Chapter 1676 Order restored
The issue of slave identity transformation is almost inevitable in this era. The Manila area also has a large slave population from East Africa, West Asia, South Asia and other places. According to records seized from the Governor's Palace, there are currently at least more than 2,800 registered slaves living in the area around Manila Bay, and the actual number is definitely higher than this, because according to the Spanish colonial government's management of slaves in the past, System, these slaves entered the local market through official channels, and the slave owners had paid taxes to the Manila authorities. In order to save this money, many slave owners would also try to secretly smuggle people into the country. The existence of "black households" was also a common phenomenon here.
During the Spanish rule, it could be said that the probability of slaves deregistering and becoming free was very small. Generally speaking, they had to serve their masters as low-class servants or coolies until the day they went to the grave. Only a handful of them had to do so. Lucky people can be favored by God.
After Haihan took over here, some of the slave owners had died in the war, and these slaves were able to automatically break away from slavery and become the first batch of free people after the war. Of course, this kind of freedom is only relative. In the Manila area under Haihan's management, not everyone can come and leave as they please. Even if you are a free citizen, you still need to re-register your identity with the Haihan Civil Affairs Department. If you want to obtain Haihan citizenship in the future, you must have official basic personal information.
Haihan's official attitude towards the human trade has always been ambiguous. He does not openly support but does not explicitly oppose it. Of course, Haihan accepts all slaves introduced to the Manila area by the Spaniards. However, these thousands of slaves had to be classified, checked, and re-registered, which was a very troublesome task for the civil affairs department headed by Qiu Yuan.
For locals, including Spanish immigrants, who did not take the initiative to engage in armed confrontation with Haihan's army, Haihan still recognized their property ownership in principle. And these slaves, according to current laws, are also part of private property. However, most local people had doubts about the management measures of the new rulers, and coupled with language and cultural barriers, the demographic work in the Manila area was carried out very slowly. Qiu Yuan also had to refer to the information left by the Spanish colonists to revise his administrative measures.
According to Qiu Yuan's idea, after taking over the administrative work in the Manila area, there are two tasks that must be carried out as soon as possible. One is to complete the survey and registration of the local population situation, and the other is to organize manpower to resume social production as soon as possible. Creating more job opportunities so that people do not need to consider the negative impact of dynasty changes on their lives is one of Qiu Yuan's most important policy policies.
Haihan has used hard or soft means to seize a lot of land from various countries in the past few years. He has also organized many post-war social order restoration efforts and has a relatively mature operation plan. Qiu Yuan did not bring many people, so he temporarily selected a group of Han people from the local area to be responsible for specific civil affairs affairs. While training, he took them to practice operations. Although there were still some stumblings, he finally succeeded in defeating the laymen of the military. .
The local industries in Manila are mainly commerce, food, and spices. However, the level of agricultural science and technology of the Spaniards is very different from that of Haihan. The previous colonial government did not have a scientific long-term plan for agricultural development, so local agriculture is still It has a very extensive business model, with a relatively single variety of agricultural products and a lack of facilities for deep processing. But even so, agriculture is still one of the important pillar industries of the local area. According to Spanish statistics, the local agricultural population accounts for about 70% of the total population.
Senior officials of the Haihan Ministry of Agriculture referred to the development experience of this area in later generations and prepared to introduce a large number of cash crops such as coffee trees, tobacco, sugar cane, and oil palm in the plain areas near Manila, and establish an agricultural deep processing industry chain to enhance the local economic value of agricultural products. Most of these people with relatively clean backgrounds, including those who have become free slaves, will be used as laborers in agricultural development in the next few years.
However, it will take at least two or three years for this plan to see real results. All that can be done now is to organize idle people inside and outside the city and let them resume production and labor. This will also help stabilize local social security. situation.
Qiu Yuan's purpose is very clear. Since the local agricultural population accounts for a large proportion, as long as these people can have a stable livelihood, the local situation will not be prone to chaos. Creating jobs for the agricultural population is one of the ruling skills that Haihan is good at. Given the natural conditions of the plains north of Manila Bay, with proper planning, it is easy to feed 1.8 million people.
Restoring the local business industry is a familiar path for Haihan. Manila itself is a trading port built by the sea. If Haihan hadn't emerged a few years ago, Manila would have been the main trade center in the South China Sea. One, it should be almost the same as Batavia run by the Dutch. With such unique natural conditions, Haihan, who is good at operating ports, will certainly try to build it into a free trade port similar to Sanya. This means there will be many infrastructure projects and jobs, as well as the need to recruit a large number of local labor forces.
A few days after Qiu Yuan arrived in Manila, notices began to appear on the streets that the government wanted to recruit a large number of local laborers. The content was written in Chinese characters and Spanish. Any local who wanted to find a job could go to the designated place at the designated time. Location, after registering personal information, you can get job assignment opportunities. Even those who have just escaped from slavery will be treated equally.
For the locals who were in panic after the war, these recruitment notices were tantamount to the beginning of a new life. As long as the war ended and they could get a job that could support themselves, it seemed that there was no question who would be the ruler of Manila City. Nothing important.
