It is precisely because of so many unique tricks and strong irreplaceability that the export products of the Tang Kingdom can enter the European and American markets smoothly and enjoy lower tariff rates.

Kerosene, for example, has gone through a tortuous experience in the European market.

After years of development, the high-quality kerosene produced by the Tang Kingdom has occupied more than 9 percent of the world's market, with the Texaco Petroleum Company, Chevron Petroleum Company, Royal Bright Petroleum Company, Chang'an Petroleum Company led by the four giants and a series of small and medium-sized oil companies, basically monopolizing the world market, the trade volume in 1857 was as high as 165 million yuan, which is the first pillar of the chemical industry in the Tang Kingdom.

Compared with the traditional rapeseed oil, olive oil and candles used in Europe and the United States, kerosene has many advantages such as high lighting brightness, less smoke, small miscellaneous smell and reasonable price.

In the early days of promotion in Europe, oil companies adopted the preferential marketing strategy of buying kerosene and sending kerosene lamps, towels and leather bags, and the vast majority of users chose kerosene lamps because of the superiority of kerosene products, and the market promotion was very smooth.

Today, there are an average of 3.7 kerosene lamps per household in French urban and rural households, and only one kerosene lamp can illuminate an entire room at night.

For the same effect, at least 3~4 vegetable oil lamps should be lit.

When it entered the French market in the early days, the average monthly sales of kerosene were about 6,500 barrels, sold at a price of 0.36 yuan per pound, and the price of rapeseed oil in the French market during the same period was about 0.52~0.55 yuan, which was significantly higher than the price of kerosene.

The local church in France was the first to accept kerosene, and the good word spread in the city and countryside, and in just half a year, the average monthly sales of kerosene in the French market reached 32,000 barrels, an increase of as much as five times.

After some conspiracy, the customs tax on kerosene imports was raised from 35% to 76%, in an attempt to curb the encroachment of imported kerosene on the domestic market, crack down on the rapeseed oil market, and obtain a huge amount of customs revenue.

The Tang Kingdom is not accustomed to the old France, and the four major oil giants immediately took action to jointly promote price increases, resulting in the retail price of kerosene in France doubling and turning a corner, reaching a high price of 0.78 yuan per pound, which has exceeded the unit price of rapeseed oil.

Even so

The sale of kerosene has not been discounted, because middle-class families in France have generally accepted kerosene lamps, and the romantic French can no longer tolerate the dim and strong smell of canola oil lamps, and the extravagant nightlife of the upper class cannot afford kerosene lamps.

The same is true of the kerosene street lamps used by the municipal government in Paris, France, which cannot be replaced with rapeseed oil due to various reasons of brightness and cost, which leads to the dissatisfaction of the municipal department over high bills.

After a brief pullback, kerosene sales in the French market began to rise steadily, surpassing the previous peak of 32,000 barrels per month after only a month and a half.

At the end of the year, on Christmas Day in December, 48,500 barrels of high-priced kerosene were sold in the French market, which made the four major oil giants of the Tang Kingdom, which monopolized the market, make a lot of money and smile.

High tariffs on French imports have led to high kerosene prices, which are more than double those in neighboring Prussia, the kingdoms of South Germany, the Italian peninsula and the United Kingdom.

This led to widespread kerosene smuggling, which was smuggled into France by surrounding regions, and German peasants crossed the border with oil loads to sell smuggled kerosene to the French at low prices.

After removing two barrels of a load of kerosene, the net weight is 80 pounds, and each pound of kerosene makes a profit of one mark, that is, 80 marks, or about 20 Tang yuan, and a trip of two or three days earns more than a month.

One to ten, ten to hundred, this attracted more Germans to devote themselves to the great cause of smuggling.

This kind of good thing is naturally indispensable to the British old, and the English Channel alone cannot stop the enthusiasm of the British old smuggling, and at the craziest time, there was even a grand occasion of smuggling by 137 smuggling ships overnight, which made the French customs department miserable and could not stop it at all.

