"Actually, Mr.'s books are selling very well in Guangzhou and Quanzhou, and they have been reprinted twice, but they are ......" Wen Nan did not agree with Luo Youde's statement, after all, this book also has half of his credit, and he is not happy when others say that no one reads him.

"Forget it, I didn't expect them to be willing to watch it, it is the most difficult thing to get some people to change here, and the bigger the official, the more difficult it is to change!" Hong Tao pouted and pointed to his head, in fact, he didn't have much hope for this book, this was just a small attempt by him, since it can be reprinted twice, it shows that it has an effect, and it can make a hundred people agree with his own proposition, so it is not in vain.

"In fact, the imperial court is not only fighting the idea of the warship, they also want to cast artillery. Since the end of last year, the imperial court has mobilized a lot of casting craftsmen to start trial production, the specific progress I don't know, for this matter, Zheng Xiang also once asked me about the details of the artillery, I prevaricated on the grounds that I don't understand, I really don't understand! Wen Nan nodded and agreed with Hong Tao's point of view, when he arrived in Jinhe Bay, he also looked down on Hong Tao from the bottom of his heart, and only thought that he had temporarily gained some advantages by virtue of one or two items, and he couldn't last long. However, after several years of observation and research, he now agrees with Hong Tao's ideas for the most part. He saw the development process of Jinhewan in his eyes, compared with the Great Song Dynasty, it was a thriving country, and it was even more in line with some of the views in the sage's education.

"It's okay, I'm not worried about the court learning my skills, in fact, what I've been doing is to let everyone learn slowly, not to learn the surface, not to learn a certain point, it's better to learn a set. Unfortunately, things don't always go my way. But I'm not discouraged. I think it's still working. What worries me the most is after the imperial court develops the artillery. Once taken by Mongolia, it will be a bit of a trouble. So far, I still have to hold on to the technology of warships and artillery, and after the great threat of the Mongol Empire is completely solved, I will think about the proliferation of technology. "Probably knowing the progress of artillery research and development in the Mongol Empire, Hong Tao is basically not worried about the progress of the Great Song Dynasty. As far as casting and smelting technology are concerned, the original Mongols must have been thrown off several streets by the Great Song Dynasty, but they couldn't stand up to others and really worked hard to learn. In addition, the Persians in Central Asia and West Asia and the techniques of the Great Cannibals were mastered by the Mongols. All aspects are combined, and I'm afraid that both sides are about the same now. The Mongols couldn't figure it out, and it was difficult for the Great Song Dynasty to make any major breakthroughs.

Wen Nan didn't let Hong Tao wait for two days, he chatted with Hong Tao in the small building for a long time that day, listened carefully to Hong Tao's vision of a constitutional monarchy and his vision for the future country, and took his wife and children to board the Jinhe at noon the next day. In his own words, Hong Tao's set of things is exactly the ideal pursued by all scholars in the Great Song Dynasty, especially the constitutional monarchy, which is simply fulfilling the ideal of the scholar class for several lifetimes. Since this concept cannot be realized in the Great Song Dynasty, then he will act as a pathfinder. Follow Hong Tao to explore one or two. If he is lucky enough to have some success, he will write his own book and talk about it. In turn, he told the scholars of the Great Song Dynasty about his achievements, and let them choose how to make their own trade-offs.

Hong Tao didn't mind Wen Nan's attitude of using the Jinhe Empire as a litmus test, in fact, he thought the same way, no one knew whether it was successful or not, so he just went to explore and explore together. Failure has nothing to do with the Great Song Dynasty, success is a living example, you can tell the Song people more intuitively, you can go through this way, and if you are willing to go further, hurry up and follow the cat and the tiger.

At the end of June, the Jinhe returned to Ximaozhou with two armed cargo ships, and the remaining six warships remained outside the port of Mingzhou. Although Wu Qian was not very happy about Hong Tao's claim to be emperor, he was still more sensible, and after listening to Wen Nan tell him about the situation of the Mongolian sailors, he still chose to maintain the original state of cooperation with Jinhewan and provide sufficient supplies to the Jinhe Imperial fleet at the mouth of the Yongjiang River. Whether it is Jinhewan or the Jinhe Empire, people can only help the Great Song Dynasty and have no harm, so it will not be that the great enemy of Mongolia has not been completely eliminated, and Hong Tao will turn his face and add another strong enemy, Wu Qian can still think about this reason.

Originally, the directors of the Straits Company generally held a meeting in October, which is the season to prepare for the South Seas, and everyone got together to discuss the prices of various goods this year, and then unified their thinking, and allocated the types of goods purchased by each company, so as to prevent the phenomenon of swarming people selling or buying one or two goods. That will outweigh the losses, and will raise the buying price and lower the selling price, allowing outsiders to take advantage of it in vain.

