Chapter 271: The Spanish Choice

Time rewinds to the end of May. Back then, the Spanish ship Alicante, which had set out from Taipei, encountered the Yuan Dou at sea, was then hijacked to Dayuan, and ultimately, after being forcibly stuffed with some goods, was made to serve as a messenger for the first time.

And when Ensign Diego Sandoval sailed the ship back to Manila in early June, it immediately caused a sensation.

After Governor-General Juan Niño de Tabola had delightedly finished reading those diplomatic files, he personally watched the part-time mason Andrés Iniesta's performance of plastering red bricks with cement. In the end, he decided to use these neatly lined, high-quality red bricks and the miraculous cement on a newly built fort in Manila.

As for the raw silk, silk fabrics, goose down, and other daily miscellaneous goods including glassware and porcelain, they were quickly carved up and snatched away by the merchants, nobility, and the Church within the city of Manila.

And for the Mishan people prisoners locked in the jail, along with the beggars, vagrants, and drunkards in the city, life had suddenly become harsh recently. The Chief of Police and the guards under his command had turned just and strict overnight; many vagrants with no family members to come pay their bail began to vanish.

Although the Governor-General was still discussing and negotiating with his officials, the keen-nosed merchants had already begun organizing sources of goods. The moment Ensign Diego Sandoval revealed the Transmigration Nation's trade terms at a bigwig's banquet, many present immediately thought of those nearly free beggars and Mishan people prisoners.

The Lord's flock had no psychological barrier against turning the habitually unruly Mishan people and Malays into slaves. Manila had already imported many black slaves; now exporting some yellow slaves was also God's will. It was enough to leave only the docile Tagalog people in the city.

And just as the merchants were actively organizing their "sources of goods," Governor-General Juan, after two brief rounds of meetings, not only fully responded to Dayuan's trade demands, but he also took the opportunity to dispatch a young Special Envoy, Viscount Juan, who was a distant, roundabout relative of his.

There was a reason the Spanish reacted so "intensely."

Looking at all the colonial powers that had already gained a foothold in East Asia, if one discards the third-rate minor players, like the Danish East India Company, then among the existing three strong powers of the Dutch, Portugal, and Spain, it was the Spanish who were currently faring the worst.

In fact, even the British, who were still very weak at the moment, were already showing vigorous vitality in colonization and trade.

Yet the Spanish's territory was perpetually in a state of danger.

The danger did not come from cannons and warships, but from a trade landscape long devoid of any pioneering spirit. The Spanish, accustomed to a trade method of buying, buying, buying with silver, had lost their own blood-making mechanism and had degenerated into mere porters of precious metals.

Unlike powers like Britain and the Dutch, who were pioneering enterprises with their own core competitiveness, the Spanish were now like those wastrel rich second-generations who only know how to take money from their father's pocket to spend, but have no ability themselves to invest and earn money.

However, the good days were gone forever. The silver contraction in Europe caused by the Thirty Years' War, the Habsburg Dynasty's military expenditures like a bottomless pit—all of this exposed the naked-swimming Spanish's backside. The silver dug out annually from South America was not even enough to pay the interest on the loans from those greedy merchants.

Under these circumstances, it was no surprise that Spain's colonies scattered around the world began to shrink day by day. With no money in Father's pocket, the second-generation's life was naturally hard.

The big-pie-faces even perfectly passed this gene down to their descendant, Venezuela.

Venezuela, whose national income once ranked among the world's top ten, would rather give universal welfare to its people when it had money than engage in some base industry. Then oil prices fell, and inflation... looking across history, only Zimbabwe can compare; even leaving a blank space is not enough to qualify.

In short, a country without its own blood-making capability is just nature's porter, whether it's carrying silver or oil. The moment the international situation changes, they are the first to kneel.

The 17th-century Philippines was no exception. The Dutch had already built their own trade channels and distribution networks in East Asia, centered on the spices of the Spice Islands, and were running all sorts of triangle trade with roaring success.

Yet the Spanish were now living more and more retrogressively. As the royal subsidies decreased, the intermediary trade between China and Mexico, which Manila had always relied on for its livelihood, was also shrinking day by day. In the competition with other colonizers, the Spanish's situation was becoming increasingly disadvantageous.

And right at this moment, crack! A thunderclap from the blue—Father had arrived.

All the trade terms proposed by the Transmigrators were, in the eyes of the Spanish, their most urgent needs of the moment; there was no reason to refuse. As for that tiny fort, what a joke. The Iberian people gave away colonies by the chunk; a fort the size of a needlepoint was not even within the gentlemen's scope of consideration.

In fact, once they obtained sufficient Ming goods from Dayuan, that small foundation in Taipei would lose its meaning in itself. Wasn't the original reason for building the fort in Taipei precisely to attract Ming merchants?

Under these circumstances, a rare instance of high-efficiency action by the Spanish began. Regardless of the consequences, the Manila side, with its high-level officials long anxious about the strategic situation, dispatched two merchant ships loaded with slaves at extreme speed, heading straight for Dayuan.

One must know that at this time, Governor-General Juan was still negotiating with various factions about the permits, quotas, and tax amounts for the slave trade.

The trade fleet was captained once again by "the Transmigrators' old friend," Ensign Diego Sandoval. The passengers on board included no fewer than ten merchant groups, as well as 400 slaves for testing the waters, and, of course, the Special Envoy.

And the cargo on the ships was prepared according to the trade list provided by the Transmigrators: a large amount of Philippine rice and a small quantity of local products like abaca and Indian cotton. Of course, the most important silver coins could definitely not be omitted.

One week later, the fleet smoothly arrived at the Tai River Dock. The straight-line distance from Manila to Tainan is only 900 kilometers; with favorable winds, it takes at most one week.

After arriving in Dayuan, nothing disappointed the big-pie-faces. The fantastical steel machinery, the beautiful and tidy streets and buildings—all of this proved that Ensign Diego had not lied when he was in Manila.

And the merchants, who had always held a skeptical attitude, could not help but be overjoyed upon seeing the various industrial goods manufactured by the Transmigrators.

In fact, the most exciting moment for the men of insight within the fleet was the instant the slaves were smoothly sold off. From this moment on, Manila had finally shed its identity as an empty-shell middleman. Just as the Dutch had their spices, the Spanish now also had an inexhaustible "signature product," and this was more important than anything else.