Until the end of 1857

The French government, which was overwhelmed by smuggling, quietly adjusted the customs import tariff on kerosene, from the original 76% plus additional punitive tariffs to the European average of 27%.

Because the British Empire in the English Channel levied a tariff of 27% on kerosene, in recent years, due to the sharp increase in kerosene, lubricants, diesel and heavy oil imports, the British customs tax rate on the above products has been reduced accordingly.

The recognition of the French directly led to the explosion of the kerosene market in France, and from January 1858, Kerosene sales in the French market started at 43,000 barrels and rose at the rate of lava eruptions every month, with 71,000 barrels in February, 104,400 barrels in March, 183,000 barrels in April, 235,000 barrels in May, 294,000 barrels in June, 330,000 barrels in July, and a peak of 347,000 barrels in August.

The French market has fully embraced kerosene with great enthusiasm and has burst out with strong purchasing power that has been hidden for a long time, Baron Rivière, the mayor of Paris, France, spoke about the widespread use of kerosene, and responded with enthusiasm with a smile on his face;

"It lights up the city of Paris, and when you stand on the top of the town hall at night, you will realize that this is the romantic city that never sleeps in Europe, and everything is great with kerosene."

The price is that Paris alone burns more than 4,500 barrels of kerosene every night.

But then again, life is too short, what is the use of making so much money by colonizing the whole world?

The executive order of the French government cannot stop the hard-core demand of the French for kerosene, as a traditional rich country, France has the ability, market, and demand to consume a large amount of kerosene, how can a decree be able to stop it?

Kerosene has been singing all the way in the markets of European countries, and the Europeans can't come up with similar products that can be resisted, and they can only lie flat after hard work, who makes everyone like it?

Based on the above factors

In 1858, the export of petrochemical products with kerosene as the core had a high growth rate of at least 30%, and the total export value of petrochemical products exceeded 200 million yuan.

At least in the next two or three decades, the Tang Kingdom can enjoy the huge profits in the petrochemical field alone, and quietly draw blood from the large profits earned by European and American countries from the colonies, feed back to itself, and further enhance its industrial base and economic strength.

To do that, it is necessary to control Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, which are also rich in oil resources.

It is not easy to do this, and Texas is a core member of the United States of the United States of America, and any coveting of its territorial sovereignty will arouse strong resentment and vigilance in the South of the United States, and even lead to the rupture of the current friendly relations between the two sides (which have not yet reached the level of the alliance).

The trick that Richard could think of was to wave money and use economic means to buy the areas in Texas that had been found to contain a lot of oil and gas, and then leave them there without exploiting them, leaving them barren and growing grass.

The Royal Holding Fund under the Ministry of Internal Affairs controls a huge amount of equity ranging from 77% ~ 38.5% among the four major oil majors, and is also the behind-the-scenes controller of the entire world oil market, with undoubted pricing power.

The cost of each pound of kerosene is 0.13 yuan, including processing costs, transportation costs, distribution costs and tax costs, and the export price averages 0.35 yuan, which is almost twice the windfall profit.

These shares alone brought a huge dividend profit of more than 31.7 million yuan to the royal family in 1857, accounting for about 6% of the total income of the royal family fund under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and it deserved to be the first major profit-maker.

Think about how the big desert dog family with a towel on their heads in later generations became rich, and you know how nourishing the life of the Tang Kingdom is now?

The thriving petrochemical industry brought 24.8 million yuan in tax revenue to the kingdom's treasury in 1857, and there is still room for substantial growth in the future, which greatly strengthened the kingdom's financial strength.

It is precisely because of such strong strength that Richard's future strategy is to use money to buy and buy, become the largest landowner in Texas, and use all the land rich in oil and gas resources for grazing, that is, not to develop.

Anyway, if I have money, I am willing to buy these places rich in oil and gas resources to graze cattle and sheep.

The four major oil giants of the kingdom with deep pockets have jointly established the Canadian Institute of Geology, and invested heavily in the research and development of a new generation of petrochemical refining equipment, and also set up their own laboratories to recruit well-known experts from all over the world to join in the in-depth development of the petrochemical industry system.

