Chapter 342 The Opium Trade

[Today's second update]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The situation in Southeast Asia eased with the reconciliation between the Chinese Empire and the Dutch East India Company, and the crisis of war was temporarily lifted, but in addition to expanding the coast guard of the five colonies of Luzon, Papua, New Zealand, Kalimantan, and Singapore, the Chinese Empire also focused the main force of the Second Pacific Fleet on the defense of Southeast Asian waters.

For this reason, although the war in Southeast Asia was lifted, relations between the Chinese Imperial Navy and the Dutch East India Fleet were still tense, and some confrontations would occur from time to time, resulting in a tense atmosphere in the local sea area filled with the smell of gunsmoke.

However, after this standoff lasted for half a year, the command of the fleet of the Imperial Chinese Navy changed after directing a military exercise at sea.

The reason is that on 17 January in the 6th year of Shenwu, the First Fleet and the Second Fleet of the Pacific Fleet were ordered to hold military exercises. But the First Fleet, since its equipment is inferior to that of the Second Fleet, has no chance of winning directly in tactical confrontations. But the First Fleet was not discouraged, the First Fleet attacked with a small fleet and the Second Fleet and gave it to the Second Fleet to eat, and then the First Fleet group quietly disappeared into the sea.

The Second Fleet was bent on finding the First Fleet for a decisive battle, so they searched everywhere, but could not find it. Seeing that the time stipulated for the exercise was coming to an end, the Second Fleet believed that it could no longer complete the possibility of annihilating the First Fleet in the remaining time, so it returned to the base.

However, just as the Second Fleet had just returned to the base, the First Fleet caught up and blockaded the base. The Second Fleet's participating units laughed at the First Fleet because the exercise ended after the First Fleet blockaded the base.

In the end, however, the Fleet Command was surprised by the First Fleet's uneasiness and common sense, and only after questioning did it understand the intention of the First Fleet.

The First Fleet gave the Second Fleet a portion of the warships during the exercise, so judging by this, the Second Fleet won. However, the problem lies in the fact that the First Fleet surrounded the base of the Second Fleet at the last time of the exercise, and if it continued to do so, it would be tantamount to a sneak attack or even annihilation of the Second Fleet.

Although the time for the exercise had come, the fleet command decided after studying it that the final winner would be the First Fleet.

Then, at the end of February, during the Royal Navy's second annual exercise, the First Fleet did the same again, tactically different from the last, but with the same result. That is, the First Fleet once again attacked the base of the Second Fleet.

It was only then that the fleet command suddenly discovered a problem, that is, the situation of the Dutch sneak attack on the Spanish fleet in the first place.

The tactics used by the First Fleet were very similar to those used by the Dutch, who liked to attack with fire and sneak attacks on military ports. In Southeast Asia, Subic, the Royal Navy's main base for the Second Pacific Fleet, was too close to the main shipping lane. With the resumption of trade between the Chinese Empire and the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch fleet often called at the port of Manila. It is difficult to distinguish whether a large number of Dutch merchant ships are caravans or fleets at night, and if it is the latter, what if the other side suddenly attacks Subic? The main force of the Pacific Fleet is stationed there, and the elite of the Imperial Royal Navy are all there, and once there is a loss, then the empire will not be able to control the sea power for a long time, and the losses will be heavy.

Even if it was not attacked, if the Dutch East India Fleet blocked the port of Subic, then strategically, Southeast Asia would fall under the control of the Dutch.

With these in mind, the Imperial Admiralty transferred all the main warships of the Pacific Fleet to the Mapula Naval Base in Guam in March of the sixth year of Shenmu.

Emperor Shenwu Deng Haonan also agreed, because it reminded him that the success of Germany's blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union was that the Soviet Union stationed its main forces on the border, which was completely lost in the German raid.

At this time, although the empire had a powerful fleet, it was far inferior to European countries in terms of overall shipbuilding industrial capacity. Even if the main forces of European countries are eliminated, they can be reconstituted within three years. And this ability, obviously, the empire does not yet possess, once the main fleet of the empire is destroyed, it will take at least five or six years to recover.