On the first day after the notice was posted on the streets, more than 500 people went to the registration location designated by the government to register, fearing that they would miss this opportunity. And when the news spread that the government fulfilled the benefits in the notice and immediately assigned jobs to these people after registering their information, more people who had originally held a wait-and-see attitude could no longer sit still and went to fight for a livelihood for themselves. By the third day, the officially registered number of people had exceeded 2,000, and about half of them were assigned to the Port of Manila to renovate and expand the terminal facilities here. Most of the remaining people were sent to the newly established state-owned farms in the north of the city to cultivate new farmland there to plant various cash crops planned by the Ministry of Agriculture. During the Spanish occupation, the size of the docks in Manila Port was actually not small. In its heyday, the Manila Fleet was stationed in this port and occupied less than one-third of the entire docks. It's just that the development and construction of the wharf by the Spanish was limited by the productivity and shipbuilding level of this era. They never considered that large sailing ships like Haihan could enter the port and dock, and they still tended to be conservative in the design of the berths. In addition, there are no large-scale equipment at the port. Unlike the port operated by Haihan, it has convenient dry bulk lifting tools and port facilities such as a sea-to-land dock rail transportation system that can improve the efficiency of loading and unloading.
To expand the scale of trade here, Qiu Yuan believed that the port’s cargo handling capacity should first be improved. After an on-site inspection of the Manila Port, he believed that the old situation was obviously not suitable for Haihan’s operating standards, so the port must first be improved. The terminal has been upgraded to a certain extent so that this maritime gateway can ensure the smooth flow of goods in and out of the port.
Of course, to carry out the transformation envisioned by Qiu Yuan, the amount of work is not small. It is estimated that the construction period will be at least three to six months, and the construction will be carried out in stages to ensure that the Manila Port can still maintain normal operation during the construction period. While this brought a large number of jobs, it also put considerable financial pressure on the newly appointed Qiu Yuan. Even based on the cheapest project cost standards, the cost of the Manila Port reconstruction project is millions, and the construction funds awarded to him by the Executive Committee are so different that it is not enough to complete the first phase of the project. Very frugal.
Fortunately, Qiu Yuan was prepared for this situation. When he set out from Sanya this time, in addition to grassroots officials from various departments, there were also businessmen from Daming, Annan, Portugal and other countries in the fleet. The purpose of these foreign businessmen who went to Manila as soon as possible after the war was naturally to seize the land as soon as possible. They had already tasted the benefits in the emerging colonies in the past few years. And they were able to get this opportunity because they had a close relationship with Haihan officials, so they were able to get this inside information early.
Of course, this kind of "care" is not one-sided. Since you want to gain benefits from Haihan's newly occupied colony, you have to pay some exchange conditions. For example, spending money to sponsor local port facilities is one of them. Qiu Yuan called these merchants together for a meeting and revealed that there was insufficient funds to build the port. However, when the port is completed in the future, wharves and warehouses will be given priority to those merchants who have made contributions during this period. So each family understood the idea and decisively donated money and materials to show their support for the government. In just one day, the problem of the project's funding gap was basically solved.
The rewards that merchants receive from this are not limited to the benefits of ports and terminals. In the subsequent agricultural development in inland areas, these bleeding merchants also have priority in enclosing land and selecting business projects. .
The Ministry of Agriculture has prepared a number of plantation projects in units of 1,000 acres for them, waiting for these businesses to choose and then go to the northern inland enclosure for implementation. Similar cooperation has been implemented many times in other ruling areas of Haihan. Both parties are already familiar with it and there is nothing to worry about in terms of the process. The current plan of the Ministry of Agriculture is to complete the preliminary land enclosure and planting project determination as soon as possible, and then transport the seedlings here from the breeding base in Hainan Island, striving to put the first batch of plantations into formal operation before the National Day this year.
As for the many mineral deposits on Luzon Island, there are currently not enough manpower available for development. No matter how many ideas Qiu Yuan has, he can only stare at the map at the moment. The executive committee did not ask him to come up with a specific mining timetable. If the situation in Manila is stabilized within the year and all management work is gradually put on the right track, he will be able to deliver.
A week after Roger's troops left, Harugong also evacuated Manila with his cavalry battalion. He first returned to Hainan Island for a short rest and then went to the Liaodong area, just in time for the confrontation that might break out after the spring. Although the cavalry battalion did not make any great achievements in coming to Manila this time, the harvest was not small. In addition to the military reward given by the Ministry of National Defense, Harugong also took away more than 40 Andalucians collected from local pastures. Young horse. If Yan Chujie hadn't said that he wanted to keep a group of war horses locally, he would probably have shipped out all the Spanish war horses captured after the war.
After the cavalry battalion evacuated, the naval fleets that set out for Manila also set sail and returned to their respective bases. Wang Tom personally led the Marines northward. Now the only place where his troops can continue to train is probably the distant Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea regions. However, in addition to his opponent Houjin, Wang Tom himself had some other plans. However, the time was not yet ripe, so Wang Tom prioritized military training and accumulated combat experience to prepare slowly.
The last special forces unit to leave the Port of Manila was Qian Tiandun's special operations battalion, and Defense Minister Yan Chujie also returned to Sanya with them. As one of the most important officials in the capture of Manila, the special operations battalion will be welcomed by the people when it returns to Sanya and participate in the celebration parade specially prepared by the Executive Committee for this purpose. Of course, the long-awaited organizational upgrade by Qian Tiandun and the special operations battalion will also be officially announced during the event as a reward for this legendary unit.
However, there was a small episode before the special operations battalion evacuated Manila, that is, Haihan quietly released the Spaniard Aragones and dispatched a Spanish merchant ship to him so that he could go to other countries still in the South China Sea. Colonies under Spanish rule. After being captured, Aragones chose to cooperate with Haihan in exchange for freedom, and Haihan eventually fulfilled this agreement. It's just that Aragones' identity as Governor of the Philippines has been in name only since then, and he may still be punished by Spain in the future. Even if he regains his freedom from Haihan, he may not be able to live a comfortable life in the future.
(End of chapter)