Chapter 1421 The Datang Plate Armor that sells all over the world
In recent years, the Portuguese have also begun to gradually imitate many things from the Tang Empire. Many industrial products that require mechanical equipment cannot be imitated, but some things that are purely conceptual changes were quickly learned by the Portuguese!
Only in this way can we see in Malacca that both the Portuguese and Tang navies used a large number of new Tang ships!
However, the Portuguese's imitation was limited to those things that did not require much manufacturing technology, such as steam engines. The Portuguese had long known that the Tang Empire had such a thing as steam engines. After all, the Tang Empire used steam engines on a large scale.
It has been many years. Although the previous ones were low-pressure industrial steam engines, they were still steam engines.
They even obtained several low-pressure steam engines produced by the Tang Empire through secret channels, and tried to imitate them, but they didn't even understand the theory. At most, they just let the craftsmen compete one by one.
Various parts are made by hand and then assembled.
The result is that they are eggs!
They put these hand-made parts together, and when they started running, they fell apart with a bang, and they still couldn't figure out why.
Without a matching scientific theoretical basis, strong precision processing, and the production capacity of special materials, there is no hope of being able to imitate the steam engines of the Tang Empire.
There are many special parts that cannot be used by craftsmen just by knocking on a piece of iron and imitating the molding!
For high-precision industrial products such as steam engines, the Portuguese can only look at them, but they are unable to imitate them. Even for some other industrial products, although the Portuguese know about them, they basically cannot produce them, or they are unable to produce them.
They reluctantly used primitive manual methods to produce, but in the end, both output and cost were far inferior to those of the Tang Empire.
Even more often, the cost of their manual imitation is much higher than the cost of production in the Tang Empire.
For example, steel, the steel companies in the Tang Empire used a lot of machinery and equipment for large-scale production, while other countries, regardless of whether they were indigenous tribes or other countries, such as the Portuguese, were still stuck in the very
Original handmade steel on this level.
This led to the fact that the price of steel produced by the Tang Empire was far cheaper than that produced by hand. Take the typical steel products exported by the Tang Dynasty, that is, various cold weapons and plate armor as examples.
Even if shipping costs and high profits are included, its selling price is lower than their hand-made cost.
For example, the price of the flagship product of export-oriented plate armor, 'Full Body Plate Armor', is generally upwards of 100 yuan FOB. Even after shipping to Malacca, it is still cheaper than handmade by Portuguese craftsmen.
Full body steel plate armor is cheaper.
Moreover, this kind of plate armor is made of all steel. The thickest part, which is the chest part, is only about three millimeters, and the thickness of most parts is only about two millimeters.
However, due to the excellent quality of the steel, the defensive capabilities of these three millimeters of steel are comparable to the four or even five millimeters thick plate armor hand-produced by Europeans at the same time.
Because the thickness is relatively thin, the export plate armor produced by Datang is much lighter.
Its light weight and excellent defensive capabilities, even if it is expensive, make the plate armor produced by Datang popular all over the world. Even the Portuguese and Spanish purchased and equipped it on a large scale.
The plate armor produced by Datang has always been popular with the indigenous people in Fuso, Southeast Asia, and even India, West Asia and other regions. Even if they cannot afford full-length plate armor, they will still buy half-length armor or breastplate.
Today's plate armor industry in the Tang Empire has developed quite maturely. There are more than ten types of export-oriented plate armor, and all of them can even be customized. Of course, this kind of customization will not increase the number of plates.
The defensive ability of the armor is just a change in style, because the Tang Dynasty military needed to ensure that its weapons could penetrate these plate armors that were exported in large quantities.
And this breakdown standard is whether the 14mm flintlock guns batch-equipped by the Tang Dynasty Army can penetrate at fifty meters!
If it can be broken down, then it will be exported; if it cannot be broken down, it will not be exported.
After all, the Tang Dynasty military was also afraid of fighting a certain aboriginal in the future. As a result, a group of aboriginal troops wearing steel cans ran out from the opposite side, but their main rifles were unable to penetrate them at medium distances.
Of course, even if it is encountered, there is actually no big problem. If you want to be able to block the 14mm flintlock gun of the Datang Army within fifty meters, even if you use high-quality steel produced by Datang, you have to do it.
To more than six millimeters!
This kind of six-millimeter-thick plate armor is too heavy. Even the Datang Army rarely equips it. Even if it does, it is equipped in the form of heavy breastplates. Generally speaking, the Datang Army's
The thickness of heavy plate armor is generally four millimeters, and there are a large number of light plate armor of two millimeters.
Why not equip thicker plate armor?
Because even if it is six to seven millimeters thick, it is useless in the age of guns.
Don't underestimate the muskets of today. Although the accuracy is not very good and sometimes misfires, the power is actually not small.
