Chapter IX The American Provinces
Li Junwei is not a gold digger. The first thing he has to do is to complete the restructuring and transform from a company's place to an imperial province. The general structure of the American development company will be basically used by the American province. For example, the company's jury will be transformed into a local council, but some people in the jury will be excluded.
These people include those who hold public offices outside the Americas, and those who do not have enough real estate and relatives in the Americas, turning the American Parliament into an American parliament. This is the greatest respect the empire for all the people of the American region. Of course, some new personnel will be added, bringing the number of parliamentary personnel to fifteen.
In the company era, there were various governors, generals and administrative regions, and they were replaced by administrative levels such as prefectures and counties respectively. All the original chief executives continued to serve as generals, while generals and officers should be appeased generals, which can guarantee the interests of the existing bureaucratic system. However, all bureaucrats must adopt a term system, one term per five years, and no more than two re-elected times.
Obviously, local officials in the Americas did not fully welcome King Yu, but they dared not raise any objections. The Spanish ship I saw on Cod Island was handled by the Imperial America Fleet. This fleet arrived in the Americas first before the dispatched fleet led by King Yu. It had two third-class battleships and four cruise ships. The fleet also brought a brigade of Marines, with a scale of 4,000 people. This is the greatest combat effectiveness of the American province, and the reorganization of the local army has been completed.
Although these armies and fleets came to America to fight against the Spanish, as long as they were stationed in America, they could ensure that Li Junwei's voice was the greatest.
The shareholders of the American Development Company are the imperial government, royal family, veterans and early group of parliamentarians. What they had already decided was not something that local middle and lower-level bureaucrats could change. Moreover, after Li Junwei arrived, he quickly won the hearts of the people. For lands like North America at the end of the world, the arrival of the imperial emperor's brothers was originally something worth celebrating, and after Li Junwei arrived, he immediately began to improve people's livelihood.
The first thing to do is to "invite people's hearts". The American province is located on the west coast of North America. It has rich land and rich resources. It has a national population of up to 430,000 people. It has established a corresponding economic system and achieved self-sufficiency. However, the problem is that self-sufficiency is incomplete, and there are two things that are lacking in the American provinces.
One is tea, which does not produce tea locally. The nearby Spaniards did not drink tea. For a long time, local tea must be shipped from the distant empire. It is not only expensive but also of high quality, because the three provinces of Beihai where the empire traded with the Americas are not tea-producing areas.
This time, the cargo carried by the three dispatched ships included a large amount of tea. Because America is remote, even at the speed of scissoring ships, the freshness of tea cannot be guaranteed. Therefore, the bulk tea is black tea and white tea, which comes from Fujian and Zhejiang production areas. When selling tea to local American citizens in large quantities, Li Junwei announced that the central government of the imperial government and the local government of the Americas have the responsibility to make the tea prices in the two major cities of the Americas, Jinzhou and Beiyuan, not higher than that in the imperial capital.
In the future, once the tea price rises, the empire's state-owned enterprise, the Ocean Group, has the responsibility to transport tea to sell and stabilize tea prices. Although the price of tea in Shenjing is quite high, it is still a very suitable price for the American region. You should know that for a long time, the cheapest tea that local people in the Americas drank was matte tea from South America, which was transported by some smuggling ships.
In addition to tea, the second point is medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine originated from the local area, and America belongs to the New World. In fact, many herbs commonly used by traditional Chinese medicine are not available here. Many plants in the Americas have never seen them. There are both good and bad. The advantage is that American ginseng produced in the Americas can be sold at a sky-high price in the local area, but it is also true that locals lack medical treatment and medicine.
Establishing state-owned pharmacies in major towns and supplying goods directly from the local area is the solution to this problem. Because of this, since then, every year, ships departing from Shenjing have been named tea medicinal ships, which are specifically responsible for transporting the livelihood needs of the American people.
After the reform, the biggest new policy was to establish an education system. In the era of the company, all actions in the Americas were for making money. There was no decent education at all. All talents came from the empire and it was very costly to invest in education. The people trained will affect the power of shareholders. Naturally no one did such thankless things.
It was not until more than 20 years after the development of the Americas that more and more local officials were sent to marry their children locally, and they had some schools in Jinzhou and Beiyuan. They were essentially aristocratic schools, with very few people and were not open to ordinary people at all. This time, the dispatch ship directly brought the branches of Shenjing National Higher High School, which were directly established in the Jinzhou area. Li Junwei also formed some primary and secondary schools for some layoffs, and some local workshops and spontaneously organized schools that the community can also be transferred to the organization and become public schools. Therefore, a talent system was established. In addition, universities in Shenjing, Beijing and Tianjin open quotas specifically to the Americas every year.
Chinese people attach importance to education, and this is true wherever they go. When ordinary people have the conditions to enroll, they will naturally be happy.
Although the new policies implemented by Li Junwei during the reform of the American provinces seem to be revealing the scars of the company and poking their pain points, the caliber of whether it is local reception of officials and local representatives or local propaganda in the empire. The American Development Company is a model of the empire's overseas development. This is not just publicity, but a real fact.
After Li Junwei arrived in the Americas, he had a national group of more than 430,000 people. This was the biggest achievement of the empire's development in the past 38 years. It formed two core cities, Jinzhou and Beiyuan, and many rich towns and villages, and also formed a reasonable economic system.
Jinzhou was originally named Kingsoft. It was originally the first stop for immigration. It discovered a gold rush point here and rose rapidly. However, with the expansion of the people step by step, the Central Valley has been developed over the past few decades. The wild land once occupied by bison and Indians has formed a scientific and reasonable irrigation system. Fruits, vegetables and various fruits and trees are everywhere. Wheat and corn have become the main local food crops, and the cultivation of various beans is also very popular. In terms of cash crops, the largest cash crop in the Jinzhou area is cotton.
