"Woo-woo~"

A loud horn sounded on the huge sailing boat, and the sails began to descend slowly, and dozens of pairs of wood pulp on the side strings were deep, turning up layers of white waves in the sea, leaving a long ripple on the surface of the sea. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

As the fleet approached the harbor, the tall sailing ships were lined up like buildings, with towering masts reaching into the blue sky.

The white clouds are floating in the sky, the large and small ships on the sea are approaching regularly, the waves are blooming, and the white ribbons are flying behind the dinghy, which is very cheerful!

"Oh~ I'm back, hahaha!"

"My lord, we're back~!"

"Participate in the adults, the subordinates are fortunate not to be dishonored!haha!"

Before the ship could get along, senior cadres such as Sochen, Hakong, Gomez, Tang Zhentian, and Tang Weitian appeared at the bow of the ship, and the sailors and soldiers cheered and threw their sailors' hats into the sky.

Chang Wei immediately mustered up his internal strength and responded loudly, "This voyage to America is not far away, it lasted a year, fortunately brothers, everyone will be rewarded with a thousand taels of silver, and the casualties will have another pension!"

"Oh~ worthy of an adult!"

"Thank you, sir!"

"Subordinates, etc., the liver and brain will also serve the adults to death!"

Chao Tianque had already told Chang Wei about the harvest of this voyage, and there were hundreds of millions of taels of silver ingots alone, and two whole ships were loaded.

In addition, Chang Wei confessed rubber trees, polyps, cochineal, cocoa, tobacco, corn, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes...... and other crop seeds. The value of these things is almost immeasurable, especially in the hands of Chang Wei, it will play a huge value in promoting the progress of world civilization!

As soon as the ship stopped, Chang Wei took off and landed a few times, and arrived on the deck of the big ship.

Hakong, Soheng, Gomez and others stepped forward excitedly to salute, Tang Weitian, Tang Zhentian and others were also about to salute, but they were called uncle twice by Chang Wei, only to know that their niece Tang Shuxue had married Chang Wei.

After greeting the soldiers, merchants, sailors and others on the boat for a while, Chang Weicai asked with a smile: "I heard Mr. Wang say that you have gained a lot from this trip, tell me about it." ”

The nimble Hakong first led Chang Wei into the storage warehouse, "My lord, look here, this row of boxes contains cocoa from Venezuela, which is boiled into sugar by the locals with honey, and it tastes very good." ”

Chang Wei picked up a piece of black paste and tried to bite it, "Hey, isn't this chocolate?"

Gomesch said: "Adults also know? This is a food invented by the British - chocolate, which is high in calories, and it is very practical to supplement nutrition when sailing." ”

"My lord, look here, this is the big yin and yang tripe fish maw, Cantonese people like to use it for stewing or stewing soup, it is very nourishing. ”

"This is a specialty of Colombia, coffee and unicorn fruit, because it is not easy to preserve, we made it into a canned according to the method that adults said, although it is not fresh, the taste is still okay. However, we brought back fruit trees. ”

The method of canning is very simple, put the food into a wide-mouth glass bottle, plug the bottle mouth with a wooden stopper, put it in the steamer to heat, and then plug the wooden cork tightly, and seal it with wax for long-term storage.

"This is the white shrimp and roses of Ecuador, this colorful variety is called the eternal rose, which is very rare, and we also brought a lot of seeds. ”

"This is the maca of Peru, aphrodisiac nourishment, the effect is very good, hehe!"

"This is a Bolivian quinoa, there are three kinds of white/red/black, broken and brewed with boiling water, it is delicious. ”

"These are the gemstones of Brazil, there are no less than 100 kinds of tourmaline, green ghost, garnet, topaz, and white crystal, which are cheap and large in the local area, but we don't have these things, and we will definitely be able to sell them at a high price. ”

"This is beef and amethyst from the country of Uruguay, and the cattle over there are fat and strong, and we have brought ten breeding cows. ”

"This is the country's yerba mate, red shrimp, butter, cheese, seedless vines, squid, rhodochrosite. ”

"Cane sugar from Paraguay, red wine from Chile, gali nuts, dried cranberries, avocados, gala nuts, kiwi, king crab, green apples, ......"

After seeing five boats of plants and food, and two boats of silver ingots, Chang Wei boarded three other boats, all of which were full of exotic animals.

