto the deck of the ship by means of a guò pulley boom (there were no steam cranes in the port of Rocha). The purchase price of these grains is only 4o yuan/ton, which is really profitable! Unfortunately, the West India Company demanded that the grain be transported to Amsterdam for delivery, and his employer demanded that he first transport the grain to Amsterdam, and then be centrally transported to the port of Nantes in France by his employer, perhaps one of the 12 largest grain wholesalers in Amsterdam.

Captain Kuayt was actually puzzled by this approach. Why don't we ship this precious wheat to the West Indies, where the price is twice as high as in Europe? You must know that many of the small islands there either grow sugar cane, tobacco, coffee and cocoa, in short, all cash crops, and the daily consumption of grains depends on imports, so the prices are extremely high. It is at least twice as profitable to sell there as France, and it is still close to it, but it is incomprehensible that the employer and the West India Company unanimously demand that the wheat be transported to France for sale.

Maybe the top didn't think about it from an economic point of view, maybe there were political factors? Amsterdam controls more than 7o% of Europe's grain trade, and many times has to do things that are difficult for outsiders to understand in order to maintain their position, and Captain Kuayter can only console himself.

Actually, he was right. Over the course of a hundred years, from the second half of the 16th century to the first half of the 17th century, cereal prices in Europe experienced dramatic fluctuations, or more simply, sharp rises and falls. Sometimes the price can vary several times in just one or two years. From an economic point of view. A 1o% shortage of goods can cause a 3o% increase in prices (and vice versa). If a given year is driven up by a poor harvest (a regular occurrence), war (Sweden blockades the Vistula River from which Poland exports grain), and panic (Genoese people all over the world want to buy grain), then the price of grain will start to rise in a rocket the following year or even for the rest of the year. And when one or all of the factors that push up the price do not exist, the price will quickly fall back or even fall to an unreasonable low.

The Dutch control 7o% of Europe's grain trade, 75% of salt trade, 6o% of fishery trade, 9o% of offshore shipping business, Amsterdam is also a financial center, commodity distribution center, the world's largest market for used ships, beef cattle trading, dairy products, this status has brought great benefits to the Dutch. But in many cases, in order to maintain this status, the Dutch also had to pay some price.

For example, in order to control the grain trade, which is a very useful weapon. The Dutch had to import large quantities of grain from the Baltic every year. In many cases, due to sudden factors (such as wars between Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Moscow, etc.), this kind of grain trade is not profitable, but in order to maintain its position as a distribution center, the Netherlands still has to import a large amount of high-priced grain, and at this time it can only rely on the subsidy of the outbound journey (loaded with pickled herring and salt, which are the bulk consumer goods of the Baltic countries), because the grain loaded in the hold on the return trip is destined to be unprofitable.

The reverse is also true, when the herring trade is unprofitable in a given year, and the return journey is very small, so you can only rely on the grain purchased on the return trip to make money. Of course, these are not very common, most of the time both trades are very profitable, and more than 5o% of the Dutch profits come from the Baltic trade, so you know how rich this route is. And. The Dutch sometimes acted decisively and took control of the situation. For example, a few years ago, they sent a fleet to intervene in the armed conflict between Denmark and Sweden in time, forcibly ending a war that was about to break out, so as not to affect their own trade.

Only by understanding the Dutch desire for commodities such as wheat can you understand their thirst for wheat on the east coast. Of course, the amount of wheat exported by the east coast every year is limited, but it is only a few thousand tons, which is not a grade compared to Poland, which exports more than 100,000 tons a year, but it is better to have one more source of grain, which is indeed a good thing for Europe at this time, which is short of food at this time.

Behind the warehouse of Luoqia Port is a large drying field, the ground of the drying field is extremely flat, paved with bricks and poured with cement. Some black laborers were churning the ground with large shovels, which had to be dried regularly to prevent damp sprouts or spontaneous combustion. This year's summer grain has just been harvested, and nearly 6,000 tons of wheat ready for export (including more than 2,000 tons of La Plata wheat) have been stored in the dock warehouse, which must be properly preserved at this time.

"6,000 tons of wheat, if the price does not fall, will probably be able to return more than 200,000 cash this year." Han Gang walked along the edge of the drying field, and then pointed ahead and suddenly said, "Hey, you see that Dutch captain actually used gold to pay for the purchase of goods, this is the reason why we have recently had a large outflow of silver and increased gold reserves, right?" ”

The man he was talking about was none other than Captain Kouat, who was paying his bills with some gold coins such as florins and duccats, which were not common in ocean trade. Because no matter which of the above currencies is basically only popular in the Mediterranean region at this time, for example, the ducats are popular in the eastern Mediterranean (in fact, its minting people are no longer very common in this currency, and the silver ducats are more common); At this time, Florin was more of a bookkeeping currency, similar to the British pound, the bank lira, the imperial lira, the Venetian lira, the guilder (which is also the currency in circulation), etc., and there were not many circulation links.

