If there is any mistake, you must correct it, but you may not recognize it.

Ten years ago, when Li Su came to Prince Yu's Mansion and followed Li Junwei, Li Junwei educated him like this, and Li Su has always kept this in mind in politics over the years.

On the third day of Li Yongzhong's arrival, Li Su took him to meet with some representatives of Spanish colonial areas such as Antonio who had good cooperation with the empire, and held a dinner party. At the banquet, everyone got conclusive news that the representatives of Spanish King Philip V had arrived in Havana.

One is Duke of Alva, who is in charge of the current West Indy House, and has a high reputation among the native Spanish nobles. The other is Count Sandro, an Italian, but because of his erudition and elegance, he served as a tutor to Philip V five years ago and was also a confidant brought by Philip V from France.

When the Empire held a dinner with its friendly partners, the nobles from Spain were also worried in the Governor's Mansion across from a river.

"Is it because of the Chinese prince here that this is the case?" Duke Avaro opened the shutters and saw the bright lights in the Chinese concession, especially the Havana Hotel, which was holding a dinner, was reflected as if it was during the day. Avaro asked.

Rodriguez shook his head and said, "His dignified Duke, is that building like this every day?"

"How many whale oil candles will be consumed? Or they lit a bonfire outside the hotel... No, why did the streets light up? It was so beautiful and shocking." Earl Sandro could not help but open his drawing board when he saw the two main roads lit by lights.

Rodriguez was very helpless about the ignorance of the two. At the end of last year, he had cleared all his property and left Havana. He returned to Spain with his wife. His father-in-law helped him find a position in the Indy Courtyard, but what he did not expect was that because of his skill in Chinese, he returned here again and had to accompany these two old antiques who lived in the last century.

"That's not a bonfire, nor a whale oil candle. It's a gas lamp." Rodriguez said, and he whispered to the people of the Governor's Office and took the two nobles to the bed facing the yard. Under Rodriguez's order, the people of the Governor's Office demonstrated how to install, how to ignite the gas lamp, and then lit the gas lamp to illuminate the center of the yard.

"This is the gas lamp, which is a product brought by the Chinese. It is said that it is made by distillation of coal, and some merchants say that it can also be made of wood. The lamps in the Governor's Office are all separate, while the streets and hotels in the Chinese concession are unified gas lamps supplied by gas pipelines.

That's what I know, and in fact, I don't know much about these advanced things," said Rodriguez. He knew that because he was originally working in Havana City Hall, he participated in the construction of these municipal facilities.

Rodriguez was not from a high birth and had been studying and working in the colony as an adult. He always thought that the colony was backward and the local area was advanced, but this time he returned to China disappointed him. In Havana, gas lamps have a history of six or seven years, but in Spain, I have never seen them before. Not to mention Spanish, he even followed the Duke of Aval to France, and did not see anything like this in Versailles.

This is mainly because Spain and France have long imposed trade restrictions on the empire.

"Rodriguez, I want to meet your friend at customs. What's his name...Carlo, right?"

"His Excellency Duke, Carlo can provide us with information that if you summon him, he may expose him. After all, in the 'colonial committee', he is the closest to the core level," said Rodriguez.

Duke Avaro said firmly: "I still want to see him. As for the time and place, you can arrange it. Rodriguez, your friend is no longer the friend you think. The Carlo you mentioned is just a customs official and owns a plantation locally. But what I found out was that he had a large army of 300 or 400 people. I had to talk to him to do so."

Rodriguez did not expect Carlo to organize a team in the past six months. He could only say: "Okay, Lord Duke, when will you see him?"

Avaro pointed to the Havana Hotel where lights were blooming in the concession and said, "He should be there now, and I want to wait for the banquet to end and he can meet me."

Rodriguez thought for a while and it was a good time. He said, "It's OK, but you can't be in the Governor's Mansion."

Avaro said: "Whatever you want to arrange."

Rodriguez left the Governor's Mansion and went to the concession to contact Carlo, while Avaro and Sandro began to discuss some confidential matters.

Although the two showed the nobles' condescendancy in front of the people below, in fact, after arriving in Havana, they felt deeply unable to do so.

In early April, Philip V arrived in Madrid. At that time, Spain had already made a choice in European territory, and most of them chose to be loyal to Philip V. Some people chose Austria because of the threat from Austria. There was only the Spanish colony. No news came. You should know that at that time, Carlos II had been dead for five months.

The Spanish government had long known that in the past two years, not only did Antonio actually gain control of the regime of the Governor General of Peru, but also the colonial landlords and merchants of the Governor General of New Spain also ran to Panama City, privately connected, and organized a colonial affairs committee to specifically deal with the changes in the royal power of Spain.

Before leaving Versailles, Philip V discussed the issue of Spanish colonies with his grandfather Louis XIV. The two reached a consensus that whether the Spanish colonies were loyal to each other depends on the relationship between Philip V's Spanish government and China. Therefore, before going to Madrid, Philip V had sent people to Ceuta to contact Li Junwei, hoping to be recognized by China and establish diplomatic relations.

To this end, Philip V prepared very good terms, many of which were provided by Avaro, such as further allowing Chinese merchants to invest in American colonies, allowing some merchants to own land in colonies, opening up the Spanish domestic market to China, etc.

But the problem is that Philip V's conditions were formulated based on the demands of China and Spain in the past. The conditions were very attractive, but they were also combined with reality. Philip V's competitor, the Austrian Grand Duke Charles, made a wish without any evidence. The conditions were more than a little higher than Philip V. What are trade, tariffs, and investments, which are all extra points. The representative of Grand Duke Charles expressed his willingness to ced some colonies and extend the time limit for the empire to control colonial tariffs.

