And when the hermit country of Korea sent envoys to visit the east coast, the Kingdom of Portugal, which had had a holiday with the east coast, also sent a large diplomatic mission to the port of the East, the capital of the east coast, for a state visit.

The mission was led by the famous Duke Luis de Mendoza Fortado i Albuquerque, former Governor of Goa, a highly respected nobleman in Portugal. The members of the mission also included many children of nobles, merchants, navigators and bankers, and many of them were quite prestigious and not incompetent, which shows the high standard of the mission.

The reason for this is that the Kingdom of Portugal today is more and more aware that in order to protect and even expand its overseas interests, it is most rational to cooperate with the East Coast Republic of China. The reason is very realistic, that is, the people on the east coast have been operating South Africa and New China Island for decades, although the number of ships there may not be much more than that of the Dutch, but because of their deep roots and the large population of the colony, the ability to fight sustainably is the strongest. Not to mention, the colonies of this country are close to the Portuguese colonies, and if the relationship is not handled amicably, I am afraid that the future will not be good.

And, of course, the Indian factor! In the eyes of the Portuguese, if there was one country or power that could save them from India's predicament, it was undoubtedly the East Coast! In the past, they had put this goal on the English East India Company, but although this colonial enterprise also hated the Dutch East India Company, it had no choice but to have a lot of strength, and it was also suppressed very badly by the Dutch, and it had been holding together with the Portuguese Goa colony to keep warm, which could only delay the defeat of the Portuguese, but could not really reverse their situation, not to mention that in recent years, this company has put a large part of its energy into the lucrative trade with the Qing State, and its support for the Portuguese has weakened. Therefore, the Goan side is very dissatisfied.

And now they're setting their sights on the heads of the people of the East Coast. The two previous governors of Goa had coincidentally pursued a policy of cooperation with the East Bank, which would have been inconceivable without instructions from the Royal Government of Portugal. After the Governor of Tavola formalized the partnership with the representative of the East Bank, Moree, Lisbon also sent a large delegation to the East Coast, intending to further strengthen the partnership and protect its interests.

The Duke of Albuquerque was born into a famous family, and his ancestors served as the governor of Portuguese India, built many trading posts and forts along the local coast, controlled the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, the coast of East Africa, the coast of India and many seas in the South Pacific, and established a solid maritime supremacy. At that time, the Portuguese fleet commanded by Albuquerque was invincible in India and Southeast Asia, winning many battles and almost invincible, showing the rising strength of the Kingdom of Portugal.

But now a hundred or two hundred years have passed, and the strength of the Kingdom of Portugal has long since become a thing of the past. After decades of nightmarish rule by the Spanish annexation and the continued attacks of the emerging Dutch East India Company – not forgetting the fatal blow of the East Coast Republic of China to the fleet of the Kingdom of Portugal – their strength was greatly reduced and difficult to compensate, given that their narrow territory, sparse population, and commercial channels were not as extensive as those of the Dutch, so it was inevitable that they would be weakened.

However, other countries are weakened when they are weak, at most they are only good days, but not the Kingdom of Portugal! For no other reason, the inheritance passed down from their ancestors is too rich and has exceeded the limits of what they can grasp, which is very problematic! As the old proverb on the east coast says, children hold gold in the downtown area, the kingdom of Portugal is now a child, and if a child wants to get a good end, the best way is to find a strong man as a backer, and now it is possible to avoid the tragic fate of being eaten by other strong men, although it is inevitable to be taken advantage of by the backer in this process, but this is also a helpless thing.

The East Coast is undoubtedly such a good backer. Especially after years of research and investigation, the Portuguese learned that the people on the east coast seem to have a very strange "cleanliness", that is, they do not particularly like the land with a large number of aborigines, such as blacks, even if they occupy some similar colonies, they also carry out brutal expulsion and massacres of the local natives, which is a shameful "waste" in the eyes of the Portuguese.