In September 1856, Jason Heinz, a professor at the laboratory of Chang'an Petroleum Company, discovered that it would become a tough and elastic material when he froze after knocking over collodion, thus inventing the plastic "celluloid".

After in-depth research

Chang'an Petroleum Company found that plastic materials have strong plasticity and can be made into low-cost cups, bowls, raincoats and other items, which have quite broad market prospects.

Richard likes to read the cutting-edge information of science and technology in the Tang Kingdom and around the world, and when he sees this scientific and technological invention, he can only touch his nose and be speechless.

Perhaps it is because the four major oil companies pay attention to the development of petroleum products, and have built various laboratories for this purpose, and new scientific and technological products are constantly born, and the plastic "Sailoro" is one of them, which was invented in advance.

The invention of this material preceded the original history by 10 years, Richard firmly believed;

Merchants are profit-seeking, without their own intervention, and with the vigorous promotion of deep-pocketed oil companies, this new material will be widely used in all aspects of society earlier than the original time and space.

Coincidentally;

The Datang Kingdom just monopolizes the cutting-edge technology of the petrochemical industry and the world market, and can exclusively enjoy the huge profits of this market for a long time in the future.

The price of selling cabbage into ginseng is what Chang'an Petroleum Company is planning now.

Anyway, there are no competitors of the same level, and as for the four major oil giants of the Tang Kingdom, it is easy to coordinate with each other, and it is enough to take the initiative to ask the royal holding fund to come forward.

Originally, Chang'an Petroleum Company was the weakest multinational company among the four giants and had the smallest market share.

Now holding the patent for the plastic "Sailo", it is estimated that it will stand out in this wave of development in the next decade or so and grow into a petrochemical giant that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Texaco Petroleum.

Overall

Relying on the abundant natural resources of North America, the mining industry of the Tang Kingdom is still a pillar industry, and the export volume of the three major types of minerals such as oil, copper and silver is the largest in the world.

The copper and silver processing industry also flourished, with more than 1,790 factories and a larger number of workshops in the provinces of the kingdom, as well as a wide variety of copper and silver household and industrial goods, in addition to copper and silver coins.

As far as industrial products are concerned, the new 7.62 mm full-charge bullet casings, artillery shells of various calibers, copper propellers of ships, copper wear-resistant pin sleeves, copper pipes, various copper parts of steam engines, trombone saxophones in musical instruments, copper nails and copper handles on wooden doors, there are thousands of subdivisions and create a large number of jobs.

Richard was not satisfied with the advantageous industries developed by relying on resources, and in the field of heavy industry, the Tang Kingdom had accumulated enough strength to give priority to the steel industry as the main target of the outbreak.

Because the metallurgical laboratory of the University of California in the Tang Kingdom, a new generation of open-hearth steelmaking method has matured through long-term research and development, and is entering the development stage of steelmaking equipment, which has the foundation for the explosion of production capacity.

Since the beginning of the 19th century

As the name suggests, the steelworks mainly use the agitation method to make steel, which is to stir the molten iron with simple equipment and add carbon or other alloys based on experience to refine various alloy steels with different properties.

This relatively primitive method of stirring is an improvement on the steel frying method that has appeared for thousands of years, and it is not a new thing.

Blast furnace steelmaking appeared in Belgium in 1325 and then quickly spread to the Low Countries, so the blast furnace mixing method used by English steel mills was not an advanced technology, and the output was not high.

Several major steel mills introduced British technology into the Tang Kingdom have an annual output of about 630,000 tons of steel and employ more than 39,200 employees, which shows that the efficiency is quite low.

If the new open-hearth steelmaking method is adopted, the steelmaking efficiency will be enhanced by 4~5 times, and it is easy to produce more steel output with the same manpower, which has a strong price advantage.

Whether steel or iron, it has a wide range of application prospects in the Tang Kingdom and is worthy of vigorous development.

