When the north wind blows from Siberia and reaches the Philippine Islands, the entire Luzon has entered the dry season. There are already 50,000 Chinese residents in Manila, some of whom are businessmen who are not settled immigrants. People speaking with different accents can be seen everywhere in Manila. Chinese, as well as many Tagalog natives, Portuguese, Dutch, British, French, Japanese, Annamites, etc. Although the Spanish "galleon trade" has been interrupted, Manila is a Chinese product The status of the transit center for shipments to America and Europe has ended, but the local distance to various parts of Southeast Asia, and the arrival of a large number of Chinese businessmen, still formed a trading place for Chinese products and Western goods in Manila.
The unjustly named "Luzon Governor's Office" has become a government, effectively ruling and managing the entire Luzon region. After all, Zeng Qi has decades of administrative experience, plus the support provided by Yin Feng's China Company A complete set of experience in central coordination and management, as well as the help of 3,000 escort soldiers and 2,000 semi-off-duty villagers, have been able to implement various development plans in various places.
Zeng Qi felt that the original Panyi place names in Luzon were too hard to hear and remember, so he simply divided Luzon into five counties: east, west, south, north, Luzon and Manila. He assigned county magistrates and other officials at all levels to start measuring the entire Luzon. The land was divided, and a large amount of land suitable for farming was assigned to the Ministry of Agriculture of the Chinese Company and distributed to the soldiers with meritorious service in the escort.
Of course, the company has introduced a contract farming system. The guards have to serve the company for twenty years before they can obtain all the land and pass it on to their descendants. Before they retire, these lands are farmed by the farms set up by the company, and the income from farming is obtained from the land. The individual soldiers and the company were divided 50-50 - the divided portion was not given to the soldiers immediately, but was arranged by the company to be distributed to their families once a year.
Soldiers who are discharged from the army or who are discharged due to disability can immediately get the twenty acres of land they are allocated and can cultivate it by themselves. They only need to pay a tax of one-twentieth of the total income of the company and the garrison every year - of course, they are obligated. If they take up arms to fight for the company in times of crisis, one of their children must also join the army. The veterans can also let the company send people to manage and farm the land, and they can receive 60% of the annual total income; of course, they can also Mortgage these properties and invest the funds in the company's commercial trade. The company offers special discounts to soldiers for buying shares, and usually gives them some shares. This is an unprecedented military welfare system in Chinese history. Taiwan has also begun to implement this military welfare system. Welfare system, so under the rule of the China Company, being a guard soldier is the best job with benefits. Not only can you get a share of the spoils of war, but your family life is guaranteed and you have no worries.
Over the past thousands of years, Chinese dynasties have made many moves to immigrate to the border areas. However, there was a lack of unified planning and long-term management, and the small peasant economy was allowed to work alone. The southwest, southeast and other places of China were scattered from generation to generation. Developed spontaneously by small farmers, the Chinese company adopts unified planning, complete planning in advance, with strong financial support, armed force escort, and organizing a large number of manpower to invest in a targeted and planned manner, which is similar to the planned economy during the great Republic period. Therefore, , the development effect in the short term is very impressive; less than a year after Zhonghua Company occupied Luzon, ten farms covering an area of 10,000 acres have begun to produce crops, and large quantities of sugar cane, corn, and rice have been piled up in the company's warehouse Like a mountain.
During the process of controlling the whole of Luzon, the convoy occupied hundreds of indigenous villages, drove many indigenous people into the mountains, and also made many indigenous villages sign alliance contracts, allowing Chinese immigrants to enter and live in, according to Chinese tradition. With their cultural affinity, unique diligence and vitality, it is estimated that the residents of these indigenous villages will basically be assimilated by the Chinese within half a century.
In the process of organizing land reclamation, Yin Feng specially stipulated that immigrants from different areas should be organized into groups to develop a place, and those injured veterans who had participated in the escort and Zhuangding teams as leaders would completely break the original ideas of the immigrants. Some villagers have clan relations to weaken clan power.
After some division, there were a large number of Spanish colonial lands on Luzon Island. In addition to part occupied by the company, part of which was distributed to the officers and soldiers of the Guards in accordance with the military merit land distribution order; in addition, there were other lands belonging to the church, and from the There are hundreds of thousands of acres of land snatched from the hands of the indigenous people. These lands may not necessarily be cultivated, but they include mines, woodlands, fish ponds, and lakes. In the hands of the hard-working Chinese, they can definitely produce benefits.
Thus, an unprecedented overseas land auction conference in Chinese history began.
In fact, only twenty merchants participated in the auction, and most of them were wealthy merchants from the coasts of Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang. At that time, the Huai merchants with the strongest financial strength were the Huai salt merchants. Only a merchant from She County sent a man to inspect and did not participate. Auctions are similar to Huizhou merchants. Only a handful of merchants from Shanxi merchants, Gan merchants and other mainland business gangs who are eager to collude with officials and try their best to get a foothold in the officialdom have participated in overseas land auctions. Those merchants still focus on Regarding the collusion between government and businessmen, all attention is focused on the mainland market and has no interest in overseas markets with extremely high rates of return and profit margins.
