In mid-to-late October, the Wujiang River basin has warmed up in an all-round way, and if we wait for another month, it will be the last chance for many areas on the east bank that have missed autumn sowing -- spring sowing. However, in the newly established settlements on the banks of the Wujiang River, such as Fort Fuguo (later known as Paisandu City, Uruguay, named after the first residents from Fuguo Township, Shandong), Yu'er Township (Casablanca, the first residents from Yu'er Township, Shandong), and Qingcun Township (Constancia, the first residents came from the former guards and their families in Qingcun Village, Songjiang Prefecture, captured by the naval landing force), this year's spring sowing is doomed to be delayed.

The reason is also very simple: their settlement has only been established for two or three months, the land has not yet been cleared, and there is not a single house - well, maybe a few temporary adobe houses - it is almost impossible to complete the preparatory work before the spring sowing begins. Therefore, the most realistic task for them is to wait for the fields to be cleared, and then replant a crop of potatoes with a short growing period, so that they can harvest more or less grain.

However, in the interval between clearing the fields, these mud legs who came all the way from Daming had to undergo militia military training arranged by the Wujiang Regional Garrison Command. This is an obligation that every adult man on the East Coast must accept, and it has been set at the beginning of the country, and there is little possibility of avoiding the past - even the children and grandchildren of the crossing must receive regular military training, and in this respect the government treats almost all equally, because it is the foundation of the East Coast Republic and cannot be violated.

To be honest, the military training of the militia is still quite regular, at least the number of live firing is frequent. Not to mention the discipline training, the whips in the hands of the officers crackled and made everyone tremble. In fact. In Europe at this time, the concept of standing armies was just emerging, and its scale was very small. As a result, European soldiers were often given adequate or inadequate military training in battle, and the intensity and frequency were not comparable to those of the East coasters.

In other words, if you just look at the intensity and frequency of training. The militia on the east coast actually outnumbered most armies in Europe, and their live-fire training was comparable to that of the standing armies (and the standing armies in Europe had very little peacetime training). If once the war starts. The people on the east coast must have been able to muster a staggering number of Europeans, well disciplined and well-trained, probably between 30,000 and 40,000 men—a number that would be beyond the power of any hostile force that crossed the sea, not to mention the abundance of logistics, forts throughout the country, and cavalry all over the mountains.

The immigrants of the Ming Kingdom were conducting military training, then the land was cleared, and the infrastructure was built. I had to ask for a large number of river slaves and some European immigrants who were bought from the other side. Leaving aside the fact that he was a slave who had been bought, the European settlers were generally the "masterpieces" of Valentino and Mendes, the labor brokers who worked closely with the East Coasters.

The two men had been in the immigration business for seven or eight years, and now their capital is becoming more and more abundant, and their network of connections in the Old World and the New World is becoming more and more solid. As a result, their numbers of immigrants are growing – mostly from Italy and Scotland. Among them, Valentino has set up a number of immigration collection points in central Italy, specifically to collect beggars, bankrupts, starving people and people who have too many brothers and sisters in their families to survive. In addition to sourcing within his home country, the Portuguese broker Mendes also used his unique network to travel to Scotland and trick the bitter Scots into working on the East Coast - Scotland was also overpopulated in those days, and you can find Scottish hired workers everywhere in the streets of the Netherlands.

Together, these two men bring about 2,000 to 3,000 Italian and Scottish migrant workers to the Eastern Republic each year. It has strongly supported various domestic construction projects on the east coast. Their relationship with these so-called laborers is basically a matter of willingness, i.e., they get an agent who transfers their ownership to the East Coast Government for the next few years, and they are required to work for the East Coast Government (for a small salary). Until the immigration fees owed are paid off. This kind of repayment relationship basically does not have the possibility of defaulting on debts, and the cooperation between the two parties can be said to be fair and fair.

The number of white laborers brought in by labor brokers, black laborers sent by South Africans, Indian slaves brought in by the East Coast themselves, and Polish prisoners of war bought by the East Bank government is probably not 70,000 or 80,000 (these people are currently "non-nationals" and are not included in the total population). These laborers, indentured servants, who were active throughout the country, used their own near-unpaid labor (their wages were extremely low. Some people have no wages at all), semi-serfdom living conditions. It has been a remarkable achievement in supporting the frantic infrastructure construction carried out by the Republic of the East Coast throughout the country, and greatly reducing the operating costs of the East Coast's society and economy.