In the past few years, the reason why there has been no blind expansion of steel production capacity is mainly due to market factors.

Most of the steel produced by the Tang Kingdom is for its own use, accounting for less than 10% of exports, about 4.5 ~ 50,000 tons per year, the main export areas are the Qing Dynasty and Southeast Asia, the United States and Central America and South America, mostly high-quality agricultural tools, knives and daily necessities, the market size is relatively limited.

This limits the difficulty of developing the steel industry in the Tang Kingdom, what can be developed without a market?

Britain's steel production peaked at 6.2 million tonnes in 1842, and that was because Britain was at the peak of the development of the steam industry, and the construction of railways, docks and bridges everywhere at home and abroad naturally used a lot of steel.

In the Indian subcontinent alone, the British built more than 28,000 kilometers of railway lines, and steel was naturally in demand as a bulk construction material.

Since the Crimean War

Britain's fiscal austerity policy for many years in order to cope with the huge expenses of the war has borne the brunt of the sharp cuts in infrastructure projects in these overseas colonies, which in turn has affected steel demand.

In 1857, the total steel production of Britain was only 4.37 million tons, which had shrunk by three percent compared with the peak, which was mainly due to the lack of international market demand, rather than production capacity.

Due to the economic development of the Tang Kingdom, the prosperity of urban and rural construction has been driven, and the annual infrastructure demand of Chang'an and Los Angeles, two million-level cities, will eat up 100,000 tons of steel production capacity.

The whimsical engineers of the Tang Kingdom plan to build the Golden Gate Bridge in the Bay Area, and one pylon on this bridge alone will consume 22,000 tons of steel, cross the water surface for more than 1,600 miles, use about 28,000 tons of independent steel cables, and about 600,000 steel rivets......

Of course

This unprecedented scale of the bridge is currently only in the technical demonstration stage, and in the foreseeable twenty or thirty years, the Tang Kingdom may not have the engineering capacity to build it, but this does not prevent engineers from putting forward this grand idea.

Just like the sea-crossing bridge in Sydney, Australia, engineers also came up with a practical implementation plan, but in the face of sky-high construction costs, the design drawings had to be shelved.

The Tang Kingdom will set off a new round of construction climax in 1859, mainly the kingdom's own railways, overseas provinces and paradise island railways, docks, bridges and other infrastructure construction, as well as urban construction.

This provides a solid foundation for the development of the steel industry, according to capacity planning;

In 1859, the total steel production capacity of the Tang Kingdom will exceed the million ton mark for the first time in history, reaching more than 1.1 million tons.

Among them, the iron output is about 780,000 tons, and the steel output is 350,000 tons.

In 1860, the planned production capacity was 1.5 million tons, in 1861 the planned production capacity was 1.85 million tons, and by 1862 it exceeded the 2 million ton mark.

The great development of the iron and steel industry means the great development of transportation, urban infrastructure, shipbuilding and mechanical and chemical industries, as well as the great development of the shipping industry and the military industry.

By the end of 1857

The Tang Kingdom has more than 1,730 ships with a displacement of more than 300 tons, and 457 ocean-going cargo ships with a displacement of more than 1,000 tons, and dozens of shipping companies of different sizes have emerged.

Different from the historical European countries, as a newly rising power in North America, the ships of the Tang Kingdom are all iron steam-powered ships, and it has the world's largest iron freighter merchant fleet.

In order to further enhance the capacity of ocean transportation and reduce costs, ocean-going ships are developing in the direction of large-scale, and many shipyards in the Tang Kingdom have started to build 10,000-ton iron steam engine-powered freighters.

Each of these ships costs 3 to 4,000 tons of high-quality steel to build, which is a large market.

The Navy's Zhenhai plan has been launched again, and 12 main ironclad warships with a displacement of 3600 will be built in succession within five years, and 12 new orders for "Cold Wind" class warships have been added.