After the departure of the main Pacific fleet from Southeast Asia, the tension in Southeast Asia was suddenly eased considerably. As trade between the two countries returned to normal, the merchants of the Dutch East India Company quickly forgot about the loss of several colonies and devoted themselves to maritime trade.

The main force of the Dutch East India Fleet also moved out of Southeast Asia and into the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean, and began to attack the East India Fleet of Britain, France and other countries. At the same time, the warships that originally belonged to the West India Company, as well as the troops of the Dutch government, also began to retreat and return home to join the Dutch War of Independence.

The imperial government of China temporarily abandoned its maritime expansion in Southeast Asia and focused its maritime expansion on the islands in the Central Pacific.

The Pacific Fleet roamed around the entire Central and South Pacific, marking the map of each island it found with the Chinese Empire, and then erecting a monument to the island. If there are indigenous people on the island, Marines are sent to clean it up. Since the islands had little economic value, most of the Imperial immigrants were reluctant to go there, so the Imperial government had to turn the islands into uninhabited islands for easy management.

In this way, the Imperial Government successively took control of the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands, the Phoenix Islands, the Tuamotu Islands, the Marquesas Islands, and the Fiji Islands. These islands were erected as a monument to the sovereignty of the Chinese Empire and marked on the map.

At this time, the empire's territory included the entire Pacific Ocean, but Japan was the only one that was still dazzling on the map.

Intelligence gathering against the Tokugawa shogunate had been going on for some time, and the imperial government had tried to threaten Tokugawa Iemitsu with his navy and demand that he end his policy of seclusion. However, Tokugawa Iemitsu was reluctant, and refused the Empire's request.

For this reason, from the third year of Jimmu, the main task of the First Pacific Fleet of the Imperial Royal Navy was to bombard the coast of Japan. However, Tokugawa Iemitsu moved the Japanese people from the coastal areas inland, and the effect of the Imperial Navy's shelling was very limited.

The Imperial General Staff formulated a series of operational arrangements for the conquest of Japan by force, but none of them achieved good results.

After the Tokugawa shogunate signed the first unequal treaty, the Tokugawa Iemitsu clan vowed to be ashamed, so the Tokugawa shogunate shifted its finances to the military on a large scale, forming an army of 500,000 men and a small but large naval division in the Seto Inland Sea. This naval division never went out of the Seto Inland Sea, and mainly schooners of one or two hundred tons, numbering as high as five or six hundred, practiced a tactic that was self-evident, that is, the tactics of a wolf pack. Since the other side did not leave the Seto Inland Sea, the Imperial Royal Navy did not dare to enter the Seto Inland Sea to fight.

The Tokugawa shogunate's army was armed with about one-third of the arquebuses, one-third of the sword-and-shield soldiers, and one-third of the spearmen. Due to the unity of the Japanese nation and the unity of heart, the intelligence services of the empire collected very limited intelligence on Japan.

The Imperial Army landed in Hirado in the fourth year of Jimmu and fought successfully against the Japanese on the plains, but when the Japanese retreated into the mountains and forests near Hirado, the war was fought extremely hard. The advantage of the Imperial Royal Army was muskets and artillery, but the muskets could not be used as an effective firing formation in the mountains and forests, and the artillery ballistics were affected by the mountain terrain and could not form an effective suppression, so they could not be reached by the Japanese troops who retreated into the mountains and forests.

As a result, the Imperial Army occupied only a few important cities along the coast of Japan in the next two years, and the attack on the inland cities was very slow and costly.

Deng Haonan had never liked to fight a war that lost money, and at the same time, Deng Haonan knew that it would not be easy to conquer a single nation like Japan, so the Imperial Army stopped its offensive after occupying several coastal cities in western Japan.

Japan's gold and silver mines were deep in the mountains, and the Tokugawa shogunate was so tightly controlled that the Imperial Army could hardly get any useful information.

Military means to conquer a nation are always the worst, so Deng Haonan turned to economic aggression. Through the occupied cities, economic aggression was carried out against Japan.

Of course, Deng Haonan knew that the Tokugawa shogunate at this time had already controlled the Japanese people and was not allowed to buy the goods of the Chinese Empire, and at the same time, Japan's feudal economy was very similar to the Chinese Empire, and regular economic aggression was not suitable for the other party.

