New Shun 1730

The British envoy could only partially agree with Fazaklay's statement.

And the reason for his agreement was mostly the second half of the sentence about "don't have another Jenkins Ear incident" and declare war on China.

Dashun could not reach the Thames, but Britain and France were still fighting each other in India.

At this time, Dashun sent its fleet to India, which was a great blessing for Britain - the world's first and second largest land power, the world's second, fourth or fifth largest ocean-going navy power, and the world's first and fourth largest treasury revenue. Who can bear this blessing?

However, the British envoy thought it was still unlikely to happen at Westminster Palace.

Perhaps the tea tax problem could be solved a little, but the cotton cloth tax was impossible.

Britain is not the Netherlands. The enclosure of land and the skyrocketing rent in Britain all depend on the wool textile industry. The aristocracy alone cannot pass this hurdle, not to mention the rising factory owners.

The envoy thought that the tea tax should really be solved.

Tariffs of 80% or even 140% are obviously giving money to smugglers, right?

"Mr. Fazaklay, I certainly agree with your understanding of China's particularity. However, the cotton cloth issue is impossible to resolve. If you think you need to make a promise to the duke, I suggest you not make a promise on the cotton cloth issue."

"If the promise is not fulfilled, it will only anger the duke even more."

"You know, he has an inexplicable dislike for our country. Perhaps it was instigated by the French, but the reason is not important. You and I have a consensus that he hates us."

After thinking for a while, the minister said, "I think that with the duke's understanding of trade, you don't need to say too much. He will certainly understand that the sales volume of tea after the tariff reduction is not the sum of the current smuggled tea and legal tea, but must be more than this."

"I personally think that on the tea issue, those people in the Palace of Westminster should achieve the result you want."

Fazaklay thought, even if only the tea tariff is resolved, it would be fine. If the tariff is really reduced, the number of people buying tea will definitely increase dramatically. Even if the tariff is reduced, the tariff revenue will increase instead.

However, will the animals sitting in the Palace of Westminster really understand such a simple truth?

Moreover, the East India Company does not want to provoke China, but some people in the country try to pull political capital and enhance their influence, and instigate war in the most resolute tone - starting a war is impossible, but it can enhance the political capital and influence of this person, and eventually send words such as cowardice to the king.

After all, some politicians believe that if they want to gain influence in the lords, they must either lick the king or go to the people to oppose the government to gain capital.

There is no other way.

This is a perfect opportunity. No matter how much you shout, there will be no war. There is no risk or responsibility, but you can get the recognition of many people in the people.

Let the people feel that this is the perfect next prime minister. Hard-line, uplifting, uncompromising, and courageous to go to war.

I am afraid that it will become uncontrollable at that time, from advocating war against China to burning Chinese silk and cotton cloth, smashing Chinese porcelain, and replacing tea with coffee and beer. The East India Company will suffer huge losses and will greatly affect the company's future profits.

And this is very likely.

Textile merchants and large landowners will encourage the burning of silk and cotton cloth out of opposition to cotton cloth and protection of wool fabric prices.

Those who sell Delft pottery and Meissen porcelain would like the whole of Europe to smash Chinese porcelain.

Those coffee growers and domestic beer merchants in the West Indies will also put aside the differences in the coffee house incident and unite to oppose tea, using the very high-sounding name of protecting their own industries.

Politicians advocate war for influence, and these merchants or capitalists use money to incite. I am afraid that the East India Company will really be greatly affected.

Fazakle is also in a dilemma.

Say that this is all China's responsibility, and say that Dashun has unreasonably sealed them off. It may cause anti-Shun sentiment in the country.

Then it will trigger a movement against oriental goods and support domestic products.

Say that this is not China's responsibility, but the company's own fault.

Many people in China have been jealous of the East India Company's monopoly on trade, so they must take this opportunity to criticize it. At least they should release the board's management rights and let the government supervise it to avoid making the big mistake of smuggling opium again.

The government's attitude is that it has always wanted to control the East India Company. In fact, as early as thirty years ago, Parliament tried to prevent it from becoming too big in the future.

So a "British East India Trading Company" with a similar name was established, hoping that the two companies would confront each other and break the monopoly of the old East India Company.

But... In Britain, there is nothing that money can't solve. The old East India Company directly paid money to buy stocks, with a total capital of only 2 million pounds and 6 million taels of silver, and easily bought the controlling rights.

So this time, if the company admits that it is its own fault, the group of people in Parliament will definitely seize the opportunity to strengthen their control over the company.

This is not okay, and that is not okay. The situation of the East India Company is very difficult.

When the country's industry is not good, a company that relies on transit trade as the only means of profit will inevitably produce contradictions with domestic industrial and agricultural capital.

Can this contradiction be transformed into close cooperation?

Yes.

The premise is that industrial capacity will improve rapidly, defeating cotton and silk in Bengal, cotton and silk in Jiangsu Province, and porcelain in Jiangxi Province, and then the East India Company will turn from a comprador to a tool for imperialism to expand the world market.

Destroy all the Great Walls with cheap goods.

Become a vassal of industrial capital and a vanguard of expansion.

If this step cannot be achieved, the East India Company will be a comprador that "tries to strangle its own textile industry with oriental cotton."

There is a natural contradiction between compradors and domestic industrial capital.

Britain is not the Netherlands, and it is not a country where financial capital destroys industrial capital itself. On the contrary, Britain's industrial and agricultural output value is quite high.