Beasts include sloths, armadillos, anteaters, opossums, spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys, marmosets, howler monkeys...... Birds include the family of Grebeans, Flycatchers, Sprays, Emerald Eagles, Short-tailed Eagles, Woodowls, Oily Birds and Musk Pheasants, all of which are unique to the Neotropics, called cranes, cranes, trumpets and sunfishes, and others include toucans, American ostriches, horned eagles, macaws, Amazonas, etc.; reptiles include anacondas, red-tailed beetles, caimans, etc.;

The most distinctive are undoubtedly hummingbirds, tapirs, alpacas, sloths, jaguars, jaguars, velvet monkeys, tortoises, vultures, electric eels of fish, piranhas, arapaima, lungfish, etc.

Chang Wei watched excitedly for most of the day before entering the flagship, as the largest, most luxurious, and most powerful warship in the fleet.

The flagship, the Sun and Moon, is a clipper with a mix of spinnaker and trapezoidal sail.

The Sun and Moon, a giant ship with classical appearance and advanced technology, is also a representative work of both aesthetics and practicality in the world today, known as the 'sea king', and the entire west coast of the American continent is amazed by the sailing along the way.

Most Spanish sailing boats are in front of the Sun and Moon, which can only be described as small sampans.

Known as the 'King of the Seas', this luxurious armed ship has seventy-six rooms and five decks. There are clinics, restaurants, galleries, concert halls...... There's even a small aquarium that is a veritable "floating city".

In addition to being incredibly large, the Sun and Moon is also the ultimate in luxury, with everything you need.

Knowing all these good news and gains, the next most important thing is the power of America and the armed forces of the colonists.

This aspect is naturally told by Gomez, who knows the most details and the history of America and Europe, and is also the commander of the ocean-going fleet.

"The power of the American continent from south to north is Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and England, and most of the indigenous people are under the rule of these five countries......"

In 1298, the Italian Marco Polo's "Marco Polo's Travels" was written, and it was widely circulated in Europe, arousing the admiration and greed of Europeans for oriental civilization and wealth, and finally led to the discovery of new routes and new continents.

More than 100 years later, Zheng He, a navigator of the Ming Dynasty, was ordered by the Ming Dynasty to send seven envoys to "Western" countries to "show off the foreign land and show China's prosperity and strength", so as to urge Southeast Asian countries to pay tribute to the Ming Dynasty and proclaim their national prestige to the world.

At the same time, the expeditionary fleet of Prince Henry of Portugal began its exploration of northwestern Africa, discovering the Canary Islands, Madeira, the Azores, and Cape Verde and the Cape Verde Islands, halfway between Africa and Brazil.

In 1450, the letterpress printing technology in Europe appeared, and the mass printing of books made knowledge widely disseminated, and due to the improvement of people's knowledge level, the desire to explore the unknown world became stronger and stronger, providing an ideological basis for the arrival of the Age of Discovery.

After that, the Ottoman Turkish Empire captured Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire fell. The land and sea trade routes to the East were controlled by the Turks and Arabs, respectively.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, and in 1501 Amerigo Vespucci made a detailed survey of the northeastern coast of South America, confirming that it was a new continent, but not India, and later named the continent "America" after him.

In this way, the world officially entered the first year of the Age of Discovery.

A few years later, the Portuguese occupied Goa, India, where Zheng He had been. After that, the Portuguese envoys arrived in Guangzhou.

In 1519, the Portuguese navigator Magellan began his voyage around the world, and in 1521, Hernando Cortés of Spain captured the city of Tenochtitlan, and the Aztec Empire in Mexico in the New World came to an end.

After Magellan was killed in the Philippines in 1521, his men continued their voyage and discovered the Spice Islands, and in August, the Sino-Portuguese Battle of Tuen Mun broke out, and in September, the Portuguese ships fled to Malacca. The following year, in September, Magellan's fleet completed its round-the-world voyage.

In 1529, Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Saragos, which drew a demarcation line 17 degrees east of the Spice Islands, completing the division of power in Asia.

In 1532, the Portuguese nobleman Martin Susa recaptured Brazil from the French.

In 1533, Francesco Pizarro of Spain destroyed the Inca Empire, the "Golden Country" of the New World.