It is well known that from 1600 onwards, the Dutch were the first to start selling opium to China. The Dutch, through Guò, introduced North American Indian pipes to China along with tobacco leaves, and smokers began to appear in China. Its extensiveness frightened China's rulers, and the Ming emperor ordered a ban on smoking. Because some people once mixed opium with tobacco for smoking, unexpectedly, the ban on tobacco led to the spread of pure opium smoking.

At the beginning of the founding of the Chinese Empire, Deng Haonan received a report from local officials that the Fushou paste transported by the Dutch to Middle-earth was rampant, and many people in the southeastern coastal areas were addicted to it, and some people were ruined.

As a result, Deng Haonan ordered a ban on smoking and peddling opium, but Dutch merchants still smuggled it. In this way, the Chinese Empire added this clause to the elements of the war against the Dutch East India Company in Southeast Asia.

However, the opium trade of the Dutch was very limited, and the Imperial Coast Guard was very strict in its inspection. At first, it was a deliberate attempt to make things difficult for foreign merchants and to crack down on foreigners' trade in China. Later, with the imperial government promulgating a series of laws to protect national industry and commerce, the customs and coast guard joined forces to make things difficult for foreign merchants in the name of inspecting opium.

The Chinese Empire, in particular, targeted Dutch merchants with harsh punishments, culminating in the death penalty of more than one kilogram of opium. The Dutch East India Company repeatedly requested extradition for the East India Company to be heard, but was denied, and although the Dutch were annoyed by the Chinese Empire's approach, they could only endure it.

By the sixth year of Shenwu, the Chinese Empire had cut off the inflow of opium, and except for the hospitals designated by the empire allowed the introduction of a part of opium for the treatment of diseases, the people were strictly prohibited from cultivating, peddling, and smoking. Of course, there are tens of thousands of addicts in the empire who have suffered deeply, and it cannot be ruled out that there will sometimes be opium smuggled into the country illegally.

The channel of illegal entry was through Vietnam, where the Dutch transported opium, and from Vietnam secretly crossed the mountains and mountains into the Chinese Empire.

At this time, the borders of the country were in fact primeval forests that had never been surveyed, and the borders between countries were based on the settlements of the population of the border villages and towns and the reclaimed land.

At this time, Southeast Asia did not yet have the Golden Triangle, an opium-rich region, because although the climatic conditions in the Golden Triangle were very easy to grow opium, it had not yet been introduced by the British for cultivation.

However, the British did not grow opium in the Golden Triangle, but Deng Haonan and Shenwu demanded the Golden Triangle region from Vietnam, the Donghu Dynasty, the Siam Dynasty, and the Lancang Dynasty in the fifth year, including Mubang, Babai Dadian, Chuankhouang, Champasak and other regions, with a total area of about 80,000 square kilometers. This is half smaller than the Golden Triangle of later generations, but Deng Haonan can only reach this kind of Cheng with his memory.

The governments of the four countries were all vassal states of the Chinese Empire, and the suzerainty demanded these four places, and they did not dare not give them. Fortunately, however, the suzerainty did not ask the four countries to cede these four places, but only asked the common people in these places to use all their land for opium poppy cultivation.

The Chinese Empire set up the Imperial Tobacco Company to buy opium poppies from farmers in these places at low prices, and then refined them into opium and sold them as large tobacco.

Deng Haonan set his eyes on opium, naturally thinking of the huge profits of the opium trade. At the same time, Deng Haonan's revenge psychology is particularly strong, thinking that the West used evil opium to poison the Chinese people, Deng Haonan wanted to retaliate with a tooth for a tooth.

Of course, the empire already legally forbade the use of opium, and at the same time forbade smoking tobacco in any form. The punishment for opium and tobacco smokers in the empire was so severe that the people of the empire were insulated from tobacco and became the only smoke-free country in the world.

After the Imperial Tobacco Company made opium into tobacco, it naturally did not have any domestic market, and all of it was sold to the outside world. First of all, the first stop was Japan.

Deng Haonan's military invasion of Japan outweighed the losses, so he invaded economically, and peddling tobacco to Japan could not only make huge profits, but also defeat the nation at the root. Once opium floods in Japan, Japan will have no more silver to use and no more soldiers to use, and the Chinese Empire can easily defeat Japan and colonize it.

