The reason why foreign businessmen think that the Royal Bank is a black-hearted banker, even darker than those Italian bankers, is because the discount on currency exchange is very large.
But Royal Bank also felt that it was quite unfair!
As the largest bank in the Tang Dynasty, Royal Bank was also a leading bank. Its various business models were very mature, and deposits with them still earned interest.
The Royal Bank does not make money from the business of currency exchange. It only costs money to make money. How can it make more money from commercial loans? The currency exchange business is purely to serve domestic businessmen and also to respond to the empire's financial policy.
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What is the policy? The Imperial Finance Department has long required that only Tang Yuan coins, preferably paper money, can be used within the Empire. Precious metal currencies or other paper money minted by other countries are not allowed to be used.
As for privately minting precious metal currency, that is even more of a serious crime!
Since other currencies are not allowed to be used in the empire-controlled areas, corresponding currency exchange services must be provided. You can't expect merchants from Europe to come over for trade with a bunch of boxes of Tang Dynasty banknotes. This kind of thing may be
It may happen in the future, but for now, don’t even think about it.
Businessmen these days, including merchants from the Tang Dynasty, carry a lot of precious metals such as gold and silver with them when they go out for trade. If you take a box of Tang Dynasty banknotes and go overseas to trade with the indigenous people, the indigenous people will
I won’t accept your piece of paper!
Gold and silver, this is hard currency.
Therefore, currency exchange business is very necessary, and Royal Bank, as the only bank currently conducting large-scale business overseas, naturally needs to assume this responsibility.
As for the price of fire, although the purity of the indigenous gold and silver coins is not enough, take the gold florin coin as an example. Although it has a gold content of 75% in name, it can actually meet this standard.
They are all small, most of them are less than 75%, and some low-quality gold florin coins only have a gold content of more than 60%.
Naturally, Royal Bank refuses to exchange according to a fixed ratio, but will exchange at a discount!
In this case, two gold florins may not necessarily be exchanged for one Tang Yuan.
One Tang Yuan, according to the latest currency law of the Tang Empire, is equivalent to 6.2 grams of gold, not equal to one Datang gold coin weighing 6.2 grams.
The currency value of the Tang and Yuan Dynasties is directly calculated based on the gold content, rather than the weight of each gold coin.
In order to protect the value of Tang Yuan banknotes, the empire adopted a policy of directly linking banknotes to gold, and stipulated that anyone could take Tang Yuan banknotes to the Datang Central Bank to exchange them for gold or silver of equivalent value at any time. At the same time, some overseas banks of the Royal Bank
Branches also have the authority and obligation to exchange gold, but in China, gold can only be exchanged at the Central Bank.
The gold-silver ratio is based on the market and is based on the gold-silver ratio announced by the Central Bank. At the same time, the central bank will adjust the gold-silver ratio at any time based on the gold-gold-silver ratio on the market.
However, after more than ten years of promotion, although in the early years many people would exchange banknotes for gold or silver as soon as they got them, now very few people in China will exchange banknotes for gold or silver unless they have special needs.
Gold or silver
Because among the many promotion policies, the most important point is that the Tang Empire stipulates that banknotes are the legal tender of the Tang Dynasty, and no person or institution may reject them, including the tax department.
In other words, banknotes can pay taxes, and this is very important. It depends on the people whether the government recognizes it. Since the government recognizes it, they are naturally too lazy to bother and insist on exchanging the banknotes for gold or silver.
This series of monetary policies naturally extended from China to the South African city of Xiyu.
Because this place is also the territory of the Tang Dynasty, its financial policies cannot be contrary to those of the local area.
But these financial policies of the Tang Dynasty are incomprehensible to many foreign businessmen.
First of all, they just couldn't understand why the Tang Dynasty people had to exchange gold and silver for banknotes, and they only accepted banknotes, not even precious metals.
In fact, it does not mean that the Tang Empire does not use precious metal currency now, it just does not use precious metal currency minted by foreign countries. The gold coins, silver coins and copper coins issued by the empire are still used.
However, most of the foreign merchants did not have Tang Dynasty gold or silver coins in their hands. Only the Portuguese, who had long-term trade ties with the Tang Dynasty, had some. The Spanish had some, but the quantity was not large.
Because the overseas trade model of Datang is basically that Datang exports various high value-added goods. When purchasing, it basically only purchases raw materials. This also resulted in huge trade between Spain and Portugal when trading with Datang.
Deficit.
The Spanish and Portuguese have to mobilize gold and silver from all over the world every year to fill this trade deficit.
When gold and silver from all over the world flowed into the Tang Empire, basically don't expect much gold coins and gold coins from the Tang Dynasty to flow overseas.
