When Earl Carlton and the others rested for a few days in the Port of Banjul, they then continued deep into the interior along the Gambia River and built the first building about fifty kilometers away from the Port of Banjul, on the new territory allocated to them by the Tang Dynasty.
When I immigrated to a village.
Time has also entered the thirty-eighth year of Xuanping.
Although another new year has arrived, it is still extremely peaceful for the Tang Empire.
The only thing worth mentioning is that from last winter to the present spring, there has been a severe drought in some parts of the north. The Ministry of Agriculture has made relatively pessimistic estimates for the grain output of several northern provinces.
If the drought is allowed to continue, it will lead to widespread harvest failure, which will affect the lives of at least about 10 million people.
A drought of this scale would be a big problem in a traditional feudal dynasty, and people would surely die from starvation.
But for the Tang Empire, although this matter was serious, it was not that serious.
The drought warning here has just been issued. Jinling has ordered all local governments affected by the drought to do relevant work, dig wells, and guide the people to plant crops that are not so sensitive to rainfall and are drought-tolerant, such as
Talk about corn, sweet potatoes, peanuts, etc.
On the other hand, even if it is only the beginning of the year, the expected grain harvest is not expected to occur until the second half of the year, but Emperor Sheng has personally sent an order to Datang Grain Corporation to prepare grain reserves in advance and cooperate with the government in disaster relief.
After receiving the order, Datang Grain Corporation began to search for and reserve grain across the country and even the world, and even transported it to several affected provinces in the north in advance.
At the same time, there are also a large number of ships heading to the Tang Dynasty's overseas grain-producing areas such as Southeast Asia, India, South Africa, and the Americas, preparing to transport large amounts of local grain back to the mainland.
Despite this, high shipping costs will result in very high food costs.
However, this kind of thing cannot be calculated in terms of money. Even if it is calculated in terms of money, there is no big problem.
It's just a cost increase of several million Tang Yuan. It doesn't even need the Emperor Sheng to come forward. The cabinet will solve it by itself. There is no need to do anything, just refund the tax to the Grain Corporation.
In other words, even if the grain harvest caused by drought has not yet occurred, the Tang Empire has already made preparations.
The Grain Corporation even made bold statements!
Even without affecting the food supply in other areas, the food reserves prepared by their company for the disaster-stricken areas are enough to feed tens of millions of people in the disaster-stricken areas for three years!
The grand statement made by the Grain Corporation is based on the country's convenient railway and shipping transportation systems, as well as the construction of water conservancy facilities across the country. The grain production capacity in most areas can be guaranteed, and it is also based on the hundreds of ships that travel between
Ocean, on the grain transport fleet that collects grain from all over the world.
In late January alone, more than 20 bulk carriers of more than 2,000 tons left the mainland for the Americas. What they were going for, of course, was to transport grain!
And this is just a small part of it!
However, unilateral preparations for disaster relief are definitely not the style of the Holy Emperor, nor the style of the Tang Empire.
During the imperial cabinet meeting during the Lantern Festival of the first lunar month, Chen Lifu once again shouted the slogan of building a Nanyang grain-producing region, claiming to accelerate the development of grain in the Nanyang region, especially the Nanyang Peninsula.
Since the Tang Empire and the Nanyang countries reached relevant agreements, the twelve Nanyang countries have moved to Africa one after another, but this relocation only took several years.
Before their complete relocation was completed, the scale of the Tang Empire's immigration in the Nanyang region was relatively small. In the past few years, a total of nearly 500,000 people had immigrated to the Nanyang Peninsula.
And most of them are concentrated in the northern part of Annan and the Malacca region.
But other places, such as Siam, Myanmar, southern Annam and the hinterland of the peninsula, have not yet begun to immigrate.
This time, Chen Lifu got into trouble and suggested starting the Nanyang immigration in advance!
Taking advantage of the widespread drought in several northern provinces and destined to have widespread food harvest failures, people from disaster-stricken areas were directly organized on a large scale to immigrate to various places in Southeast Asia.
Li Xuan also gave his approval to this point.
Sooner or later, there will be large-scale immigration to the Nanyang region. The high-level officials of the empire have long decided on the plan to immigrate tens of millions of people to Nanyang. They are just waiting for the twelve Nanyang countries to get out before officially starting the plan.
But now, Li Xuan feels that this plan is too slow. It will take several years for all the twelve Southeast Asian countries to leave, and it will take many more years for them to immigrate. In this way, it is estimated that the multi-million immigration plan will not be completed within ten years.
Li Xuan was unwilling to wait any longer, so he casually made a decree to start immigration in the Nanyang Peninsula in advance. Of course, considering that there are still a large number of indigenous people in most areas of the Nanyang Peninsula, the scale must be controlled and the selection of areas must be more careful.
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In addition to the Nanyang Peninsula, Li Xuan also asked the Immigration and Reclamation Department to speed up and increase immigration to the Nanyang Islands. The immigration rate of the Nanyang Islands has been too slow in recent years.
At present, there is only one state in Nanyang, let alone the peninsula, Malacca.
As for the Nanyang Islands area, it has been managed by Datang for many years. There are already many localized areas, but the total number of immigrants is still not large.
According to statistics from the Immigration and Reclamation Department, after so many years of immigration and development, there are two provinces and two states in the Nanyang Islands, namely Luzon Province, Banten Province, Australia, and Malacca State (Melaka State includes part of the Nanyang Peninsula).
Now there are more than 4.5 million people in total.
And this number is even less than that of North America. According to statistics from the Department of Immigration and Reclamation, North America currently has a population of 4.6 million.
By the thirty-eighth year of Xuanping, the population of the Empire's America had officially exceeded the population of the Nanyang Islands.
What's even more terrifying is that these millions of people in North America have been newly added in recent years, rather than accumulated over decades.
Therefore, last year, the thirty-seventh year of Xuanping, more than 1.2 million new immigrants from the empire arrived in North America to start their new lives in just one year.
Moreover, this number is not expected to decrease this year, which is the 38th year of Xuanping, and may even increase further.
For comparison, the Nanyang Islands region only received a total of more than 200,000 immigrants in the thirty-seventh year of Xuanping. Not surprisingly, this year it will be about the same number.
As for immigrants from other places, there are even fewer immigrants. In the thirty-seventh year of Xuanping, India, including Ceylon, accepted a total of 80,000 immigrants.
Several colonies in West Asia and the east coast of Africa, as well as Mada Island (excluding South Africa), only accepted a mere 20,000 immigrants in total.
The situation in South Africa is better, having accepted about 50,000 immigrants.
In Europe, including Ceuta, there were even fewer immigrants. In the thirty-seventh year of Xuanping, only about 10,000 immigrants chose Datang to naturalize in various European colonies.
However, in America, there were 1.2 million people last year!
This shows that the people of the Tang Dynasty had a special liking for immigrating to the Americas.