The alliance with the East India Company was proposed by Zhou Lang, who believed that it was a matter of taking what each side needed.

Therefore, both sides of the negotiation are very sincere, but sincerity does not mean that there are no differences, so it is really difficult to say that the negotiations will not be successful.

The East India Company was very optimistic about Xiamen's geographical location and the prospects for tea exports, and fools knew that the cost of taking the tax rate from Wuyi Mountain to Xiamen was definitely lower than crossing Wuyi Mountain and passing through Jiangxi to reach Guangdong.

If the freight is low, then the price of tea will naturally be low, the purchase price will be low, and the profit margin will be large.

If it weren't for the stupid policy of the Qing government, the East India Company would have wanted to trade in Xiamen a long time ago, and now that Zhou Lang occupies Xiamen, then there is no need to go through the Qing government to set up a trading house in Xiamen.

Zhou Lang's policy is also very open, and he does not refuse merchants from any country to trade here.

But the East India Company wanted greater privileges, they wanted privileges, and they were used to using privileges to make money.

In other words, the East India Company wanted to monopolize the tea trade in Xiamen.

This is unacceptable to Zhou Lang, allowing the East India Company to monopolize the tea trade, what does Zhou Lang eat.

But it was okay to give the British certain trade preferences, and according to the business intelligence collected by Wei Lianli from Guangzhou in recent years, Zhou Lang found that except for the British, the trade volume of other countries was decreasing.

One reason is the outbreak of the French Revolution, the outbreak of the revolution in France, not only made the French elite suffer an almost purge of the general experience, the elite class is the largest consumer market for luxury trade, the disappearance of the French market, not only affected the French merchant ship, but also many countries with France as the entrepot trade object, also cut the merchant ship to the East. In addition, the countries of the European continent were also involved in the whirlpool of anti-French wars, which affected their ability to send merchant ships abroad.

Another reason is the enhancement of Britain's own strength, Britain has replaced the former sea coachman Dutch, as the largest merchant fleet in Europe, as for Britain's own market, due to the protection of the British navigation law, it is left to the British merchant fleet, other countries can only re-export to Britain through smuggling, smuggling is an uncertain trade after all, it is difficult to expand the scale.

There is only one exception, that is, the United States, the newly founded Americans, eager to open overseas markets, through trade to grab wealth, although the United States in the past the main entrepot trade object is also France, but the United States has a relatively large domestic market, plus due to the loose political structure of the United States, the federal government is difficult to tax the states, tariffs become the largest source of federal taxes, so the United States federal trade is extremely encouraged, whether it is exports or imports, can bring about an increase in tariffs.

The urgency of the Americans is reflected in the fact that they have just sent the first American merchant ship, the "Empress of China," to China just five months after the founding of the country.

The United States, a new country with a commercial culture from the Netherlands and England, was eager to gain wealth through trade, so the itinerary of the Empress of China attracted tearful attention from civilians to presidents in the United States. After the "Empress of China" returned to China, a wave of "China fever" was immediately set off among the US government and the opposition, and the then ambassador to France and later US President Jefferson sent a report on the maiden voyage of the "Empress of China" to the French Foreign Ministry. An exaggerated claim circulated in the newspapers that "all over the United States, no matter how small a village, even a creek with a five-man sailboat, began to plan a trade to the Far East."

After the outbreak of the French Revolution, the United States took advantage of the war in Europe and even acted as a middleman for selling Chinese goods to Europe. To a certain extent, the prosperity of trade with China indirectly helped New York surpass Philadelphia to become the largest city in the United States.

Zhou Lang predicted that at least until the end of the Napoleonic Wars, there would be no major growth in the European market except for Britain, and if it wanted to open the British market, the British East India Company could not avoid it.

Therefore, Zhou Lang could give some preferential treatment to the East India Company, but he could not refuse other British and American merchants to come to trade.

The negotiation between Zhou Lang and Brown is like two cautious boxers, both of whom punch frequently, but most of them are tentative, seemingly fierce and fierce, but they are both carefully testing each other's bottom line, and they both want to win as many benefits as possible for themselves and pay as little price as possible.

On the contrary, Henry Pitt did not express his position on the negotiations, his status is too special, he is not only the major shareholder, partner, chairman of the committee of the Chinese company, but also the shareholder representative of the British company, as long as the two companies reach an agreement, what kind of agreement is reached, whoever suffers more losses, who makes more profits, he can get benefits, so he does not need to express his position.

The negotiations seemed to be intense, but the process went smoothly, because this is a cooperation that is mutually beneficial, and the two sides have mutual needs, which is nothing more than who can get more benefits from the cooperation, but as long as the cooperation must have benefits, not to mention that the British East India Company is even the largest shareholder of the Chinese East India Company, and he can also get benefits from the development of the Chinese company, so it is almost inevitable to reach an agreement.

After complex negotiations, some preliminary consensus was finally reached.

The two commercial enterprises will cooperate comprehensively within the scope of business, the Chinese company will provide comprehensive assistance to the British company within its own sphere of influence, allowing the British company to use the commercial base and business channels of the Chinese company to carry out trade expansion activities, and the Chinese company will receive help from the British company in India, including the establishment of a trade hall within the territory of the British company, free trade, and enjoy mutually preferential tax rates, etc.

