Monday, July 1, 1630.

After intense preparations, a fleet consisting of three short shirt-class ships of the Oriental Transport Company, five Aoguang-class flying scissors merchant ships of the State-owned Ocean Transport Company, and the Navy's "Humpback Whale" transport ship will soon set sail from Manchester City, and will then pass through Butterfly Island, Nanshan Overseas Governor's Territory, and Yueshan Island to Pearl Island, and the tulip sail frigate will be responsible for escorting the escort.

In addition to a large number of materials needed for the construction of the Far East, the passengers of the fleet also included officers and men of the army and navy who went to Pearl Island for garrison rotation, as well as a business working group led by Zhao Mingchuan, deputy general manager of the Oriental Industrial Company.

Although it is called a working group, the team actually has more than 400 people, most of whom are technicians and their families who have signed long-term contracts with Dongfang Industrial Company. They are all skilled technicians from all walks of life recruited by the Oriental Group in the past month with extremely favorable conditions in the local area, and will live and work on Pearl Island for at least five years, becoming the backbone of the business of the Oriental Group in the Far East.

According to a company development plan submitted by Zhao Mingchuan, Dongfang Industrial Company and many small and medium-sized enterprises in China have reached a technical cooperation intention, the former to contribute equipment, the latter to provide skilled technicians, and jointly build a number of small seed enterprises on Pearl Island. Product projects include building materials, cement, salt and sugar, textiles, ship maintenance, agricultural and sideline processing, metallurgy, etc., all of which are projects with large-scale market demand.

For the markets of India, Southeast Asia, Daming, Japan and North Korea, obtaining raw materials nearby and carrying out commodity production and sales can obtain huge profits no less than Atlantic trade, which is the core strategy of OUCC Group's Far East operation.

However, when it comes to military industry, shipbuilding, hardware, machinery, glass, tobacco, chemical, pharmaceutical and other industries, the state prohibits OUCC from opening relevant enterprises in the Far East on the grounds of "protecting local manufacturing capacity and jobs", and can only purchase from the local market.

Under the supervision of the Congress, the strength of a single Pearl Island is absolutely incapable of completing the above-mentioned industrial operation layout in the Far East, so the Oriental Union Group must find a dependent object and commodity export port that can provide sufficient labor and raw material input. Except for India and Southeast Asia, which have already been preempted by the European powers. At present, the most qualified is Hainan Island in the Ming Dynasty.

After Di Zugong's ignition a few months ago, Zhao Mingchuan finally understood why Yan Xiaosong supported Liu Yaoyu to take root and develop in Qiongzhou. If the land of Qiongzhou is really as rich in resources as Yan Xiaosong or Di Zugong described, using Liu Yaoyu's cousin-in-law, Zhao Youheng, the magistrate of Qiongzhou, a figure with local political power, and then combining it with the gorgeous capital of Pearl Island, the future prospects are simply exciting to imagine.

"It turns out that Mr. Yan has already made a layout, but it's a pity that Brother Yi Ping and I are still worried about the way out all day long." Walking on the deck, watching the dock workers still stepping up to deliver ocean-going supplies to the fleet, Zhao Mingchuan was full of emotion.

"Ah, sir. I'm so sorry! Not far away, a young man in a fancy short suit (suit) with two large suitcases accidentally bumped into a passenger, and was busy apologizing, forgetting that his suitcase had accidentally fallen apart, and a large number of books or gadgets were exposed.

"Oh, thank you!" Frey buried his head on the deck to pack his books and tools, and when he saw a hand helping him pick it up, he quickly looked up and thanked him.

"It's just a gesture...... Hey. Are you a scholar? ”

Pick up a copy casually, a typical Chinese anthology, with a lot of hand-drawn printed drawings in it, and then turn over the cover. It reads "Mineral Taxonomy". Seeing that the other party was so young, Zhao Mingchuan couldn't help but be in awe.

"Hello sir, my name is Frey, and I studied geology at an Ivy League college. He is currently studying biology at the Metropolitan State University of Manchester. The young German, who was not yet 21 years old, took the book handed by Zhao Mingchuan, smiled shyly, and spoke Chinese Chinese very fluently.

"You are the Mr. Frey who published the Lunar Island Biological and Mineral Resources Report?"

Zhao Mingchuan was even more shocked. Because he had read this special material after returning to Huamei last year, it caused quite a stir in China at that time. It is said that it was because of this report that a small private domestic mining company invested in Gassan Island without hesitation and obtained the exclusive rights to mine the region's sulphur and copper resources.

The development of Gassan Island from a small seafaring supply depot to a new overseas territory with a population of several hundred was largely due to Frey's scientific expeditions.