Besides

The newly launched 20 hp diesel unit has attracted a warm response from the market, and the ship power composed of it has many characteristics such as light weight, good reliability and cheap use, which is very conducive to the development of offshore ships and inland waterway shipping.

Such a diesel engine with a simple propeller is enough to propel a ship of about 100 tons at a speed of eight to nine knots.

If it is a 500-ton offshore ship, five 20-horsepower diesel engines can be installed in the stern, and eight sets can be set up on 800-ton ships, which eliminates the need to purchase bulky and expensive steam engines, and has a strong cost advantage.

Since its launch, shipyards across the kingdom have received hundreds of new orders for small and medium-sized vessels.

Whether engaged in cargo transportation, passenger transportation, or offshore fishing, diesel power with low prices has a strong cost advantage.

The 20 horsepower diesel engine can also be used in many fields such as large ships retracting anchor chains, fishing boats retracting and trawling, mine tractors and minecarts, and factories as power equipment. It can also be used to strengthen the power of walk-behind tractors, which is simply a lot of benefits.

With the Kingdom's major decision to further increase the scale of railway construction, the domestic market demand of the Datang Kingdom will expand rapidly, which has laid a solid foundation for the explosion of production capacity in the steel industry.

The newly industrialized countries have the advantages of the newly industrialized countries, the old colonists have the difficulties of the old colonists, and the process of developing iron steamships in Britain has been full of twists and turns, and there are many obstacles.

Today

Britain also maintained thousands of sail cargo ships, and its Royal Navy budget for 1857-1858 was 8.44 million pounds, with a total ship size of 633,000 tons, about 1,000 sail warships of various tonnages, and 37 iron steam warships (including 6 slipways under construction).

This year, the Royal Navy's budget exceeded £9 million.

In the next year, 1859~1860, according to the current appropriation proposal discussed by the British Parliament, the scale will exceed 10 million pounds.

10 million pounds is worth 50 million Tang Yuan, which is more than twice the current military budget expenditure of the Tang Kingdom, which shows the wealth of the British Empire.

This is still in the face of the civil war between the north and the south of the United States, Richard secretly used a large amount of money from the royal treasury to train and equip more than 200,000 mainland recruits and carry out weapon refitting of the whole army, and the total amount of military appropriations skyrocketed, which is an unsustainable state.

Normal year

The total military expenditure budget of the Tang Kingdom is between 8.2 million and 8.5 million Tang Yuan, worth about 1.6 million to 1.7 million pounds, to maintain a limited navy with an army of less than 90,000 people, a Royal Janissary of less than 15,000 people, and about 20 capital warships.

Among them

The military expenses of the Royal Janissary and the Royal Navy are all paid by the royal treasury, and the kingdom's treasury does not bear this part of the appropriation, because these are all royal private armies, and they should not be confused.

Compare the two

The annual military expenditure of the Royal Navy of the British Empire will exceed 10 million pounds, which is almost the total financial revenue and expenditure of the Tang Kingdom (Note; Excludes the income from the various enterprises, mines and royal farms controlled by the funds of the Royal House), which shows that the British Royal Navy is financially powerful.

However, the British Royal Navy also has its difficulties, with a total number of nearly 1,000 sail warships of various types, which have become a heavy burden and a huge burden for the Royal Navy to move towards modernization.

On the road of transformation, the British Royal Navy has gone very hard, and the steam ironclad warships that represent the world's advanced level make them salivate.

However, the high annual maintenance cost of the existing large sail fleet makes the Royal Navy not have enough funds to build more ironclad warships.

It was in February 1858

The Royal Navy has come up with an ambitious plan to eliminate sail warships, planning to eliminate a total of up to 472 sail warships in the next three years, mostly small and medium-sized sail warships of hundreds to thousands of tons, while retaining the main force of medium and large sail fleets.

This plan was rejected by the British House of Commons and the House of Lords, what are you kidding?

The Royal Navy of the British Empire has accumulated more than 150 years of belongings, and if it is said that it will be decommissioned, it will be decommissioned, can so many warships be cracked and burned as firewood?

O loser!

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