Nanyang Province, Luzon Province, Sambo Port, a port at the southwestern tip of Mindanao.

Sanbao Port, which is 500 nautical miles away from Luzon Port, is still as hot as summer even at the end of the lunar year. At ten o'clock in the morning, Wu Sangui walked out of the inn.

The former Admiral of the Ming Dynasty was stepping on a pair of flip-flops at this time, wearing a pair of loose beach pants and a short-sleeved floral shirt. This kind of deviant clothing invented by an unknown clever Han merchant would never dare to wear it openly outside in the Central Plains, but it is very popular in this hot seaside port.

With a straw hat and sunglasses, the sun is immediately less dazzling and hot.

Wu Sangui first went to the auction house and looked at the goods he entrusted to trade. The Wu family's merchant ships brought rock sugar and rice from Taiwan, and then bought copper from here. The goods sold very well, and the two ships he brought had already been sold and sold at a good price. Even if you deduct the brokerage fee of the auction house, you can still make a lot of money.

It's just that the copper he wants is not in stock for a while.

"The copper mines of the Moro people are too slow, mainly because these people are too lazy, and they have to rest for most of the day. Just thinking about eating, drinking, and having fun, it's the worst guy I've ever seen. "One of the tooth dealers at the auction house was a Spaniard, a mixed Spanish and Han Chinese, and he spoke good Cantonese. After the Spanish troops in Luzon withdrew, he stayed, and for him, it was just a change of boss to work, and in a short time, he was even able to speak a decent amount of Mandarin.

The Moro people are indigenous to the Philippines.

Before the arrival of the Spaniards, there were indigenous countries in the Philippine archipelago. Later, the Spaniards occupied Luzon and other northern islands, but the attack on the southern islands did not go well, and the Spaniards later called these natives who could not conquer the Moro people.

Wu Sangui knew that the Moro people were not a people, in fact, the Moro people were just a derogatory term for the southern natives of the Spaniards. Previously, there were four sultanates in the Philippine archipelago: Sulu, Maguindanao, Mindanao, and Manila, except for the Sultanate of Manila, which was in Manila, Luzon, in the north, and the other three were in the south.

Among them, the Sultanate of Sulu even asked to go to the Central Plains to meet Zheng He when Zheng He went to the West in the Ming Dynasty, and the three kings of Sulu later went to Beijing with him, and the king of the Middle East later died of illness in Shandong and was buried there. Therefore, the Central Plains and these Moro people have actually been in contact for a long time.

After the Great Han defeated the Spanish and took over the Philippines, the Moros to the south were completely different from the Spaniards. The Spaniards were bent on conquering by force, but the Han were engaged in trade and friendly cooperation with them. Under this policy, the Moro people also quickly became friendly with the Han Dynasty, and had already sent envoys to Beijing to send letters of state, attaching maps of mountains and rivers and household books, requesting to attach them to China.

Of course, the Han is happy to make such a request, so now the Han canonizes the title of Sultan of the Three Kingdoms, and the Three Kingdoms are also happy to have such a thigh hug as the Great Han.

The Sulu Islands, where the Moros live, and the southern part of Mindanao, were also open to Han merchants, who immediately bought several ports from the three kingdoms with a small amount of money and goods.

This is how the port of Sambao came about, after the Han bought the port and the surrounding large tract of land, the port was quickly built, and the port has even become a necessary port from Guangzhou to Haikou, Manila, to Makassar, Mataram, and Banten.

Although the port was first built, due to its geographical location and the preferential treatment of the free port area, it not only became a center for the Moro people to come to trade, but also became a transit point for Nanyang trade, which was very prosperous.

Alfonso peeled a coconut for Wu Sangui, and said flatteringly, "It is estimated that it will be difficult to buy copper in a short time, why don't Master Wu buy something else?" ”

Wu Sangui drank two large sips of coconut water and said with a smile, "Do you have any rare goods here?" If it's just coconuts or shells or stuff like that, I don't want it. ”

Alfonso was a man who knew how to read his face, and he had long seen that this Wu owner was not a simple person.

"We have a lot of good stuff in our auction house, but you don't see it in the average person." At first glance, Master Wu is not an ordinary person, maybe you will be interested. ”

Wu Sangui hated those Xiyi, hated the body odor on their bodies, hated their arrogant demeanor and rude eyes, but at the moment, this mixed-race Hongyi was quite good at talking.

He slowly enjoyed the coconut water.

Alfonso finally took the initiative to press the bottom of the box through their auction house, the slave.

Wu Sangui was not surprised at all, the slave trade was illegal in the Han Dynasty, although the Sanbao Port was on the land of the Sulu Sultanate, but the Sanbao Port belonged to the Han Concession, and the Han had extrajudicial jurisdiction, so it was the law of the Han Dynasty that was exercised, and the slave trade was illegal in the Sanbao Port.

But just as smuggling could never be stopped, the slave trade was still everywhere. Not to mention the Sanbao Port, which is thousands of miles away from the Central Plains, even in Taiwan, Hainan and even Guangzhou, there are such underground transactions.

