Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong are the main areas of foreign trade, and the most important area is still Fujian, after all, among the three regions, Fujian has the worst conditions, and there is no good land to feed the local people (Jiangsu and Zhejiang have the Yangtze River, Guangdong has the Pearl River, and the land is mostly plain).

In Fujian, one of the few natural resources is its natural harbor. Fujian must rely on the ocean, and this truth is very simple. Fujian has long been the center of Chinese navigation, and in the era of sailing, that meant it was also the center of China's international trade.

The maritime trade center of the Ming Dynasty was in Fujian, and the Fujian maritime trade center was in Yuegang.

Fujian's trade is mainly divided into two major directions, one is the Japanese state; The second is the Spaniards and the Dutch in Southeast Asia, and Portugal also has a piece of the pie.

At that time, during the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate, the productivity was low, and the people ate brown rice balls (the Chinese folk were not much better), and some Japanese people arrived in the southeast province and were deeply surprised that the common people in the southeast province were eating white rice, because in the Japanese country, white rice was also called silver grain rice or silver relics, and it was something that only "heavenly people" (nobles) could eat.

Except for silver and gold, the Wa Kingdom lacked everything!

The cost of a load of silk is more than 60 taels of silver, and the price of five or six hundred taels of silver is transported to the Wa Kingdom, and the Wa Kingdom is deeply influenced by the Celestial Empire, and there is no resistance to silk.

With a bit of luck, the Wa Kingdom had a mountain of gold and silver, and its silver production accounted for one-third of the world's silver production at that time!

Transporting a shipload of silk to the Wa Kingdom, a shipload of silver will come back, and the profits will be terrible.

In addition to trade with Southeast Asia, the port sends about 20 or more galleons to the Philippines at the beginning of the rainy season in March each year. Each big ship would be filled with more than 500 merchants carrying all sorts of goods you could imagine, first of course silk and ceramics, but also cotton, iron, sugar, flour, chestnuts, oranges, live poultry, jam, ivory, jewelry, gunpowder, lacquerware, tables and chairs, cattle and horses, and anything else the Chinese thought Europeans needed.

Some people even carry very little food, because no matter what they have in their hands, they can easily resell it and make a good profit.

If the principal of the merchants is insufficient, they can only buy and sell goods by usury, for which they have to pawn their wives and children as collateral to the usurers. If the merchant died, his family would be in trouble. The creditor would dig deep to find whatever they could find to pay off the loan, and if they could not pay it back, the pawned wife and children would become slaves, and the creditor would resell them to anyone else, just as slaves were sold.

Normally, there will be a person with the largest capital to rent a boat and then sublet the cabins to someone else, usually 20% more than his own charter rent. Below deck were a number of sealed watertight compartments, none of which had portholes, and each compartment was about the size of a washroom, and was packed with cargo. The porcelain was to be wrapped tightly and then packed into boxes, and the dishes were filled with straw to prevent them from shattering.

The merchants filled the cabins with water in various places, and then placed the boxes containing porcelain in these damp places. When soaked in water, the straw swells, holding the ceramics firmly in place to form an unbreakable whole.

Theft is almost non-existent on a ship, as thieves cannot leave the stolen goods they still have on board. Still, the merchants would sleep on their cargo with their own food, and they would stay in the dark and filthy cabins for the entire voyage. The journey from Moon Port to Manila takes a total of 10 days.

Almost all the goods shipped to Manila were sold, and the Spaniards bought all the goods with silver.

For example, in 1602, the Mexican colonial authorities informed the Spanish court that in that year alone, galleons had shipped nearly 400 tons of silver, or about eight million taels of silver, to Asia, and that the main destination of the silver was the Eastern Celestial Empire, so exaggerated that the emperor of China could build a palace with the silver bricks sent to his country! (If the British hadn't used opium to snatch back Chinese silver, I believe that there would be so much silver in China that every household would have a lot of silver dollars for children to play with)

I also know that it is not right, but the people of the Celestial Empire have everything in their hands, and Spain has its own silk weavers and tailors. However, the scale of textiles in the Celestial Empire is far from being matched by the Europeans, and the quality is higher than that produced by Hongmaofan's own products.

The people of the Celestial Empire are extremely industrious and undemanding, and their characteristics are "high quality and low price", and there is also a large quantity.

The maritime merchants of the Moon Harbor sold the silk of the Celestial Empire to Manila, with a profit margin of 30-40%. Spanish merchants sat on the ground and doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled prices and sold them to the Americas; Even so, when they were sold in the Americas, they were only 1/3 the price of textiles produced in Spain. They crossed two oceans to sell silk from China to Spain at a lower price than the silk produced by Spain itself.

Isn't this rolling or what?

……

In addition to the trade of the Spaniards, what about the trade to Batavia?

Batavia is the location of the Dutch East India Company, and its main export trade includes sugar, deerskin, venison, antlers, rattan, and rice, and transshipment trade includes Dutch metals and medicinal materials, Batavia's spices, pepper, amber, linen, cotton, opium, tin, and lead, and Chinese silk, pottery, and gold.

Well, there is a lot of silver, these are two silver routes, and the Southeast Mansion is pinched on the two routes to sit on the sea to collect money.

To buy a route or not?

If you don't give it, you will rob it... Well, we can't be so direct, it should be said that it is the seizure of the ship, and we are not buying road money, but collecting taxes!

Two thousand silver dollars for a ship, compared to tens of thousands of taels of profit, is not much!

……

If Yan Changwu said that he would pay taxes on the road before, then everyone would laugh at him as a child's dream.

But he defeated the Daming Water Master, and others sent money to the door, lest he didn't want it!

Moreover, he continued to expand his sailors, planning to purchase eighteen more sixth-class cruisers, bringing the total number to thirty-six, half patrolling and anti-smuggling, and half training, the speed of such sixth-class cruisers is impossible for merchant ships to escape, and they are professional... There is a pirate tradition!

Maritime merchants everywhere can only give money obediently!

Borrow the silver of the Moon Hong Kong Silver and pay it off on time!