Fang Dongquan was canonized as Marquis of Lu Nan, and received half of Borneo's fiefdom and one-twentieth of the entire Borneo land as private territory. This was just one of the canonizations in the late autumn of the 22nd year of Xuanping.
This time, Li Xuan ennobled more than fifty nobles. Their fiefdoms were all located in various parts of Southeast Asia, and most of them were undeveloped areas.
For example, already developed areas, such as Luzon Island and Banten Island, have not been entrusted to any nobles.
This includes the newly conquered Malacca area!
After the military captured the city of Malacca, Li Xuan, who was in the rear, established the state of Malacca in due course.
It is worth noting that the theoretical jurisdiction of Malacca Road includes the city of Malacca and most of the peninsula. In addition, a large area on the south coast of the Strait of Malacca is also included.
The entire Malacca State, the area under its jurisdiction is basically the area on both sides of the Malacca Strait!
At the same time, the jurisdiction of Malacca State does not belong to Banten Province, but is temporarily directly under the jurisdiction of the cabinet. In addition, in terms of name, it is not called an overseas territory, but is directly included in the local category.
Li Xuan naturally attaches great importance to an important area like Malacca, and he wants to completely localize this place!
And this localization starts from the administrative management model!
In order to reflect the importance of Malacca State, this is the model under the direct jurisdiction of the cabinet.
With the subsequent conquest of various islands in Southeast Asia, the Tang Empire will inevitably accelerate the immigration development and localization process in Southeast Asia. By then, it will become natural to build provincial highway-level units.
It’s just that it’s still a little early, and the number of immigrants in the entire Nanyang region is only a few hundred thousand!
It will take time to completely localize Nanyang, establish administrative agencies at the provincial and highway levels, and govern it as a local.
Li Xuan is not in a hurry about this. Now the Tang Empire has plenty of time to slowly stabilize its rule in the Nanyang region.
What is more important now is the follow-up war in India. With the capture of Malacca, there is no doubt that this city, which was once used by the Portuguese as a bridgehead for Eastern colonization, will also become an important strategic base for the Tang Dynasty's westward expansion into the Indian Ocean.
Therefore, when it comes to the handling of Malacca, in addition to the administrative handling of establishing the state of Malacca, the more important ones are the military and commercial handling.
Militarily, the headquarters of the Indian Ocean Fleet is temporarily established here. At the same time, the military is already planning to renovate the city of Malacca.
This is a bastion after all. Although it is in tatters, the foundation of a bastion is still relatively well preserved. With subsequent repairs, it will become the strongest fortress of the Tang Dynasty in Malacca.
In addition, the navy plans to establish a naval base here to park its huge fleet and set up coal bunkers to add coal and water to steam warships.
Not to mention business, Malacca was originally an important trading city, but now it is occupied by the Tang Dynasty. It will not change its attributes as a trading center. A huge port city will be rebuilt here.
In the future, this place will gradually replace Wandan and even Luzon and become the most important commercial and even military stronghold of the Tang Empire in the Nanyang region.
Unfortunately, after the war between the Tang Dynasty and the Portuguese, almost all trade between the Tang Empire and Europe and even India was interrupted.
Because the main trade objects of the Tang Empire in this direction were the Portuguese, the entire trade model in the past was that Tang merchants transported goods from the country to Malacca, and then in Malacca controlled by the Portuguese, they interacted with Portuguese merchants, Indian merchants, and Ottoman merchants.
, merchants from the Safavid dynasty and various other messy merchants braved the rain.
Of course, in addition to the Portuguese merchants themselves, most of the merchants from the above-mentioned countries also obtained permission from the Portuguese and paid various benefits to the Portuguese, such as paying heavy taxes, so that they could enter and exit the port of Malacca.
However, even though merchants from other countries were involved, most of the goods in the Tang Dynasty were purchased by Portuguese merchants and then transported all the way to Europe after long sea transportation.
In the past few years, Datang has been trying to independently open up European routes, but unfortunately it has never been successful. At most, it has only intervened in the trade of India, West Asia, North Africa and other regions.
At the same time, Datang was also supporting the Spanish global fleet and exporting products to Europe through the Spanish global trade fleet. However, the Spanish global fleet sailed around the world only once a year, sometimes even every two or three years.
It was only once. Although the volume of a single trip was large, the sustainability was not good. Therefore, the Spaniard's European route channels were not very reliable.
