Zhou Lang had just occupied Fujian, and he established a textile factory through the Americans, which was the first year of Jiaqing (1796), and this year is already the seventh year of the Great Zhou Dynasty (1806), and a full decade has passed.

In the first three years, the American team helped build the factory, and then continued to expand the scale to build various machines with local craftsman technology, and after three years, all the raw materials and technologies for the production of machines had been mastered by local craftsmen, at least those excellent craftsmen in the Zhou Lang Arsenal, with the help of American and British mechanical consultants, were able to manufacture.

After a whole set of technologies have matured, Zhou Langcai vigorously promoted it, and this task was handed over to the local government.

China's civil officials don't have the ability, this ability to promote production is very strong, especially when Zhou Lang cares about it, and they do it as a political achievement, it simply explodes into a small universe.

At one point, it even evolved into a nuisance, because the use of power by officials was too barbaric. Zhou Lang asked them to promote the big factory system, they did not patiently invite local craftsmen and workshop owners to observe and learn, but directly ordered, just like the Guangzhou government in order to do trade, will find Yin Shi people to act as thirteen merchants, if you want to quit, you can't quit, such as the Pan family, the government publicly stated that it can't "let him stay out of the matter".

The Fujian government also adopted the same measures, and those workshops that had been engaged in hand-weaving in the past would certainly not let go, forcing them to set up machine textile factories, and in order to expand their scale, they also went to a bunch of irrelevant and honest people to set up machine textile factories, regardless of the fact that these people had no experience at all.

This method will certainly not be efficient, and may even have serious consequences, and a large number of well-to-do people may even be involved in bankruptcy.

By the time Zhou Lang noticed it, Fujian had already drummed up more than 100 factories, which was the speed brought about by the centralization of political power, which may not be efficient, but the feedback speed was definitely fast.

When he learned that the production of most of these workshops was not ideal, Zhou Lang realized that the root of the problem was himself, and that this matter should not be done by those civil officials at all, so he first issued an order criticizing the violent behavior of civil officials. Skilled workers from government-run workshops were then stationed in these factories and provided them with free technical support to enable them to produce as smoothly as possible.

As a result of the government's intervention, in the following three years, the people of Fujian changed color when they heard about the textile factories, and almost none of the factories took the initiative to open them. It took three years for Zhou Lang to patiently help these newly opened textile factories to streamline their production. During the period, in order to prevent those rich people from going bankrupt, Zhou Lang also provided a large number of interest-free loans, and these factory owners who chased ducks to the shelves used these three years to basically learn how to manage the factory, how to sell products, etc.

Then there was a year of low tide, and in the seventh year, suddenly some people began to set up textile factories spontaneously. It is mainly the relatives and friends of these old factory owners, because they saw that their relatives made a fortune in textile factories, so they begged their relatives to do it together; There are also factory owners who take the initiative to invite their relatives to do it together after they get rich.

In the seventh year, there were more than a dozen new textile factories, the eighth year increased to more than 50, the ninth year reached 80, and this year has just passed half a year, and the number of applications for opening textile factories has exceeded 100.

Zhou Lang thought that in China, a place with a large population, it would be more difficult to break through the barriers of industrialization and trigger an industrial revolution than in countries with smaller populations and more machine production.

I didn't expect the Industrial Revolution to break out in the textile industry.

In fact, the reason is very simple, China has been the world's largest textile supplier before, and Chinese textiles have always had a stable sales channel. In addition, many countries around China, in fact, do not have the conditions for the development of the textile industry, such as Japan, where there are many people and little land, it is impossible to use a large amount of land to grow cotton, imported cotton cloth is the best choice, it has always been the market of China's handmade cotton cloth, and now it is impossible for them not to buy cheaper woven cotton cloth. Russia's geographical position is too high, and it is almost impossible to produce cotton, and the Russians have been importing large quantities of China's Nanjing homespun cloth, and even the Nanjing homespun can be used as currency in Kyakhta.

In addition, Zhou Lang's attitude of encouraging trade made China suddenly change from a country that restricted trade to a country that encouraged trade, and the huge shift in policy made Chinese merchants begin to export a large number of local cotton cloth.

Even at a time when the British were still trying in every possible way to purchase the unfading Nanjing cloth from China, British products were completely unable to flood the world market and crowd out Chinese cloth.

This industry is very profitable in the case of the exponential expansion of the market, which leads to a shortage of goods, a large number of cotton textiles are exported, and the price of textiles has risen year after year. However, it is difficult to expand the output of manual production in the short term, so machine factories with faster production speed become hot.

At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England, the merchants were desperately urging the factory owners to produce, saying, "Whatever you can produce, we will make the best and the second." "You have to find a way to invent, and you have a lot to do in industry......"

China's textile industry happened to encounter a sudden outbreak of the market, and production could not keep up with the market black hole, the market factors of the industrial revolution have.

Why it happened first in Fujian is determined by Fujian's geographical environment.

Although Fujian is also a large number of people and little land, it is impossible to produce cotton, but Zhou Lang encourages cotton imports, cotton import tax rate is almost the lowest among all imported goods, standardize the customs system, so that imports become smooth, Fujian is a province by the sea, all obstacles to the use of foreign raw materials do not exist, so that they can import raw materials in large quantities.

The mountainous terrain of Fujian itself not only does not become an obstacle, but is a huge advantage, because Fujian is not only mountainous, but also close to the sea, and more tropical, this condition is destined to Fujian has a large amount of precipitation, many rivers, and many are small streams with a large drop.