Look at the land after the people of the East Coast drove out the aborigines, thousands of miles of uninhabited, production and business activities completely stopped, and the barren land became a paradise for wild animals. Moreover, the immigrants and exiles they had migrated from elsewhere were not enough to fill the gap left by the aborigines, and the economy of the colonies was in decline in the short term. That's weird.

However, this colonial model of the people on the east coast doomed them to be unable to occupy large areas of land in a hurry like the Kingdom of Spain and the Kingdom of Portugal for a period of time. Because the reason why these Iberian colonization actions were able to swallow such a huge amount of land is, to put it bluntly, a compromise with the local indigenous people, that is, the indigenous people were still able to stay in place, and the mestizo Indians and even Indians were flooded in large numbers in the army and government offices, for example, the largest number of the colonial army in the Viceroyalty of Peru was the Indians, followed by the mestizo Indians, and the number of "gentlemen" (that is, whites) was the least. The same is true of the Portuguese colonies, and even the proportion of Indians is higher than that of the Spaniards, it can be said that most of the army is filled by Indians, followed by blacks, which explains why the status of Indians and blacks in the Portuguese colonies is so high, so that many people have achieved a high social status, such as Dias, the black general who fought against the East Coast, is one of the best.

Therefore, this colonization method of the people on the east coast is more "reassuring" to the neighbors, because it means that they cannot quickly swallow a large amount of land in a short period of time, and there are so many indigenous people in some lands that it is impossible to evict or kill them. In this way, there was a basis for cooperation between the two sides, so the Portuguese came to the door.

The Duke of Albuquerque and his entourage were immediately received by Li Qing, a member of the Central Executive Committee, and hosted a banquet for the Portuguese delegation in the Dongfang Hotel. Through the credentials submitted by the Portuguese, Li Qing now has a preliminary understanding of their intentions, to put it bluntly, this time the Portuguese came to give gifts and benefits, in exchange for the support of the people on the east coast in the Zambezi River Basin, Angola and the Indian coast. More precisely, an upgraded version of the agreement reached between the two sides in Goa!

Li Qing roughly understood that the Portuguese were willing to provide a base on the Portuguese mainland for the navy and army on the east coast to temporarily station and rest, just as the British provided the port of Dover to the east coast for carrying out strikes and raids on the French coast, which was crucial for the continued operation of the east coast army in Europe, at least in this part of Western Europe. The Portuguese also saw this, knowing that the people on the east coast were now more and more devoted to the European continent, and were very interested in obtaining a solid forward base, so they decisively made a bet and agreed to use the small northern city of Viana do Castelo as a base for the rest of the navy and army on the east coast. If necessary, the two sides can sign a contract, and the people on the east coast can have the right to build docks and military camps in the local area for a very small fee, and at the same time, the Kingdom of Portugal promises to provide a stable supply of water, medicine and some weapons and ammunition for the base, and also provide repair and maintenance services for the warships on the east coast, which basically meets the needs of the army on the east coast for an intervention base, so it aroused Li Qing's great interest.

In addition, the Portuguese promised that the two countries would implement the principle of full "open doors", and that there would be zero tariff trade between the mainland and the overseas colonies of the two countries. In this way, the people of the East Coast can easily sell their goods to Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Portuguese East Africa, Portuguese India, Timor Island, Macao and other places, and then import wine, olive oil, cheese, horses, slaves, seafood, dried fruits, rubber, ivory, coconut and other goods produced in Portugal at low prices, which is of great benefit to both sides, and the only damage is probably the Portuguese mainland and the colonial government, because the tariff revenue is seriously reduced. However, the Portuguese had also studied some of the economic writings written on the East Coast for many years, believing that this would prosper commerce, stimulate import and export trade, and that the government would be able to compensate for it by receiving large tax revenues.

