The Maurin River flows quietly, just as she has done for thousands of years. But in contrast to the countless years of calm of the past, in the last two years, the noise has gradually filled the otherwise silent valley - and a large number of humans have begun to set foot in it.

Angel. Baron Bravo stepped out of the cabin of the three-masted Thrush, a medium-sized sailing ship built in Panama. The fresh air outside relieved his frowning brow slightly, and he handed his ivory staff to his attendant, then took off his beaver fur hat from his head, looked around, beckoned a carriage, and headed for the most prosperous trading area. As for his entourage, except for two personal guards with swords, the rest could only trot all the way behind.

Today's Maolin City is really getting more and more prosperous - of course, this prosperity only refers to the business and popularity of the city, as for the messy planning, poor housing, and poor health of the city, in terms of hardware facilities, that is pure nonsense. The city, which arose from the smuggling trade, has only a few sturdy brick and stone houses that appear to have been used as warehouses. Of course, now that the smuggling trade has been going on for two years and the volume of trade is getting higher and higher, more Spanish, Genoese, and Portuguese Jewish merchants have come to the place to build merchandisers so that they can get a piece of the feast. Although these later merchants were not able to seize the opportunity as soon as the smuggling trade began, they had the wealth to buy all the building materials needed to build the merchant houses from the East coasters at high prices. It looks like it's going to be a big job.

According to the private statistics of some people, the total number of merchants and their entourages in Maolin City has exceeded 1,600. And if you count the professions of translators, tailors, blacksmiths, fishermen, ship repairers, coopers, bakers, winemakers, etc., who served these merchants. That's more than three thousand. As for the food needed for the livelihood of these people, it was supplied partly by the Southern Railroad Company (which provided high-quality butter, flour and pickled products) and partly by grain wholesalers from Peru - because they were able to provide lower grain prices than the people of the East Coast, thanks to the large number of agricultural plantations based on the enslaved Indians in Peru.

For the prosperity and development of Maolin City, the people of the East Coast are actually happy to see it. In this chain of interests with Peruvians as the end consumer, domestic enterprises, industrial workers, the Southern Railway Company and the Spanish comprador have all made a lot of money, as for the victims. Of course, the Viceroyalty of Peru had a very developed artisanal industry, and these primitive industrial producers could not compete with cheap goods from the East Coast. Now they have changed careers or emigrated to them - such as the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

In fact, Peruvian industry, which was originally based in Lima and Quito, the most densely populated and industrially developed areas (including most of present-day Peru and Ecuador), was not too developed in the first place. Not to mention the small capital in the budding of these industries, most of these are the rise of individual entrepreneurs of craftsmen. Let's just mention industries of a certain size, such as large workshops employing at least a few dozen to a few hundred Indians.

These large workshops were generally built by the people of the peninsula, and some were built by local Peruvian commercial capital, but there is no doubt that the capital of these workshops was highly parasitic, i.e. they were inextricably linked to colonial officials and even to the Spanish aristocracy of the Old World. Their production technology and production mode have not changed in a hundred years, and they are basically in a state of stagnation.

At the same time, because they also have the attribute of commercial capital, they operate the exchange trade between some industrial products of the Old World and local special products. Therefore, it is natural to choose projects that avoid the risk of competition with the industrial products of the Old Continent, so its industrial categories are naturally limited to a specific box and are extremely single. The colonial character is very pronounced. The ultimate result of all this is that the Viceroyalty of Peru has never seen a single manufacturer of means of production on a large scale, and there is really no soil for the survival of these industrial categories.

With the smuggling agreement between the Southern Railway Company and the Spanish compradors in Peru, a large number of cheap East Coast industrial products poured into Peru, and the industrial system that was already relatively difficult to operate in the region suddenly collapsed. Capital has also stopped favoring these industries that cannot provide them with profits, and has instead invested heavily in special products such as grain, tobacco, sugar cane, cocoa, coffee, and tropical giant trees. And in this way, a large number of exports were exported to the east coast, and a lot of profits were made. All you have to do is go to Maolin City, the center of the smuggling trade. The actual state of production in Peru today is more or less clear of what kind of goods are carried by Spanish ships or caravans coming from afar, a vast viceroyalty that has largely ceased to export any industrial goods.

If you still don't believe it, then Angel, who has just landed on the shore. Baron Bravo will surely tell you the truth - this Peninsula man, who has become a liaison and intermediary with the Southern Railway Company, has come to Maurin Harbor to negotiate with the commercial representatives of the Southern Railway Company stationed here. Baron Bravo was instructed by a number of large plantation owners in Peru to make a special trip to Port Maurin in order to ask the Southern Railway Company to reduce the tariffs on Peruvian grain entering southern Patagonia.