In 1558, Elizabeth I of England ascended the throne and actively encouraged piracy in order to expand Britain's maritime power.

In 1561, when the Japanese invaded Taizhou on a large scale, Qi Jiguang led his troops to win nine battles and nine victories, and won the world-famous victory in Taizhou! In the next few years, he joined Yu Dayou's army to carry out the Xinghua, Pinghai, and other Pingyu battles, and won successive battles. In 1565, the long-term plague of the Japanese was finally put to rest.

In 1571, the Battle of Lebando broke out, in which the Ottoman navy was defeated by the combined fleets of Spain and Venice, losing control of the Mediterranean. From then on, the Ottoman Empire began to decline.

In 1580 Spain annexed Portugal.

In 1581, the former northern Netherlands declared its independence, and the Netherlands was born.

In 1588, England defeated the Spanish "Armada".

In 1592, in the Korean "Imjin Patriotic War", Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Korea across the sea, and the Ming Dynasty came to the aid of Korea and defeated the Japanese invaders.

In 1600, the British East India Company was established, and in 1602, the East India Company was established, and the conflict between Britain and the Netherlands intensified. In 1604, the French East India Company was founded. In 1624, Dutch colonists invaded and occupied the island of Taiwan.

In 1629, a skirmish broke out in Lisbon, and the Royal Portuguese Navy to which Gomez belonged came to the coast of Daming to seek business opportunities, and met Changwei.

After 1630, Chang Wei's ocean-going fleet was established, and last year Yan Ruyu led an army to conquer the island of Taiwan.

Throughout the late 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans opened new routes across the Atlantic to the Americas, detoured the southern tip of Africa to India, and the success of the first circumnavigation voyage, which is traditionally known in history as the "Great Discoveries".

At the end of the 15th century, due to the development of the commodity-money economy, the demand for money increased considerably. Money is not only a medium of commodity exchange, but also a symbol of wealth and power, as if whoever has it has everything.

Precious metal gold and silver is the ideal currency, in the Middle Ages in Western Europe, the silver standard was initially implemented, after the 15th century, gradually transitioned to the gold standard, gold and silver are the means of payment for defense trade.

As a result, the kings, nobles, and merchants of Western Europe went crazy in pursuit of gold and silver, forming a precious metal craze.

Christopher Columbus once said, "Gold is a wonderful thing." Whoever has it becomes the master of everything he wants. With gold, even the soul can be brought to heaven. ”

However, there is not much gold produced in Europe, and silver is mainly produced in Germany. From the second half of the 15th century onwards, Germany's annual silver production continued to increase, but it was still not enough. Western European merchants brought in expensive silk and spices in trade with the East, which led to a massive outflow of precious metals. In order to alleviate the shortage of precious metals, some countries have repeatedly ordered bans on the export of gold and silver, but this has not solved the problem.

In the 1295 book "The Travels of Marco Polo", it was described that the palace walls, walls and ceilings of Beijing were painted with gold and silver, and that countless Japanese gold was used to build houses, and the claim was absolutely credible.

The wide circulation of this book made Western Europeans salivate, and they decided to cross the ocean to the rich East.

The pioneer Portuguese sought gold on the coast of Africa, in India, and throughout the Far East, the word gold was the spell that drove the Spaniards across the Atlantic to America, and gold was the first thing the white man asked for when he first set foot on a newly discovered shore.

Before the end of the 15th century, there were three main trade routes from the West to the East. One was the overland route, the traditional "Silk Road", which landed in Constantinople, passed through Asia Minor, the Black Sea, and the southern shores of the Caspian Sea to Central Asia, and then crossed the Pamirs to China.

The other two were by sea: one from Syria and the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, through the two river basins to the Persian Gulf, and the other from Egypt to the Persian Gulf via the Red Sea, and then to India and China. These trade routes had already passed through merchants from Italy, Arabia, Byzantium, and Persia before they could reach Western Europe.

In the middle of the 15th century, the Ottoman Turkish Empire rose to occupy Asia Minor and the Balkans, controlled traditional trade routes, and imposed heavy taxes on passing goods, so that the goods arriving in Western Europe were not only small, but also 8-10 times higher than the original price. As a result, the merchants and aristocrats of Western Europe were eager to open a new route to China and India, bypassing the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.

