Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 185 South American Specialties
At the end of July, the newly formed Rio Grande do Sul Ocean Shipping Company fleet arrived in Southeast Asia, with its first stop being the Natuna Islands.

The shipping company owns more than 150 ocean-going vessels with a displacement of more than 500 tons. Since the maiden voyage only needs to carry more than 10,000 Southeast Asian Chinese, one-third of the ships, about 50 ships, came on this voyage.

With the establishment of an ocean-going shipping company, the fleet's mission is not just to transport immigrants. Carrying goods for sale is also an important task on the route between South America and Asia.

South America is rich in animal and plant resources. High-yield crops such as corn, soybeans, sweet potatoes, and potatoes were spread to Asia and other places by European colonists, increasing local food production and feeding more people.

However, plants with medicinal value such as cocoa, rosewood, sandalwood, mahogany, balsam wood, snake mulberry, cinnamon, and cinchona have not been widely spread like sweet potatoes due to their picky living environment. Their origins are limited to the American continent, and their production is limited. Their prices have remained high, and there is a lot of profit margin. Therefore, in addition to storing daily necessities and weapons and equipment, the remaining space in the fleet is filled with preliminarily processed herbal medicines, cocoa, and some selected cinchona seeds.

After the fleet arrived in Southeast Asia, cocoa and plant medicinal materials were quickly sold in batches at high prices to local kings and merchants in the Malay Peninsula, Thailand, Annan and other places. Cinchona seeds were planted in suitable locations in the Natuna Islands by more than a dozen specially hired South American Indians.

The cinchona tree is suitable for living in humid and rainy areas. In later generations, southern Yunnan Province, Taiwan Island, Indonesia, and Malaya were the main production areas of the cinchona tree besides South America.

Southeast Asia has a tropical rainforest climate and a natural environment similar to that of most parts of South America. The fleet planted cinchona trees in the Natuna Islands on the one hand to take into account the impact of natural factors and on the other hand to obtain greater profits.

In 1850, the British extracted the anti-dysentery drug quinine from the cinchona tree, solving the biggest threat to colonists’ lives in tropical regions.

After the invention of quinine, European colonists began to gradually expand their sphere of influence in Southeast Asia and Africa. Annan, Burma, Malaya, and the East Indies gradually fell, and the European colonists' control over Southeast Asia became increasingly stronger.

The invention of quinine was of great significance to European colonists. However, in 1869, about 19 years after the invention of quinine, due to the limited source of cinchona trees, the manufacturing cost of quinine had not been effectively reduced, which limited the large-scale use of quinine.

The second half of the 19th century was a historical period of rapid technological change. In the following decades, with the advancement of science and technology, the output of industrial and pharmaceutical raw materials such as rubber and cinchona trees discovered in South America increased rapidly. Only in the more than ten years before that did rubber and cinchona trees have the opportunity to maintain high prices and make huge profits by relying on South America's monopoly position.

Europeans have mastered the production technology of quinine drugs. The reason why they have not introduced cinchona trees on a large scale to other regions is mainly because they have not chosen a suitable location to plant the transplanted seedlings. This limitation can be solved in a few years as they gradually explore and experiment. Therefore, Li Mingyuan, relying on the knowledge of later generations, was the first to transplant cinchona trees in the Natuna Islands. He could seize the opportunity, use the raw material production area nearby, and make profits in Asia, a region with a vast market.

The high-priced sale of South American local specialties brought considerable profits. After consultation between the fleet leader and Sun Bin and others, they decided to keep most of the sales profits as immigration costs, and use the rest to purchase and recruit Chinese craftsmen who were scattered around Southeast Asia.

In every war-torn era, the people of the Central Plains would move collectively. For example, when Henan encountered famine, the local people habitually fled to Gansu and Shaanxi, while the residents of Shandong flocked to the northeast. Refugees from Hebei and Shanxi fled to the Hetao Plain and Mongolian grasslands where nomadic peoples lived. The migration of the northern Han people to the grasslands brought much-needed technical talents to the nomadic peoples. Then the nomadic peoples relied on the fleeing Han craftsmen to develop a military manufacturing system, strengthen their own strength and launch an invasion of the Central Plains. The internal troubles in troubled times led to external troubles. In the last years of the dynasty, foreign invasions mostly came from this.

Compared with the north, the south was plagued by miasma. The indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia had a favorable natural environment and were not as aggressive as the nomadic peoples in the north. The Han people who fled to Southeast Asia quickly integrated into the local community and had less impact on the Central Plains.

Rio Grande do Sul is a long way from Asia. The Chinese who went to South America voluntarily or involuntarily were at the bottom of society. Except for a few anti-Qing volunteers who had rudimentary knowledge, various traditional craftsmen were very rare among ordinary people.

The development of Rio Grande do Sul was on track. In terms of industry, since the industry was just in the early stages of rapid development in the second half of the 20th century, Chinese apprentices could start from scratch under the guidance of Prussian technical workers. However, traditional Chinese industries, such as tea making, porcelain refining, and building Chinese wooden buildings, required skilled craftsmen with more than three or four years of experience. Without the guidance of a master, it was difficult for ordinary people to master the relevant skills in a short period of time.

The development of industry will eliminate most of the technological enterprises of the feudal period. When Prussian experts and technicians helped Rio Grande do factory facilities in South Rio Grande, Li Mingyuan did not care much about the lack of talent in traditional Chinese industries, because in the post-industrial era, Li Mingyuan was accustomed to accepting industrial products and had little contact with traditional industries in his daily life.

At this time, except for the forced changes in clothing and costumes of the Han people under the rule of the Qing Dynasty, they maintained traditional habits in their daily lives.

When Li Mingyuan inspected construction sites in various parts of Rio Grande do Sul, he often found that many newly married Chinese families had evacuated their makeshift collective wooden houses. Five or six familiar Chinese retired soldiers formed a construction team, helping each other transport wood on their land and build simple Chinese-style wooden houses.

In Rio Grande do Sul, local Brazilians left behind brick kilns and Western-style houses built with bricks and rubble. Li Mingyuan was a little surprised why they did not live in the houses allocated to them. After asking them, he realized that most Chinese were very dissatisfied with the Western-style brick and tile houses left by the Brazilians. They thought that Western-style houses were not only uncomfortable to live in but also ugly, and not as ventilated and beautiful as Chinese-style wooden houses. So even if they were allocated Western-style brick and tile houses, they still wanted to build a Chinese-style wooden house suitable for living.

The inertia of traditional culture has a great influence on the Chinese. There are many similar things like building Chinese-style wooden houses in Rio Grande do Sul. Wang Pu and officials in charge of government affairs in Rio Grande do Sul have also made similar suggestions to Li Mingyuan many times, hoping to migrate more Chinese craftsmen from the mainland to solve the inconvenience of Chinese life in Rio Grande do Sul. Therefore, in addition to completing the established immigration mission, the ocean-going fleet added a new mission.

Annan is a place where many Chinese live in Southeast Asia. Among the more than 300,000 Chinese, there are many craftsmen of all kinds. Sun Bin accepted the task of selecting some Chinese craftsmen from Annan as the first batch of Nanyang immigrants. At the same time, he sent his men to recruit craftsmen in the concessions of European powers such as Hong Kong, Macau, and Shanghai as Annan Chinese merchants. …

The fleet stayed in Southeast Asia for half a month, and after receiving 11,000 ordinary immigrants and 1,000 craftsmen, it set off back to South America in mid-August, and Sun Bin continued to be responsible for the subsequent task of recruiting Chinese craftsmen.

(End of this chapter)