After joining Zheng Ruozeng and Shen Jing, the team drove into the mountains, the road became bumpy, the carriages were no longer passable, and everyone changed horses. The destination of their trip was a mining area in the northern mountains. Needless to say, Luzon's prosperity today is directly related to the discovery of abundant and easily exploitable gold and copper deposits in the mountains.

The reason why Shen Mo used Luzon as an overseas colony of the Ming Dynasty was first of all because of the favorable time and place - the distance between Luzon and the mainland was moderate, there were mature routes to and from the mainland, there was a good Chinese base, and it coincided with the invasion of the Spaniards, and even its king was dying in battle soon after asking for help from the Ming Dynasty. If you don't take advantage of the situation to take Luzon and let the Spaniards gain a foothold in Asia, there will be tigers sleeping soundly on the side of the Ming couch. When Portugal is annexed by it, the Spaniards will surely set out from Luzon as soon as possible to take over Malacca and the Spice Islands. At that time, the Ming Dynasty will either fight with the country, or be locked in the South China Sea forever and miss the competition in the world.

But taking Luzon is only the first step, and if it can't attract the people who have relocated to the promised land, it will only be an overseas enclave, like the territories that have been discarded at will in history, and if there is a fiscal crisis at home, no matter how important the strategic position, it will be abandoned by spending cuts. So it has to be attractive enough for people to flock to it, so that the country is reluctant to give up.

The construction period of the plantation is too long, and the upfront investment is too large. Not only rely on the sky to eat, but also have to sell the products to the country, in order to be profitable, if there is a wave in the middle of the ship, the market is not smooth and silent, it will be difficult to return the money, and even may be lost. So only the desperate and gullible peasants will be attracted to it. However, the citizens who need Luzon's urbanization the most will not be tempted by the hundreds of acres of land across the ocean, and for them, there is really no reason to give up the current decent life, go to the ends of the earth to sweat and bleed, and even send their lives there.

Therefore, there needs to be a more deadly yòu confusion. With the development of the commodity economy, the tide of money worship inevitably swept the country, poverty and happiness were regarded as a laughing stock, wealth became a symbol of strength and status, and people's pursuit of precious metals became unprecedentedly fanatical. This is also why it is Luzon, not the neighboring Java and Malaga, because this small island has the third largest gold reserves in the world, which is far from comparable to the lack of precious metals in China!

In this world, only the thirst for gold can allow human beings to overcome their fear of the sea and embark on an unknown voyage in search of an opportunity to get rich overnight. In fact, before the arrival of Nanyang, gold deposits had been discovered in Luzon many times. Because the indigenous society of Luzon was still in a fairly primitive state, they did not understand the economic value of gold, and only regarded it as an ornament. Moreover, there were few immigrants at the time, the commodity economy was less developed, and the contact with the outside world was limited, so that news of the discovery of gold mines could not spread.

However, from the first day of Nanyang Company's entry into Luzon, the search for gold mines became their top priority, and after paying a huge price, they finally determined the location of 19 gold mines on the island in Longqing for five years, and then advertised through major newspapers in the southeast to recruit domestic people to come to pan for gold, and agreed that the Nanyang Company only needed 30% of the collected sands, and the remaining 70% belonged to the people.

What is little known is that this ratio of 37 kai, as well as the way of private development, once caused a huge controversy within Nanyang. Here is a question, what is this Nanyang company that has been mentioned repeatedly?

To be precise, this is a permanent joint-stock company established in Jiajing 44 years, and the public promoter is Huilian, which contributed 24 million taels of silver, accounting for 80% of the shares. The remaining 20 percent was subscribed by hundreds of large and small firms or individuals, with a total share capital of 30 million taels of silver. Among the shareholders of Huilian, there are nine major families in the southeast, as well as Jin merchants who joined because of the exchange of shareholdings with Sunrise. Therefore, from the very beginning, Nanyang Company was not a simple business, but a super pioneering group with unparalleled financial resources and power, and was tasked with seizing profits for shareholders in the Age of Discovery.