Philip V wanted to tempt him and found himself a beggar.

In fact, what the two of them competed for was not only the colonies' recognition of their throne, but also the fiscal revenue of the Spanish colonies.

In the twenty-eight years of the empire, the war in the Americas ended, and the empire signed the Treaty of Madrid with Spain. The empire obtained the North American and temperate parts of the Spanish colony, as well as Bolivia and Panama, and more importantly, controlled the colony's tariffs and had concessions everywhere.

During the twenty-five years of the empire, before the war in the Americas began, the Spanish government's fiscal revenue in the colonies was only about 3.74 million imperial silver dollars. This number has exceeded the average value in the past thirty years.

In the 38th year of the empire, that is, after the empire mastered the customs of the Spanish colonies, the Spanish government's fiscal revenue in the colonies had exceeded 7.6 million imperial silver dollars. In addition to the peak of large-scale silver output caused by the new smelting method in 1598, this was the highest income. Moreover, in ten years, the annual income of the colonies has increased. Data provided by the Indy Court to Philip V shows that as long as peace continues to be maintained this year, the colonies' fiscal revenue will definitely exceed 8 million Chinese silver dollars, which is higher than the local fiscal revenue.

Among them, the income of colonial customs accounted for the majority, reaching 3.4 million imperial silver dollars.

The reason why fiscal revenue doubled was mainly because after the American War, China was able to conduct comprehensive legal trade with the Spanish colonies. With the entry of a large number of mines with pumped steam engines, the output of various minerals, including gold and silver mines in the Spanish colonies, surged. Scientific customs management made the smuggling trade, which was originally dominated by European countries such as Britain, the Netherlands, and France, declined. In addition, the empire also cracked down on pirates on a large scale in the Caribbean region, making the colonies' trade safer.

More importantly, the Empire's customs management in the Spanish colonies was very sincere, and did not exempt or reduce the tax on products from the Empire without any bottom line. Instead, in order to protect some handicrafts in the colonies, it maintained a reasonable tax rate. Of course, this inevitably caused the bankruptcy of those handicrafts, but did not cause any bad consequences, or in other words, it was not bankruptcy at all, but a conversion to production.

For example, in Mexico, there are some handicraft textile industries with relatively low efficiency and serious technical level. After the Empire took over the customs, local Spanish workshop owners and squire demanded that the Empire must increase import tariffs on textiles to protect these textile industries.

Customs officials finally agreed, and the tax rate was even higher than what these colonial gentry required, but the condition was that textile raw materials, such as cotton, wool, etc., were completely abolished export tariffs. As a result, the colonial textile industry gained a price advantage but could not master the quality advantage. A large number of textiles from North American provinces and South Africa were pouring in, directly destroying these low-end textile industries.

However, the economy of the colony is not divided into labor and cooperation. The Spanish colony is a large manor and large plantation economy. In the empire, cotton planting, seed removal, spinning, weaving, dyeing, etc. are divided into labor and cooperation to form an industrial chain.

The Spanish colonies, from cotton planting to finished cotton cloth, were all run by the owners alone. Even those large manors and large plantations are themselves a small self-sufficient society, with tens of thousands of people and thousands of people.

The owners involved in the textile industry found that although their textile workshops were bankrupt, they had sales of raw materials such as cotton and wool, and exported them to North American provinces on a large scale, with great profits. So the handicraft workshops were disbanded, and slaves and tenants went directly to grow cotton or raise cattle and sheep. The original management team directly became distributors of Chinese textiles. They lost the textile workshops and made more money than before.

In the 28th year of the empire, textile owners in Mexico asked customs to increase China's cotton cloth tariffs. Just four years later, they joined forces to reduce the tariffs. However, at that time, they were no longer textile workshop owners, but cotton planters, ranchers and cotton cloth distributors.

The arrival of the imperial merchants not only directly activated the local economy, but also had many indirect effects. In the past, even adjacent colonies could not trade between the two major Governor's districts of the colonies. No matter how remote the colonies were, they could only trade with the Governor's district and the local area. However, after the American War, this was broken because Chinese merchants were not restricted, because trade between the colonies also began, but tariffs were charged.

These situations have led to losses in the trade volume between the colonies and the local area. Of course, the main losses are borne by the local area. Even if the merchant ships from Spain to the colonies do not receive any tariffs at all, the goods provided are difficult to welcome. Conversely, the sucrose, tobacco and minerals produced by the colonies are what the local area needs.

Since the 35th year of the empire, the trade between Spain and the colonies has resumed a lot, mainly the goods carried by Spanish merchants, not only from Spain and other European countries, but also from China. Often, some Spanish merchants will go to Ceuta to purchase a large number of industrial products and sell them to the colonies, or let the Netherlands be a second-hand dealer.

In any case, the fiscal revenue of the Spanish colony is becoming more important to the Spanish government. It is precisely because of the continuous increase in the income of the colony that the Spanish government is more at ease in handling national debts, and the scale of national debts is also declining. If the fiscal revenue of the colony is lost, the Spanish government will go bankrupt because it has not paid back the national debts owed for more than a hundred years.

You should know that more than half of the fiscal revenue of the Spanish Empire each year is used to repay national debts, and the fiscal revenue of the colonies is only a little less. Although the Spanish government is not afraid of bankruptcy, because they have gone bankrupt many times in the past, it was in the peace era. Now that the war is going on, fiscal bankruptcy will directly lead to the failure of the war.
Chapter completed!