Chapter 1704: Fight a battle before doing business
Zuo Chengsheng was completely confused about what was happening in front of him.
They are here to do business. How can they do business when there is a war?
The navy has shelled the port. Will the Ottomans still do business with them?
If no one accepts your goods, wouldn’t it be a huge loss?
An old businessman next to him saw Zuo Chengsheng's appearance and kindly explained to him: "This is my first time doing business with the indigenous people, Zuo. Don't worry, it's okay!"
"I've seen this kind of thing a lot. I remember when I went to Southeast Asia, I didn't go out to sea to bombard the ports of the natives. Most of the natives were stupid. If I didn't bombard their ports in advance, they didn't know what business was!"
A middle-aged man beside him interjected: "Mr. Chen, you have traveled to Nanyang before. I have also traveled to Nanyang before. Brother, you are right. The natives of Nanyang are shameless. I will buy them in a while."
The spices are just half a shipload of spices, and those natives still want money. What a joke, when did I, Hu Laoliu, travel to Southeast Asia to purchase goods from the natives and pay for them!"
"In the end, it took a lot of shells to teach them the rules!"
After saying that, he suddenly sighed and said: "What a pity, not many natives in Nanyang are doing business anymore!"
Zuo Chengsheng was speechless after hearing this. According to the way you do business, I'm afraid all the natives will die, and you are still doing a crappy business.
Moreover, the empire has been developing in Southeast Asia for many years. Most of the important islands, such as Luzon, Mindao, East Tan, West Tan and the Malacca Peninsula, have basically been localized, even if they have not been completely completed.
You are so stupid, how can the natives do business with you?
Mr. Chen was also interested in chatting at this time, so he turned around and asked: "I didn't expect that Boss Xu, you used to do Nanyang business!"
Boss Xu sighed: "That was all in the past. Later, when I was traveling to India, I encountered a storm and the ship sank. I finally swam to the shore and was rescued by a passing ship. It was just money.
I’ve lost all my money, and I haven’t recovered from my pride for several years. Now I can only go to the library to see if I can make a comeback!”
When Zuo Chengsheng heard this, he couldn't help but sigh that Shang Hai was ruthless!
The Zuo family used to be quite prosperous. They were also considered old-fashioned gentry in Chang'an. When the new dynasty was established, one of his cousins also joined the officialdom. Although he did not reach a high position, he retired.
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Later, the dynasty carried out land reform, unified agricultural taxes, rent-to-purchase orders and farmland orders, which directly led to a significant decline in land income, and then the stepped agricultural tax rate hit the big landlord class hard.
In the past, landowners who could live comfortably with hundreds or thousands of acres of land were gradually changing their investments. They raised funds to enter industry and commerce through selling land or other methods.
The Zuo family also sold a large amount of land during this wave, and then entered industry and commerce. It reached its peak a few years ago, owning a textile factory and other industries.
Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. Poor management of the factory directly led to the ruin of the family.
Their Zuo family is like this, and the middle-aged man in front of me is probably the same.
And a few years ago, this middle-aged man, Boss Xu, was probably a wealthy businessman.
Those who were able to go to Nanyang to do business in the early years were not simple characters, because in the early years when the empire was just established, the naval strength was average, there were many pirates in the Nanyang waters, and the Portuguese were still in Nanyang at that time.
Nowadays, all the ships sailing in Nanyang are armed merchant ships. Moreover, at that time, the risks were high and the profits were high. Of course, it also required a lot of capital.
Unlike now, the whole of Nanyang has become the back garden of the Tang Dynasty. Although there are still many indigenous people in the area, it doesn't matter. Now when doing trade in Nanyang, as long as you don't foolishly go to the islands controlled by the indigenous people, and land in deep
In the mainland, there is basically no need for armed merchant ships.
Moreover, with the development of ship technology, the risks of navigation have been rapidly reduced. Therefore, the ships running the Southeast Asia route today are actually not many armed merchant ships of overseas trading companies in the traditional sense. They have all become ships of shipping companies.
Those who were able to trade in Southeast Asia in those days were not simple characters!
Unfortunately, Boss Xu didn't seem to be very lucky. The ship encountered a storm while traveling to India. Once the ship sank, everything ended.
Now, he has gone to the West China Sea to try to make a comeback, but he doesn't know whether he will succeed.
His situation is very similar to mine.
But, can they succeed in the West China Sea trade?
Zuo Chengsheng doesn’t know yet.
