Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 370 The Meridian River (Part Two)
After more than ten years of development and operation, Xinhua has gradually grown from an impoverished pioneering base into a powerful regional force with a population of over 80,000.

At its core headquarters on Qiming Island, Xinhua has also successively established a system of industries covering more than ten categories, including steel, metallurgy, building materials, food processing, timber processing, machinery manufacturing, military industry, shipbuilding, and textiles.

Although these industries were small in scale and their technology was far from meeting later standards, in the early 17th century, Xinhua had become the only regional power in North America with an advanced industrial system, giving it an undeniable advantage in the colonization competition in North America.

Among Xinhua's many industries, the leather industry is undoubtedly its most important economic pillar.

Thanks to the extremely rich fur resources on the west coast of North America—from Alaska in the north to San Francisco Bay in the south, the vast forests, rivers and coastlines are filled with the active presence of Xinhua fur traders.

They set up purchasing stations and established trade relations with local indigenous tribes, exchanging goods such as ironware, cloth, salt, and alcohol for high-quality furs such as beavers, otters, seals, foxes, minks, deer, and bears. Then, through advanced and efficient processing techniques, they tanned these raw hides into soft and durable leather products.

For processed fur products, Xinhua mainly distributes them to the global market through two routes:

Xinhua's immigrant fleet, laden with furs and leather goods, crossed the Pacific Ocean, heading towards Ming Dynasty, Japan, Korea, and other places.

One method was to use Xinhua's ever-growing fleet of immigrant ships, laden with furs and leather goods, to cross the vast Pacific Ocean and sail to countries and regions such as the Ming Dynasty, Japan, and Korea.

During the Ming Dynasty, these North American furs were considered treasures, especially beaver and otter furs, which were the first choice for high-ranking officials and nobles to make fur coats because of their softness and delicacy.

In exchange, Xinhua merchants brought back Eastern goods such as silk, porcelain, tea, raw silk, medicinal herbs, pig bristles, and tung oil.

Some of these were kept for personal use, while others were resold to Japan, Annam, Siam, Champa, and even flowed into Spanish America through clandestine channels, forming a highly profitable trade chain.

Secondly, there was the increasingly prosperous smuggling network in Spanish America.

Despite the strict monopoly policy imposed by the Spanish royal family on trade in the Americas, Xinhua still managed to establish a relatively tight smuggling channel through native-born white nobles in Mexico, Peru, and other places to import leather products into the European market.

At this time, European nobles had an extremely strong demand for North American furs, and the market was expanding year by year.

It was the fervent pursuit of furs by all levels of society in France that fueled the French penchant for colonizing North America. Wave after wave of French fur traders traveled along the Lawrence River, venturing deep into the North American continent to search for furs, which they then transported back to France ship by ship.

During this period, whether in France or other European countries and regions, fur remained an expensive and luxurious commodity. Wealthy nobles and merchants wore beaver, otter, and seal furs hunted in North America. These furs were of excellent quality and were highly sought after by the wealthy class.

Ordinary people can only buy some cheap cowhide or sheepskin products, but not in large quantities.

At that time, apart from Britain, which developed a sizable livestock industry through the brutal Enclosure Movement, most European countries were still struggling to make a living from the land, and the market supply of both cowhide and sheepskin was not large.

What's even more "exciting" is that this period coincides with the stalemate and protracted nature of the Thirty Years' War in Europe. The demand for military equipment such as ammunition pouches, leather boots, holsters, water bags, belts, leather armor, and leather hats is increasing daily in various warring countries and regions, which to some extent greatly boosts the market demand for leather products.

When Xinhua was engaged in smuggling trade with Spanish America, in addition to importing large quantities of textile raw materials such as wool and cotton, it also continuously increased its purchases of other leather raw materials produced in the region, such as cowhide and crocodile skin. Then, through industrialized production methods, it made leather products and sold them to its partners, who then re-exported them to Europe.

The rapid rise of Xinhua's leather industry is attributed not only to its abundant and inexpensive fur resources, but also to its advanced tanning technology. Compared to European colonists who still relied on traditional tannic acid-based vegetable tanning agents for slow tanning, Xinhua's artisans began using improved chrome tanning and oil tanning processes several years ago, greatly shortening the production cycle and improving the leather's water resistance and softness.

This makes Xinhua's leather products highly competitive in terms of both quality and price in the Ming Dynasty, Spanish America, and even the European market, bringing Xinhua a huge profit of 80 to 100 million yuan every year.

In terms of a single supply channel, Xinhua had become the world's largest fur supplier during this period, influencing not only the fur trade pattern in the East but also having a profound impact on the European fur market.

Through Xinhua's smuggling channels, Spanish America indirectly imports approximately 8000 to 10000 pelts of various colors into Europe each year, with a total value exceeding 300,000 pesos.

Although this volume is still far less than that sold by French fur traders, it has had a certain impact on the fur market throughout Europe.

It can be said that through more than ten years of operation and planning, Xinhua has already formed a leather empire and continues to expand into a broader trade territory.

In its early days, Xinhua's fur processing was not much different from the tanning process in Europe. It mainly used vegetable tanning agents, such as bark, leaves, and fruits, which are rich in tannins. These tannins were combined with the collagen in the fur to transform the raw hide into durable vegetable-tanned leather.

While this process is simple and easy to operate, the tanning cycle is very long, lasting from several weeks to several months. Moreover, the finished leather is brownish-yellow and has a relatively hard texture, making it suitable for making shoe soles, equestrian tack, and rough leather clothing.

This led Xinhua to only perform simple tanning on those precious furs for a long time, and then sell them as raw hides to the Ming Dynasty and Spanish America, thus losing a huge amount of profit.

Of course, another method of fur tanning in Europe is to use mineral tanning agents and process the fur with natural alum, which makes the fur softer and cleaner.

However, no corresponding mineral deposits have been found within Xinhua's territory, so it needs to be imported in large quantities from Spanish America, making it easily subject to others' control.

To this end, the transmigrators used their extensive chemical knowledge to synthesize a variety of chemical raw materials, including trivalent chromium salts, aluminum salts, and sodium sulfide (sodium sulfide is produced by heating sulfur and reacting it with charcoal or natural sulfur ore with coke). This not only greatly shortened the entire fur tanning process (to only 1-2 days), but also made the fur softer and significantly improved the heat resistance of the leather.

Of course, most importantly, using chemical raw materials to tan fur not only improves production and processing efficiency but also greatly reduces tanning costs.

After all, there's no longer a need to spend time and effort importing alum and other vegetable tanning agents from Spanish America.

The widespread use of chemical tanning agents has directly driven the development and progress of Xinhua's chemical industry.

In many newly established colonies within Xinhua's territory, in addition to the corresponding local management agencies, there were usually fur stations of the Southern Trading Company.

These stations not only acquired various raw hides, but also built simple tanning workshops to perform preliminary processing on the collected hides before transporting them back to the headquarters on Qiming Island for final refining and coloring.

This distributed production system greatly reduces processing and transportation costs and ensures that Xinhua can respond quickly to market demands.

The several barrels of pungent substances carried on the immigrant ship that arrived at Muyang Fort were not the "poison" the sailors jokingly referred to, but rather chemical raw materials used by the fur station for tanning furs.
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(End of this chapter)