What's more, whether it's the Tang Army, Spain, Portugal or even the Ottomans, they are all equipped with heavy muskets!
In order to fight against plate armor, heavy muskets have become popular in Western countries. What are heavy muskets? Generally speaking, muskets with a caliber of about 20 mm.
The Datang Army also successively developed and tested heavy muskets of various calibers such as 17mm, 18mm, 19mm, 20mm, and 22mm. Finally, after making trade-offs in weight and power, it finally
The decision to equip large-scale batches was the 18mm heavy flintlock gun.
This 18mm flintlock gun, known as the 15-year-old rifle, uses the latest black propellant with the most scientific proportions. In addition, the barrel is longer, so it is powerful enough to shoot at 100 meters.
It can penetrate eight millimeter-thick plate armor, and the plate armor in question is made of high-quality steel produced by Datang itself.
In other words, in the contemporary environment, no plate armor can stop a 15-year-old rifle, not even the plate armor equipped by the Tang Army itself, not even a hundred meters away.
The development of plate armor has come to an end, which is why even though almost the entire army of the Tang Dynasty has adopted plate armor, the most commonly used armor is light breastplate.
Even so, many military generals have already made calls to cancel the breastplates of ordinary infantry. If it has little practical value for protection for this point, it is better to reduce the combat load of soldiers to strengthen their strength.
What about battlefield mobility?
Many military generals now believe that running fast is worse than wearing thick clothes!
Therefore, in fact, the plate armor in the Tang Dynasty military is already in a very embarrassing situation. You can say that it is useless, but its role in resisting cold weapons such as bows and arrows is still huge.
But you have to say that it is useful. When it comes to enemies that use guns, especially Portugal, Spain, and Ottomans who use heavy muskets on a large scale, it actually doesn't have much strategic value.
However, this is only the Tang Army's internal view of plate armor, and does not represent the views of armies around the world on plate armor. Today, plate armor is still a weapon of strategic value around the world.
What must be mentioned is that when the Tang Empire began to market their export-type plate armor to the world, it also stimulated the promotion and application of plate armor on a global scale to a certain extent.
Maybe in the original time and space, plate armor was easier to see on Western battlefields, but now, you can see Tang plate armor in the battles between the daimyo in Fuso, and also in various parts of Southeast Asia, such as the battlefields of Annan.
You can see them on the Internet, and you can also see the Tang plate armor in India and even in West Asia and North Africa.
Even in Europe, Datang plate armor has appeared, and there are quite a lot of it, because both the Portuguese and the Spanish have purchased Datang plate armor on a large scale many times and shipped it back to Europe to equip their local troops.
Sold to many other European countries.
To put it bluntly, Datang plate armor was one of the best-selling among the many industrial products of the Tang Dynasty, and it had no geographical limitations. Regardless of whether it was a barbaric indigenous tribe, the Portuguese, or some slightly civilized countries such as Spain,
Or the Safi Dynasty or even the Tatars, all expressed a great desire for Tang Dynasty plate armor!
The biggest reason why Datang plate armor is so popular all over the world is that it is of high quality and low price, and it is of high quality and low price that cannot be imitated by others.
The Portuguese can produce plate armor on their own, but the price of the plate armor they produce is higher, and for the same weight of plate armor, the plate armor they produce by hand has lower protection.
The same thing happens with cotton!
The textile industry is currently the leading industry in the light industry of the Tang Empire. A large amount of cotton cloth is not only popular domestically, but also exported in large quantities!
Cotton cloth is a basic living material, and many places have the ability to produce it themselves. But why can the cotton cloth of the Tang Dynasty appear in various places in East Asia, in the Western Region, Central Asia, and in China along with merchant ships one after another?
India appears in West Asia, Africa and even Europe.
Relying on low price dumping
How did Datang Western Trading Company open up the cotton market in India and make India the largest export market for imperial cotton today? It was very simple, at a price that was so low that the locals could not refuse it!
They conduct large amounts of low-price dumping at prices that are half or even cheaper than local cloth prices, engaging in completely unreasonable and malicious competition.
Faced with this low-price dumping strategy, the local cloth industry was simply unable to resist, and in the end most of them relied on political intervention.
But what type of company is Datang Western Trading Company? Do you think that it is a well-behaved trading company that only does business, and if you are bullied outside, you can only go home crying, or at most you will find the father of Datang Military?
Take it out!
joke!
They are a colonial company with armed forces!
If the local indigenous princes dare to use political means to obstruct normal trade, the Datang Western Trading Company will not hesitate to send troops to attack, and many times, the Datang Western Trading Company is happy to do this, because attacking these indigenous princes will lead to war.
Wealth can be equated.
After all, fighting for money is much faster and more enjoyable than making money in business!