In recent years, Fujian merchants have been attacking everywhere and occupying many mainland markets. In particular, overseas luxury goods, Western goods, chiming bells and other products are almost monopolized by Chinese companies. Although Fujian merchants have risen rapidly, various mainland companies, led by Lianghuai salt merchants, The Great Merchant Gang is still following the same old path: combining government and business, being both official and business, and working hard to become a vassal of the government.
Although overseas land auctions seem a bit deserted, nearly 500,000 acres of land in Luzon Islands were still auctioned. Although the China Company only recovered a few hundred thousand taels of the money for selling the land, it has attracted all the wealthy businessmen along the coast. Tied to his own chariot, from now on, whether it is the Spanish or the Dutch, anyone who wants to get involved in Luzon will become a public enemy of the merchants and people along the southeast coast of China.
In 1607, marked by the change of ownership of Luzon, a new historical era in the Western Pacific began.
At the end of the year, Zhonghua Company kept a low profile in the country. After the anti-tax supervision incident passed, it took the initiative to send a "scare money" to the tax envoy yamen. When the business was in decline at the end of the year, the White Lotus Sect in the mountains of western Fujian rebelled, and the cult rebellion swept across western Fujian. In more than a dozen counties, the governor Chen Xingxue had to devote all his attention to suppressing the White Lotus Sect uprising. He could not care about tracking down the murderer who killed the tax supervisor, and he completely forgot about Taiwan.
Therefore, after Yin Feng returned to Taiwan, he issued instructions to various places in Southeast Asia. At the end of that year and throughout 1608, the Chinese Company occupied more than 20 gold mining areas in Borneo (Kalimantan). The more than twenty small Malay kingdoms were simply unable to resist the force of the China United Company and Chinese pirates.
The gold mining areas are mainly in Sambar, Nambawa, Vanna and other places in West Borneo. Before the Chinese company occupied the Philippines, it had already sent a large number of naval forces disguised as pirates to operate in this area. Mai Xiaoliu once worked in West Borneo. A stronghold was established along the coast of Nanyazhou, which was named after Nanyazhou.
In early 1607, a large number of Chinese pirates left West Borneo and went north to join the war against the Philippines. The Dutch took advantage of the situation. However, the red-haired foreigners were beaten dizzy by the indigenous residents in this area, and the number of the Dutch was too small, so soon After being driven away, when the Chinese pirates came back from the Philippines, their team had become even larger. Yin Feng put part of the naval force under the control of Mai Xiaoliu. The Chinese once again marched to various parts of Southeast Asia. This time they no longer used pirates as a cover, and they justifiably fought. The Chinese United Company's blue background flag with Chinese characters.
This time, many of the personnel of the Chinese Company who participated in the fleet going south were Hakkas from the border between Fujian and Guangdong. They were good at dealing with foreigners. Those sailors who were mainly ethnic minorities were also naturally good at sociability. The armed forces of the Chinese Company There are basically no obstacles to activities in western Borneo. Since the local indigenous people and Chinese merchants have been communicating with each other for nearly a thousand years, they generally have a good impression of the Chinese. Therefore, their attitude towards the Chinese is completely different from that of the Dutch. The chiefs and nobles are very They welcomed their arrival and even tried their best to invite them to their territory. The reason for this was not only the good image of the Chinese here for thousands of years, but also these indigenous people saw the warships, soldiers and cannons brought by the Chinese company, which brought China People regard them as powerful protectors, and at the same time, they also regard them as a favorable factor that can make their country rich.
Although the Chinese at that time had a sense of superiority in traditional culture, Chinese cultural traditions had never had the concept of racial discrimination. The people in the coastal areas were also traditionally good at getting along with people of any race. After the developers of the Chinese Company landed in Nanya Prefecture, they have been We can go deep into the headhunting area in the interior of Borneo, and Chinese immigrants can live in harmony with the headhunting Dayak people. Many Chinese bachelors immediately marry local indigenous women. The chiefs and people everywhere are very happy, because such marriages can bring benefits to local villages. To achieve stable trade, that is, a large amount of trade income.
Chinese immigrants in southern Fujian also followed the development team of the Chinese Company into Borneo. They were better at agriculture, and the fields they cultivated were all lands that the Malays would never grow crops on before, such as gravel land, swampland, woodland, etc. Wait, Chinese farmers are miraculously able to grow crops on these lands, and their harvests far exceed those of the local natives. It is precisely because these lands were originally abandoned and ownerless lands that Chinese immigrants and local natives have no Regardless of land disputes, they can generally get along harmoniously.
Of course, there will also be natives who are not very smart. Once, the chief of a small indigenous state, out of greed or just xenophobia, threatened the lives of the Chinese company's gold mine exploration personnel.