Of course, they are not without hope, black laborers are generally the tribesmen conquered by the Black Eight Banners, they work on the east coast for 3-5 years, and when they return to South Africa, they are immediately granted the legal status of the Eight Banners, and at the same time, they are also given cattle and sheep, and they have since become "noble" banner people; The future of the Indians lay in the colonies of South Africa, New China, and Australia, and they were also granted the status of colonies of the East Coast after several years of heavy work—and the mortality rate was generally more than forty percent because they were intolerant of heavy work—and then they were sent to the overseas colonies to pioneer and divide the land; White laborers and Polish prisoners of war were treated similarly, and they were also required to work for several years before they could be freed to apply for national status in the Eastern Republic of China under the provisions of the Homestead Law. The only difference between them is probably that those Italian and Scottish laborers generally only need to work for 3-5 years to pay off their debts, and they have a higher degree of freedom in peacetime, while the Poles are basically prisoners of war, with limited freedom, and generally need to work for 5-7 years to be free.

In addition to these laborers, there is also a special group on the East Bank, namely free immigrants. They are generally from the Livonian region and are inextricably linked to the Livonians, the largest white group on the east coast, such as some Livonians in Riga, who often receive money from ships on the east coast or from the bank of La Plata, and then use the money they receive to call on friends to scrape together enough money to hire a sea ship (usually a Hanseatic ship) and then travel to the east coast on their own to earn a living.

It is worth noting that these people are generally dragged with their families, and after arriving on the East Coast, they can apply for full citizenship as long as they learn daily conversations in Chinese, and their naturalization applications are generally approved relatively quickly. Thus, on the east coast, the Livonians actually had a deep sense of superiority over those white Europeans from elsewhere. Although they were despised as barbarians in Europe and discriminated against for not believing in Christianity, the latter was a very valuable "advantage" in the eyes of the East Coasters, because it meant a very low cost of assimilation.

I don't know if it's a historical reason or something, Livonia has always been more women than men, so the number of women in Livonia who came to the east coast also exceeded that of men, which is very strange in the history of immigration in various countries. However, it is not surprising that the trading post of the Republic of East China in Riga has been funding some Livonian women to go to the East Coast all year round, and the Taoist church has been doing this kind of thing, perhaps this is the fundamental reason why a large number of Livonian women are sent to the East Coast.

The treatment of free immigrants is naturally very different from that of indentured servants and laborers, after all, they basically do not squeeze out the resources of the East Coast government - whether it is money or transportation capacity - but come by charter ships themselves, so they can receive almost no less than the wages of ordinary citizens on the East Coast (generally 80% of the salary) when they work for the East Coast people from the beginning, so they accumulate property quite quickly, and often after the nationality is approved, they are already able to make up part of the cost of buying houses and land. The path of life is much smoother than that of the Poles, Italians, and Scots.

However, in quantitative terms, these free Livonian immigrants make up only a tiny fraction of the migrant workers, and the vast majority of them still receive low or no wages. Although these people live in a better way than in the Old World (the construction bureaus under the Ministry of Transport provide an adequate supply of grains, proteins, and fats), they work extremely hard (mostly on the construction site) and are hated by the natives on the East Coast, whose low wages indirectly hinder the growth of the wages of ordinary East Coasters.

But fortunately, many of the so-called "locals" on the East Coast were actually mostly uneducated bitter people a few years ago, and their hatred of these migrant workers was quite restrained, and sometimes they could understand each other, which was not a big problem. At the moment, only about 20 per cent of the nearly 1,000 migrant workers working in Fort Phu Quoc and elsewhere are free Livonian immigrants, so the General Directorate of Development and Development can drive these people to work quickly and efficiently for a small fee, and the supervision of the police and militia of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is not vegetarian.

After all, the "Ming people" (as some East Coast officials jokingly called) have to carry out militia military training, so the hard work such as construction can only bother these foreign laborers. In any case, as long as they work hard for a few years, they will be able to enjoy the official status of East Coast nationals. As for the unequal treatment between the two sides, then it can only be blamed that this place is not ruled by God, but a pagan country where the vast majority of men are yellow, accept your fate! (To be continued)