But the two businessmen, Boss Xu and Mr. Chen, were extremely confident. They said that these natives were cheap, and they wanted to let the navy bombard them for a while, so that they could do business honestly.
Businessmen like them naturally don't know the official plan.
The officials don't care about a little trade at all. They care more about directly controlling this important city on the coast of the West Sea, and then controlling the oil resources here.
As for Datang Petroleum Company, which is behind all this, there are naturally people present on occasions like today. Of course, it is impossible for them to appear openly and openly in the official team.
There is only a small team of seven or eight people from Datang Petroleum Company here, and their main task is not to interfere in official affairs, but to prepare for a more detailed subsequent survey of the area and make plans for the company's subsequent oil exploration here.
Zhu Tongen, who leads this small team, is a strong man in his thirties and is the captain of one of the many petroleum survey teams under Datang Petroleum Company.
In fact, this is not the first time he has come to Baku. Not long after Datang captured Kuri six months ago, he came to Baku by ship and conducted a simple survey of the local oil resources.
They discovered oil resources that were easy to exploit and had abundant reserves locally, and finally reported them to the head office.
Later, Datang Petroleum Company promoted the pursuit of occupying Baku through its connections with upper-level officials.
But even Zhu Tongen didn't know that the matter was actually reported to the Holy Emperor's desk along the way. After all, after the combination of oil and the Ottomans, the people below did not dare to make decisions on their own.
The importance of oil has been affirmed many times by Shengtianzi. Even if the kerosene produced by Datang Petroleum Company can only be used as a raw material for lighting, even if Datang Petroleum is still losing money.
Oil is not yet a highly profitable commodity!
However, many high-level people have already received some gossip. The Royal Institute of Technology has refined many products from petroleum, and kerosene is just one of them.
And many of them have very magical properties, and many professors from the Royal Institute of Technology have already joined in the research on petroleum.
Of course, these laboratory findings can only tell people that many petroleum products have great utilization value, but how to use them, especially how to carry out large-scale refining and production and apply them to industry, is still unclear.
breakthrough.
The officials' attention is actually not because of the great role of oil, but purely because of the attention of the Holy Emperor.
What is good above is what is good for the people below. Since the Holy Emperor attaches so much importance to oil, officials like them naturally need to follow the pace of the Holy Emperor and pay attention to oil.
Although most officials who attach great importance to oil do not even know what oil looks like or what its uses are.
Emperor Sheng takes it seriously, and the Royal Institute of Technology has published many professional papers proving that oil has great industrial value, so even if they don't know what it is used for.
But officials also take oil very seriously.
And more importantly, after many years of surveys by Datang Petroleum Company, it was sadly discovered that not many oil resources were found in the mainland provinces of the empire. At most, there were only a few small oil fields, even in Suzhou.
The size of the oil field is actually not that big.
When Datang Petroleum Company developed the Suzhou Oilfield many years ago, it was optimistic that as long as it continued to drill oil wells, there would be more and more oil. However, it turned out that the Suzhou Oilfield was only so large and its output was very limited.
Until now, the second phase of the refinery plan in Suzhou has been slowed down.
Since no oil fields have been found in the local provinces, Datang Petroleum Company has naturally set its sights overseas. Exploring and extracting oil overseas is actually very troublesome for Datang today.
Not to mention the trouble of surveying, finding oil is not that simple. Nowadays, when Datang Oil searches for oil, it often finds oil springs based on existing clues.
Then drilling surveys will be carried out and oil reserves estimated.
But there is no way to estimate it by relying on a large amount of scientific data like later generations.
Finding oil in unfamiliar places overseas is troublesome, and transporting oil is also troublesome.
Transportation requires costs, especially oil. This is a bulk consumable. The quantity is not just a few hundred or a few thousand tons, but tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of tons.
This will cause expensive transportation costs, and the expensive transportation costs will raise the price of oil, eventually making it unaffordable for ordinary people.
And goods that cannot be used have no value!
In addition, there is another more important point, which is the mining issue.
Compared with mining, surveying and transportation are minor problems.
Because extracting oil requires a lot of machinery and equipment, if oil is discovered in a local province like Beihai Province, it is naturally very simple. Just transport the equipment there and extract it.
But if oil is discovered in provinces like Luzon and Banten that have not yet completed localization, then it will not even be able to be exploited!
Because the Import and Export Committee prohibits the export of any machinery and equipment to these overseas territories that have not completed localization.