Chapter 922 Amborna Island

Yan Chujie woke up to the aroma of seafood porridge. Last night's reception banquet lasted from evening to midnight. He didn't eat much, but drank a lot of wine. After the banquet, Roger arranged for another person who was said to be from Siam.

He spent the night with a little girl who was only about seventeen or eighteen years old. After a night of hard work, his stomach was already empty. Yan Chujie was already in his forties and had traveled thousands of miles south from Sanya.

Even though he was extremely energetic, it was inevitable that he would 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 Ambona Island has been quite impressive. In the early days, there were big investors such as Qiong Lianfa, Annan Consortium, Nanhai Investment Bank and other Haihan investors investing here to enclose land and build large plantations. Since the labor force here is huge,

Partly due to 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 is operating

The government provided many preferential policies to investors, and later attracted many businessmen from the Ming Dynasty 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 Lianfa Consortium, which had deep entanglements with Haihan's interests. This group of people first came from Haihan.

The businessmen who jointly engaged in the development of agricultural and forestry projects have now become Haihan's hardcore supporters. As long as it is a development project led by Haihan, they will invest money first to occupy the pit. Even though the cultivation on Ambon Island is

Due to the crop growth cycle, the plantation has not yet entered the real profit stage. However, at the beginning of this year, Qiong Lianfa doubled the area of ​​the previous two thousand acres of plantation. This also shows that shareholders are interested in

The prospects for the development of Ambuna Island are promising.

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,

This is one of the main reasons why the funders 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 were sold to Ambon Island by human traffickers across the country.

The slaves must first perform unpaid labor on the island for more than half a year, and then based on their performance, the qualifications for applying for naturalization will gradually be opened. Of course, under the intentional control of the sponsors, the conversion rate from slaves to naturalized citizenship

It 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 have no 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 unnecessary branches.”

In order to reduce costs, plantation and farm operators will take the initiative to release slaves after their unpaid labor time is up, and then purchase new cheap labor from slave traders. However, these freed slaves have temporarily lost their jobs.

If you are working, you will not be able to apply for naturalization locally. The large number of unemployed people who appear in batches will inevitably affect the local public security environment. However, this approach of the operator does not violate the current laws and regulations of Haihan, so the local management committee also

They can only choose a compromise solution and transport all the released slave workers to Sanya for redistribution. Although this will delay the time for the slave workers to apply for naturalization for a period of time, the treatment they can get if they go to HN Island

After all, it will be much better than here on Ambuna Island.

Although Haihan's senior management is also aware of the fishy nature of this, it does not stop operators from repeatedly using such methods to reduce costs. These slaves are considered lucky in this era to be able to obtain basic living conditions, at least they are not

They will be used as pure livestock just like their compatriots who fell into the hands of Western colonizers. Although the first period of entering Haihan society will be difficult, as long as they can survive naturalization, there is still hope for a better life in the future.

of.

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 with twenty people to a room was cleaned by dedicated personnel every day, and facilities such as wells, bathrooms, and public toilets were provided.

It is also very complete. The medical and health institutions on the island will also come regularly to provide some guidance on epidemic prevention to avoid the outbreak of epidemic diseases 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 doing laundry and cooking in the dormitory. The food for the slave workers was not good, but it was basically enough to ensure that they had enough food.

After physical labor and a quick look around, Roger took him to a 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

He was not interested in understanding the situation of these people. He was 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 from China. 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 development of natural rubber

The advantages of elasticity, plasticity, lightness and waterproofing 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, rainproof cloth, etc.

.

However, these applications are not the best uses of rubber. The key to turning natural rubber into a truly practical industrial product is rubber vulcanization technology. After vulcanization, the rubber will have higher elasticity, heat resistance, and tensile strength.

It has such characteristics that it is more suitable for making industrial products. This technology was not developed until the middle of the 19th century by the American inventor Charles Goodyear, and the Goodyear company named after him became the most famous rubber tire in later generations.

One of the companies. Forty years after Goodyear invented vulcanization technology, Englishman John Dunlop invented the world's first pneumatic tire, and his name Dunlop also 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-produced tapes with insulation properties

Electrical wires are also one of the necessary conditions. In addition, rubber has many applications in daily necessities, medical and health, 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. Currently, about half of the plantation projects developed and constructed on the island are

Rubber trees were planted.

"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 in the first five years, the annual dry rubber output per mu will be about 100 kilograms. After that, it will increase year by year, and it will increase even more in ten years.

To about 200 kilograms, the environmental adaptability can 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. In the growth period in the past few years, only input

There is no output, so they only charge a small amount of symbolic rent. They try their best to reduce labor costs, and a large part of the reason 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 hundreds of thousands of yuan in income to the sponsor every year. All 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 are not measurable by the hundreds of thousands of yuan per year. The industrial application of rubber will greatly promote Haihan's development process 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 cultivation area on the island can basically ensure that there will be a surplus of food after meeting local demand, but the income from food crops is far away.

Far less than cash crops, so minimum cultivation is almost always carried out according to the land allocation method. That is, investors must have a certain proportion of the area for cultivating food crops in the local development land and use it as land rent.

Part of them must pay a certain amount of grain tax to the local management committee every year.

Apart from 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 here by travelers.

During the period, farming was carried out in the Far East. This kind of food crop does not need to be cultivated as intensively as rice, and the planting 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 Haihan residents, the most important function of this agency is to manage slaves imported from the outside world.

In short, this is the official organization 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.

Won this place. Later, Du Rong was transferred to Penghu to serve, while Li Dagui stayed on Amborna Island. Adhering to the personnel appointment tradition of Haihan capable people who work hard, Li Dagui, in addition to the duties of the Security Department,

, he also holds a concurrent position in the Ministry of Civil Affairs in charge of immigration management. Of course, he will also make full use of the convenience of this position to select those who can develop into intelligence personnel among the various people he comes into contact with. Especially for those who arrive in the local area.

As a group of slaves, 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 was somewhat impressed by this name.

I have seen it in the reports submitted by Ambrosia Island in the past. He should be one of the first Dutch people to establish trade relations with Haihan. This Captain Janssen also represents the top management of Batavia to a certain extent.

Attitude - The Dutch don't mind doing business with their enemies as long as they can make money.

Jansen sent 320 slaves that day, most of whom came from the slave market in Batavia. After a basic physical examination, Haihanfang accepted the slaves and presented them to

Jansen paid the agreed transaction price. Three-quarters of the 320 slaves were men, and most of them were healthy men between the ages of fifteen and forty-five. This was also to adapt to Anbu Na.

Labor demand in the island slave market.
Chapter completed!