The cotton produced here is of good quality and is also one of the few cotton-producing areas in the Americas. It has formed a large textile industry in Jinzhou City. The cotton in the Central Valley can go through various processes directly from the local area and become dyed cotton and even ready-to-wear. It is not only provided to the American people, but also an important commodity for trade with Indians and smuggling to Spanish colonies.
Another industry in Jinzhou area is salt drying, because it has a Mediterranean climate, with hot and less rain in summer, which is most suitable for evaporation of salt fields. This northern fishing industry and convenience provided by smuggling to the south.
Jinzhou was established because of gold rush, but also because of agriculture. But speaking of this, the development momentum of Beiyuan region gradually surpassed that of Jinzhou region. Although agriculture was underdeveloped due to the cold climate, it developed the most developed industries in the Americas.
Beiyuan's development was also due to gold digging. At the beginning, because the irrigation system in the central valley of Jinzhou was not perfect, I wanted to develop grain cultivation in Beiyuan. But things went against my wishes. People found that it was better than Jinzhou and could go deeper into the inland area. Along the river valley, many Indian tribes could be found. Fur trade became the mainstream first, so industries such as leather goods processing were born. The rise of fishing and whaling industries in the northern region, and the dense hardwood forests along the river area directly led to the rise of Beiyuan's shipbuilding industry.
Every year, trade ships that come to the Americas will be repaired in Kitahara. Gradually, Kitahara not only builds fishing boats, whaling boats and patrol boats, but also warships such as schooners and cruisers can be built. Kitahara Shipyard, a shipyard with more than 700 workers, is also the largest factory in the Americas.
In fact, in the world today, the largest factories are shipyards, and the shipyards will be born from industrial cities because they need more supporting industries. The iron parts needed only require minerals, iron smelting and iron products processing. In addition, the sawing factories, logging yards, canvas, rope processing and other industries needed for shipbuilding. In fact, most of the industries in Beiyuan City, with a population of more than 27,000 people, are supporting shipyards.
The American region is praised and is known as a model of overseas development not only because of its economy, but also because of the good relationship between the national groups and the local indigenous Indians.
After the first wave of immigrants arrived, they quickly clashed with the local Indians because they discovered gold rush points. After a war after a dimensionality reduction attack, the pioneers obtained land, gold mines, slaves and women who worked, and took root. But soon, people had a question, that is, why must they fight against the Indians?
After a while of debate, the first American Council reached a common opinion--the conflict with the Indians was meaningless.
The Indians could provide two kinds of resources, material resources and human resources, but all materials, from land to fur, food, etc., can be obtained through trade. As for human resources, it is fine to hire, but when it comes to slaves, it is not very useful.
In the colonies, there are only two uses of slaves. One is used for cash crop plantations, such as sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean and South America, tobacco and indigo plantations in Virginia in North America. The other is used for mines, such as the Spanish gold and silver mines, saltpeter mines and mercury mines in the American colonies. These places use slaves in large quantities. Take Li Junwei's strategic target Potosi Silver Mine as an example. This is already a mining city with 200,000 people, and the vast majority of the population is Indian, black and mixed races.
However, these industries were not available in the early days of North American territory, and slaves could not be used for fishing, gold mining and logging. By the time the Americas had cotton plantations and various mines, the empire had already had a sufficient population here and used some machinery, including steam drainage machines. Of course, more importantly, the Americas did not need to produce any bulk goods.
The sucrose and tobacco of Virginia are directly supplied to Europe, but the economic crops and products produced by the American provinces have limited capacity to supply to the empire. For a long time, only a few ships each year have to be filled with high-value items, such as sand, American ginseng, fur, and whale products. The slightly lower value is all kinds of leather, especially the cowhide of North American bison and other things, but these things can only be profitable by selling them for special prices.
At the beginning, the American region was isolated from the world for a long time for security. The Spaniards did not know their existence. When they knew each other, war broke out and they could only rely on smuggling to develop their foreign economy.
Since the things produced cannot be sold, why do you need to produce them? Since there is no production, there is no need for too much labor. Indian slaves are no longer necessary.
Moreover, if Indian slaves are needed, they will have to fight against Indian tribes, which makes the company's security cost very high and is not conducive to rapid development within. If the cost of obtaining fur under peaceful conditions is the lowest, as for the Indians' distrust and hatred of immigrants, they do not need to be actively resolved.
In the early days, the American Development Corporation estimated that there were about 400,000 to 500,000 Indians on the West Coast, which is no longer a small number. The entire North America is only 2.5 million. The pioneering immigrants have not yet launched a war. The disease spread by the trade exchanges between the two sides has caused a large number of Indians to die.
Of course, at the very least, the number of Indians was only tens of thousands. Compared with those in Central and South America, the Indians in North America had a low level of civilization, but they were very united. Once they became sick, the whole tribe was taking care of them and it was easy to be contagious.
Controlling Indians does not necessarily rely on force and slavery. Trade itself is a great control. You only need to pick up some brightly colored shells on the coast to exchange for fur from the Indians in the inland, and glass balls of various colors can be used as pearls. The best-selling product is always wine.
The first immigrants in North America to grow sorghum and sweet potatoes, both of which can be used to make wine, and the Indians had no resistance to alcohol. Although in today's era, drinking was harmful to the body and could not be accepted by alcoholics, at least all people who drink knew that drinking was wrong and drinking could easily cause trouble, but the Indians did not even have this concept.
Chapter completed!