In the 15th century, the improvement of science and technology and the advancement of geographical knowledge made it possible to sail the oceans, creating the necessary conditions for opening up new shipping routes. At that time, Europeans were able to build large ships with multiple masts, fast speeds, and a load of hundreds or even thousands of tons, suitable for long-distance voyages.

The compass invented in China was introduced to Europe by the hands of the Arabs and was widely used in navigation. The earth circle theory is increasingly accepted by people. In 1477, the Florentine geographer Toscaneri drew a map of the world, drawing China and Japan in the west of Europe, believing that it was possible to reach the East by sailing west from Europe.

China's seafaring achievements helped the Europeans to open up new routes to the East. At the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese da Gama took advantage of Zheng He's seafaring achievements to open up a new route through the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa to India.

At the end of the 15th century, Spain and Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula completed the territorial unification. The monarchs, nobles, and merchants of the two countries actively supported the seafaring industry and opened up new routes to India in order to plunder gold and silver, expand their power, and open up new routes to India.

In the first half of the 15th century, the achievements of Portuguese seafaring discoveries shocked Europe, and Enrique was not only admired by the Portuguese, but also respected by Europeans.

The Portuguese voyages and expansion on the west coast of Africa prompted the Spaniards to actively search for another new route to the East. They financed the voyage of Christopher Columbus and his entourage westward from Europe, which ended up in the Americas, opening up a new route to the Americas.

Columbus's voyage opened a new route from Western Europe to the Americas, ending the isolation of the Americas and laying the groundwork for Spanish overseas plunder and colonization.

Although Columbus opened a new route to the Americas, he did not reach the rich East, nor did he immediately bring Spain considerable wealth.

Vasco da Gama, however, opened up a new route to India, which brought Portugal astonishing profits.

The Spanish authorities were jealous of this and hoped that a new route to the East would be found to continue supporting ocean-going expeditions.

Portugal and Spain actively explored new shipping routes, and also began colonial plundering of Asia, Africa, and the Americas before other countries. The two countries declared their territory wherever they went, and naturally clashed.

After the mediation of Pope Alexander VI, the two countries signed the Treaty of Tordesillas in June 1494: about 370 li west of the Cape Verde Islands, a dividing line from the North Pole to the South Pole - the "Papal Meridian", the "discovered" new land to the east of the line belonged to Portugal, and the west of the line belonged to Spain.

According to the treaty, Spain had almost the entire Americas, and Portugal had a vast sphere of influence in Asia and Africa. This was the first time in the world that a colony had been partitioned.

The Portuguese had long heard that Africa was rich in gold, and as soon as they set foot on African soil, they were obsessed with scavenging for gold. Later, the Portuguese sailed to the coast of Ghana and found that the area between Cape Sanjianjiao and Cape Coast was rich in gold sand, so they named Mina (meaning "mineral deposit"), which later became known as "Gold Coast". ”

They found that ivory was grown in some places, and it was called the "Ivory Coast". From 1480 to 1530, the Portuguese plundered 100,000 pounds worth of gold in the Gulf of Guinea, accounting for 10% of the world's total gold at that time.

As early as the 40s of the 15th century, the Portuguese colonists operated the trade of black slaves for profit. In 1444, for example, they transported 235 blacks from West Africa for public auction on the European market. Subsequently, more than 1,000 people were transported to Europe each year to work as slaves, miners, or to perform hard agricultural labor.

In 1502, 10 years after Columbus arrived in the Americas, the first Portuguese ship to transport slaves arrived in Santo Domingo in the Caribbean and sold blacks to sugar plantation owners as slaves for a huge profit. In 1510, Spain openly sold a slave trade licence (assiento), which allowed those who held the permit to trade slaves to the Spanish colonies in the Americas, and Portuguese slave traders bought them in large quantities and monopolized the slave trade in the Americas. They openly rounded up blacks along the coasts of West Africa, especially in the densely populated Senegal, Gambia River valleys, and the Gulf of Guinea, or provoked tribal conflicts to buy prisoners of war, and even used cheap goods to induce local chiefs to betray their subjects, and then put these innocent blacks in wooden shackles, shackles, chained together, and escorted to slave trading strongholds for shipment to the Americas.

In the area of the Gold Coast, there are 30 or 40 strongholds of this size, and some ruins still exist today. Benin was a famous slave trading center and was called the "Slave Coast" by slave traders. Later, the slave trade spread to the islands of Mozambique, Tanzania, and Madagascar on the east coast of Africa.

