By 1628, the second phase of the Thirty Years' War had been going on for more than three years, and the war in Germany had begun to become clear. Frederick V, who had made a comeback in history, with the full support of England, actually gained a foothold on the northwest coast of Germany, and together with the Allied Danish army, the Holy Roman Empire led by the Earl of Tilly and the Duke of Wallenstein was turned upside down.

The large import of American arms and the strong support of the local German Protestant city-states made Frederick V's troops defeated and defeated again and again, and always stood on the front line of Oldenburg and Bremen. Of course, this also has something to do with the fact that the Holy Roman Empire did not pay the most attention to him, after all, Denmark is currently the biggest threat to the Holy Roman Empire in terms of the size of its forces and its ambitions.

King Christian IV of Denmark, who had mediocre military ability, began to bear the heavy blows of the commanders of the two empires after the early stages of the war, and if it were not for the support of England, the Netherlands, Sweden and other countries, it is estimated that it would not have been able to support it for a long time. In the autumn of last year, the main Danish army led by Christian IV was defeated at the Battle of Danesh, and thousands of Danish mercenaries lost their armor and occupied German lands, and had to retreat home. It's a pity that the generation of war god Wallenstein obviously wants to kill them all, and the front of the army is directly aimed at Jutland, and it is only a matter of time before he enters Denmark proper.

France had made peace with Spain, and even the two countries had signed a military alliance in 1627 to deal with England's-stirring sticks, which were making a fuss about the French religious civil war. In this situation, the anti-Habsburg coalition across Europe had essentially collapsed, and the unification of the German regions of the Holy Roman Empire seemed a foregone conclusion.

In this situation, the most tense situation is that the Netherlands, who are on the verge of the focus of the war, and Spain are in a scorching battle on the ground before the winner is decided, and they may face the retaliation of the Holy Roman Empire. Time. The whole of Holland was terrified. Of course. There are also some people who do not focus on this aspect. Because the Netherlands has money, and with the enormous energy of the board of directors of the Bank of Amsterdam, it is not impossible to reconstruct the European diplomatic landscape again.

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Over the past two years, the scale of transatlantic trade has expanded further. The contradictions between the United States of America and the major European trading countries have gradually become apparent.

The sugar and salt company under the state-owned Agriculture, Forestry, Fishery and Animal Husbandry Group, as well as the private Bermuda Sugar and Salt Company, whose accelerated expansion in the Azores caused discontent in Portugal and France, which began in the 15th century. It is the main supplier of rock salt to Western, Eastern and Northern Europe.

Although only about 5,000 tons of Huamei refined sea salt are imported into Europe every year, it is basically not enough to pose a threat to the supply and demand of the whole of Europe. But the price of the purified sea salt is not much different from that of locally produced rock salt in Europe, and it is already showing signs of expansion by the magnitude of the magnitude, and salt merchants in both countries are wary of this.

As a result, starting from the second half of last year, the "close" Portuguese finally broke the preferential trade policy since the establishment of diplomatic relations for the first time, and imposed a large increase in import duties and sales taxes on all gorgeous refined salt entering the Azores, and France also made some tax increases. As a direct consequence of these policies, the export price of Huamei's refined sea salt has almost doubled. The export consumer base is more high-end, and European orders are shrinking rapidly. The plans of the two major salt companies in China and the United States to increase production and exports have been hit head-on.

Coincidentally, the gorgeous textiles that once invaded the English cotton market and dominated the market were also troubled. Exports of cotton-wool blends to London, England, increased rapidly from 300,000 in 1625 to 550,000 in 1627, and although most of them were re-exported to other regions by London traders, they inevitably affected the local wool textile trade in England. The woolen industry in England, which has been the backbone of the country's economy since the beginning of the enclosure movement, and the old and new aristocrats behind it, finally united this time, and the royalists rarely became ostriches and pretended not to see it, and the English National Assembly began to impose import duties on Chinese textiles.

