The relationship between the homeland and overseas territories will inevitably form a primary and secondary relationship.
And everyone has selfish motives. When the industry in the Americas develops to a certain extent, the conflicts between local business owners and dignitaries and the local business community will become almost irreconcilable. By then, independence or simply a larger-scale war will be possible.
of.
The American Revolutionary War and the Civil War in history were all due to similar reasons.
Of course, overseas territories, especially places like the Americas, are certain to develop in the future, and they cannot be suppressed even if they want to.
But Lin Xuan can slow down this progress, and they cannot be allowed to have a systematic industry in the next twenty or thirty years.
If the local area is given decades to accumulate, even if the Americas begin to develop industry and have a complete industrial system, it will not pose much of a challenge to the local area.
When industry develops to a certain level, especially after entering the electrification era, various technical gaps and barriers will become larger and larger, and it will be difficult for latecomers to catch up.
As for what will happen decades or even hundreds of years from now, Li Xuan is too lazy to worry about it.
He just needs to ensure that the Americas and other overseas territories do not change too much while he is alive, and let future generations worry about the future.
Anyway, it’s still the same sentence. After he finishes the global localization, regardless of whether it is the independence of America or simply a war with the mainland, it will be the Tang Dynasty fighting the Tang Dynasty. No matter how hard they fight, the meat will rot in the pot, and future generations will
Let them do whatever they want.
Now Li Xuan doesn't want to worry about future generations.
Today's localization policy implemented by Li Xuan can, on the one hand, accelerate the process of global localization, but on the other hand, it can also be used to restrict the industrial development of overseas territories.
Because there are actually very few overseas territories that can truly achieve localization, and it is very difficult.
North America, with such favorable conditions, seems to be developing well now, but in fact it is still struggling with localization. Such indigenous people are not so easy to deal with.
As long as there are still indigenous people in the local area, this localization will not be completed. Without localization, industry will not be able to develop.
Therefore, the localization policy of the Tang Empire cannot be simply understood as a simple policy of emigrating overseas and bringing overseas areas into the domestic scope. It also had more functions.
Especially when combined with the import and export restrictions of the Import and Export Committee, it has become very important.
After Li Xuan approved the partial localization of Ceylon Island, the happiest person was not the Indian Affairs Office, but the Navy.
Because Ceylon Island is now, strictly speaking, a super large military base. Although there are many immigrants, most of these immigrants still serve the military.
After partial localization, a large-scale naval ship repair yard and a small-scale shipyard can be established on the island of Ceylon.
The Import and Export Committee has issued a special approval for the partial localization of Ceylon Island, allowing the Island of Ceylon to develop limited shipbuilding and ship repair industries, and at the same time allowing the effective development of local industrial product processing industry.
These three industries are actually aimed at the needs of the military.
The military, especially the navy, urgently needs to build a larger ship repair shop with high technical capabilities on the Island of Ceylon to provide repair and maintenance services for the navy's numerous ships in the Indian Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and other waters.
At the same time, it is also to provide maintenance and repair services to the private ships of the empire traveling between these two sea areas.
Although the Navy previously had a ship repair shop on the island of Ceylon, the scale could only be said to be of medium scale, and it could only perform routine maintenance, and even lacked repair capabilities.
As for civilian ships, today's civilian ships are basically not repaired and maintained overseas. In many cases, they can only perform the simplest maintenance in very primitive shipyards.
In order to solve the maintenance problem of a large number of overseas ships, the imperial high-level officials also intended to build Ceylon Island as the Tang Empire's shipyard in the Indian Ocean to provide repair and maintenance services for the imperial ships, whether they were warships or civilian ships.
In addition, we are also planning to set up a small shipyard on the island of Ceylon!
It is worth noting that this shipyard is very different from the shipyards established in other overseas territories of the Tang Empire.
In fact, the Tang Empire had shipyards in many overseas territories, such as the most famous South African shipyard. This shipyard already has the ability to build thousand-ton sailing wooden warships. The British, Spanish and Ottomans all
We can order warships from this shipyard, but there are many ordinary merchant ships.
However, this South African shipyard, like other overseas territory shipyards, is just a traditional shipyard. It can only build sailing wooden ships, and even shipbuilding can only use traditional methods and cannot use various mechanical equipment.
In terms of technical capabilities, South African shipyards are not much better than Spanish shipyards.
