After the meeting, Tang Tong took Hong Niangzi, Liu Rushi, Dayuer, Hai Lanzhu and others to visit the shipyard. There are now nearly 10,000 Japanese, thousands of Koreans, more than 1,000 Ming people, and about 100 Spaniards here. Tang Tong is very satisfied with the scale and progress of the shipyard. The workers in the shipyard are also very hardworking. There are only a dozen supervisors in the entire shipyard. It seems that under the leadership of those obedient Japanese, those Koreans are also obedient.
Afterwards, Tang Tong looked at the more than one hundred warships that had been built, and thought that if these warships were equipped with his artillery, it would be a very powerful navy. Such a navy would be enough to make those Westerners no longer dare to underestimate the Ming Dynasty at sea.
Tang Tong took the girls on a tour of the warships. At Liu Rushi's suggestion, Tang Tong named more than a dozen of the warships. The largest one was named Daming, followed by Yue Fei, Huo Tangbing, Wei Qing, etc. Tang Tong also named several medium-sized ships Chen Yuxian, Yuan'er, Hongniangzi, Liu Rushi, Dayuer, and Hailanzhu, which was also a way to please the girls. Seeing this, Heipi and others were also moved. After obtaining Tang Tong's consent, Heipi, Liu Yiming, Xu Yu, and Tang Chaosan also named a warship after themselves.
Tang Tong didn't care about these things. There were plenty of ships anyway, and more and better ones would be produced in the future. He would have to rack his brains to think of names at that time. However, if there were ironclad ships in the future, they could not be named so frivolously.
The next day, Tang Tong brought Hongniangzi and Hailanzhu, as well as Tang Chaosan, two thousand soldiers and three thousand Japanese accomplices to India to look for Westerners to buy artillery. Meanwhile, Heipi and his men began to capture local natives as slaves throughout Malaysia and then sell them to Westerners.
At the beginning, Hei Pi and his team's operation was successful, and they captured many indigenous people. However, because there were too many jungles here, these indigenous people hid in the deep jungles, making it less and less successful to capture them. It was not until a large number of immigrants came and developed the jungles that the indigenous people had no place to hide. But that's a story for later. However, in places like Southeast Asia and Australia, there are many indigenous people, and Hei Pi and his team never ran out of slaves. It's just that these slaves were not of high quality and had a bad reputation among Westerners. As a result, Hei Pi and his team only did this slave business for a few years and switched to selling black slaves. Later, Hei Pi and his team sent the indigenous people they captured to Europe for free. As for how these people got along with Westerners in Europe, that was their business.
Over a period of more than ten years, under Tang Tong's instruction, Heipi and his men sent more than three million aboriginal men from Southeast Asia and Australia to Europe, leaving this vast area with basically no aboriginal men. These people did not bring cheap labor to Europe. On the contrary, because of their inherent laziness, they consumed a lot of Europeans' food, causing the Westerners who bought these slaves to cry out that they were cheated. People said that the products produced were counterfeit and shoddy, but they didn't expect that there were also such counterfeit and shoddy slaves.
When Tang Tong took the first batch of more than a thousand slaves to India, he never thought that Westerners would never trade slaves with the Ming people in the future. Tang Tong's main purpose this time was to explore trade routes, so although the goods he brought were of many varieties, the quantity was not large. On the contrary, he brought a lot of soldiers, mainly to prevent Westerners from looking down on him.
Three thousand Japanese auxiliary troops equipped with muzzle-loading muskets and two thousand soldiers equipped with breech-loading rifles, such a team is absolutely incomparable to any colonial army of any Western country on land at that time. A strong military is the guarantee of trade in this era. Tang Tong is very clear about this.
Tang Tong did not know that this period was the Thirty Years' War in Europe, but he knew that there were two East India Directorates during this period, one was Dutch and the other was British. Because of the dispute with the Dutch in Southeast Asia, Tang Tong could only find the British East India Directorate. Of course, Tang Tong had no interest in the British East India Directorate. It was just that their tentacles had not yet extended to the Ming Dynasty, and Tang Tong would not create enemies for himself at will. Only after he had established a foothold in Southeast Asia and drove the Dutch and Spanish forces out of this area could he consider who his future enemies would be.
During this period, the British East India Company did not have much military force in India, and Britain's energy was all in Europe. In a few years, a capitalist revolution would take place in Britain, which was Tang Tong's opportunity.
When Tang Tong and his companions set foot on Indian soil, they were greeted not by Westerners but by local Indians. Since the end of the 16th century, when a large number of Westerners arrived in India, these Indians were no longer surprised by foreigners. On the contrary, many Indian upper-class people started doing business with Westerners. So when Tang Tong and his companions arrived at a port, many Indian upper-class people came to look for business opportunities.
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