As in many industries, the first modernization projects to go to war in China in modern times were often brought by foreigners, from shipbuilding to textiles. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

The same is true for the silk reeling industry, the first to establish a modern silk reeling factory in China was not Chinese, but Jardine Matheson.

In history, in 1860, they opened the first silk reeling factory in Shanghai, Jardine Silk Reeling Factory, originally the British wanted to run the silk reeling factory to the south of the Yangtze River, but whether it was the Taiping army occupying Jiangnan, or the Qing army occupied Jiangnan, they did not agree to their request, so they had no choice but to put it in Shanghai.

But the problem is that Shanghai is not a silkworm production area, the surrounding area of Shanghai is mainly cotton growing, and the raw materials of the silk reeling factory silkworm cocoons have to be transported from Suzhou.

Transportation is not a problem, the problem is that the cocoon is not a dead thing, it is not an ore or cotton, but there are baby silkworms in the cocoon, which is a living thing. When the time comes, the baby silkworm will bite through the cocoon, and the cocoon that is bitten is a waste cocoon, and there may be a way to deal with it by hand, and the machine is completely useless.

This is just a problem, even if some cocoons can be transported in the right time, the ones that are worn and flattened during the journey are not easy to use.

Therefore, Jardine Matheson set up a silk factory in Shanghai, and they had many problems to solve, such as they needed to build scientific transportation facilities, and the imitation silkworm cocoons were damaged during transportation. Even if it is transported to Shanghai, silkworm cocoons are seasonal raw materials, and silkworms in Jiangnan are basically spring and summer, and they have to buy the raw materials they need for a year in these two seasons, which requires preservation equipment. Cocoon storage facilities are needed, generally to build cold storage, otherwise the silkworm baby will bite through the cocoon if it feels warm.

In short, what Jardine Matheson wants to solve is not the problem of a silk reeling factory, what he needs to solve is the problem of a complete set of modern silk reeling system, this problem is not something he can handle as a foreign company, not to mention the huge investment, but also to communicate with the local government, it can be said that without the strong support of the government, it is difficult for this industry to develop.

Therefore, in the process of operation, Jardine Silk Reeling Factory often encounters the problem of insufficient raw materials, shutdown is almost the norm, the most important thing is that the problem of cocoon storage has not been solved, so after ten years of dismal operation, it was found that it was really not enough to compete with the handmade silk reeling in the Suhu area, and the Jardine Silk Reeling Factory was directly closed.

Ten years, that is, from 1860 to 1870, this had nothing to do with the Taiping army's attack on Shanghai, before which they would not be able to drive. In fact, the biggest problem in history was the Franco-Prussian War, because France, the world's largest silk producer, fell into a state of war, so that the Jardine Matheson Silk Reeling Factory, which had relied on direct export of raw silk to France and could barely support it, could not operate at all.

Originally, they closed down directly, but in this era, due to the rapid development of the Guangdong silk reeling industry, things have changed.

Xu Rongcun was the first batch of compradors in Shanghai, but his family was not his own, in fact, he still followed his brother Xu Yuting, Xu Yuting did business in Macao in his early years, mainly to do foreign trade business, it can be said that before the Opium War, he was a comprador.

Later, after the Opium War, Shanghai opened its port, and foreigners flocked to Shanghai, but the scene could not be opened for a while, because Shanghai did not have the complete service system of Macau, so Baoshun Foreign Bank lent a huge amount of money and invited Xu Yuting, a partner in Macao, to come to Shanghai for development.

As early as 1846, Xu Yuting set up a Yichang Silk Tea Soil in Shanghai, mainly engaged in silk tea and opium, in fact, it was those things he did in Macau, silk tea was supplied to Baoshun Foreign Company, and opium was supplied to him by Baoshun Foreign Company, which was equivalent to transferring the Xu family's trade in Guangdong to Shanghai.

With the rapid development of Shanghai in the early days of the opening of the port, especially the unique character of Shanghainese people who are not xenophobic, Xu Yuting is like a fish in water in Shanghai, and his business has grown big within a few years. Xu Rongcun came to Shanghai with the help of his brother's connections and connections, and opened a Rong Ji silk shop, mainly engaged in raw silk business.

But Xu Rongcun had a good brain, and when he heard that the British were holding a trade fair, no one else cared, he sent a bag of raw silk to the exhibition, and won the gold medal, which made the Ming government notice him and invited him to do foreign affairs, and since then he has been in the officialdom. But his family is still running a foreign trade business in Shanghai, not only did he not fall because he quit, but because of his connections, he became bigger and bigger.

His brother Xu Yuting has been in poor health in recent years, but the Xu family has produced a powerful descendant, named Xu Run, who is also a famous comprador in later generations, and the main mark in history is that he later helped Li Hongzhang to do the steamship China Merchants Bureau.

Xu Run was brought to Shanghai by Xu Yuting together with Xu Rongcun, and Xu Rongcun was introduced as an apprentice at the beginning, and in a flash it was more than 20 years, Xu Run became the comprador of Baoshun from an apprentice, and now he has taken over the family business.

At this time, Xu Run was mainly based on raw silk and tea. But the young Xu Run's brain is alive, in recent years, the Ming Dynasty's silk reeling industry has developed rapidly, two years ago he opened a silk reeling factory in his hometown of Xiangshan County, but the operation is not ideal, the competition is only from the South China Sea, Shunde and other mulberry silkworm base developed those silk reeling factories, although not bankrupt, but there is no profit.