However, the Ceylon Island Shipyard is different. Although this shipyard is restricted, it can still build small-scale ships of less than 1,000 tons, especially warships.
Because the Tang Dynasty military had a huge demand for small-tonnage offshore and inland river ships in India, West Asia, Africa and even the Americas.
But before that, because steam ships were also import and export restricted equipment, only the empire could produce and build these steam ships, and even their use could only be done locally.
For a long time, in fact, in overseas territories, apart from the large ocean-going ships of ocean-going trading companies and shipping companies, only the military owned offshore and inland river ships with steam engines.
Many years ago, in order to solve the problem of offshore and inland river transportation in overseas territories, the Import and Export Commission made a small opening, which was to allow some shipping companies and overseas territory officials to use offshore and inland river steam vessels in overseas territories.
But if they want to use it, they can only order it locally.
Therefore, they all ordered offshore and inland river steam ships from the mainland. After the small-tonnage ships were built, they were directly transported to overseas territories via large freighters. As for the larger-tonnage ships, such as those hundreds of tons, they slowly moved along the coastline.
Sailed on.
If Ceylon can build a small shipyard this time and can produce steam and steel ships of less than 1,000 tons nearby, then many small ships can be built directly locally, which will save a lot of trouble.
However, in order to control the leakage of technology, this shipyard is strictly restricted and can only be an assembly plant. The main components, especially the core components such as steam engines, can only be purchased locally.
At the same time, this shipyard is directly affiliated with the Navy. It is mainly used to build offshore and inland river vessels for the Navy to be used in India, Africa and other places. The orders for private ships are just incidental.
But even so, it can be considered an opening.
In any case, Ceylon has its own shipbuilding industry, even if it is just an assembly shipyard.
In comparison, other places are much worse. For example, South Africa has developed the shipbuilding industry for many years. Although their South African shipyards seem to be large in scale, they can only build wooden sailing ships.
There is almost no market for this kind of ships in the Tang Dynasty, because the ships of the Tang Dynasty, let alone sea-going ships, even offshore and inland river ships, are all steam and steel ships.
The only purpose of these sailing wooden ships is for export.
The English, Spanish and Ottomans were the most important customers of South African shipyards.
As for the Tang Dynasty itself, it rarely purchased these wooden ships.
It’s not that wooden boats are hard to use or anything, but wooden hulls are now more expensive than steel hulls!
As the steel industry of the Tang Empire showed explosive growth, fierce competition broke out among several major domestic steel companies in order to compete for the market. The price war continued, which has caused the value of steel to fall to a point that the European natives
Almost unimaginably cheap price!
Low steel prices have also significantly reduced the prices of various steel products.
The biggest expense of the hull is either wood or steel. When the price of steel is much lower than that of wood, it means that steel ships are cheaper than wooden ships.
Businessmen are also normal people, so they naturally choose whatever is cheap.
Under this situation, the Tang Dynasty had no market for large purely wooden ships in China. The wood required to build large ocean-going ships was too demanding and the price was too high, which was far less cost-effective than steel.
Of course, in offshore, inland rivers, especially small-tonnage ships, because the requirements for wood are not high and the corresponding prices are cheaper, there is still some market for wooden ships.
However, on ocean-going ships, new wooden ships are basically no longer visible.
South African shipyards, on the other hand, can only build wooden ships, which limits their customer base and also makes the cost much higher.
If steel can be used to build ships, their costs can be reduced by at least ten percent even if the cost of transporting steel from the mainland is included.
Unfortunately, the Import and Export Committee's restrictions are too strict!
In fact, the same situation as the South African shipyard is the New South Shipyard in the Americas.
As Datang's first and one of only three shipyards on the east coast of America, Xinnan Shipyard, like all the shipyards in Datang's overseas territories, are all state-owned enterprises invested by local finance.
Enterprises affiliated to the Ministry.
In order to prevent enterprises in overseas territories from being uncontrolled, although the Tang government would allow the development of overseas territories in some key traditional handicraft industries, they generally only allowed the development of enterprises affiliated to the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises and did not allow private capital to enter.
After all, the companies of the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises are originally extensions of the government, and they consider political issues more than profit issues when doing things.
But private capital enterprises only have money in their eyes!
For money they can disregard the laws of the empire.