As we all know, although the area of Southern Patagonia currently operated by the Southern Railway Company is extremely rich in resources, the land is relatively poor on the whole, and the development years are not long, so it has not been self-sufficient in food. Most of their food deficit was previously covered by imports from the east coast and a small part from Peru (which only started last year). In recent years, the Peruvian region has unsurprisingly enjoyed a bumper grain harvest, but this is not good news for the plantation owners - a 10 percent increase in grain production could result in a 30 percent price drop in the past, which is extremely detrimental to them.

At this time in the past, if the Old World ships had not come and buy the grain, perhaps the plantation owners would have had to destroy some of the grain on their own initiative in order to maintain the precarious price in the market, and if they did not do so, their losses would have been even greater. What the? You say the poor don't have anything to eat? What's the matter with me? Is that my fault? If I give food to the poor, will anyone the fuck come and buy my food? 1. Am I responsible for the loss? God, I'm not a philanthropist, please don't make it so difficult for me.

And because of the privateering activities of ships on the East Coast in the Caribbean, and the restoration of the order of agricultural production in Europe, the Peruvian plantation owners were destined to have a backlog of grain that could not be sold. Therefore, they began to set their sights on the people of the East Coast, to be precise, several strongholds and tens of thousands of settlers under the control of the East Coast Southern Railway Company.

However, it is not an easy task to export grain to the jurisdiction of the Southern Railway Company. Because the Southern Railway Company has tariffs on many foreign goods entering the region, as well as grain (which ranges from 9.5% to 16.5% depending on the variety), this is the biggest obstacle to Peruvian grain entering the market. Although the plantation owners of Peru enslaved the Indians in large numbers, due to the backwardness of the mode of production and the high cost of the means of production, the price of their grain was not much lower than that of the East Coast itself, and after the import tariffs, it was no longer enough to maintain an absolute advantage in the competition with the grain from the East Coast. Therefore, in order to solve the crisis of its own food surplus and seize the market of the Southern Railway Company, it is necessary to persuade the Southern Railway Company to agree to reduce or even cancel the tariff on Peruvian grain imports.

This was not an easy task, but Baron Bravo, who had a lot of responsibility on his shoulders, had no way back, and he had to convince the Southern Railway Company to accept this offer, and then open the import of wheat, rice, and corn from Peru. He had even put himself in the shoes of the Southern Railway Company, and they could make a lot of money by importing cheap Peruvian grain, processing it and selling it back to the East Coast. In addition, he was prepared to point out to the commercial representatives of the Southern Railway Company the fact that if they were open to importing grain from Peru, it would inevitably stimulate Peruvian plantation owners to invest more, buy more metal farming tools and bean cakes from the Southern Railway Company, and then hire more labor from the Old World, which in turn would be a potential consumer market for goods from the East Coast, and the relationship between the two sides would be completely mutually beneficial.

What Baron Bravo, who has consciously become the spokesperson of capital, did not expect was that the Southern Railway Company had long planned to import Peruvian grain, which was cheaper than in China. The Southern Railway Company is first and foremost an enterprise, and its primary consideration is undoubtedly its own operating conditions. With the success of the Pacific migration route, a large number of Ming people from the Far East passed into the South Pacific into the Southern Cone, and how to settle these people has now become a big burden for the company. After all, tens of thousands of people eat, drink, eat, drink, live, and transport is not a small number, and for a large-scale enterprise like the Southern Railway Company, which is responsible for its own profits and losses, every penny is eager to be broken in half and spent.

Importing cheap Peruvian grain can undoubtedly save the company a lot of money. Therefore, if Baron Bravo does not come to the East Coast this time, the East Coast people will also go to him recently, and they will also talk about buying grain from Peru. However, now that the Peruvians have come to the door first, the initiative is in the hands of the East Coasters, and there is no doubt that there will be more benefits to be gained during the negotiations.

In addition, tens of thousands of destitute Ming people poured into the Southern Cone, which was both a burden and a huge resource—cheap labor. Given the strong westerly winds that blow in the southern cone all year round, it would be a good idea to build a large number of wind-powered mills in an open area (usually by the sea or along the railway, which is also easily accessible), and then process cheap grain imported from Peru and finally exported to the mainland and neighboring Brazil.

With low raw material prices, low wages for workers, and low equipment operating costs, the many machine flour mills in the local area that are playing the game of big fish eating small fish are afraid that they are in big trouble. (To be continued)