The Straits Company is not a pure transportation organization, it is not only responsible for escort, port replenishment and navigation safety, but also has strict internal organizational discipline, free pricing and a combination of unified purchase and sales. On the one hand, it will take advantage of the huge purchase volume and source of goods of the company's maritime merchants to bargain with suppliers, and on the other hand, it will also use the monopoly degree of these goods and buyers to raise the selling price. Generally speaking, it is more like an indispensable intermediate link, in addition to the transportation of profits, but also partially affect the market price direction.

What kind of company is the most profitable? Businesses that can set the rules of the game are the most profitable. What the Straits Company has been silently doing in recent years is to reach out to the market to ask for rights, and the greater the power in its hands, the stronger the control, the more effective the rules it formulates, and the stronger the cohesion. For the maritime merchants who fight alone, the Straits Company is both cute and hateful. Because you don't know when it will make a big sale, it will make you lose a lot of money, and you don't know when it will embargo a certain kind of goods, and you can make a lot of money. Maritime merchants who are unwilling to take too many risks naturally choose to join the Straits Company to make money with the big guys.

At present, there are more than 100 formal shareholders of the Straits Company, all of whom are well-known maritime merchants in Guangzhou, Quanzhou, and Fuzhou, and almost half of the long-distance ships that set sail from the port of Guangzhou every year are hung with copper coin flags. Most of the remaining long-distance cargo ships are short-haul, do not pass through the Strait of Malacca, or simply go to the port of Malacca to buy goods, and then go to a few small surrounding countries to resell them, and it is not very important whether they join the strait company or not.

Among the younger generation of maritime businessmen in Guangzhou, Qiongzhou, and Quanzhou, many people are accustomed to going to the bank of the Straits Company in Guangzhou to solve the liquidity problem. The bank specializes in providing large loans to Straits shareholders and can also provide small mortgages to other non-corporate members. In addition, the bank has a more important business is the withdrawal of deposits in other places, which is more important and intimate than loans for maritime merchants.

At present, there are no paper money that can be circulated with each other, and there are no bills of exchange and checks that can be circulated with each other, and there are only two ways to go out to make a big deal, one is to barter with goods, and the other is to bring a sufficient number of Great Song Dynasty copper coins, the purchasing power of this thing has been popularized by the merchant ships of the Straits Company to the Indian Peninsula, and there is a tendency to develop westward. But both methods have drawbacks, barter, the way of trading is too rough, once you can't find a suitable exchange of goods, you will face the danger of losing money. It is also very troublesome to trade with copper coins, although with the escort of the armed merchant ships of the Strait Company, pirates basically do not need to be considered, but everyone brings copper coins, which leads to a large outflow of copper coins from several ports, and the number is becoming scarce day by day, and it is very inconvenient to raise, and the price often fluctuates.

As soon as the non-local withdrawal deposit business of Haixia Bank came out, all the worries and troubles of maritime merchants were swept away. If you want to go to the port of Kalamba with a shipload of goods, you only need to deposit a sum of money at the Haixia Bank branch in Guangzhou and set sail with the certificate issued by the bank. When you arrive at the port of Kalamba, if the goods are not sold out and there is not enough money to buy the goods, you can take this voucher to the Straits Bank branch in the port of Kalamba to withdraw money, and after paying a little handling fee, you can immediately get the cash and buy whatever you want. By the same token, if you save a sum of money in Puerto Calamba, you can withdraw it immediately when you return to Guangzhou. Don't worry about credit problems, the shareholder of Haixia Bank is the Straits Company, which has the endorsement of hundreds of maritime merchants, which is higher than the credibility of the imperial court.

Since the beginning of this year, Haixia Bank has added a currency exchange function, and gold, silver and jewelry can be exchanged with copper coins at a certain price. If you don't have a sufficient amount of copper coins, but you have gold, silver and jewelry, you can also go to the Straits Bank to exchange them for copper coins, and of course, you will have to charge a certain amount of handling fees. This provides a settlement method for many maritime merchants, especially when trading with foreign merchants, their gold, silver and jewelry can also be traded as goods or currency, as long as they refer to the exchange rate of the Straits Bank, they do not have to worry about taking it back and depreciating.

But the Straits Company still seems to feel that there are not enough services to offer, so starting in June, the company has actually launched gold and silver coins. This thing can not only be exchanged with the Great Song Dynasty copper coins according to a fixed ratio, but also can be used to Southeast Asian countries directly as money, at present as far as Kalamba Port in the west, as far as Japan in the east, and as far as Jawa Island in the south, this kind of gold and silver coins printed with exquisite patterns have begun to appear, and its name is called mouse head and whale money. This is not Hong Tao's idea, it is all the common name of the maritime merchants and the common people, as for the official name, no one cares, it can be spent, and it is useless to care so much.

Originally, Hong Tao wanted to get another check business, but when he saw that the craftsmen of Jinhewan had spent a night drawing an identical check sample, he immediately dispelled this idea. Deposit receipts are all named, and those things are well documented, but the checks are bearer, and if someone also has a crooked mind, it is still a trivial matter to let the Straits Bank lose money, and it is not worth it to ruin the reputation that has been built up with great difficulty.

(To be continued.) )