The Chinese Empire used the occupied coastal cities to transport opium to the already addicted Japanese to various parts of Japan. At first, the Chinese Empire controlled the price of opium very low, almost the original price, and even sold it at a loss, so that the Japanese people smoked a lot and expanded rapidly. As sales surged, the empire began to gradually raise prices, and finally made the Japanese money little by little.

With the large-scale export of opium from the Chinese Empire to Japan, which led to a large outflow of Japanese silver, the Tokugawa shogunate discovered it too late, and tobacco containing opium had already spread rapidly and spread throughout Japan.

In a few years, the Imperial Tobacco Company turned from a loss of more than 10 million silver dollars to a profit of 10 million silver dollars, and this figure continued to climb with the passage of time.

With the surge in opium exports to Japan, the area of opium poppy cultivation in the Golden Triangle region expanded dramatically, from the original annual output of five tons of opium to 12 tons.

At the same time, the common people of the Golden Triangle gained a considerable amount of money from the cultivation of opium, which led the common people of Vietnam, the Taungoo Dynasty, the Siamese Dynasty, and the Lancang Dynasty to draw seeds from the Golden Triangle region and spread them throughout the country. The governments of the four countries also saw the huge profits from opium poppy cultivation and were able to collect large sums of taxes from the common people alone. At the same time, the price of grain from the Chinese Empire was much lower than that in China, and it was not cost-effective for the common people to grow grain, so it was more cost-effective to grow opium poppies instead, and it was more cost-effective to buy grain from the Chinese Empire with the money from selling opium poppies.

As a result, Vietnam, the Taungoo Dynasty, the Siamese Dynasty, and the Lancang Dynasty all used opium poppy cultivation as their main source of economy, while gradually neglecting agriculture.

What they don't know, however, is that this is the first step in Deng Haonan's economic aggression.

For example, in the case of grain, he first dumped grain on a large scale at a low price, causing the country's grain prices to drop sharply, so that the peasants of this country would not make money from farming, but would lose money. Within a few years, the country's farmers gave up farming and sold their land in favor of cheap food. When the country's arable land is used for other purposes, the Yankees will raise the price of grain and implement a grain monopoly, which is a disguised form of economic aggression.

This cheap trick has been tried and tested repeatedly, so Deng Haonan is now using it to carry out economic aggression against other countries. Because Vietnam, the Taungoo Dynasty, the Siamese Dynasty, the Lancang Dynasty and other countries all regarded the Chinese Empire as their suzerain, the military officials of the state and dynasty believed that colonial wars should not be waged against them, but Deng Haonan was not satisfied with only collecting some tribute from these countries every year, so he had to change the mode of aggression and use the economy to invade them.

Grain production in the Chinese Empire rose sharply, thanks to the government's semi-forced large-scale cultivation of high-yielding food crops such as corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. But the empire has more grain, and the more grain the people sell, the lower the price. In order to increase the income of the common people, the imperial government had to buy grain at a high price.

But the imperial government could not always make a loss-making deal, so this part of the difference had to be apportioned to the colonies and vassals.

Of course, the treatment of colonies can be done directly, but the treatment of subject countries needs to be done in a gentle way.

Deng Haonan first peddled grain to the subject countries at low prices, causing the dependent countries to be unable to sell their own grain, making their common people think that there was no way out for growing grain. At this time, the empire cultivated opium in the Golden Triangle on a large scale, so that the common people of the subject countries believed that growing opium was more cost-effective than growing food. As a result, the peasants of the subject countries gave up growing grain and planted opium instead, so that the empire controlled the grain market of the subject countries and had pricing power.

Invisibly, the empire controlled the grain of the vassal countries. In the era when the people took food as the sky, this was equivalent to controlling all the subject countries.

Of course, the tobacco companies of the Chinese Empire also did not pity the common people of the subject countries, as long as they did not sell to the Chinese, they would not break the law, so as the common people of Vietnam, the Donghu Dynasty, the Siamese Dynasty, and the Lancang Dynasty planted opium poppies on a large scale, the Imperial Tobacco Company also slowly infiltrated the big tobacco to them, and by the time they found out, it was too late. E