"There's a little bit of that going into that." "Our current gold-silver ratio is 1:15, while Amsterdam is between 1:14 and 1:14.5, and the difference is not small. For European merchants, it would certainly be more cost-effective to use gold on the East Coast. However, silver is depreciating all the time, and the poor gold and silver standard system in Europe is full of loopholes, and the response is often very late, although we are also a gold and silver double standard now, but sooner or later we will have to reform to the gold standard, so it is okay to collect some more gold now. ”

During this era, as the production of silver mines in the Americas increased year by year, silver, as the world's currency, experienced a long-term and huge depreciation. Not to mention, at the beginning of this century, the king of Spain had just ordered the gold-silver ratio to be adjusted from 1:1o.o1 to 1:1o.6o, and then only forty years later, the gold-silver ratio listed in Amsterdam had climbed to about 1:14, which is not a shocking depreciation of silver. In fact, the silver of this era is equivalent to the dollar of later generations, and Spain has produced a huge amount of silver currency needed for global economic growth in the Americas every year, which is as bad as the United States printing money at will to engage in quantitative easing, and the consequence is that it has caused hyperinflation in Europe and gradually spread to the world with the prevalence of ocean trade. Compared with silver, the production of gold has been very limited, and it is basically in sync with the growth of the economy, which is a relatively ideal local currency. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before the East Coast implements a gold standard for monetary reform, but certainly not now.

"According to the plan, the navy's convoy to Europe will return by the end of June, and then they will send some ships to escort the silver ship to the port of Suez to settle with the Ottomans for next year's slave girl purchase cost of 400,000 yuan." Qiang Quansheng grabbed a handful of wheat from the ground, carefully looked at the not very full wheat grains, and said: "The money that I have worked so hard to get has been spilled out like this, and our country has not even been able to make a budget for more than ten years now, and the finances are a piece of." Next year, military spending will continue to rise sharply, while trade will fall, and if no strong measures are introduced, then fiscal bankruptcy is certain. ”

Han Gang was speechless. The so-called forceful measures are nothing more than the following: 1. Conscientiously implement the collection of property tax, income tax, business tax and other taxes; 2. Female slaves, houses, and land allocated to peasants are no longer free, and installment loans can be made, such as female slave mortgages, house mortgages, etc.; 3. Plundering outward, that is, the 6th Army, which had been raised at great cost on the east coast, should overcome the difficulties and attack the rich Paraguayan region, and then tear off the mask of civilization and plunder what a qiē could plunder. In addition to sending some of the capital ships to escort the convoy to Europe for trade, the rest of the warships can go to the coasts of Chile and Peru in batches to attack the weakly defended Spanish villages and towns, cut off the Spanish sea lines of communication, and then plunder resources and feed the war with war.

These measures have been discussed within the Executive Committee for a long time, and there is a general tendency to implement them as much as possible. It is believed that the 6th Army will soon receive the combat order from the military headquarters, and they have already set up two large military stations in Santa Fe and Corrientes, and have hoarded a large number of combat materials and personnel, and the conditions for the next step are relatively ripe for both northward and westward expansion. Even if the Spaniards had sent some troops from Lima to help in the war, there would have been no more than 1,000 regular colonial legionnaires, and there would have been little chance of victory against a well-trained, well-equipped, and experienced Chang Kaisheng detachment of more than 4,000 men (including Polish mercenaries).

After returning to the mainland at the end of June, the main force of the Navy's First Fleet is likely to carry out such tasks as escorting ships, breaking diplomatic relations, and attacking ports in batches together with the newly commissioned battleship "East Coast" and other ships. Although the total number of ships of the Spaniards was far from the east coast, they were scattered all over the world, and the number and quality of the sea forces in one place alone were far inferior to those of the east coast, so it was necessary to make full use of the advantages of the east coast and vigorously attack the sea lines of communication and coastal ports of the Spaniards in order to force them to negotiate peace.

Even the Second Fleet, which is far away in Xinhua Port, has been notified to intercept Spanish ships passing through the coast of East Africa (a small number of Spanish ships also take the Indian Ocean route). It's a pity that New Huaxia Island is too important to the mainland, and the Second Fleet does not dare to leave without permission, otherwise it can go to the Philippine waters in the Far East to attack the local Spanish ships and plunder property. (To be continued......)