On August 5, 1651, as had been done for the past two years, the "Nantieyu-001" and three other ships of the same type docked punctually at the wooden dock on the banks of the Maolin River, ready to begin unloading. Not far from them, in the Pacific Ocean, two 400-ton frigates - part of the Third Fleet - were drifting boredly on the rough seas, waiting for the four fishing boats (which also doubled as transports) to unload and return to the port of Araucan.

On the way back to the port of Araucan - in the waters off Chiloe Island to be precise - the boats will also catch fish in passing, which is still very rich in horse mackerel, where large schools of migratory horse mackerel gather, giving the Southern Railway Company's fishing fleet a very good opportunity. They stuff the fish into a refrigerated chamber fitted with an ether freezer so that they can be stored for a long time, which actually greatly enhances the length of stay at sea for the fishing boat, and in turn reduces the cost of fishing.

Of course, since Peru has industries that have been "killed" by foreign commodities, such as textiles, fishing, and iron smelting, there are also industries that have flourished, such as grain cultivation, tobacco cultivation, sugar production, logging, winemaking, and so on. This is especially true for tobacco cultivation and sugar refining. Whether it's a tobacco plantation or a sugar cane plantation. Undoubtedly, they are extremely draining. This places extremely high demands on high-quality fertilizers. In such a situation, the East Coast bean cake, which has been widely praised in Brazilian plantations, has become a major import for Peruvian plantation owners.

According to incomplete statistics, in the more than ten months since the soybean cake was vigorously exported to Peru, due to the limited production capacity and the huge demand in Brazil and North American markets (Virginia and Florida), the price of the east coast soybean cake exported through Luoqia Port has skyrocketed by 40% compared with the beginning, which makes a domestic dry oil-cake joint enterprise collectively laugh crookedly. And stimulated by this huge market demand. The soybean sowing area in the major agricultural areas of the country has surged, the grain sowing area has dropped sharply (because the profits are too thin), and the sales volume of new oil presses and supporting steam engines have also attracted explosive growth.

Selling the East Coast's superior commodities, such as high-quality agricultural tools, fertilizers, and even bred seeds (which will degenerate into ordinary seeds after a few generations), to the Viceroyalty of Peru at a very high profit, not only to attack the handicraft industry of the other side, but also to enable the other side to produce more and cheaper basic agricultural products. These agricultural products are of great significance in reducing inflation in the East Coast and freeing up more labor resources that can be transferred to the infrastructure sector.

And because the bargaining power for the export of Peruvian agricultural products has always been in the hands of the Southern Railway Company, coupled with the comprador businessmen who have been "corrupted by money". The pricing power of grain, sugar cane, tobacco, and even cotton cultivation in the entire Viceroyalty of Peru is largely out of its own hands, and the characteristics of colonization are very obvious. The slightest change in prices in the international market (in fact, the East Coast market and the export market that derives from it) can be a nightmare for these plantation owners and even homesteaders.

In order to tide over the difficulties, they often had to struggle to produce more goods, but this often caused them even greater disasters - the greedy comprador merchants and the ruthless Southern Railway Company would take the opportunity to lower the purchase price and exploit the fruits of their labor, with the result that the more commodities they produced, the poorer they became, and the poorer they were, the more commodities they produced, and so on and so on, and finally they could not extricate themselves, fell into the debt trap, and were controlled by the comprador merchants who had their destiny in their hands.

The reasons for this consequence are manifold, but the main one is the frequent activity of naval vessels on the East Coast in the Caribbean. These ships, which had been engaged in privateering activities all day long, dealt a great blow to French, British, Dutch, and even Italian capital, which competed with the capital of the East Coast, and reduced the purchase of Peruvian agricultural products by merchants from these countries. In addition, the people on the east coast have also used various means, which are nothing more than to coordinate interests and divide and co-opt, so as to consolidate their dominant position in the Peruvian market and make their monopoly characteristics more and more obvious, in order to grab excess profits.

