After the thaw of this major water artery in the Western Regions, steam-powered tugboats, which had been silent all winter, began to travel back and forth between the north and south, and the handicrafts produced in the Western Qing Dynasty and the timber and woodware of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were transported to the river. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info. ybdu。 Then the cattle and sheep, wool, furs, cotton and brass of the Kazakh Khanate were transported to the Heavenly Kingdom and the Western Qing Dynasty in the south.

The port outside Hezhongfu City, which has just begun to show its embryonic shape, is even busier, racing past many harbors along the Yangtze River. Countless merchant goods are moving between the docks and tugboats. Merchants of various countries dressed in silk or precious fur clothes are holding ledgers and staring at the unloading of goods. Coolies in white hats who had been sold from the Western Qing Dynasty or the Kingdom of Heaven were dressed in coarse cloth and carried heavy loads under the supervision of foremen—most of them had been captured in the war between Heaven and the Western Qing a few years earlier, or as slaves in the war to divide the kingdom of Khorezm. After the end of the war, most of them were sold to the cities of Hazhong, Qihe, Tieshan, East Kazakh, or Central Kazakh, which belonged to the Kazakh Khanate, which were new after the end of the war against Russia.

Almost eight years have passed since the Great War with Russia, which is probably the fastest period in the history of the southeastern part of Kazakhstan. After the end of the war, under the organization of the Ming Colonial Department, the Kazakh Khanate suddenly became another hot spot to attract immigrants after the Northeast and Lanfang. It attracted a large number of poor middle peasants from the interior of the Ming Dynasty to open up land here. The immigrants from the Northeast and Lanfang had already given the poor in the interior the best wealth effect, and after years of immigration activities, the colonial ministry and officials at all levels in charge of this matter. All have accumulated considerable experience. The rate of loss of migrants on the way. has increased from the original 15%. It dropped to less than 2%, which is not comparable to the long-distance travel of later generations, but in this era, it is already a good number.

Moreover, the discovery of the Banyan copper mine on the northern shore of Lake Balkhash and the gold deposits of the Altai region, as well as the Law on Homesteads of the Kazakh Khanate. The Act allowed the government of the Kazakh Khanate to grant arable land to citizens of the Ming Dynasty who arrived on their own, and each citizen of the Ming Dynasty could receive up to 40 acres of land (because the land of the Kazakh Khanate was relatively poor, immigrants from collective farms of the Kazakh Khanate could receive 40 acres of land per capita). It should be more than 20 acres in the outer northeast, and the criteria for granting land for free immigrants are based on this), and ownership can be obtained after 10 years of cultivation or operation. As a result, it attracted countless immigrants who spontaneously came in search of wealth—but for many years to come, the terms offered by the Kingdom of California to Ming citizens were clearly more attractive. Speaking of which, it is really easy for the poor middle peasants in China to get land in this time and space, and I don't know if there are any peasants who are willing to make a revolution for the land?

By the end of the 15th year of the Ming Dynasty, according to the statistics of the Kazakh Khanate's internal cabinet, the Ming citizens who had settled here had exceeded 2.6 million (including the Mongols, excluding the garrisons)! And more than 300,000 people come from the mainland every year. This was followed by a wave of construction of cities and collective farms. Although in the southern part of the North-East, the first collective farms were established. It has now been gradually converted into autonomous farms, but in the newly developed Kazakh Khanate and Siberia and in the north-northeast. The collective farm system is still in its infancy. Each farm is a semi-militarized colonial group integrating production, life and defense, and is jointly funded by the Ming Colonial Department, the Migration Department of the Kazakh Khanate, and the Kazakh Development Corporation. Naturally, everyone has guns and is always ready to fight - although the Russians were defeated 8 years ago, all kinds of anti-Ming forces still exist in the Kazakh Khanate and the surrounding areas, some are supported by the Russians, some are True God extremists, and even the local Kazakh tribes may have an armed conflict with the collective farms! The colonization activities of the Ming Empire in Central Asia were also full of bloodshed and killing......

