Chapter 922 Amborna Island
Yan Chujie woke up to the aroma of seafood porridge. The feast last night lasted from evening to midnight. He didn't eat much, but drank a lot of wine. After the banquet, Roger arranged for a little girl who was said to be from Siam to stay with him for the night. She was only about seventeen or eighteen years old. After this night, his stomach was already empty. Yan Chujie is already in his forties. He traveled thousands of miles from Sanya to the south. Even though he is very energetic, it is inevitable that he will feel a little tired.
Yan Chujie looked at the sky outside the window and then resolutely got up. Today's planned itinerary was to inspect several plantations and farms, as well as the immigration office on the island, but he didn't have much free time to sleep in.
The agricultural development on Ampurna Island has been quite impressive. In the early days, major investors such as Qiong Lianfa, Annan Consortium, and Nanhai Investment Bank invested in the land and built large plantations here. Since most of the labor force here comes from the slave trade, the operating cost of the plantation is even lower than that of HN Island, which to a certain extent makes up for the geographical disadvantage of this place being isolated overseas. In addition, in order to support the development process of Ambona Island, Haihan provided many preferential policies to investors in terms of business operations. In the later period, it also attracted many Ming businessmen to come south to participate in the development.
The first plantation that Roger Yan Chujie visited was one of the first projects developed by foreign investors on Ampurna Island. The sponsor was the Qiong Lian Fa Consortium, which had deep entanglements with Haihan's interests. This group of businessmen who first formed a joint venture with Haihan to develop agricultural and forestry projects have now become Haihan's loyal supporters. As long as it is a development project led by Haihan, they will invest money first to take advantage of the pit. Although the plantation on Ampurna Island has not yet entered the real profit stage due to the crop growth cycle, at the beginning of this year Qiong Lianfa doubled the previous two thousand acres of plantation. The area also shows that shareholders are optimistic about the development prospects of Amborna Island.
The crops grown in this plantation are mainly rubber trees, coffee trees and several spice crops. There are many similar plantations in HN Island and Annan, and most of them have begun to make profits. Haihan's successful experience in operating plantations is one of the main reasons why investors dared to invest heavily in this isolated island in the middle of the ocean.
This plantation has more than 600 employees and is one of the largest plantations on the island, including more than 400 slave laborers. These slaves who were sold cross-border to Ambona Island by human traffickers must first perform unpaid labor on the island for more than half a year, and then based on their performance, they will gradually be eligible to apply for naturalization. Of course, under the intentional control of the financial owners, the conversion rate from slaves to naturalized citizens is quite low, because once naturalized, it means that the bosses must pay labor wages to them.
"So, these profiteers will probably take the time to replace people, right?" Yan Chujie said with a smile: "If I remember correctly, the first condition for applying for naturalization from the Ministry of Civil Affairs is to have a stable job in the local area. As long as the bosses let people go and replace them with a new batch of slaves, they will never need to pay wages.”
Roger was not shy about this issue and nodded: "That's true. This is a loophole in the current laws and regulations. We don't have a better way to deal with it for the time being. We can only send away the replaced slave workers as much as possible. To avoid extraneous problems.”
In order to reduce costs, plantation and farm operators would take the initiative to release slave workers after their unpaid labor time limit expired, and then purchase new cheap labor from slave traders. But because these freed slaves temporarily lost their jobs, they were unable to apply for naturalization locally. The emergence of a large number of unemployed people will inevitably affect the local public security environment, but this approach of the operator does not violate Haihan's current laws and regulations, so the local management committee can only choose a compromise solution, which will be All freed slave laborers were shipped to Sanya for redistribution. Although this will delay the time when slave workers can apply for naturalization for a while, the treatment they can get in HN Island will be much better than that in Ambon Island.