On the whole, both sides were satisfied, but it was the East India Company that benefited the most, and through Zhou Lang's channels, they could obtain another source of tea, no longer subject to the Thirteen Lines, and Zhou Lang could only obtain the convenience of conducting a wide range of commercial activities in the territory of the East India Company.

But the East India Company's profits, not caused by the unfairness of the way of cooperation, but the current strength gap between the two sides, an elephant and an ant live together, the elephant breathes a breath of air, enough for the ant to digest for a lifetime, but this does not mean that the elephant is unfair to the ant, because the ant and the elephant enjoy the same right to breathe, the agreement reached by the two sides is actually this equal right to breathe, but Zhou Lang now has a relatively small appetite and cannot digest more benefits.

Brown is a chicken thief, in order to prevent Zhou Lang from taking advantage of the loopholes in the terms, for example, Zhou Lang's pretense to enter the tea channel in the inland of Fujian is developed by Wei Lianli's Lian Li Xing, not a Chinese company, so it cannot be shared with the British company, he particularly emphasized that Lian Li Xing's current development in the inland of Fujian should be included in the channels controlled by the Chinese company.

For example, he clearly stressed that if the British company could not penetrate deep into the interior of Fujian due to its background, the Chinese company had no responsibility to risk angering the local government to forcibly support the British company's entry, which was also written into the draft.

Zhou Lang believed that even if he agreed to the East India Company to send people to follow Wei Lianli into the interior of Fujian, the Manchu government would not agree, and the British wanted to open up supply channels directly in the Fujian tea region, and unless they could defeat the Manchu court, they would still be turned away.

In fact, in the end, the terms of this agreement that can be realized are probably only that Zhou Lang's company can carry out commercial activities in India, and the East India Company can only carry out commercial activities in the area controlled by Zhou Lang.

So this agreement between ants and elephants, in fact, ants take a big advantage, because both sides do have equal breathing rights, but the gap between the ant's home and the elephant's home is too big, although the elephant's breathing ability is strong, but the ant gets more breathing space from the elephant's territory.

In fact, both sides also know in their hearts that this is only a preliminary cooperation, and no one can say how long it can last, and it is limited to commerce, and there is no intention of providing military obligations to the other side, nor is there a request for military assistance from the other side, but if this cooperation can achieve good results, comprehensive cooperation in the future will not be too far away.

During this time, as Zhou Lang gained a firm foothold in Jinxia, there was no friction with the Manchu local government, and the two sides well abided by the tacit understanding that the well water would not interfere with the river water.

And at the beginning, Changlin was very satisfied with the cooperation, because because of Zhou Lang's presence in Jinxia, the pirate forces that had been plagued by the Minhai for a long time were actually weakened.

This is mainly the result of Zhou Lang's recruitment of rebellion, since entering Jinxia, Zhou Lang began to recruit fishermen, many small groups of pirates who could not survive because of natural disasters, and lived like beggars at sea, and responded to join. As Zhou Lang gained a firm foothold, some veteran pirate gangs also began to come to vote.

Unconsciously, with the siege of Guangzhou, the seizure of Fengshan and the forcible capture of Jinxia this time, Zhou Lang's limelight in the Fujian-Guangdong Sea has been extremely loud, and with the expulsion of the Zhu Li group from Penghu, Zhou Lang has become a well-deserved No. 1 maritime giant in the southeast sea. According to pirate tradition, there are bound to be some pirate gangs that want to join them.

Zhou Lang basically does not refuse to come, but there are conditions, that is, to transform these pirates, he can't look at pirate ships, only look at pirate people, he can give pirate leaders a certain status and official position according to the scale of the pirate gang, but these pirates must be dismantled, he doesn't want his fleet to be a pirate gang wearing military uniforms.

Zhou Lang asked his three old pirate leaders, Qiu Tong, Lin Fazhi, and Zhang Biao, to talk to those pirates, but because of the rules that Zhou Lang adhered to, some pirate groups were very hesitant, but for those small groups of pirates who were in danger, they were very attractive, because although they lost their absolute control over their subordinates, they could get a generous military salary and an official position appointed by Zhou Lang.

Especially the latter, it is very attractive to some pirate leaders, a large number of Guangdong pirates can fight to the death for the Vietnamese for the official position of the Xishan Dynasty in Vietnam, Zhou Lang is also the generalissimo of the South Road of the Heaven and Earth Society, and the attraction is especially greater than that of the Vietnamese government.

So in just half a year, the number of naval soldiers under Zhou Lang swelled from 10,000 to 30,000, which was the result of the dismissal of more than 20,000 old and weak, and the placement of a large number of female pirates on the land of Xiamen, otherwise Zhou Lang's navy would have gone straight to 80,000.

can't help but feel that pirates in this era are really too serious.

With the expansion of Zhou Lang's power, the pirate gang in Minhai decreased rapidly, and only Shui Ao, Fengwei and two ships with hundreds of people and thousands of people remained.