"There's going to be an underground deal soon, would Master Wu be willing to go over and take a look?"

Wu Sangui waved his hand, but just smiled faintly, "Lead the way in front of your head." ”

Where there is demand, there is trade, and although the population of the Han Dynasty has exceeded 30,000, it still needs slaves.

The Han Dynasty expanded its territory on all sides, and every year it laid countless new lands, although the imperial court continued to move people from the Central Plains to the newly opened land, but the immigration was still limited. In those newly conquered lands, the land is vast and sparsely populated, some are land, and what is lacking is manpower.

As in Luzon, the imperial court encouraged people to emigrate. As long as they were willing to immigrate to Luzon, the imperial court would provide them with an interest-free loan, and even a passage fee and free shipping. In Luzon, every common person could own 200 acres of land. It's all free land, and it's all good land.

A family, young or old, has 200 acres per person, and if there are six or seven people in a family, there are more than 1,000 acres of land. But it is impossible to cultivate so much land, and most of the land is still barren.

At this time, there were people who specifically offered a commodity to the immigrants, the slave trade.

Most of those slaves were captured on the islands of the South Seas, and they were not expensive, but they could be used as good laborers. For the new immigrants, if they buy a few slaves, then the land allocated by their families can be planted, and the rice or sugar cane they earn back will soon be able to earn back the money from buying slaves.

Alfonso and Wu Sangui quickly came to a house, which looked like a warehouse, but there were many people inside. Before entering, Alfonso gave Wu Sangui a mask and a number plate. When you put on a mask, no one will know you, and if you have a number plate, you can hold up a sign and buy it.

There were a lot of tables and chairs inside, and Wu Sangui chose an empty seat to sit down.

A slave trader pounded on the large table with a mallet, and the masked buyers below stopped talking and turned their attention to him.

The auctioneer beckoned, and two young men came in with a woman.

It was a young woman of about twenty years of age, apparently of mixed race, of white descent, with large beautiful eyes, wearing a white cloth skirt, and red hair tied with a red headband.

The auctioneer said a bunch of compliments and waited for everyone to bid.

Wu Sangui watched a group of people compete for this young bastard red-haired woman, and in the end, the young woman was sold for one hundred and forty yuan, such a price, it is obvious that she was not bought back to be a servant. Wu Sangui glanced at the person with the highest bidder, the mask covered his face, but he still saw that it was a Han man, about forty or so, and some fat Han people, dressed in silk and holding a fan in his hand. Wu Sangui immediately knew the identity of this person, a silk merchant from Fujian, and his purpose for buying people was self-evident.

Next was a woman of about twenty-six or seventeen, who introduced that this was a good cook, and she was quickly sold. There were several in a row, and they were successfully auctioned.

waited until the seventh order, and finally it was the goods that Wu Sangui cared about.

A black man with dark skin and curly hair, very strong and young.

"A group of ten, a group of five hundred, ten yuan each time, start."

Wu Sangui calculated that one was only fifty yuan, which was really not expensive. Now there are at least five yuan a month in the Zhongyuan factory, and I can buy one salary in a year. Spending less than a year's salary on a young and strong slave for a young and strong slave can work for at least twenty years, which is much more cost-effective than hiring a worker.

Especially now that there is a labor shortage in the Central Plains, there is no need to hire workers if you have money.

The imperial court laid down a large area of land every year, and the newly occupied land required a large number of immigrants, and the government continued to move the people of the Central Plains to the frontier, and the result was that the population of the Central Plains was greatly reduced. Many people have no land to plant, so they have to work elsewhere to make ends meet.

And now the population of the Central Plains is decreasing, and even if the people of the Central Plains have no land, they can still get land to plant.

As a result, it is becoming more and more difficult to employ, especially for long-term workers.

Not to mention, in the frontier land, the shortage of labor is even more serious.

Wu Sangui bought a lot of land in Taiwan, then in Luzon, and this year in Annam, all of which he bought to grow sugarcane. After buying the land, they also prepared to build a sugar factory, but the land was easy to buy, but it was difficult to recruit workers.

"Look at them, how strong and young they are, my lords." In Mandarin with a Cantonese accent, the trafficker said, "It's definitely worth the money, these people eat less than pigs, do more than cows, and are more honest than dogs." ”

The words of the traffickers are indeed very moving, if such black slaves are sold to those new immigrants, it is estimated that even if they are a hundred yuan each, they are willing to buy them.

Sure enough, there was a bid right away.

More people joined the competition, and soon the auction price reached 800 yuan a group.

Wu Sangui didn't make a bid, he had been watching the merchants who were bidding, there were many bidders, and they were very active, even if it was a group of eight hundred yuan, he was still unwilling to give up.

"Nine hundred!"

The fat Fujian man who had just photographed the first mixed-race girl shouted a high price.

"Nine hundred and one!"

A Cantonese businessman is not to be outdone.

Hearing that they were still competing with each other, and the price was getting higher and higher, Wu Sangui had a smile on his face. It seems that the trade of copper and rice sellers is no longer done, and a more profitable business has emerged. (To be continued.) )