Although the tax increase is not high, it is more like a gesture of easing the contradiction between the royalists and parliamentarians in England, and it has not broken the price and quality advantages of Huamei textiles, but it has also scared the cloth producers and traders in China and the United States into a cold sweat. Now the annual output of cotton and wool blended has exceeded 1.6 million horses, Yang Wenwen Life Art Group, had to postpone the production increase plan, and the reaction is that General Industries, which thought that it had obtained a large number of textile machinery and supporting steam power units, was extremely disappointed.

These are the two small sparks that have emerged in Sino-American trade with Europe, and at present, they have not spread to other Chinese and American goods, but the internal pressure of transatlantic international trade between the United States and Europe has been slowly accumulating. However, these signs are not the biggest threat to Sino-American maritime trade in the coming years, because the potential of the European market is far from being tapped.

The real trouble is that the import of industrial and agricultural raw materials in Europe has begun to show a momentum of deliberate troublemaking. According to the continuous tracking mechanism of the U.S. Department of Commerce, starting in 1626, the import prices of various industrial and agricultural raw materials in Europe increased by an average of 20% in two years, but the import of several important varieties did not increase at all. After some detailed follow-up, a mysterious phenomenon was discovered. Most of the higher-priced contracts for European raw material imports were entrepot trade by the Dutch, which then had a ripple effect of price increases in Spain, Portugal, France and England.

It has to be said that the Dutch in the 17th century, the powerful merchant fleet, accounted for 80% of the entire European maritime commercial capacity, and indeed had the power to influence the price of trade transshipment. Although one-third of the Dutch commercial capacity is concentrated in the European North Sea and the Baltic Sea, the Dutch merchant ships still account for more than 50% of the commercial capacity in southwest Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, including the Azores route, with a total merchant tonnage of 60,000 tons, while Spain and Portugal have invested less than 20,000 tons of merchant ships for the Azores route combined.

Spain and Portugal cannot be blamed for their incompetence, after all, the strategic core of these two aging European colonial empires, one in Central and South America and the Caribbean, and the other in Brazil, Africa, and the Indian Ocean routes, there are very few merchant ships left for China and the United States to act as porters. Moreover, the old-fashioned monopoly commercial policy pursued by the two countries led to a difference of 108,000 miles in the commercial shipping industry of the two countries compared to the Netherlands, and the combined gross tonnage of merchant ships in the two countries during this period was less than 200,000 tons.

Business statistics from the Consulate General of the American Concession in the Azores Heroísmo are shown. The number of Dutch-flagged merchant ships arriving in the Azores in the fourth quarter of 1627. This is a 15% decrease from the third quarter. The increase in the number of merchant ships arriving in England and France during the same period was not enough to fill the share of the Dutch withdrawal.

At present, when the domestic market is still immature, the bottleneck of the quantity of industrial and agricultural raw material imports will suppress the scale expansion of related enterprises in China and the United States, thereby leading to the pressure of domestic employment in the future. There are more harm than good for immigrants. The increase in the import price of raw materials will inevitably lead to an increase in the cost of raw materials for the production of domestic goods, although the improvement of production efficiency can balance the final cost, but the negative impact on domestic people's livelihood will also accumulate over time.

No matter how much China and the United States want to solve the problem of European trade surplus. I can't stand this kind of "scoundrel" behavior of "not increasing the quantity but only increasing the price" of raw material imports. Moreover, in this process, with the large-scale export of Chinese goods, the Dutch, who have the largest merchant shipping capacity, are also uniting French, Portuguese and English merchants to intentionally or unintentionally raise freight rates and control the purchase volume and other small actions, secretly suppressing the contract prices of some low-tech and gorgeous goods that are not irreplaceable in the European market. For example, wine, low-end building materials, honeycomb coal, furniture and wood products, etc., the price reduction range is usually between 5% and 10%, and most of these are the main export products of domestic small and medium-sized enterprises.

Perhaps it is to reverse the trade deficit, or it may be to take the opportunity to forcibly share industrial profits in the wave of hot sales of Chinese and American goods, or it may be to divert the investment direction of maritime trade. But the basic situation is relatively clear. Whatever the reason or purpose of the Dutch, it is clear that an act of commercial repression has emerged. Who made all this cargo to and from Porto Heroísmo in the Azores carried by European merchant ships?

