New Shun 1730

At first, William IV was grateful to Liu Yu.

He thought Liu Yu was a fool.

He and the French ambassador staged a coup in Russia, but after a long time, the Russo-French alliance was not reached. He was like a tool used and then abandoned by Queen Elizabeth.

He tried to win over the Orange faction in the Netherlands and signed a "free trade" treaty - free trade, for the Netherlands at that time, there was no treaty more traitorous than this. The average wage of textile workers in Leiden was two or three times that of the UK, so they were also worthy of free trade?

As a result, he failed to win over, and he was angry and humiliated the Netherlands before leaving. As a result, he helped William IV to come to power and drove away the parliamentary faction that "was submissive to China and France and not tough enough".

But now this whole set of combined punches has completely stunned William IV.

He was not an outstanding person.

Although he always thought that he would become Caesar and Augustus, and become the governor of the Netherlands with a series of military victories.

But first of all, his physical condition did not allow it.

Secondly, his mother's way of education can only be said to have raised a child who is indecisive.

In terms of Chinese history, his ancestors, William II, William III, and even Prince Maurice, were all at the level of Li Er and Liu San. But when it comes to him, it can only be said that in terms of political skills, it is an insult to Yingzong to compare him with the emperor who called the door.

It would have been fine if everything was going well. Who wouldn't be a ruler who maintains the status quo? He should compromise with the oligarchs and admit his weakness.

However, everything did not go well.

He had only been in power for one or two years, and such a big thing happened.

The parliamentary faction was still nodding and kowtowed to France at the beginning, and always told the French about the aid to Austria that they were just fulfilling the signature on the state edict, hoping that France would not be angry.

But William IV was the son-in-law of the eldest princess of Great Britain and an orthodox British relative. And as soon as he came to power, he directly announced that he would declare war on France and prepare to pick up a big bargain. He also directly assisted Austria with a large amount of money and expelled the French ambassador to the Netherlands, with a clear stand.

Now, William IV, who had a clear-cut stance, had no idea what to do when faced with the situation that the Austrian Netherlands was occupied by France and that Britain was going to withdraw its troops to prevent Catholics and Scotland from entering London.

If he was like his predecessor, Prince Maurice, it would be easy to say, just do it.

The problem was that he was not.

The diplomatic situation took a sharp turn for the worse, and the voices of domestic opposition suddenly rose again.

Many people were silent at the beginning, and more people thought that "it would be better to return to the feudal era" because the oligarchic regent faction and the financial capital faction were so rotten that they made people sick.

And the people who supported Orange's coming to power the most, in addition to the soldiers and the nobles of the Orange faction, were the guild organizations throughout the Netherlands.

It turned out that the guilds in various provinces absolutely supported the Orange faction.

Guilds should be swept into the garbage dump of history. Compared with the financial capital of Amsterdam, the guilds of the feudal era were definitely no match for the capital of the Enlightenment era.

For example, the pottery guilds in this city, the local pottery is controlled by the guilds. Life was good.

As a result, capital engaged in business, and Yixing purple clay teapots from tens of thousands of miles away were shipped to the Netherlands frantically. What did the local pottery guild think?

Capital and guilds are incompatible.

The guilds of the old era were severely squeezed by capital. The guilds hoped that the Orange family would come to power and fully support the revival of the guilds, suppress capital, and return to the late Middle Ages.

The Orange family was aristocratic, had manors, and was basically hostile to financial capital and financial oligarchs in various provinces.

However, after William IV came to power, he soon understood why his ancestors would rather go to Britain to be king than stay in Amsterdam.

The oligarchs in Amsterdam clearly told William IV that you can be in power; but without our consent, your orders in Amsterdam are shit.

The Dutch province took 50% of the taxes from seven provinces and left the Netherlands, and the government of the United Provinces could not function.

Choose capital? Or choose feudal guilds?

William IV quickly gave the answer.

He changed his attitude when he was a manor owner in Friesland, no longer supporting the revival of the guild, nor hindering the squeeze of commercial capital on the old guild.

This contradiction has been suppressed for the past few years.

And the registered members of the guild were the backbone of his support for coming to power.

Now, this contradiction is accompanied by the great victory of France and the loss of East India. The guilds of various provinces took this opportunity to put pressure on William IV, hoping that William IV would make a clear statement.

Representatives of guilds from various provinces gathered in The Hague to accuse the governor of the harm of capital, hoping that the governor could give an explanation: if they guarantee to support the guild in the future, eliminate capital, and restore the ancestral law, they are willing to continue to support the Orange family.

After being ambiguous for so long, there must be an explanation, right?

While the guilds were putting pressure on this side, the shareholders of the East India Company and the financial oligarchs of the Netherlands were also putting pressure on William IV.

August 12.

The news that Dashun launched a surprise attack on Southeast Asia quickly spread throughout the country in the morning along with the ships arriving on the shore, combined with the small territory of the Netherlands.

Dashun lured and annihilated the Dutch East India Company's fleet in Southeast Asia, captured Ceylon and Batavia, seized control of the sea, and surrounded Malacca...

The news reached Amsterdam in the morning.

In the afternoon, the East India Company's stock, which was originally priced at 2,000 guilders, did not stop after being cut in half, falling from 2,000 guilders to 600.

It was that fast.

This is still the "benefit" caused by the inconvenience of communication at that time.

If communication is convenient, a large number of Dutch people who witnessed the real situation of Dashun's voyage to Southeast Asia can send the first-hand news back to Amsterdam as soon as possible, not to mention 600, I am afraid that it will fall to 60 on the same day.