Alvin, the pirate leader's trade in the South African port is the most typical example. He also brought a ship full of goods, but his men Bai Er and Luke also wandered around the trading hall for a day.
After asking many people, I found that some of the goods I had on hand were not easy to sell.
For example, for a batch of woolen goods shipped by Alvin, there were no merchants from the Tang Dynasty who even asked about the price. When Baier saw the woolen goods shipped by the Tang Dynasty people, he knew why they were not interested.
Because the quality of their fabrics is better and their output is huge, they are so crazy that they transport the fabrics all the way from Africa back to China for sale.
However, it is not that there are no popular items. For example, a batch of their candies aroused the interest of several Datang merchants, who contacted them to inquire about the price.
The domestic demand for sugar in Datang has always been very huge. Although Datang has begun to plant sugar cane in recent years, it is still unable to meet the huge domestic demand.
And this is not a special case. In fact, Datang is extremely thirsty for almost all agricultural products and industrial raw materials.
Therefore, various agricultural products and raw materials are important acquisition targets for Datang merchants.
In fact, they can't make much money by transporting these products and raw materials back to the country. Strictly speaking, they can't even make back the freight, but they don't care much about it.
Because merchants of the Tang Dynasty are now trading in Africa and Africa, their main profits come from selling domestic goods to foreign merchants.
Purchasing these raw materials and transporting them back to the country is just a matter of course. You can't just run back empty.
The situation Baier is encountering now is that many high-value goods, such as woolen fabrics, cannot be sold at all, while those that are more popular are cheap agricultural products and industrial raw materials.
However, the goods he wanted to buy were all extremely expensive goods!
Baier and the others, like all European merchants, wanted to buy three products of the Tang Dynasty: silk, porcelain, and perfume. In addition, the high-quality plate armor and swords of the Tang Dynasty were also high-quality goods.
However, although the Tang Dynasty people brought a lot of these things, they could not stop the merchants from all over Europe and North Africa rushing to buy them!
The price remains high.
In the end, Baier calculated the funds after selling the goods, plus the cash on hand of the boss Alvin Grant, and estimated that he could only purchase a small amount of Datang goods.
With this amount of cargo, there is no need to use the huge Alvin to load it. It can be loaded on any small boat.
Even for stable navigation, they may have to load some heavy and worthless ballast stuff into the cabin by then!
But this is not the point. The point is that even if you can only buy a small amount of Tang Dynasty goods, you can still earn a large amount of lovely gold coins by shipping them back to Europe. It is conservatively estimated that you can earn tens of thousands of gold florins.
Woolen cloth
The people on the Alvin, pirates and pure merchants, were able to make so much money with just such a small capital. Those sea merchants with strong capital robbed them when their ships were loaded with many goods from the Tang Dynasty.
How much money do you make?
Although Baier is just an accountant under Alvin, he is still a pirate by profession, and his thinking mode is naturally a typical pirate mode.
With hopes for the future, Baier and Luke stayed in the trading area for three full days. After successfully completing the task assigned by Alvin, selling the goods, and then purchasing Datang goods, this
That's when we left the trade zone.
To be honest, after staying in the trade area for three days, he didn't want to leave the trade area.
This place looks like paradise in many ways.
It's just that this paradise is too expensive for ordinary people to live in.
But even so, if there is a chance, he is still willing to come to the trading area again, even if he risks his life to take a bath again.
However, after leaving the port of South Africa this time, I still don’t know when I will be able to come back.
Also, if you want to stay in the trade zone, you probably won’t be able to do it without bringing enough money with you.
However, this made him even more looking forward to the robbery on the way back.
As soon as he left the trade area, he found the boss Alvin, reported the relevant transactions to him, and then brought Alvin a very important piece of information.
That was when Baier was in the trading hall of the trading area, he found a good prey.
How good is it?
The prey was an Italian merchant ship, the Allen, which was not only a slow-moving carat ship, but most importantly, this Italian carat ship did not carry a large number of sailors to sea.
At that time, Baier also heard the captain of the Allen boast that the sails of his merchant ship had been modified, allowing fewer hands to control the sails and saving sailing costs.
In order to save labor costs, the Italian didn't even bring many sailors!
However, such merchant ships are the favorite targets of pirates!
They can easily catch up, launch a gang-hopping battle, and finally capture the merchant ship and plunder all the goods inside!
After hearing Bai Er's report, Alvin realized that this prey was better than the two prey he had found previously, and he immediately decided to kill this Italian merchant ship regardless of anything else!
In order to move smoothly, Alvin immediately sent a large number of manpower to monitor the Allen. As long as it was confirmed that they were sailing back to Europe, their Alvin would immediately leave the port to catch up and leave the South African waters where the Tang Fox patrolled.
Take action now.
As for taking action in South African waters, they are not so bold!