After reaching the final conclusion, Minister of Commerce Zhou Qifeng overturned the table on the spot, and the former foreign trade enterprise employee almost rushed directly into the parliament to launch the 17th-century European version of the "Opium War" against the Netherlands.

However, the current situation cannot be solved, and in just eight years, the whole of China and the United States has formed a circle of common business interests with Europe that has begun to take shape. Taking 10,000 steps back, the Dutch can lose their arms import channels, but China and the United States cannot afford to lose European trade without the participation of the Dutch, and the role of the Netherlands, a European-stirring stick, is currently more important than that of England.

In the absence of a more appropriate excuse and opportunity, any kind of unilateral and brutal behavior will do more harm than good to China and the United States, whose national strength is still weak.

The most effective solution to these "secret knocking" behaviors from the Netherlands is to carry out a re-transformation of the country's overseas import and export trade model. Vigorously improve the Atlantic commercial capacity of China and the United States, and change the previous "relying on the entrepot trade of European merchants in the Azores" to "using the Azores as a support point to trade directly with the European continent", so as to solve the triple problem of raw material imports, commodity exports and prices.

Today, China and the United States have a relatively mature ocean-going commercial fleet with a gross tonnage of 60,000 tons, but most of them are engaged in the transportation of commodity raw materials and construction materials between local towns and overseas territories, and there are very few ships that actually participate in direct trade with Europe.

Brazil and Cuba have invested in the production of raw materials for several years, but also gradually fell into the bottleneck of insufficient capacity, many raw materials are piled up locally, transportation delays are becoming more and more serious, and it is difficult to adapt to domestic demand only by relying on the slow pace of shipping dispatch in Spain and Portugal. The lack of backbone domestic commodity raw material logistics capacity, and the strict occupation of large and medium-sized ocean-going merchant ships with advanced performance in the 17th century, not only limited the scale of foreign import and export trade, but also made the cost of domestic commodity logistics high, bringing adverse suppression effects to the development of various small and medium-sized enterprises.

On the eve of the Chinese New Year in 1628, the Chinese and American Congresses, which formally passed the "Shipping Encouragement Act", prepared to deal with the problems of the country's foreign import and export trade caused by the Dutch, and improve the bottleneck of the country's maritime commodity logistics.

The core content of the "Shipping Incentive Act" is that the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce will unite several major commercial funds and commercial banks to establish a special "shipping support fund" to encourage private capital to set up shipping companies with extremely low loan interest rates, and the state will give preferential policies on industrial taxation. For best encouragement. The shipping support fund will also receive a special injection from the state treasury. From 1628 onwards. Within 5 years, financial subsidies will be provided to all newly built civilian merchant ships with a full load displacement of more than 500 tons.

As soon as this encouragement bill came out, it immediately injected a shot in the arm into the entire transportation and trade industry in China and the United States, and made the production enterprises related to shipbuilding smile. Among them, Shi Yige and You Qi, the two CEOs who changed their names to Beiyang Shipbuilding Group, were the most excited.

Today, there are only two shipbuilding companies that can build large and medium-sized ocean-going vessels, and the first is the Beiyang Shipbuilding Group, whose shipyard in the western part of Long Island has 12 large slipways. There are 4 dry docks of more than 3,000 tons, and more than 1,500 shipbuilding workers at all levels, but the previous operating rate is not very high, and more than half of the large slipways are always doing small sesame business such as inland river transport ships.

The second is the Qingcheng Shipyard jointly established by the Beiyang Shipbuilding Group and the Qingcheng Municipal Government in early 1627, which is a semi-state-owned nature, and the Beiyang Shipbuilding Group provides a certain number of skilled workers, due to the high cost of large and medium-sized ocean-going ships, so the main business of the Qingcheng Shipyard is still focused on the construction of inland civil ships, and currently has more than 400 employees.

Ministry of Construction and Transport. It also issued a "promotion specification" to the Beiyang Shipbuilding Group, requiring the design of two civil merchant ships suitable for the current situation of domestic shipping. The first is for ocean shipping. The maximum cargo capacity is not less than 600 tons, and the seaworthiness must be higher than that of the previous flying shear sailboat, and the difficulty of handling is lower than that of the flying shear sailboat. The second type is a general-purpose merchant ship for domestic medium and offshore and inland waterway shipping, which requires that it must be able to sail directly from the Song River to Porter City in the north, with a maximum cargo capacity of not less than 400 tons. The unit maintenance cost of the above two options must be lower than that of any existing vessel of the same type.