The company's first business expansion was the maritime shipping industry. With investment regardless of cost, Nanyang Company quickly established its own escort fleet to the highest standards, and recruited the best seamen and captains, breaking through the old overlords and establishing its position on the ocean. However, the competition has led to a decline in profits in the transportation industry, and although it is still very impressive, it is far from being able to recoup its investment.

However, Nanyang's ambition does not stop at sharing a piece of the pie with Wang Zhi and Xu Hai. It has a higher pursuit, that is, to establish colonies and monopolize the colonial economy as its main business! The sea competition with Xu Haiwang is just for military training, and Luzon is their real goal!

Finally, when the Spaniards invaded Luzon, the king of Luzon asked for help from the Ming Dynasty, and when the Ming Dynasty was still too busy to take care of himself, the Nanyang Company took the initiative to ask for help from the people, asking for the organization of a civilian fleet to support Luzon. And the court didn't want to pay a penny, just get the trade monopoly of Luzon after driving out the Spaniards.

In the perception of the Peking officials, Luzon is an almost barren barbarian land, what trade can there be? Pushed by Shen Mo, the Nanyang Company was finally authorized in the name of the emperor to recover Luzon and agreed to grant it a monopoly on trade in Luzon.

As a result, as we all know, the Nanyang Company did its best to drive out the Spaniards who had not gained a firm foothold by taking advantage of the right time and place, and finally established its supremacy on the island through a series of schemes. But it is a company after all, and the shareholders are not interested in expanding their territory, what they need is profit, and it is to realize the good prospects described earlier! At the very least, we have to earn back more than 10 million taels of war expenses, right?

What awaited them, however, was the bad news of additional investments, more than once, each time in the tens of millions of taels – mass migration, the formation of security forces, the construction of infrastructure, the provision of means of production for plantations, each of which required sustained and huge investments, and for years with no return. Although everyone looked at the silent face, they could only grit their teeth and throw money into it with tears...... Basically, all the money earned through maritime trade in those years was invested...... The mood of the shareholders can be imagined.

Therefore, when a large-scale gold mine was discovered in Luzon, the shareholders, who had long been green-eyed, were like wolves that had been hungry for ten days, shouting to make a big profit to compensate for the losses suffered in the past few years. As they wanted, they fenced these mines, and then ordered black slaves in large quantities from the Franco-machine merchants, or forced the natives to work as laborers, without even paying them, and all the gold dug up went to the company!

But Shen Mo couldn't agree, he needed the gold mines of Luzon to revive the whole chess game he had arranged.

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In a textbook for Nanyang executives, Shen Mo divided the colonies into three types: colonial, predatory, and commercial. A predatory colony is a destructive plundering of only the natural resources of the colony, including the population resources; As for the commercial colonies, they were used as raw material production and dumping sites. The colony colony, on the other hand, is the continuation of the suzerain's country overseas, which can not only fulfill the functions of the first two, but more importantly, can become a part of the national territory and a permanent place for the people to settle.

Obviously, the third type is the longest-term and the most bewildering...... If Luzon can really be made a colony, the Nanyang Company is tantamount to becoming a prince, and all the shareholders are the ministers of the state, and this kind of confusion is enough to make people give up some immediate interests.

However, the conditions for the formation of such colonies are too harsh, first of all, it is necessary that the colonies do not have indigenous civilizations, or the degree of civilization is extremely low, so that it is possible to erase the imprint of the original civilization and make new civilizations take root; At the same time, there are also requirements for the number of aborigines, although the Han civilization has the strongest assimilation effect, but if the number of aborigines is too large, the difficulty of assimilation is too great. Outright genocide is certainly possible, but it is not something that the Chinese can do. Therefore, if you want to become a colonization place for the Chinese, you must first have a very low level of civilization and a very small population. And it can't be too far from the mainland, and the natural environment has to be suitable for survival.