It just so happened that the textile factories of this era mainly used water power, which gave Fujian more convenient conditions than other places, and there were a large number of these short tributaries in the Minjiang, Jinjiang and Jiulong River basins, which could not only facilitate the construction of factories, but also facilitate transportation through waterways.

It has abundant hydraulic power, and the world's most mainstream hydraulic equipment is extremely suitable here, so the technical conditions for the industrial revolution are in place.

The most critical part of industrial production, manpower, Fujian is not lacking, and Fujian happens to be the most serious place with the most serious surplus of Chinese, the land simply cannot support all Fujianese, let alone provide job opportunities for all Fujian laborers, so Fujian has excess human resources and extremely low labor wages.

So the labor factor of industrial production is also present.

As for another important factor, the capital factor, it was solved by the interest-free loans provided by Zhou Lang to the first batch of factory owners.

With capital, markets, labor, and technology all in place, the Industrial Revolution is a matter of course.

But Fujian's experience is difficult to promote comprehensively, because Fujian that meets all the conditions is the first to break through the large industrial barrier, and his characteristics are more difficult to imitate, Guangdong's Chaoshan terrain is similar, and soon the textile industry has expanded in the past, but the textile industry in other places is not so lucky, especially in the Susong area, the center of the textile industry, and even affected by the impact of Fujian's cheap cotton cloth, resulting in the operation of the Jiangnan textile industry workshop began to become difficult.

Water conservancy spinning machines and looms are blooming everywhere in the Jinjiang, Minjiang and Jiulongjiang river basins in Fujian, Fujian's iron-smelting industry began to produce textile machines in large quantities, and the upstream and downstream industries of the textile industry began to gather in Fujian, and Fujian is rapidly replacing the central position of the textile industry in the south of the Yangtze River.

However, it is not feasible to promote machine production in Jiangnan. Where there is water power, such as Yiwu in Zhejiang and other mountainous areas, transportation is a problem, British industrial production was also laid out in the mountainous areas at the beginning, transportation has always been an obstacle, and later through the railway to solve these problems.

In places with convenient transportation, such as Shanghai, but there is a lack of a large number of fast-flowing rivers, the water of the Huangpu River is not suitable to push the water wheel, because you can't intercept and control the flow speed, which will make the speed of the machine can not be guaranteed, and whether the speed of the machine is uniform or not, but it will affect the quality of the product.

The industrial relayout of Britain is after the promotion of the steam engine, and the future of Jiangnan is definitely steaming.

The steam engine Zhou Lang had been introduced, and using the skills of the British mechanics, he had mastered the production of the Watt steam engine. Britain banned the export of machinery, but it could not prohibit the movement of people, and British skilled workers who immigrated to the United States brought a large number of British technology. These technical advisers sent to China by the British East India Company will not care whether or not the British core technology is leaked, as long as they are rewarded, they are willing to do anything.

But the problem is that the production of steam engines and the promotion of steam engines are two different concepts, and European countries have also imitated steam engines, but except for Britain, there are only a few hundred steam power that is really applied to the production field in other countries.

After occupying Jiangnan, Zhou Lang quickly asked the Americans to help build a steam textile factory in Shanghai, but the government-run factory itself was difficult to operate, and the biggest difficulty was the price of power.

The steam engine burned coal, and coal could be transported from other places, and the price was very high. There is no threat to Fujian's hydroelectric factories at all, and government-run factories can ignore costs, but private factories must see cost as the first issue, because their goal is to make a profit.

In order to make coal supply cheaper, it is necessary to form a scale of production and sales at both ends, so as to effectively reduce costs. This requires the overall supporting work together, and there is no good solution for the time being.

The ultimate solution is to find vitality in the local advantageous industries.

That is, the production of Nanjing cloth. Due to the fraudulent use by merchants, the Nanjing cloth market was chaotic, and many Westerners came to visit, but they may have obtained printed and dyed homespun cloth produced elsewhere. Zhou Lang cracked down on counterfeiting, on the one hand, to provide official certification for those workshops in Jiangnan that really used local colored raw cotton to produce Nanjing cloth, and on the other hand, to prohibit foreign native cloth from abusing the brand of Nanjing cloth.

At the same time, in the peak season of cotton every year, when a large number of Nanjing cloth is listed, an expo is held in Nanjing to promote genuine Nanjing cloth, and merchants from all over the world are invited to participate in the purchase.

Then Zhou Lang promoted steam power in Nanjing, which is irreplaceable, and the production scale is also considerable, and there is no shortage of special products in the market.

Let the government-run factories use steam-powered machines and use local colored cotton to try to produce authentic Nanjing cloth. After more than two years of exploration, continuous adjustment and improvement of equipment, finally this year successfully used steam spinning machines and textile machines to produce Nanjing cloth with quality not inferior to handmade products.

Then the relevant standards were formulated, all the technical details were published to facilitate the imitation of Chinese craftsmen, and the excellent workers of the arsenal were also allowed to mass-produce Nanjing cloth textile machines, which were directly sent to some of the largest local Nanjing cloth workshops for them to try.

Nanjing cloth is a high-end product, more able to bear higher costs, whether the workshop owner can make more money, often depends on the amount of output, rather than the level of cost. As a result, steam power was the first to be successfully popularized in the production of cloth in Nanjing, so the price of coal in Shanghai became high, and coal from other places poured into Shanghai, and a large number of coal was transported in a centralized manner, diluting the transportation cost. With the influx of coal into Shanghai, the price of coal in other places has risen, driving the expansion of coal production and the development of the coal industry as a market promoter.

When the cost of using coal begins to be similar to that of hydropower, steaming will quickly spread and industrialization will enter a higher level.