The rigid requirements of these two kinds of civil merchant ships are also the first time that the country has sorted out the hardware environment of the domestic shipping industry, and the use of inland civil ships with different performance and uneven maintenance costs will gradually change in the early stage, and all the old sail galen ships will also be completely eliminated.

In response to this favorable policy, You Qi resolutely stayed up at home for half a month, and finally came up with a series of design plans for civilian merchant ships, and continuously published shipbuilding business advertisements in the "Manchester City Weekly", which continued to increase the policy of encouraging shipping promoted by the state.

In order to meet the harsh requirements put forward by the Ministry of Construction and Communications, You Qi boldly launched two full steam-powered ship schemes this time, which surprised both the domestic military and civilians, knowing that even the equipment schedule formulated by the Navy Command, the test time of all-steam-powered ships was after 1630.

However, judging from the design and construction of small inland river steam carriers by Beiyang Shipbuilding Group in recent years, You Qi's ambition in all-steam-powered ships should be greater than that of the military, which is probably the instinctive thinking of a technical nerd. The Beiyang Shipbuilding Group, which already has a lot of experience in the construction of inland steam ships, seems to have made some preparations.

The first ocean-going merchant ship, based on the original "Manatee" real yàn sail merchant ship as the prototype of the improvement, removed the sail device, full steam power, and using iron bone wooden hull, sold for 150,000 US dollars. The standard displacement is 1100 tons, the full load displacement is 1450 tons, the maximum cargo capacity can reach 650 tons, a set of 660 horsepower double expansion steam unit power, the cruising speed is 10 knots, the maximum speed is 11.5 knots, and the economic speed of 8 knots, the coal load on the ship can provide a range of 3500 nautical miles, enough to sail to Lisbon on the European continent at one time, and then add some coal, and even from the Azores to and from London, England or Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the number of crew members is only 20 people!

The second model is a further scaled-down version of the first model that emphasizes economic applicability, and is also fully steam-powered and iron-boned wooden hulls, priced at $80,000. The standard displacement is 720 tons, the full load displacement is 950 tons, and the maximum cargo capacity is 440 tons. Powered by a set of 320 horsepower double-expansion steam engines, the cruising speed is 8 knots, the maximum speed is 10 knots, and the endurance reaches 2200 nautical miles at 8 knots, which is enough for the sea trade and transportation of domestic towns and overseas territories, and the need to control the crew even needs only 10 people.

In addition to the cumbersome and low-cost sail lock and mast structure, and then the use of iron-boned wooden shell technology and mature steam engine, the construction difficulty and cycle of the two civil merchant ships are much lower than that of sail ships of the same tonnage. If it takes at least a few years to train a sailor who can handle the sails, then the training time for a steam engine boiler is only half a year, and the requirements for boat operators are greatly reduced, and the cost of operation and maintenance is lower than that of existing vessels.

Once these two fully steam-powered merchant ships begin to be used on a large scale, the only problem will be that in the future, it will be necessary to expand the coal filling stations and maintenance points in various places, including the Azorean American Concession, and the domestic anthracite coal development will also be raised to an important level, and by the way, it will also begin to increase the import of coal to England, which has previously had the largest demand for coal in England only in the honeycomb coal production of local Huamei factories.

Coupled with the shipping insurance business that some people in China are brewing, as long as the "Shipping Incentive Act" can be effectively implemented and promoted, in a few years, the country will be able to change the current predicament of Atlantic commercial shipping and raw material import trade, not only can more directly penetrate the European market, but also create a large number of jobs and taxes related to it for the country.

Not only the shipbuilding industry, but almost all walks of life will benefit from this policy, and domestic praise is suddenly everywhere. However, these require a lot of time, money and manpower to be developed one by one, and the easiest way to start construction at the moment is naturally to make some "small" hints to the Netherlands...... (To be continued.) )