Now that a war has broken out between the Portuguese and the Tang Dynasty, trade with the Portuguese people can no longer be expected. This means that most of the European routes have been interrupted. Before the end of the war, the only way for Datang's goods to be imported into Europe is
The Spaniards are here.
In addition, another very important thing is that with the outbreak of war between the Tang Dynasty and the Portuguese in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, it also hindered many merchant ships from other countries, such as the Ottomans, Safavid India, etc., from going to Malacca for trade. Even the Tang Dynasty
The ships of the Western Trading Company were also affected by the large-scale war and suffered a lot of disruptions.
In the past, although the Tang Western Trading Company and the Portuguese competed fiercely, the officials from both sides generally maintained restraint. At most, they pretended to be pirates and carried out attacks.
But now, the Portuguese have directly blocked the routes throughout the Indian Ocean, especially several ports in southern India controlled by the Portuguese. They rely on these port colonies to directly block the routes along the southern coast of India.
This has also led to the fact that Datang's overseas trade has now fallen into a rather embarrassing state: the goods cannot be shipped out!
But even so, it could not dispel the determination of the Tang Dynasty to conquer Nanyang and even India. The war between the Tang Dynasty and the Portuguese people was not an accident, nor was it started on the spur of the moment, but after careful consideration and action.
Completely prepared.
In order to make up for the losses caused by the interruption of overseas trade, the Tang Empire vigorously promoted the development of domestic demand a few years ago.
What has to be said is that today, the local market of the Datang Empire is the largest market in the world. Sufficient population and a good people's livelihood economy have made the local market of the Datang Empire the largest single market in the world.
.
Therefore, although overseas trade losses are not small, a large part of them can be passed on to the domestic market, thereby reducing losses.
Although the reduced losses are still heartbreaking, they can no longer cause too much damage to Datang's domestic economic development. It is precisely because of the huge domestic demand as support that the Datang Empire can brazenly
Wage war.
Now, the war has achieved preliminary results. Malacca has been conquered, and the Portuguese colonies on other islands in Southeast Asia have also been captured. It can be said that the Portuguese have been completely driven out.
This huge Nanyang region has become the back garden of the Tang Empire!
This laid a favorable foundation for the Tang Empire to promote localization policies in this region!
Regarding Nanyang affairs and even Indian Ocean affairs, after Li Xuan set the general direction, he just didn't care much about it. Anyway, this war is not a matter of a while, not even a year or two.
Five years is a normal thing. After all, the scope is too large, and it is very far away from the homeland of both parties. It is unlikely to cause any actual blow to the other party's homeland, and it is unlikely to start a war in the colony.
There is a large-scale strategic decisive battle, because both sides mobilize troops from the mainland and colonies. It often takes a year and a half. The strength is limited, and it is impossible to dispatch tens of thousands of troops at once. These few hundred
A war involving thousands of people will actually have little impact on both sides, and both sides can take a long time.
Therefore, this kind of colonial war usually takes a long time, and Li Xuan also has the patience to wait.
Putting aside the affairs of the Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, Li Xuan also refocused his attention on domestic development.
In the past two years, domestic development, especially the development of industry and commerce, has shown explosive growth.
The biggest driving force is undoubtedly the upgraded and improved high-pressure steam engine. In industry, high-pressure steam engine units can achieve greater power, higher efficiency, and lower coal consumption, which also improves industrial efficiency.
While increasing production capacity, it can also greatly reduce the cost of industrial products.
This can be seen from the fact that in the past two years, the ex-factory price of cotton cloth by domestic textile companies has dropped again and again. In the current trade market in Shanghai, the price of ordinary cloth is already higher than it was in Xuanping 19 years ago.
It has dropped by at least 40%, and the price decline continues.
Don't think that you won't make money if the price drops. At the same time, you have to see that in Shanghai alone, its cloth output increased by more than 300% in the 19th year of Xuanping!
The output is larger, the cost is lower, and the selling price is lower, which means more people can afford it.
In the 19th year of Xuanping, an ordinary working-class family might have to plan carefully to buy a set of clothes for their family within a year. But now, as long as the income level does not change, this time can be shortened to half a year.
about.
The price has become cheaper, people who could not afford it before can now afford clothes, and people who could afford it now can buy more. This has brought about an explosive increase in the sales of cloth in the entire market.