Of course, with the arrival of immigrants it was not just the struggle, but also the great demand and thriving trade. Due to the delay in the construction of the railway to the interior, the inhabitants of the Kazakh Khanate could not obtain industrial or handicraft products from the Ming and Han dynasties, so they had to rely on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Western Qing Dynasty. As a result, it has also led to the economic development of these two small countries in the Western Regions. And what the Kazakh Khanate can now sell to the Heavenly Kingdom and the Western Qing Dynasty is actually all raw materials such as livestock products, brass and cotton, as if the Kazakh Khanate was a colony of the Western Qing and Taiping Heavenly Kingdoms. However, this situation will change completely in a few years. Because the Prussian geological expedition hired by the General Association for the Promotion of Industry discovered rich coal and iron ore resources in the Central Kazakhstan Province (probably the area around Karaganda Oblast in the future)!

"The Kazakh Khanate is really a treasure land, coal, iron, copper, lead, gold...... You can get all the mines here, but the transportation is too inconvenient, and the machines can only be transported from Persia, and the freight is really high. In the whole world, only the Emperor Ming has such a skill! ”

Zhou Jinlong, an engineer at Lanfangxing Nanfen Iron and Steel Company, stood on the dock, craned his neck to look at the approaching fleet, while chatting with a red-robed official about opening a factory in the Kazakh Khanate.

This red-robed official is middle-aged Liu Zongxian, who has mixed well in the officialdom of the Kazakh Khanate in recent years, and is now the head of the Central Kazakh Prefecture! Of course, he can't be compared with Zeng Guofan, the governor of Hezhong, who is also in charge of a government, but only has the title of prefect. However, Li Hongzhang, Prime Minister of the Kazakh Khanate's Cabinet, has already told him that how big he can be as a ruler of the government depends on his ability to run the territory! In terms of the size of the territory of the Central Kazakh Province, the size of the territory is comparable to that of several provinces in the Han region, and in terms of resources, only the Northeast can be compared. The disadvantage is that it is sparsely populated and the traffic remains the same...... Now it's up to him to manage the place, if he can really develop it, it is not impossible for the governor of Zheng Erpin! If he can't make a name for himself, then his career will stop at the Wupin Prefect.

Of course, Governor Liu wanted to go to the next level, he glanced at the five-short figure beside him, his skin was tanned, and his beard was unshaven, and he didn't know how many days he hadn't shaved the engineer who graduated from the metallurgical department of Jishi University. There is a smile on his face, and there is no official tone - it is said that if he has been an official in these places where everyone has a gun for a long time, he naturally does not feel that being an official is superior.

"Mr. Zhou, everything is difficult at the beginning, now the Kazakh Khanate has no industry, and it has to be shipped in from outside, of course, it is a little more expensive. However, when the coal and iron industry in China and Kazakhstan develops, the cost of development will be much lower. ”

"That's right, as long as we can build an iron plant with an annual output of tens of thousands of tons and a coal mine with an annual output of several hundred thousand tons in China-Kazakhstan Province, it will be much easier to develop in the future. At the very least, it is possible to produce plate rails, and then speed up the construction of railways in the Western Regions. It is probably because of this that the emperor did not hesitate to invest a huge amount of money. ”

When the two of them were talking, a tugboat had already docked first, and they saw a white and chubby middle-aged man walking across the gangplank first, waving at Liu Zongxian and smiling: "Sixth, sixth, what you want, brother, I have already helped you transport it intact!" Thousands of tons of iron guys, only our Western Regions Brothers Company can carry it, others don't even think about it! ”

Of course, this fat man is Liu Zongxian's second brother Liu Zongying, the big boss of the Western Regions Brothers Company, the largest private company here in the Western Regions, and the steam tugboats sailing on the Syr Darya River are all from this company! In addition, Western Regions Brothers has branches in Heavenly Court, Samarkand, Bukhara, Tehran, Isfahan and Basra. Through the introduction of the Empress Dowager Ye Lan'er of the Western Qing Dynasty (Jin Yixu has died), he even established a relationship with the court of the Qajar Dynasty in Iran, thus establishing a trade route across the four kingdoms of Iran, the Western Qing, the Heavenly Kingdom and the Kazakh Khanate. Every year, the goods that pass through his company to and from various countries are around tens of thousands of tons, and it is really a huge wealth of money! (To be continued.) )