Although Haihan's senior management is also aware of the tricks involved, it does not prevent operators from repeatedly using such methods to reduce costs. These slaves were considered lucky in this era to be able to obtain basic living conditions. At least they would not be used as pure livestock like their compatriots who fell into the hands of Western colonists. Although the first period of time after entering Haihan society will be difficult, as long as you can survive until naturalization, there is hope that your life will be improved in the future.
Yan Chujie visited the collective dormitory where slave workers lived. Although the house with earthen walls and thatched roof was a bit crude, the environment was relatively clean. Each room of twenty people would be cleaned inside and outside every day, and there would be wells, bathrooms, public toilets and other facilities. Very complete too. The island's medical and health institutions will also come regularly to provide guidance on epidemic prevention to prevent the outbreak of epidemics in densely populated dormitories in the hot and humid natural environment.
When Yan Chujie arrived, all the slave workers had already gone to work, and there were only a few women in the dormitory doing laundry and cooking. The food of slave workers is not good, but it is enough to ensure that they can have enough physical strength to work. After taking a quick look around, Roger took him to the nearby rubber forest.
The slaves working here can easily be distinguished from different regions by their appearance. There are skinny Malays, Persians with curly beards, dark-skinned Africans, and Javanese who seem to have not yet fully evolved. Yan Chujie is not interested in understanding the situation of these people. He is more concerned about the cultivation and breeding situation of the rubber trees planted here.
This plant, native to the Americas, was brought to the Far East for cultivation two and a half centuries in advance by the Haihan people who crossed over. The stage of producing profits can last for decades, and all the output will be produced by the sea. With the complete acquisition by the Han government, there is no need to worry about sales, and the economic benefits are far more cost-effective than growing food crops. In recent years, it has been one of the most popular projects among investors at the Haihan Investment Promotion Conference.
In the original history, it was a hundred years later that the French adventurer La Condamine brought the natural rubber produced in the Amazon rainforest back to France and handed it over to the National Academy of Sciences for research. Haihan started a full century earlier than its competitors. The elasticity, plasticity, lightness and waterproofness of natural rubber have not been discovered by other countries in this era. Haihan can use these characteristics of natural rubber to process it as a waterproof material to make various raincoats, rain boots and waterproof materials. Rain cloth and so on.
However, these applications are not the best uses of rubber. The key to turning natural rubber into a truly practical chemical industrial product is actually rubber vulcanization technology. After vulcanization, the rubber will have higher elasticity, heat resistance, tensile strength and other properties, making it more suitable for making industrial products. This technology originally had to wait until the mid-19th century to be developed by American inventor Charles Goodyear, and the Goodyear company named after him later became one of the most famous rubber tire companies. Forty years after Goodyear invented vulcanization technology, Englishman John Dunlop invented the world's first pneumatic tire, and his name Dunlop became the trademark of another famous tire company. As for the rubber products that can be used in industry, there are countless rubber products, such as hoses, tapes, sealing gaskets, conveyor belts, linings, etc. For the Sanya area, which urgently needs to vigorously develop power applications, self-production of wires with insulation properties is also a necessary condition. In addition, rubber has many applications in daily necessities, medical and health care, military, construction, etc. The huge demand gap is far beyond what the current rubber plantation capacity can fill.
The climate conditions in South Asia are very suitable for the cultivation of hevea trees, so rubber plantations occupy a very important position in the investment projects of Ambona Island. About half of the plantation projects currently being developed and constructed on the island are planted with rubber trees.
"The rubber trees planted here will have to wait a few more years before they can be harvested. People from the Ministry of Agriculture said that the annual dry rubber output per mu will be about 100 kilograms in the first five years, and will increase year by year thereafter, and will increase even more in ten years. To about 200 kilograms, the environment can be adapted to be higher." Roger introduced the situation of the plantation to Yan Chujie as he walked: "Qiong Lianfa has enclosed thousands of acres of land here, and only inputs were made during the growth period in the past few years. There is no output, so they only charge a nominal amount of land rent. A large part of the reason for their efforts to reduce labor costs is to minimize losses during this period. But when the banana harvest starts in a few years, they will make a profit. .”