So high that from the beginning, Liu Yu did not expect Britain to become a comprador, but believed that only the hollow Netherlands had the opportunity to become a comprador.

Fazaklai did not know what else he could do for the company and his shares, so he could only do his best and leave it to fate.

Perhaps, the company should change its thinking, otherwise even if it escapes today, what about the future?

…………

After a long time, Fazaklai came to Macau with deep anxiety.

After finally getting the permission to pay a visit, Liu Yu scolded him.

Fazakley swallowed his anger.

He did not find too many excuses and took the initiative to admit the company's mistakes. But not finding too many excuses does not mean not finding excuses.

The mistake he admitted was that the company did not improve supervision, which led to the flow of opium into China; it was not that the company intended to exchange opium for silver.

Liu Yu did not say anything heart-breaking, but did not care how to divide the responsibility, and just scolded him directly.

However, the scolding was all empty words.

He did not mention canceling the East India Company's right to trade in China.

Not a word.

This kind of empty words made Fazakley even more uneasy and full of imagination.

After all, before the Dashun went to Southeast Asia, it was also smiling with the Netherlands, and even did not cut off the trade with the Netherlands.

The more smiling, the more terrible it is.

Liu Yu looked at Fazakley, who was nervous and uneasy without saying a word, and wanted to laugh in his heart.

He naturally hated the opium trade, but now it seems that there is no big problem.

It is very easy to ban the sales of more than a thousand boxes. The autonomy of customs and the right of fleet cruising are in the hands of Dashun. As long as they are strictly dealt with, the scale will be smaller at most, and there will be no big problems.

Originally, the mentality was relaxed when facing the British. Now that Fazaklai has this attitude of actively admitting his mistakes, Liu Yu is confident in the trap he has set.

The so-called trap is actually part of the established strategy after Dashun.

That is, India's "Shangdang Returns to Zhao" plan.

This plan has three key points.

First, it is to increase the value of North America, so that France has the motivation to invest more resources in North America, so that American Catholicism, Protestantism, English, French, Spanish and even Chinese in the future will become a mess.

This key point was solved through the ginseng trade and the historical factors that Dashun did not ban the Northeast, which led to the basic extinction of local ginseng.

The fact that ginseng is so expensive now is not his credit, but a historical necessity caused by Dashun's PTSD in the late Ming Dynasty. Crazy immigration to the Northeast, with only that little ginseng, how can it be enough to dig? If all the ginseng is dug up, the price of American ginseng will go up.

He just made a small contribution, asking people to write a paper to show that American ginseng is not from the hot land of Nanyang, but from the bitter cold land of Liaodong, so the warm and cool properties are still the same as before, and the effects are the same.

This forced France to choose strategic contraction and give up some strategic directions when it was determined that it could not exert its strength in Asia, the Caribbean, North America and Africa at the same time.

Then, there is the problem of the power comparison between Britain and France in India.

Dupleix is ​​capable.

His native soldier plan is very good, and he has a clear understanding of the reality of the numerous vassal states after the collapse of India's centralized power.

Even the French army in India is really better than the British. Of course, it is limited to land warfare, and the navy is hard to say.

Although France won first and then lost in the early stage because of the control of the sea, it did not have an advantage in India. But on the other hand, Britain really had no ability to attack the city, especially the French fortress that was not by the sea and could not get naval support.

The war in Europe is about to end, so how can we make the French feel that the balance of power between Britain and France in India has changed significantly and it is no longer worth wasting more energy in India?

That requires Britain to strengthen its power in India.

Finally, the problem has been discovered and analyzed, how to solve this problem?

How to make Britain strengthen its power in India?

The answer is to make the British East India Company feel a crisis and force them to consider, assuming that Dashun really cuts off trade in the future, based on the company's current operating conditions and profit direction, how can they ensure that the company will not collapse like the Dutch East India Company?

The collapse of the Dutch East India Company originated from Dashun's voyage to Southeast Asia.

If the trade between the Netherlands and Dashun was simply cut off, the Dutch East India Company would not collapse.

First, the spice trade is the foundation of the Dutch East India Company.

Second... Dashun's merchants, of course, merchants all over the world are like this, profit-seeking.

Although Dashun closed its trade with the Netherlands, the Netherlands still conducted transit trade in Batavia, and people still delivered goods there. Even if Dashun's maritime merchants did not deliver goods secretly, the Portuguese were still very happy - Macau's golden age was back, and they could once again deliver tea and raw silk to Batavia!

But the British East India Company was different.

This was very different from the impression that the East India Company was the vanguard of the British industrial bourgeoisie's external expansion, which was imagined by later generations.

The real East India Company that Liu Yu saw was not expecting to make money from selling British woolen cloth in textiles, but to make a fortune by shipping Indian and Chinese cotton cloth back to Britain.

However, with the Cotton Act of 1700 and the enhanced version of the Cotton Act of 1720, the East India Company's income from Indian trade dropped sharply. The company's large profits came from silk, tea and porcelain in the Chinese trade.

If Dashun now relied on the success of going to Southeast Asia and banned trade with Britain by taking advantage of the opium incident, it can be said that the British East India Company would immediately have economic problems.

The British East India Company was a loser in the competition in Southeast Asia and was driven to India by the Netherlands. Their company did not even have the basic business of spices.

As long as the British East India Company felt that there was a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads that could fall at any time, they would have to step into the trap designed by Liu Yu in advance.