New Shun 1730

Vérendrye's understanding is basically correct.

But the noose in North America is very special. It is actually the self-employed farmers who pull this noose.

The differences between reclamation and hunting, planting and gathering, will soon be decided under the 450 mm precipitation line, and under the agricultural technology and metal smelting technology at that time.

The tyrants in New France are all in the fur business.

The tyrants in the thirteen states have land speculators. But the tyrants in New France cannot have land speculators, because New France is not Virginia, and tobacco and agricultural products for Europe cannot be grown.

Vérendrye is also sober.

But this sobriety is meaningless.

He knows that every time he expands the wine or livestock trade with New Yizhou, he is selling the noose that hangs the Fur Ginseng Company.

But he, all shareholders, and even the royal family, have to sell this noose.

Every time the wine trade volume is expanded, it means that hundreds or even thousands of migrants can be provided for Dashun.

In the long run, this is very dangerous.

But in the short run, even within ten or twenty years, every shareholder, royal family, and fur trader will be excited about the expanded wine and grain trade, and the annual dividends will be greater.

The translator adjutant made a timely intervention, saying: "In fact, more people will join this migration. You may not understand their love for the land and their desire to have their own farmland."

"The more people there are, the easier and cheaper the migration here will be."

Vellendry nodded, but did not say anything. Instead, he and the translator adjutant and several others continued to move forward and entered the cooperative winery of the Wang Long brothers.

In the workshop, people busy in the strong smell of wine and steaming heat, no one looked up to see these strange-looking people. Just like the church district before the ban on religion in the capital, no one would be shocked by these strange-looking foreigners.

The people here have seen a lot and are used to it.

Whether they come to transport cattle and horses or buy wine, they will see a wave every year.

Wang Long, who was busy in the workshop, saw these people and knew that most of them were here to discuss business, so he went up to them. After asking a little, he learned the other party's identity and said to the translator adjutant: "You came at the right time. I heard that you wanted to expand the wine trade before. Is it settled this time?"

This is not a commercial secret. Although Dashun's wine trade here is also controlled, things like expanding business production still need to be communicated in advance.

Because...the situation here is so special. It is almost a semi-planned system. If you produce too much, you can't sell it at all.

It's not that only Indians drink alcohol, such as Jinshan, Yinshan and other mining areas, where the amount of alcohol consumption is greater.

But the question is, who will come here, cross the mountain pass and take the rugged road to transport wine? The wine from Fenglin Bay is much cheaper if it is transported directly to Jinshan along the coast.

Wang Long and others have long been thinking about expanding production, including expanding production by purchasing potatoes from local self-cultivating farmers. As for the capital for increasing production, the accumulation of the past few years of support, after repaying the support loan from the court, there is still some money left, which is enough to upgrade the winery.

Vérendrye naturally explained that the expansion of trade this time has been decided, and then asked: "Did you also migrate from the Yellow River?"

This question made Wang Long a little unsure of how to answer.

After a long time, he smiled and said: "We didn't have the Yellow River before. But there will be one in the future. If you ask this, you can also say that we migrated from there."

"So... these workers also migrated from there, right? Can I ask them? Don't worry, I know your policies very well. I am not a missionary. And I have a pass." Virendrye made it clear what the Dashun court was very concerned about. It is a taboo for missionaries to come here.

Fortunately, something big happened in the Catholic Church in Europe in recent years. Spain, France, etc., jointly "forced the Pope to abdicate" - either disbanding the Jesuits and other organizations that have seriously threatened the royal power, or Spain and France withdrew from the Vatican.

Even so... Actually, the Jesuits also contributed to several wars in North America before France. But they were abandoned after they were used. The French Foreign Missionary Association, which was affiliated with the royal power and the government, took over many of the Jesuits' businesses.

This is of course a good thing for Dashun.

Because the people in the Vatican have nothing to do with the regime of New France, and their missionary work completely disregards national interests - or rather, disregards the interests of France, but the interests of the Papal States.

Including Dashun's distorted Christianity requiring Taoist priests and monks to be managed by the Li government with certificates, it is actually not much different, all trying to complete the regime's control over the church.

France now has taken over the missionary business to the French Foreign Missionary Association.

Then, whether Jesus is the king, God is the country, it is clearer.

At least they will not send people to Dashun for nothing. Missionary work also requires politics.

"West of the Mississippi River, the Lord does not rule." This was the treaty negotiated with France after the war. As a shareholder of the fur company with vital interests, and also an official officer of the French government, Vérendry was very cautious about this.

After obtaining the consent of Wang Long and others, Vérendry handed cigarettes to a group of distiller's workers who were resting there, and asked: "Are you considered indentured servants? Are you satisfied with the life here?"

This matter is not easy to define.

In a debate, we must first clarify what is a human being and what is a slave.

But in essence, they are.

Because their migration expenses were prepaid by these employers. Dashun has a government and violent organs here.

Since there are violent organs, they must "respect the contract".

In other words, if these people escape or something, they must be caught by violent organs. Of course, the legal principle of arresting people is not something like "fugitive slave law".

Rather, it is because they owe money, and debts must be paid back, which is natural. They are not caught because you are a slave, but because you owe money to the employer.

So, in essence, they are indentured servants.

But in legal terms, they are not.

