At the end of July, the newly formed Rio Grande do Sul Ocean Shipping Company fleet arrived in Southeast Asia, with its first stop at the Natuna Islands.
The shipping company has more than 150 ocean-going ships with a displacement of more than 500 tons. Since the voyage only needs to carry more than 10,000 Southeast Asian Chinese, one-third of the ships, about 50 ships, came for this voyage.
With the establishment of an ocean shipping company, the task of the fleet is not only to transport immigrants, but also to carry goods for sale on the route between South America and Asia.
South America is rich in animal and plant resources. High-yield crops such as corn, soybeans, sweet potatoes, and potatoes were spread by European colonists to Asia and other places, increasing local food production and feeding more people.
However, plants with medicinal value such as cocoa, rosewood, sandalwood, mahogany, balmwood, mulberry, cinnamon, and cinchona trees have not spread as widely as sweet potatoes and potatoes due to their picky living environment, and their origins are limited to the Americas.
On the mainland, the output is limited, the price has been high, and there is a large profit margin. Therefore, in addition to the storage of daily necessities and weapons and equipment, the remaining space in the fleet is filled with preliminarily processed botanical medicinal materials, cocoa, and some selected
Cinchona tree seeds.
After the fleet arrived in Southeast Asia, cocoa and plant medicines were quickly sold in batches at high prices to local kings and merchants in the Malay Peninsula, Thailand, Annan and other places, while cinchona tree seeds were specially sourced from more than a dozen South American states.
The Indians chose suitable sites for planting in the Natuna Islands.
Cinchona trees are suitable for living in humid and rainy areas. Later, southern Yunnan Province, Taiwan Island, Indonesia, and Malaya were the main producing areas of cinchona trees except South America.
Southeast Asia has a tropical rainforest climate, and the natural environment is similar to that of most parts of South America. The fleet planted cinchona trees in the Natuna Islands on the one hand to consider the influence of natural factors, and on the other hand to obtain greater profits.
In 185o, the British extracted the anti-dysentery drug quinine from the cinchona tree, which solved the biggest life threat to colonization in the tropics.
After the invention of Quinine, European colonists began to gradually expand their sphere of influence in Southeast Asia and Africa. Annan, Burma, Malaya, and the East Indies gradually fell, and European colonists became more and more powerful in controlling Southeast Asia.
The invention of quinine was of great significance to European colonists. However, in 1869, about 19 years after the invention of quinine, due to the limited source of cinchona trees, the manufacturing cost of quinine had not been effectively reduced, which limited the use of quinine.
Used on a large scale.
The second half of the 19th century was a historical stage of rapid changes in science and technology. In the following decades, with the improvement of science and technology, the output of raw materials for rubber, cinchona and other industries and pharmaceutical industries increased rapidly in South America. Only in
In the past ten years or so, rubber and cinchona trees had the opportunity to maintain high prices and earn huge profits by relying on their monopoly position in South America.
The Europeans have mastered the production process of quinine medicine. The reason why they have not introduced cinchona trees on a large scale to other areas is mainly because they have not chosen a suitable location to plant transplanted seedlings. This limitation has gradually increased as they gradually explore and experiment.
It can be solved within a few years. Therefore, Li Mingyuan relied on the knowledge of later generations to transplant cinchona trees in the Natuna Islands first. He could gain an advantage and use the raw material producing areas nearby to gain profits in Asia, a region with a broad market.
Selling South American local products at high prices made a lot of profits. After discussion with Sun Bin and others, the fleet leader kept most of the sales profits as immigration costs, and the remaining part was used to purchase and recruit Chinese craftsmen living in various parts of Southeast Asia.
.
Every time there is war, people in the Central Plains will move collectively. For example, when Henan encounters a famine, local people habitually flee to Gansu and Shaanxi. Shandong residents flock to the northeast, and refugees in Hebei and Shanxi flee to live with nomadic people.
Hetao Plain and Mongolian steppe.
The northern Han people migrated north to the grasslands to escape, bringing much-needed technical talents to the nomads. Then the nomads relied on the fleeing Han craftsmen to develop their military manufacturing system, which strengthened their own strength and invaded the Central Plains. In troubled times, internal troubles led to foreign invasions. In the last years of the dynasty,
, many foreign invasions come from this.
Compared with the north, miasma is rampant in the south. Due to the favorable natural environment, the indigenous people in Southeast Asia are not as aggressive as the nomads in the north. The Han people who fled to Southeast Asia quickly integrated into the local area and had less impact on the Central Plains.
Rio Grande do Sul is far away from Asia. The Chinese who went to South America voluntarily or involuntarily were at the bottom of society. Except for a few anti-Qing rebels among them, there were very few traditional craftsmen among ordinary people.
The National Exhibition of Rio Grande do Sul has entered the formal stage. In terms of industry, since the industry was just in the early stages of rapid development in the second half of the twentieth century, under the guidance of Prussian skilled workers, Chinese apprentices could learn from scratch. In traditional Chinese industries, such as tea making,
, refining porcelain, building Chinese-style wooden buildings, etc. require skilled craftsmen with more than three or four years of experience. Without the guidance of a master, it is difficult for ordinary people to master relevant skills in a short period of time.
Industrial exhibitions eliminated most of the technology companies in the feudal period. When Li Mingyuan was helping Prussian experts and technicians build factory facilities in Rio Grande do Sul, he did not pay much attention to the lack of talents in traditional Chinese industries, because in the era of industrialization in later generations, Li Mingyuan was accustomed to accepting industry
Products are almost inaccessible to traditional industries in daily life.
At this time, except for the clothes and clothing that were forcibly changed under the rule of the Qing Dynasty, the Han people maintained their traditional habits in daily life.
When Li Mingyuan inspected construction in various places in Rio Grande do Sul, he often found that many Chinese families who had just started their families moved out of the temporary collective wooden houses. Five or six familiar Chinese retired soldiers formed a construction team to help each other on the land that belonged to them.
Transport wood and build a simple Chinese-style wooden house.
In Rio Grande do Sul, local Brazilians left behind brick kilns and Western-style houses built with bricks and gravel. Li Mingyuan was a little surprised why they didn't live in the houses assigned to them. After asking him about it, he realized that most Chinese people have a negative attitude toward Brazilians.
The remaining Western-style brick and tile houses were very dissatisfied. They thought that Western-style houses were not only uncomfortable to live in but also ugly, and not as ventilated and beautiful as Chinese wooden houses. So even if they were assigned a Western-style brick house, they still wanted to build a Chinese-style wooden house that was suitable for living.
The inertia of traditional culture has a great influence on the Chinese. There are many things like building Chinese-style wooden houses in Rio Grande do Sul. Wang Pu and the officials in charge of government affairs in Rio Grande do Sul have made similar suggestions to Li Mingyuan many times, hoping to start from the continent.
The region relocated more Chinese craftsmen to solve the problem of inconvenient living for the Chinese in Rio Grande do Sul. Therefore, in addition to completing the established immigration mission, the ocean-going fleet added a new mission.
Annan is a place where many Nanyang Chinese live. There are many craftsmen of all kinds among the more than 300,000 Chinese. Sun Bin accepted the task of selecting some Chinese craftsmen from Annan as a batch of Nanyang immigrants. At the same time, he sent his subordinates to Hong Kong as Annan Chinese merchants.
Macau, Shanghai and other concession areas of European powers recruited craftsmen...
The fleet stayed in Nanyang for half a month, and after receiving 11,000 ordinary immigrants and 1,000 craftsmen, the fleet returned to South America in mid-August, and Sun Bin continued to be responsible for the subsequent task of recruiting Chinese craftsmen.