Xu Run understood that there was no advantage in the Xu family in Guangdong, but in Shanghai they had a great advantage, and happened to hear that Jardine Matheson was going to sell the silk factory, and Xu Run, the land of the silk factory, didn't care, what he cared about was those machinery and equipment and workers. But the problem of the Jardine silk reeling factory, Xu Run is also very clear, he has also run a silk factory, knowing that raw materials are the biggest trouble, the French and Italians provide raw materials for large factories by building a silkworm cocoon reserve, and the Guangdong silk reeling factory is built directly in the countryside, saving the money for this equipment.

Xu Run understood that unless the silk reeling factory could be built in the countryside of Suzhou and other places, he would accept that the Jardine Silk Reeling Factory would have to go out of business, and if it was Xu Run in the past, he would not have paid much attention, but now the Xu family is different, they have a diplomat, and it is Xu Rong Village who can talk to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

Historically, he was a bureaucratic comprador who was very good at using official power, and it was strange to leave his uncle alone.

So there was such a scene.

Li Xiucheng considered that in dealing with the Ming Dynasty, he had to have a good relationship with Xu Rongcun, and felt that it was not a big deal, the worldview of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was not that of the squire, but of the people at the bottom, but that they didn't care about those rules and regulations, and even smashed the Confucian Temple, of course, they didn't care about any foreign factories, they used to treat foreigners as brothers, and the books written by Hong Renji on running factories and building railways were publicly printed in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

So there was no resistance to the concept, and Li Xiucheng casually agreed.

He didn't know that his unintentional move would modernize the silk reeling industry in Jiangnan by several decades.

Of course, it also increased the tax revenue of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom by a large amount, but the traditional silk reeling industry went bankrupt, but the life and death of the small people, who cares, the prince of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom only cares about whether they have money to spend, and the purpose of their peasant rebellion is not to achieve any doctrine, the purpose of their rebellion is just for their own local masters.

Xu Rongcun himself didn't know how much benefit the privilege he asked Li Xiucheng would bring to the Xu family, he just casually asked his nephew, and it was like this, he didn't care if he didn't succeed, his most important identity and task was mediation. Therefore, after agreeing with Li Xiucheng, he will go to negotiate with the British.

The content of his discussion with Li Xiucheng was mainly the appeal of the Ming Dynasty, and it was not certain whether the British could accept it. But Da Ming had already considered the issue of protecting British interests, and even did not plan to fight for customs with the British from the beginning, Xu Rongcun thought that he was still very sure to convince the British. He needs to resume trade in Shanghai as soon as possible, which is not only the interests of foreigners, but also the interests of Ming merchants, Shanghai's foreign trade is very developed, but the trade with the Ming Dynasty is equally developed.

The British were indeed more difficult to deal with than the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and they were even more difficult to speak, and they resolutely could not agree to the stationing of the Ming army in Shanghai and the stationing of the Ming fleet in Shanghai. Xu Rongcun used the Taiping army to suppress the British, saying that if the Ming army was not stationed here, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would not be at ease.

The core of the problem is actually control, the British still want to control it themselves, they want to garrison troops in Shanghai. But previous circumstances had shown that their garrison was completely unable to maintain the security of Shanghai. Xu Rongcun used this as a breakthrough point, believing that Britain could not guarantee Shanghai's trade security at all.

The Ming attitude made the British very ambivalent, they found that in order to take full control of Shanghai, the British either started a war, and the scale of this war was unpredictable, and they had to eliminate the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom regime before it was possible to remove the threat of Shanghai once and for all.

According to the conservative estimates of the British, the scale of this war was definitely no less than the suppression of the Indian uprising. They have to raise at least 200,000 troops to fight this war, spending hundreds of millions of pounds to solve this problem. But the benefits are much smaller than India's, and first of all, even if they win, it will not be easy for them to directly dominate Jiangnan in China.

If they don't choose war, they can only choose to cooperate with the Ming Dynasty, although they can see that the Ming Dynasty is using their diplomatic relations with the Tai'an Kingdom to profit from it and want to intervene in Shanghai, but if they don't let the Ming intervene, then they will have to ensure the safety of Shanghai themselves.

After a heated argument about the huge cost and sharing power in Shanghai with the Ming, the British wisely agreed, but made a few demands.

First, the Ming garrison in Shanghai could not exceed the British, and under any circumstances, if the Ming wanted to increase the number of garrisons, it was necessary to obtain the understanding of the British and increase the number of troops equally.

Second, the customs in Shanghai was still managed by the British, and the Ming Dynasty was not allowed to intervene in the management of the customs.

Third, the Shanghai concession must be restored to its previous state, the foreigners will continue to maintain autonomy in the concession, and the Ming Dynasty cannot intervene in the politics of the concession.

These conditions can be considered by the Ming Dynasty, but the problem is that Li Xiucheng has never considered that after he conquers Shanghai, he will hand over Shanghai to foreigners, and the Taiping Army cannot garrison troops in Shanghai, so this will put him under strong political pressure, and there will definitely be a group of people who will impeach him.

Xu Rongcun felt that his job was really difficult to do.