The East India Company without East India is just an empty shell, isn't it?

Moreover, this is not just a matter of the East India Company.

A company with a scale of hundreds of millions is on the verge of bankruptcy, and it affects more than just the East India Company.

In recent years, the East India Company has been in a state of tearing down the east wall to repair the west wall. It has borrowed money from outside, and a large part of its cash needs to be solved through loans.

Various triangular debts, various loans, bonds, purchased national bonds of various countries, and investments in various countries, a large part of the income of the East India Company is maintained by these things.

Once the East India Company has problems, the entire Amsterdam financial market will collapse.

Does the East India Company still have assets?

Yes.

Persian warehouses, African trade offices, Cape Colony, fleets, cargo ships, company headquarters buildings, these are definitely assets that Dashun cannot take away for the time being.

And the intangible assets, market inertia, spice monopoly sales channels, etc. that the East India Company has developed over the past 100 years.

They are all assets, and they are assets of considerable value.

The question is, can these things support the East India Company?

Can a large number of middle-class citizen shareholders want Persian warehouses? Or can they want those spice sales channels?

In their eyes, it is not worth a single copper coin.

They only want one thing, that the company stocks that were once as popular as cakes in their hands should not become waste paper that is too hard to wipe their butts.

The Dutch never thought that the East India Company would go bankrupt.

In 1720, the first European financial crisis caused by the Mississippi Bubble and the South Sea Bubble broke out, and the stocks of the East India Company remained strong.

In the eyes of the Dutch, the stocks of the East India Company are not paper money, but gold.

It is different from the high rate of return that John Law boasted about when playing the game of passing the parcel.

VOC really paid an annual interest rate of up to 57%, and the annual interest rate of 50% lasted for nearly four years!

Even during the financial crisis in 1720, it still paid an annual interest rate of 16.5%.

Paper money? Paper money is also worthy of being compared with VOC stocks? Even comparing gold with that small bond stock is an insult to VOC stocks.

VOC can borrow very low interest loans in China because no one does not believe that VOC cannot repay it. The reason why VOC rarely borrowed in China was that it hid its accounts. It was a golden and jade appearance, but a rotten cotton inside. If it borrowed too much in China, it would be easy to have problems.

No Dutch thought that Dashun would come up with such a trick to cut off the source of funds.

For any large company with problems, no one knows its internal financial situation before something big happens.

Once such a big thing happens, many hidden problems will burst out instantly.

Stocks at this time are different from stocks in later generations.

Investors mainly earn dividend annuities. The company had promised before that if they did not want to hold the shares, they could buy them back at the original price, and the company could either leave them to the directors or sell them to others.

It was just that almost no one had sold them before, and the price of the shares on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange was definitely higher than the share capital.

Many companies closely related to the East India Company, such as the maritime insurance industry, the spices and oriental goods futures industry, the sugar futures industry, the loan bank, etc., almost all experienced serious crises on the afternoon of August 12.

In fact, the time point chosen by Liu Yu was not just a simple withdrawal of funds.

The collapse of the Dutch financial market was very simple.

More importantly, the time point chosen made a large amount of idle capital after the European financial crisis have nowhere to go.

Before the systemic financial crisis caused by the South Sea Bubble in 1920, the share capital of various joint-stock companies in the UK was 250 million pounds, equivalent to 800 million taels of silver. In this era, it was really too hot.

After the bubble burst, the UK realized the importance of national supervision and introduced the "Bubble Act". In theory, unless the company is authorized by Parliament or chartered by the royal family, it cannot issue stocks at will, so as to avoid passing the buck and fraud.

However, how difficult is it to obtain royal charters and parliamentary authorization?

In addition, after the South Sea bubble burst, another wave of Mississippi bubble burst, which made investors cry and scream.

This has created a subtle psychological impact: European capital generally believes that private joint-stock companies are unreliable, and state-guaranteed bonds are more reliable. National debt may be 4% or 5% per year, but it is stable; the return of the Mississippi Company is said to be 80% per year, which is enough, but do you dare to buy it?

The Netherlands has continued to decline in recent years, and the French stock exchange only trades for one hour a day, leaving a large amount of capital with nowhere to invest.

Either buy national debt or government bonds. And some high-quality company stocks, such as the Dutch East India Company with an annual interest rate of 57% in 1612, are simply hard to come by.

In this context, triggering the financial crisis in Amsterdam will definitely have additional benefits for Dashun.

The UK cannot absorb so much financial capital at this time. Either the Bubble Act needs to be amended or a technological revolution will break out in the UK. Neither of these two things will happen in a short period of time.

Not to mention France.

As the financial crisis exploded, a large amount of capital always sought profits, just like flies seeking feces.

Not to mention that Dashun did not eat alone, it let European financial capital cooperate with Dashun to open up the European and American markets together.

Let's talk about another benefit: Dashun demonstrated its national strength, Europe had a large amount of capital, and after 20 years, people generally trusted official bonds and national debts and sought stability... Does this mean that Dashun found a place to issue national debts?

Dashun could not issue national debts in China. Dashun's usury interest was too high, and the land value was too high, so no one bought the national debt. 100 taels of silver to buy land in a disaster year is definitely more profitable than buying national debts.

However, such an incident, coupled with the aftermath of the 20-year investment crisis.

Assuming that Dashun fights the Netherlands again in the future, it can raise national debts in the Netherlands to fight the Netherlands.