The most typical is the San Giorgio comptoir in Genoa, a veteran syndicate that has been engaged in the import of American products for more than 100 years in the port of Cádiz, Spain, and has completely stopped importing tobacco, sugar cane, and cotton from Peru to sell back to Europe in the last year or two, for the reason that it is unprofitable, and second, that they have found better opportunities to make money -- the East Coast people have coordinated their interests with them, granted them the agency rights for many high-quality East Coast goods, and also opened the market to the San Giorgio Merchant House. They can export high-quality Italian cheeses, hams, olive oils, butters, wines, dried fruits, etc., to the East Coast and its colonies, a market of hundreds of thousands of people with a disproportionately high proportion of consumers.

Attracting relatively friendly Genoese capital, focusing on attacking British and French capital that competed with the East Coast (both countries are determined to develop their own industries), and maintaining limited cooperation with vested interests of Dutch capital, this is the overall development strategy formulated by the Executive Committee of the East Coast Republic for domestic industrial capital. Today, after losing the French market, concentrating on developing the Peruvian market, competing for the commercial tentacles of the British, French and Portuguese, and cultivating a group of comprador classes that are closely tied to the interests of the East Coast, and then indirectly controlling and influencing the producers and consumers in the Peruvian region through these commercial compradors, this is the key to maintaining the advantages of the East Coast in Peru for a long time, and then sucking the blood of Peru to nourish the East Coast itself.

All in all, after negotiating the smuggling trade two years ago with the Southern Railway Company, which represented the industrial and commercial power of the Eastern Republic, Peru's fate was largely foregone – the economic colonization of this resource-rich region would deepen over time. The Spaniards on the east coast were not inproductive, they had a rudimentary industrial production system, although limited by population, education, market and other factors, the industrialization process was not deep enough, and the system was still very incomplete, but it was enough to destroy most of the artisanal industrial power of the Viceroyalty of Peru.

It can be said that if there is no external force to violently break this process, then the future of Peru is simply worrying. In the long-term plan of the Executive Committee and the Southern Railway Company, a large number of cheap East Coast industrial products will first pour into Peru, and when this process has developed to a certain stage, the East Coast industrial and commercial capital (such as the Southern Railway Company) that has been accumulated by sucking Peruvian nutrients will also begin to invest excess capital in Peru. In other words, at this stage, the goods and capital of the east coast will enter Peru at the same time, and then control the Peruvian market and economy - this is the so-called capital export stage of the imperialist countries.

However, unlike the imperialist economic invasions that have occurred in history, the arrival of goods from the East Bank into the Peruvian market was accompanied by a considerable number of immigrants - most of them from the Far East from the Ming Kingdom, and there are many of them on the banks of the Maurin River today, probably about seven or eight hundred.

The immigrants were nominally employees of the Southern Railway, but in fact they were all on a five-year contract with the Southern Railway, with a large settling-in fee, and then landed on the banks of the Maolin River by boat. According to the plan, these people will build commercial stations, warehouses, shops, and hotels on the land purchased by the people on the east bank of the Maolin River to work in the service of the ships and personnel of the Southern Railway Company. In addition, the Southern Railway Company has also found various excuses to relocate a considerable number of agricultural personnel here, and they have now opened up some fertile farmland on the banks of the Maolin River, planted a large number of melons, fruits and vegetables, and raised many livestock, planted some fruit trees, and developed settled agriculture in earnest.

As for whether the Spaniards are worried that there are too many people on the east coast here? This was not a problem at all, because it was originally a wild area, and there were few settlers, and after the ravages of two wars between the East and the West, the early colonists either died in the war or were killed by the rioting Araukans, and there was not a single hair left. Now that the smuggling trade has flourished and the number of people has increased dramatically, the consumption of daily necessities is not a small amount, so there is an urgent need for agricultural laborers to come and provide various kinds of food such as vegetables, poultry eggs, and meat to the people in the city.

Therefore, the arrival of farmers on the east coast has actually filled the gap in this regard, and it will be beneficial to everyone. You see, these farmers are so hardworking, so productive, and offer a wide variety of products at affordable prices, is there anything more satisfying than that?

Of course, there were also fears that these peasants from the east bank would not leave when they came - and this was basically true - and then their descendants would completely occupy the Maolin River valley, and then the territory would be de facto infidels. However, in Maolin City, which has a strong business atmosphere, this concern did not resonate much. Everyone should do business and make a fortune, who will care about what will happen in decades or even hundreds of years? (To be continued......)