After da Gama opened a new route to India, the Portuguese invasion extended to Asia. At the beginning of the 16th century, Portugal was a small country of more than a million people, unable to occupy many large countries with a long culture and vast land, so it mainly plundered by establishing military posts, monopolizing trade routes, and engaging in fraudulent trade.

The Portuguese colonists soon occupied Sokorat (1506), which controlled the Red Sea routes, and Hormuz, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, defeated the combined Indian, Turkish, and Arab fleets in Diu (1509), and in 1510 occupied Goa, India, as the capital of the Eastern colonies, with a satrap under the rule of a governor. They continued their eastward invasion, conquering Malacca (1511), Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and the Moluccas, known as the "Spice Country".

The mid-16th century was the height of the Portuguese colonial empire, which had military posts and trading posts in West Africa, East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, India, the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia, and monopolized the main trade routes between Europe, Asia and Africa. The Portuguese regarded the Indian Ocean as their own inland sea, openly intercepting, pursuing and robbing ships of other countries, killing people and overstepping goods, and even sinking women and children into the sea. They taxed the people of the occupied territories, extorted spices, or used cheap small goods such as mirrors, pins, and glass balls to defraud valuables such as pearls, precious stones, and ivory, and shipped them back to Lisbon to sell at high prices for a staggering profit.

At the same time as Columbus opened a new route to the Americas, the Spanish began to conquer and plunder the West Indies. At the end of 1492, Columbus established his first colonial stronghold in northern Haiti. In 1496, Columbus's brother built the city of Santo Domingo on the southern shore of Haiti as the capital of the West Indies. Based in Haiti, the Spanish colonists conquered Jamaica, Puerto Rico (1509), Cuba (1512), and the entire West Indies, with the Indian Office in Seville (1511). They "committed atrocities and wanton slaughter" against the Indians "like ferocious wolves that break into the tame lambs."

By the forties of the sixteenth century, only 500 of the more than 60,000 Indians on the island of Haiti remained, while hundreds of thousands of Indians in places such as Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Cuba had been exterminated.

In April 1519, the Spanish nobleman Hanan Cortez, led about 600 infantry and 200 Indians, carrying 10 cannons, 16 horses, and 11 ships, landed in Veracruz on the east coast of Mexico and launched an attack on the country of the Astercons.

King Montezuma II sent a large amount of gold, silver and jewels to Cortez, asking him to withdraw his troops. Cortez, on the other hand, went so far as to sow discord that he entered Mexico City in November by forming an alliance with many of the tribes dissatisfied with Montezuma.

Montezuma not only did not resist, but personally presided over a grand welcome and welcomed Cortis into the palace. Cortez plotted to arrest Montezuma and rule in his name, extorting gold, silver, and jewelry.

In June 1520, when the Indians revolted, Cortez's gang fled in the night rain, killing and drowning in the lake, and the looted treasure fell to the bottom of the lake, which became known as the "Night of Sorrows." ”

In August 1521, Cortez again led his troops into Mexico City, turning Mexico into a Spanish colony, called "New Spain." In 1523-1524, the Spaniards invaded Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador.

In January 1531, Francisco Pizarro led 180 soldiers, carrying 2 cannons and 50 horses, divided into 3 ships, left Panama and landed on the northwest coast of Peru.

In November 1532, Pizarro took advantage of the Inca throne dispute to occupy the northern town of Cajamarca, and set up an ambush to surprise him, capturing King Atahualba alive and killing more than 2,000 Incas.

Pizarro extorted money from the king to fill the cell where he was being held, about 96 cubic meters of gold and a large amount of silver, and treacherously killed him. On November 15, 1533, Pizarro led his troops into the Inca capital of Cusco and turned Peru into a colony.

The Spanish colonizers then conquered Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile and other South American countries.

By the middle of the 16th century, Spain had invaded Central and South America, with the exception of Brazil, and established a vast colonial empire.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Spain established the Council of Indian Affairs, which was directly responsible to the king, and was in charge of administrative, military, financial, legislative, and religious affairs in the American colonies.

A trade agency was also set up to deal with trade between Spain and the Americas. In the Americas, four viceroyalties were established in New Spain (Mexico), New Granada (Colombia, Venezuela), Peru and La Plata (Argentina).

