Chapter 3046
Since coming to North America, the frequency of Tom Wang's overseas trips has gradually decreased.
It’s not that his love for sailing has diminished, it’s just the nature of his current job.
Before coming to North America, Tom Wang only had to lead troops to fight as a naval commander and did not have to think about other things. But now he has also become a consul who leads a party, and there are a lot of government affairs that need to be handled in a timely manner every day.
Weighing the pros and cons, he could only focus on the overall situation, temporarily give up his hobbies for many years, and adapt to the new role as soon as possible.
In four years, he started from scratch and overcame countless hardships to build this seaport city on the west coast of North America. This also gave Tom Wang a sense of accomplishment.
But for him, Jinshan Port is not the final goal, but a starting point. The great deeds he wants to accomplish will not stop at Jinshan Bay or the river valley plain.
To the south, north, and west, there is vast land to explore, and countless resources waiting to be developed. Of course, there are many opponents who will not let Tom Wang achieve such a goal easily.
Western colonists set foot on the American continent much earlier than Wang Tom. There were already a large number of developed Western colonies in Central America and the east coast of North America. But Wang Tom believes that Haihan has enough strength to defeat these competitors and seize areas and resources with strategic value.
But before that, Wang Tom must first ensure that the Jinshan Colonial Area has the basic conditions to support the war. Even if Haihan, thousands of miles away, can provide some support, the local population, economy, manufacturing industry... are currently not up to standard. Wang Tom must first solve these basic problems before he can implement his planned development plan.
But using limited funds and personnel to solve all aspects of the problem is even more difficult than all the wars that Tom Wang has experienced in his life.
Among them, the matter of conscription alone is enough to give Tom Wang a headache.
There were more than 3,000 soldiers who followed Tom Wang to North America, but most of them were veterans over 30 years old. This was also the agreement that Wang Tom had reached with the Executive Committee, to keep young soldiers in the country as much as possible in exchange for the support of the Executive Committee.
Later, after arriving at Jinshan Bay, some people were recruited one after another from the family members of the army. Together with the soldiers recruited sporadically from other channels in the later period, the total strength was only about 4,000.
It is certainly no problem to achieve self-protection with such a force size, but if you want to launch external wars and quickly expand the territory of your ruling area, you will obviously need more troops to disperse the garrison.
Based on the current population structure and age situation in the Jinshan Colony, the number of retired personnel may continue to exceed the number of recruits that can be recruited for a foreseeable period in the future. This means that the military strength of the Jinshan Colonial Zone will not increase, but may actually be reduced.
Of course, Tom Wang can use it as a buffer by extending his service life and delaying the retirement of active duty soldiers. But to fundamentally solve this problem, we still have to find ways to increase the number of new recruits.
Otherwise, ten years later, most of the army will be veterans in their forties and fifties, and their combat effectiveness will be greatly reduced.
But if you want to increase the size of your troops by recruiting new soldiers, the local population situation is another big problem.
It is not impossible to introduce immigrants from Haihan, but due to geographical and maritime conditions, large-scale population migration across the Pacific is definitely not possible. Compared with the mainland of Haihan, the Jinshan Colonial Zone does not have the East Asian continent with a huge population base as a backing. North America is sparsely populated. Almost all of the colonies of Western countries are concentrated on the east coast and the Gulf of Mexico coast on the other side of the continent. The indigenous people called Indians live concentratedly in the North American continent in the middle of the continent with lush water and grass. plain areas.
There are not many indigenous tribes actually living on the west coast. In addition, the nature of the indigenous tribes is different from that of the Han people, so it is not easy to conquer them.
Wang Tom tried to recruit troops from the indigenous groups for two purposes. One was to obtain local sources of troops, and the other was to slowly naturalize the indigenous people through this method.
However, the execution of this task has never been ideal. Recruiting officers have been replaced one after another, but no breakthrough has been achieved. In the end, even a young man like Wang Anbang was sent to carry out the task of recruiting soldiers. This was somewhat like treating a dead horse as a living horse doctor.
"How has the mission been accomplished in the past month?"
Seeing Wang Anbang's somewhat depressed look, Wang Tom had actually roughly guessed the outcome. But he also wanted to see if his son could learn some truth from this mission.
Wang Anbang lowered his head and said: "My child is incompetent. I only recruited eight indigenous soldiers this month. I failed to complete the task. Please punish me from my father!"
Tom Wang did not lose his temper with him, but continued to ask: "You were full of confidence when you took over the task. You should have tried some different methods, right?"
Wang Anbang explained the various methods he had used in detail. Although some methods did not sound very reliable, Wang Tom still nodded slightly and affirmed his bold attempt.
"Then have you ever thought about why these methods don't work?"
Even if Wang Tom didn't raise this question, Wang Anbang had been thinking about it for several days, and then responded: "My child thinks that the current recruitment methods are based on the ideas we used before, and are applied to the indigenous people. But the ideas of these indigenous people are very different from those of our Haihan people, so the effect of conscription is not ideal.”
"For example, paying military salaries during service, granting nationality after service, allocating farmland, arranging work, etc. For these indigenous people, they don't seem to care much about these rewards."
"The indigenous people are used to bartering, and very few people can use coins for transactions. Even if they get some banknotes from us by selling goods, they will not keep them in their hands, but use them all immediately. They don't Treat coins as a form of wealth ”
"The indigenous people only recognize the rule of the tribal chiefs and lack recognition and awe of the significance of the country. In their eyes, Haihan is just a more powerful tribe, but they are not willing to leave their tribe easily."
"Most of the indigenous people make a living by fishing, hunting and grazing, and agricultural farming is still at the level of slash-and-burn farming. For them, allocating cultivated land to individuals is of little significance, because there is unowned land everywhere."
"It may mean nothing to them that we build towns, ports and cultivate farmland here because this is not the way they know how to live and work."
"Everything here may make them feel very novel, but it will not prompt them to actively join us and accept our arrangements and transformation, just like we will not actively join the indigenous tribes and become one of them."
(End of chapter)