Rather, they are [long-term workers who have paid the employment fee in advance, signed a labor contract, and this contract complies with the legal rights of private ownership, and is recognized and protected by the court law, and cannot be regarded as slaves but as human beings].

These employees do not pay attention to the name of whether they are considered human beings or slaves, nor do they care much.

But they are very happy to answer Verendry's second question.

Most of the answers were satisfactory.

Overall, the labor intensity was not too great, and the "price" of each person was relatively high. After all, the freight was there, so the employer did not dare to use them to death.

This was different from the group of Irish people on the East Coast.

Many slave owners would hire Irish people to do some dangerous work because Irish people were cheaper than black slaves, and black slaves were personal property. Just like self-employed farmers raising cattle, they also knew that they could not use them to death. Dead cattle were not as valuable as live cattle, and black slaves could not be sold as beef.

But the problem was that those Irish people ran to North America by themselves. The slave owners did not pay for their tickets.

On the Dashun side, every employee was transported by the employer at their own expense. In fact, compared with the Irish who ran by themselves, they were more like slaves in terms of "price".

After all, the cost was still too high.

The ticket to cross the Pacific Ocean and the re-migration from Fenglin Bay through the mountain pass were not a small amount of money.

These hired workers came here last year. They have to work here for eight years, which is enough to pay off their debts and save enough money to buy land.

However, in fact, they have been "working for others" for more than eight years.

In their hometown, they also participated in river digging and river embankment construction. They came here to work for six years to pay off their debts and two years to save money to buy land. If all these are counted, they can basically be regarded as busy for most of their lives, and finally got their own farmland when they were almost unable to work.

But if you ask whether they are satisfied with the life here... undoubtedly they are satisfied.

This place is different from going to Nanyang after all. Going to Nanyang, there are folk songs such as "Don't go to Nanyang" and "Don't go to Nanyang to die" because it is too scary. The mortality rate is too high.

This is a temperate zone. In terms of mortality, compared with the 20% mortality rate in the early days of Dashun's Nanyang development - malaria, fever, mosquitoes, cholera, Leishmaniasis, hookworms, dengue fever, schistosomiasis, tropical leprosy - relatively speaking, the mortality rate of Dashun's large-scale Nanyang development is still lower than that of Batavia's early three-year replacement of people, but this place is a temperate semi-arid climate, which is definitely much safer than Nanyang.

Moreover, or, there is hope.

Hope is even within reach: there is really land here, and you can really get the land and become a self-cultivating farmer with a hundred acres of land, and this hope can be achieved in just seven or eight years.

For Dashun's Central Plains, just at this time, telling a tenant farmer "If you work hard for eight years, you will have 120 acres of land" - for any poor peasant, this is a temptation comparable to the paradise.

Since there is hope, then of course they are satisfied.

As for the living standard here, it is indeed much higher than when they were in their hometown.

In the past, Massachusetts enacted a law that slaves could not eat lobster more than twice a week; later, eating fried chicken and watermelon was considered an insult.

In terms of food alone, the living standard here is high, needless to say. The per capita grain output is here, and the per capita land area is here.

They are not the first wave of immigrants in the early days.

For example, Wang Long's group must have been dissatisfied at first, because they were self-employed farmers in their hometown. The conditions offered by Dashun were really unattractive to those who were originally self-employed farmers at first - even a fool knows that if you are a landlord, it is useless to have only land, you must have tenants. And in the beginning, it seemed impossible to have tenants, so it would be a miracle if you could be satisfied if you crossed 20,000 or 30,000 miles to change places to be self-employed farmers.

But the later group of people were different, they themselves were not real self-employed farmers. So, you can imagine what the living standard is like.

When you get here, I dare not say anything else, but there is enough food.

As for work, it is a bit hard and tiring... that's it. When I was in my hometown, I had to do corvée labor; I had to fiddle with my fingers to figure out how to store the grains, and I had to bring all the straw home.

Working here may seem tiring, but it may actually be easier than in my hometown.

Hearing that these people were very satisfied with the life here, Vérendry thought that it seemed that he had to let his sons go back to mainland France to buy land and manors as soon as possible. If these people were very satisfied with the life here, it would mean that among the more than 300 million people, at least 10 million would be very satisfied with such a life. Once the migration wave breaks out, the balance of power here may be broken in 20 to 30 years or 30 to 50 years at most. It seems that it is safer to buy land, noble titles and manors in mainland France.

In fact, Vérendry estimated that at least 10 million people could accept the life here... It was really underestimated by an order of magnitude. For Dashun, the migration problem was never the willingness to migrate. Self-cultivating farmers like Wang Long belonged to the Yellow River problem rather than the migration problem.

The difficulty has always been how to move people here, which is the root of some violent theories of the radicals within Dashun Realism.

If we only talk about the willingness to migrate, Vérendry's estimate is really an order of magnitude less.

The Yellow River problem and the problem of ethnic migration and land occupation are two different things.

Dashun could easily pick out millions or tens of millions of people who could accept such a grant of 120 mu of land.

But in the case of the Yellow River, Dashun did not choose to massacre, nor did it choose to directly dig up the Yellow River, or deliberately force Kusanagi to rebel, which would definitely be more troublesome than simply migrating ethnic groups to occupy land.

Although, in fact, as far as the feudal dynasty is concerned, choosing to deliberately force Kusanagi to rebel is the most likely choice.