Luzon is very rare to meet these conditions perfectly, but only if the people are attracted to it.

As mentioned earlier, gold is the magic weapon of the world. And you have to make people feel that they will make a lot of money, so that they can put down their livelihood, overcome the fear of the unknown, and come to Luzon to pan for gold.

Under Zheng Ruozeng's painstaking persuasion, the shareholders finally agreed to give him another three years, and if he still did not make a profit in three years, then the gold mine must be recovered and developed by the company independently.

After obtaining the understanding of the shareholders, Zheng Ruozeng launched an overwhelming advertising campaign, conveying the news of the discovery of countless gold mines in Nanyang to the north and south of the river, and finally opened the curtain of the Great Emigration.

Guangdong, which is closest to Luzon and the most adventurous among the people, was the first to feel the impact of the gold rush...... The peasants pawned their fields, the workers threw down their tools, the soldiers took off their armour, the soldiers left their studies, and even some middle- and lower-ranking officials abandoned their official positions and bought tickets to board the passenger ships bound for Luzon.

At the height of the gold rush, half of the houses in Canton were empty, because of a sudden shortage of labor, factories were shut down on a large scale, and even newspapers that had been in circulation for several years had to be closed because of the departure of typesetters and the dispersion of subscribers. The craze then swept through Fujian, Guangxi, and Huguang, where 70,000 adult men left their crops to harvest and sailed south to Guangzhou and then south in the six years of Longqing alone. At the same time, more than 40,000 Fujianese set out from Quanzhou for Luzon. Even in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, which are complacent and extremely nostalgic, there are several large ships full of gold diggers sailing every day.

Gold prospectors from the country's provinces caused Luzon's population to skyrocket. In the fifth year of Longqing, the registered population of the Governor's Palace of Luzon was 87,000, and a year later, it had reached 315,000, and another year, the population exceeded 500,000. Because gold mining spots are dotted around, towns have sprung up like mushrooms. The once lifeless island of Luzon has finally become lively because of the arrival of gold prospectors.

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Upon arrival in Luzon, the prospectors were first registered with the Governor's Palace, then incorporated into a gold mining team, and after the discipline was announced, they were taken to the corresponding gold mining site by the security forces of the Nanyang Company. At first, they were worried about whether they would be abducted, but soon this worry was swept away, and there was only one voice left in everyone's hearts, that is, 'gold, gold'!

From the northern mountains, to the central mountain ranges, to the southern mountains, there are gold mining points set up by Nanyang Company everywhere. Originally, since the golden sand was on the surface, gold could be washed out of the sand with just an ordinary washbasin. No matter how stupid a person is, he doesn't need to be taught, it's completely a physical work. At that time, the average person could find two taels of gold, which was six taels of gold a month, which was equivalent to 20 times the average monthly income in China. And in some rich mining areas, some people can even find this number in a day.

In the fourth year of Wanli, the Luzon gold rush reached its peak, and the gold output increased from 3 million taels in the five years of Longqing to 15 million taels, accounting for almost half of the world's output.

But what is even more eye-opening is the magical driving effect of gold......

The Chinese are well aware of the truth that they are not guilty and guilty, so while acquiring wealth, they must also protect their own safety, whether it is property safety or personal safety. Therefore, the most direct profit is Huilian, which has long been deeply rooted in people's hearts of the silver, has become the first choice for gold diggers to save gold, and Huilian has also launched a property preservation service, if the depositor dies unexpectedly, Huilian will pay the gold in his account to his designated heirs. This greatly reduced the idea of some people vainly trying to kill people and get more goods for nothing, so that the tide of gold rush could not go crazy in the frenzy.

The washed gold slabs from all over the country are piled up in the silver coffers of the Huilian throughout Luzon, and the Huilian is responsible for minting the gold coins and keeping them safe for customers. This made the gold reserves of the Huilian suddenly increased from the alert level to 20 times the original level, and its strength rose to a new level.

But even bigger changes are yet to come...... RO！。