In the Americas, Spain implemented the "guardianship system" (also known as the "guardianship system" and "large land grant system"), which divided a large amount of land and Indians to the Spanish nobles, favored courtiers, adventurers and the Catholic Church (called "guardians") hereditary possession, who had the right to force the Indians to engage in construction, mineral development, cultivation of land, pay taxes and perform all kinds of labor (with little pay), and the right to make the Indians Christians.

The Indians were nominally free men, but in fact slaves. "Guardianship" was first introduced in Santo Domingo and later spread throughout Spanish America. With the extinction of the Indians, "guardianship" was replaced by black slavery. The Spanish colonizers, in collaboration with the Portuguese, transported large numbers of black Africans to the Americas, forcing them to work in the mines and plantations with extreme hardship.

It is said that the average working life of young adults on a plantation is only 7 years. The labor in the mine is hard and the working conditions are poor, and when the miners are often gone, they often have no return, and their relatives often bury them in advance.

The number of blacks who arrived in the Americas in the 16th century was 900,000, and in 1630 it was 2.75 million. For every black person trafficked to the Americas, five people die on the African continent and on the way. As a result, Africa loses between 60 million and 100 million people.

The Spanish colonists amassed a great deal of wealth on the white bones of Indians and blacks. From 1521 to 1544, they transported an average of 2,900 kilograms of gold and 30,700 kilograms of silver from the Americas each year.

By 1545-1560, gold had increased to 5,500 kilograms and silver to 246,000 kilograms.

At the end of the 16th century, Spain mined 83% of the world's precious metals in the Americas.

The opening of new shipping routes and the ensuing colonial plundering had a profound impact on the history of countries around the world. Many countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas have since gradually become colonies or semi-colonies, and have become the objects of plunder by Western colonizers.

Portugal and Spain were the general vanguard of colonial plunder, while the Netherlands, Britain, and France used their powerful military and economic power to squeeze out Spain and Portugal, and continued to carry out brutal colonial plundering in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, bringing great disasters to the people of these regions.

However, there is another side to the story. After the opening of the new shipping routes, the world will be integrated, which will be conducive to economic and cultural exchanges, and will promote the formation of unique cultural circles in some regions, such as the Americas, on the basis of absorbing foreign cultures, and promote the convergence of world civilizations.

The opening of new shipping routes and colonial plunder also had a major impact on Western Europe, causing commercial and price revolutions, and in the final analysis, contributing to the collapse of feudalism and the rise of capitalism.

The so-called commercial revolution refers to the expansion of commerce, the increase in the variety of goods, the change of business methods, and the transfer of commercial centers on trade routes, which began to form a world market. Commerce between Europe and Asia and Africa expanded, and commercial ties with the Americas began.

A large number of goods from Asia and Africa began to appear in large quantities on the European market. The trade routes and commercial centers of Europe gradually shifted to the Atlantic coast, and the commercial cities of Italy tended to decline, while Lisbon, Antwerp, and London became increasingly prosperous.

New financial institutions such as joint-stock companies and exchanges have emerged. A large amount of cheap precious metals plundered and mined from the colonies flowed into Europe in a steady stream, causing prices to skyrocket, known as the price revolution.

In the 16th century, gold in Europe increased from 550,000 to more than 1.19 million kilograms, and silver from 7 million kilograms to 21.4 million kilograms.

Spain received the most gold and silver from its colonies, and prices rose the most and the fastest, with an average increase of 4.5 times and a five-fold increase in food prices in the 16th century. Britain, France, and Germany generally rose 2 times to 2.5 times.

Rising prices have led to a decline in the real wages of wage-dependent workers and a growing impoverishment. The feudal lords, who had traditionally levied a fixed amount of money rent, had reduced their incomes.

The new bourgeoisie, the new aristocracy, benefited from the use of cheap labor and the sale of products at high prices. Since then, capitalism in Western Europe has developed rapidly, surpassing many countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas.

According to the intelligence gathered by Gomez, the five European countries have about 100,000 troops on the American continent, with a population of more than 3 million, and their firepower is dominated by ancient arquebuses.

Chang Wei thought confidently: "According to this level of estimate, there are 10,000 troops and hundreds of warships that can gain a firm foothold, and then dominate the Americas!"