"Well, but this time I became an employee of the Oriental Union Group and joined the Far East Expedition, but unfortunately I only received the invitation letter the day before yesterday, so I was really in a hurry." When everything was gone, Frey closed his suitcase and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Look up for a long time, look up for a long time! In Xia Zhao Mingchuan, it is the leader of the Oriental Industrial Company. Inspecting the products of Qiongya Island on the spot, it will be a lot of hard work! Zhao Mingchuan hurriedly bowed his hand, and was deeply excited by the group's large-scale investment in the East.

"You're Mr. Zhao? That's great, I'm looking for you! Here's my letter of introduction! You know, I'm longing for the East, where the world's greatest civilization is, and of course, here. Frey nodded sheepishly, as if he felt that he was far from being called a "scholar", but his eyes lit up at the mention of the East.

"Hehe, if Mr. Frey doesn't dislike it, how about you and I share the same cabin?"

Zhao Mingchuan is only 8 years older than Frey, and the two actually fell in love when they met for the first time, and it seems that they will not be bored along the way.

In a short time, the huge fleet set sail, and they will arrive at Pearl Island in a little more than two months, during which they will stop at the Governor of Nanshan and the Overseas Territory of Yueshan Island at most to unload some of the supplies that belong to the local area.

……

In 1630, both Europe and Asia in this time and space had far-reaching events.

In Europe, in July, Gustav II of Sweden, the god of war, officially intervened in the European war, leading 13,000 Swedish regular troops to land in Usedom in northern Germany. Gustav was warmly welcomed by the local Protestants and then moved into the Mecklenburg area. The Protestant forces that defected to the King of Sweden were in full swing, and soon the force grew to a staggering 40,000 men. At the same time, Duke Wallenstein, the military commander of the Holy Roman Empire, was caught in a power struggle within the empire, and the capable but more ambitious Wallenstein began to be vigilant and ostracized by the German princes and imperial bureaucrats.

In Asia, the Ming Dynasty had just entered Chongzhen for three years. It was attacked by the military attack of Huang Taiji, the leader of the Later Jin. More than 20,000 people of the Houjin army broke the Great Wall from near Da'ankou, captured Zunhua, and then turned into Beigi, and even went around a circle near the city of Beijing, and then marched east to defeat Tongzhou and Luanzhou, which shocked the whole country.

was found from behind to drill into the stomach and kill, Yuan Chonghuan, who was the governor of Liaodong at the time, definitely lost face, and took the main force outside the gate to urgently return to help, and fought several fierce battles with the Houjin army in a row before he could be regarded as forcing the opponent back. But. The historical suspense in this process also planted the seeds for his subsequent tragic ending.

The first entry of the Houjin army, the population, grain, livestock, property of Jingji, Hebei and other places suffered heavy losses, in addition to the momentum of the Qin Wang Ming army, almost took the Houjin army into the customs helpless, and watched the other party retreat from Xifengkou. At the end of this battle, a number of famous generals, including Zhao Shujiao, died, and the strategic situation of the Ming Dynasty towards the Later Jin Dynasty had completely lost the initiative and completely turned into a passive defensive state.

And the peasant rebellion in Shaanxi that began the year before. Surrounded by the Ming Dynasty officials and troops, the rabble of peasant troops was beaten by the Shaanxi officials. Seeing that a peasant movement was about to be suppressed in this way, the peasant army, under the leadership of its leaders Wang Ziyong and Wang Jiayin, suddenly crossed the Yellow River by force in May. Transferred to Shanxi. As of July, the peasant army had successively broken through many prefectures and counties on the border between Shanxi and Shaanxi, and had set off a chain reaction of popular revolt in Shanxi. The northern peasant rebellion at the end of the Ming Dynasty. It has officially entered the stage of no ending.

The erosion of the situation in the north of the Ming Empire does not seem to have affected the rhythm of life in the south, even though natural disasters have been ravaging Liangguang and Fujian for several years. There have even been large-scale ethnic minority riots in Guangxi, but on the whole, under the impetus of the gradually thriving maritime trade along the southeast coast, singing and dancing are still the main tone of society. As for the influx of refugees from the interior, few magistrates were able to treat it as their own business, except to drive them out or ignore them.

But in Liangguang and Fujian, there was still a war without gunpowder. The cause of the incident was that some family maritime merchants with backgrounds in Liangguang were unwilling to pay "escort fees" to Liu Xiang and Zheng Zhilong, so they were secretly suppressed by Liu Xiang, Zheng Zhilong, and Li Guozhu's forces.