In the plantation under the name of Qiong Lianfa alone, about half of the area is used to plant rubber trees. The Ministry of Agriculture estimates that after this rubber forest is put into production, it will be able to provide the Haihan Industry Department with about 20 tons of dry rubber every year. This alone will bring an annual income of hundreds of thousands of yuan to the sponsor. The previous operating costs can be earned back in the first two or three years of production, and stability will be gained from it in the next thirty or forty years. income.
Of course, the benefits that Haihan can obtain from it cannot be measured by the hundreds of thousands of yuan per year. The industrial application of rubber will greatly promote the development process of Haihan and change the society under Haihan's rule from still being based on agriculture. The industrial structure dominated by China is accelerating towards industrialization.
After visiting this plantation, Yan Chujie stopped by to check on the operating conditions of two other farms. The current farmland area on the island can basically ensure that there will be a surplus of food after meeting local needs. However, the income from food crops is far less than that of cash crops, so the minimum farming is almost done according to the land allocation method. That is to say, investors must have a certain proportion of the development land in the local circle used for cultivating food crops, and as part of the land rent, they must pay a certain amount of grain tax to the local management committee every year.
In addition to rice, the second most cultivated food crop on the island is cassava. This starch-rich crop is one of the main food crops in the tropics. It is native to South America and was brought to the Far East for cultivation during this period by travelers. This food crop does not need to be cultivated as intensively as rice, and the cultivation method is extremely simple. It is very suitable for South Asian slave laborers who are not good at farming to operate.
After visiting the plantations and farms, Yan Chujie’s next stop was the island’s Immigration Department. In addition to registering local Hai-Han residents, the most important function of this institution was to manage slaves imported from the outside world. In other words, this is the official agency that deals with slave traders from various countries and conducts various gray transactions.
The person currently in charge of managing this organization is Li Dagui, who made great contributions when Haihan attacked Amborna Island. It was precisely because of the various intelligence provided by him and Du Rong when they were undercover on the island for a long time that Haihan was able to operate smoothly. Got this place. Later, Du Rong was transferred to Penghu to serve, while Li Dagui stayed on Ambona Island. Adhering to the Haihan tradition of personnel appointments in which those who are capable work hard, Li Dagui, in addition to his position in the Ministry of Security, also holds an immigration management position in the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Of course, he will also make full use of the convenience of this position and choose those who can develop into intelligence officers among the various people he comes into contact with. Especially for the slave groups that arrived locally, his selection priority was even ahead of the military and employers.
"Chief, this is the transaction record of the purchase of slave labor this month. Please take a look." Li Dagui received a period of training in Sanya before joining the job. He naturally knows the status of Yan Chujie, a member of the executive committee, in Haihan official circles. This is He was the highest-ranking member of Haihan's senior management who he had close contact with, so his attitude was particularly humble, and he handed the book to Yan Chujie with both hands.
Yan Chujie took the book and started to look through it. The record on it was from October 2nd, which was about ten days ago. The delivery person was Geert Janssen, the captain of the Dutch East India Company. Yan Chujie had some impression of this name. He had seen it in the reports submitted by Ambrosia Island in the past. He should be the first batch to establish trade relations with Haihan. One of the Dutch. To a certain extent, Captain Jansen also represents the attitude of Batavia's senior leaders - as long as they can make money, the Dutch do not mind doing business with their enemies.
Jansen delivered three hundred and twenty slaves that day, most of whom came from the Batavia slave market. After a basic physical examination, Hai Hanfang accepted the slaves and paid the agreed transaction fee to Jansen. Three-quarters of these 320 slaves are men, and most of them are healthy men between the ages of fifteen and forty-five. This is also to meet the labor demand of the slave market on Ambrina Island.
(End of chapter)