In addition, Portuguese merchants could also import all kinds of goods from the mainland and overseas colonies on the east coast, such as machinery and equipment, hardware products, soda ash, dyes, high-quality cotton cloth, medicines, raw silk, tea, porcelain, dyed leather goods, horse-drawn carriages, etc., which were in high demand in Europe, and then find ways to sell them to other regions. Although the Dutch now control the trade hegemony of the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean, the Portuguese have really settled down to drill camps, and it may not necessarily be that there is no market, at least now they trade frequently with many cities on the Atlantic coast of France.

From this point of view, the Portuguese said that they wanted to implement comprehensive free trade with the east coast, which seems to be a hole in the country, but it is difficult to say who will take advantage of whom. The Portuguese had ceded all their domestic market to the people on the east coast, and for this reason they could lose a lot of precious metals, but if they got all kinds of goods from the east coast at low prices and sold them to France, North Africa and the Italian peninsula, they might not be able to harvest a lot of precious metals. In this way, the two sides are offset, maybe the Portuguese still make money!

Of course, by doing so, the Portuguese gave up the possibility of their own industrial progress and positioned their country as a dumping ground and distribution center for industrial products on the east coast. This devastating effect on the country's industry may last for many, many years, until one day the people on the east coast are tired of some low-end industries and do not want to do it, so they move out, and the Portuguese may get the opportunity to develop their own industry by undertaking industrial transfer. However, since Portugal is a small country with a population of only 17.8 million, and it is not realistic to develop industry and compete with France and Britain, it is better to take refuge in the east coast as soon as possible, sell yourself at a good price, and become a comprador of goods on the east coast, which is not a bad way to make money.

Li Qing has a good understanding of the Portuguese's thoughts, but it's also good for the east coast, isn't it? It is the English who should be anxious, who have completely fallen to their Portuguese kingdom, and now seeing that they are not powerful, they have actually found themselves a "father", although this father is mainly used to protect Portugal's overseas interests (in Europe, Portugal still needs the protection of the English), but more or less with the commercial interests of England constitute a competition, which will definitely cause them to dislike, but who cares? Who let you England be beaten like by the Dutch East India Company on the island of Ceylon, and even the important town of Trincomalee was lost, and you still have to blame yourself for not giving strength and not showing your strength.

Finally, the Portuguese also dropped a bombshell, that is, if the East Bank government had reached an understanding with the Kingdom of Portugal in advance, then it could recruit mercenaries in its own country to fight in areas mutually agreeable. Perhaps fearing that the people on the east coast would not understand, the Duke of Albuquerque even more vaguely pointed out that if the people on the east coast had any "difficulties" in the Black Sea area, then perhaps a group of no more than 3,000 volunteers and a number of sailors and ships could be recruited in the Kingdom of Portugal to go to the Black Sea area to "carry out tasks". The "volunteers" here, in fact, everyone knows it, that is actually the Royal Portuguese Army has taken off its military uniform and changed its skin, these people go to the Black Sea coast to fight, the main enemy can basically be determined to be Russians, Eastern Ukraine, and very unlikely to be Poles, but it doesn't matter, the Kingdom of Portugal is not worried about being an enemy with them, let alone in the name of mercenaries.

To be honest, this proposal of the Portuguese really shocked the east coast side, so much so that the diplomatic boss Li Qing was a little distracted for a while. You must know that the people on the east coast have been operating in the Black Sea trade for many years, and have invested a lot of energy in the Danube, Dnieper, and Don river basins, so it is naturally impossible for people to destroy them at will. But over the years, their biggest problem is that they do not have more direct control of the force, resulting in insufficient interference ability, for example, if the Cossacks in eastern and western Ukraine fight again, threatening the interests of the people on the east coast, and the Ottoman Empire is limited to a variety of factors can not participate in the war, the east coast people directly send mercenaries I am afraid that the best way, there was no such condition before, but now the Portuguese send to the door, the source of mercenaries is there.

This is a bombshell! Li Qing thought.

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