When several merchant ships engaged in the Annan trade were intercepted by Liu Xiang, these maritime merchants hurriedly contacted Zheng Zhilong through some connections, hoping that the other party would come forward to solve it. Who knows that Zheng Zhilong has no good face at all for these "unruly" maritime merchants of the two Guangzhous, and he also scolded these unruly businessmen on the grounds of "doing business privately with foreign domains and provoking borders".

What a Zheng Zhilong, this is simply a family of soldiers and bandits! In a fit of rage, these angry rich families found a relationship and sued Wang Zunde, the governor of Liangguang, and wantonly fabricated Zheng Zhilong's crime of "conniving at Haikou and colluding with Miyi".

Who is Zheng Zhilong? is not only the maritime overlord in Fujian and Zhejiang, but also the governor of Fujian, Xiong Wencan, who is turning purple with his great contribution to exterminating pirates along the southeast coast. But Wang Zunde, the governor of Liangguang, was a well-known tendon in history, and as soon as he heard the complaint of Liu Xiang and Huamei Fanyi, and even Zheng Zhilong and Luzon Franc Jiren, he immediately became furious. On the one hand, he ordered the coastal military town guard to exterminate Liu Xiang, and on the other hand, he impeached Xiong Wencan for conniving at Zheng Zhilong, humiliating the outside world and damaging the national body.

Of course, Xiong Wencan is not a soft persimmon, since it has caused him trouble, he naturally has to go all out. After some understanding, Xiong Wencan also wrote to Emperor Chongzhen, impeaching Wang Zunde, the governor of Liangguang, for befriending local wealthy businessmen, many of whom favored profiteers and resold them for personal gain, and abused their authority...... When it came to the splendid article, Xiong Wencan was a step higher than Wang Zunde, and he was also half angry with the other party. All of a sudden, the Governor's Office of the two Cantons and the Governor of Fujian attacked each other, each insisting on its own words.

In the past year, the once-half-dead Fuzhou City Bosi miraculously contributed tens of thousands of taels of silver to the emperor's inner treasury, so that Emperor Chongzhen, who was eager to break a penny of silver in half to use, had a deep memory. This is a good proof of Xiong Wencan's governance of Fujian and Zhejiang, "maritime peace, strict regulations, and prosperous business", and the emperor will naturally not deny Xiong Wencan's efforts.

Emperor Chongzhen, who was well aware of the contradictions between the local governors, could only adopt the strategy of "each fighting a board" in the end, and scolded both Xiong Wencan and Wang Zunde, which means that this kind of thing should not come to Beijing all day long, I am very annoying...... However, Wang Zunde also received the holy decree of "prohibiting the investigation of illegal goods in Guangxi and Guangzhou, and arresting and suppressing pirates".

The holy purpose is to start, and Wang Zunde will do it. First of all, it reaffirmed the law that foreign merchant ships could go ashore in Panyu and Macao. Then all merchant ships from Fujian, Zhejiang or Nanyang must also be approved by the Guangzhou City Shipping Department and the Bei Wei Du Commander, otherwise the cargo can be confiscated on the grounds of private reselling; In the end, he ordered the coastal waterproof warships in Guangzhou, Qiongzhou and other places to pursue Liu Xiang, but this order basically had no possibility of being implemented. Because like Zheng Zhilong back then, Liu Xiang's bribery work along the coast of Liangguang was also impressive, and the imperial court shouted to suppress bandits at every turn. What's more, those coastal waterproof battalions and military town guards under the jurisdiction of Guangdong have been short of soldiers and salaries for many years, and they have long been rotten to the roots, and they have the heart and the ability.

This is a typical fire at the city gate, which affected the fish in the pond. The order in the East China Sea and the South Sea, which was finally "settled" by the Huamei Expeditionary Fleet, has once again become a bit chaotic. For a time, all kinds of extortion and extortion by local officials in the name of the Liangguang Governor's Office appeared in the ports of Liangguang and Guangzhou, and in the end, it was the maritime merchants on the southeast coast who paid a heavy price for this political struggle. The vagaries of the maritime trade policy in the last years of the Ming Dynasty can be said to be vividly expressed in the hands of Wang Zunde.

But you make trouble with you, we do ours. Liu Xiang of Nanyang, Li Guozhu of Luzon, Su Minggang of Java, Yan Sihai of Dayuan, and Zheng Zhilong, who was newly promoted to the "Deputy General of Jinpeng Coastal Defense", still unhurriedly gathered their own interests in the peaceful way of not interfering with the river water from the well water, while the maritime merchants from all over the country holding these thighs were waiting for the arrival of the gorgeous seafood in Chongzhen's three years. (To be continued......)