Chapter 75: Money, Money, Money

Professor Luo was a mysterious figure. After crossing over, he only revealed his surname was Luo and kept everything else secret, so at first people just called him Old Luo. Later, everyone discovered this guy loved to forcibly lecture people on trivia, utterly oblivious to the atmosphere, a bit like Sheldon. And the thing was, whenever he debated someone, all kinds of data just rolled off his tongue — whether it was true or not, the average person couldn't out-argue him anyway, so the title "Professor Luo" stuck among the crowd.

Ever since he bruised his own cheek firing an AK, Professor Luo had been chased off to work in the Logistics Department, where taking inventory was his main duty. Just now, seeing Feng Jun and the others eyeing the sandalwood, his old habit kicked in and he came over to start lecturing.

"At that price, wouldn't a ton be worth tens of millions?" After hearing Professor Luo finish quoting the price, Xia Xianze was a bit surprised.

"The market is flooded right now with all sorts of mixed sandalwood from Indonesia, Australia, and Africa, and even for that, a single lightweight bracelet costs hundreds or thousands. Old White Sandalwood of Southern India at five thousand a jin is no problem." Professor Luo smiled and patted the wood bark with his hand, adding.

"Then process ten cubic meters first. Strip off all the bark, keep only the heartwood. Once Cao Zong arrives, ship it back first to test the market." Xia Xianze made the final decision.

"That's easy." Professor Luo nodded. "We've got carpenters on hand right now, and the Dutch definitely have some too. Quite a few non-combatants should have survived. Tomorrow, once we free up some hands, we'll start registering people. Find them and put them to work."

A total of forty cubic meters of raw logs were measured, weighed, and recorded. Next were the spices: pepper, nutmeg, cloves — all these common spices were in the warehouse. Pepper had the highest proportion, but the total quantity wasn't large; all these spices combined only amounted to one hundred and fifty dan. In this time period, spices held a lower position than sandalwood in trade with the Ming.

Several dan of pure white ivory aroused the visitors' interest without a doubt. While loudly denouncing the Dutch and Indians for having no concept of animal protection whatsoever, people took whole tusks in their hands, stroking them back and forth, clicking their tongues, their ugly greed on full display.

A loud "Clang—" snapped everyone back to their senses. They turned their heads to see Professor Luo now holding a copper gong.

"Where did the Dutch get so many copper gongs?" Everyone quickly noticed no less than ten dan of copper gongs piled in a corner.

"Copper gongs are a traditional Malay instrument, okay? Indonesia has so many copper mines." Professor Luo grinned mischievously again and tapped the gong with his knuckles. "The Dutch wanted to collect spices, so they've been mapping the Spice Islands all these years. Collecting some copper gongs was easy. This counts as filler cargo. Generally speaking, Ming Dynasty merchants still recognize the value of copperware."

All the more unique goods had been inspected. The Dutch warehouses also held some other coarse, miscellaneous goods: sappanwood for dye, Dutch linen and some coarse woolen cloth for making shirts, glass beads for fooling the natives, some lead-tin metal blocks, and several hundred locally purchased deerskins. Foodstuffs included a not-insignificant amount of flour, rice, palm oil, salted fish, and air-dried venison. The latter two had clearly been obtained from natives and Fujian fishermen.

The Great Ming's flagship products — raw silk, porcelain, and cotton cloth — were present in the warehouse in only pitifully small quantities. It seemed the intelligence was accurate: the Dutch were having a hard time in this period. The chaotic situation in Fujian made it impossible for the Red Hairs to establish trade channels with the Ming.

After the goods were fully inventoried, the whole noisy crowd surged into the Dutch Governor's Residence. Inside two large, plainly built solid-wood houses were many documents and letters. Professor Luo and Cai Feiming had struck a treasure trove; one rummaged through cabinets while the other translated, both bustling with delight.

Everyone else completely ignored those two. Their destination was a storehouse inside the Governor's Residence.

Yes, that's right. The storehouse was the Silver Vault.

Silver was the true flagship product of the Westerners. After the colonizers arrived in East Asia, the silver produced in the Americas finally found an outlet. The beautiful metal was forged into coins of every shape and size, and these coins converged into a rolling Silver Dragon, flowing only inward and never out, ultimately vanishing entirely into that magical land of China.

Marked by the Portuguese occupation of Macau, from the mid-Ming period onward, the annual external silver inflow into the Ming Dynasty — including from Japan — never fell below two million taels, peaking at over four million taels. Even after 1640, during the period of trade contraction caused by the great wars in Europe, the annual silver input into the Great Ming never dropped below one million taels.

Those damned Ming people needed nothing at all. Worst of all, they were clever and deft, capable of producing porcelain, raw silk — oh, and later, tea would be added — the very goods that drove colonizers mad. Yet the red-eyed Europeans had nothing — don't even mention those spices; in the total trade volume, all the colonizers' goods combined accounted for only a tiny fraction. The only thing the Ming people truly liked was silver.

In trade with the Great Ming, the concept of trade balance simply did not exist. Those pitiful goods were always mere supporting actors: utterly powerless, pig's head in hand but unable to find the temple door, clinging shamelessly, fighting tooth and nail, all just to earn the qualification to pour silver into the bottomless pit that was the Great Ming — that was the true portrait of the early colonizers.

The chests of silver the Dutch had shipped to Dayuan were now piled inside the Silver Vault, awaiting their new owner. Xia Xianze strode in with measured steps, the first to enter the storehouse. Once inside, he bent down, scooped a handful of coins from a wooden chest, and examined them closely.

Judged by the craftsmanship standards of the early 17th century, these Dutch Guilder silver coins in Xia Xianze's hand deserved the appraisal "decent condition."

The coin shape was basically a perfect circle, with an inscription around the outer rim. The obverse bore a design: a half-length samurai and a shield, while the reverse featured a lion, a common motif on European flags. Dutch coin designs in this period were rather casual; the basic rule of an emperor's portrait on the obverse and a crown and shield on the reverse had not yet fully formed.

The silver content of the Dutch Guilder was very high, exceeding 95%. The silver coins in these chests varied in size and were quite jumbled; everything from 1 Guilder to half-Guilder coins, and even large 5-Guilder and 10-Guilder silver coins could be found.

These coins couldn't be counted clearly in a short time, and they still needed to be sorted and have their content tested. Wang Liguo and the others would be busy for the next few days.

Besides several dozen chests of Dutch Guilders, the warehouse also contained a few chests of Spanish Pesos.

These Pesos were the classic early Spanish Cross Silver Coins. These hand-struck silver coins, which couldn't even achieve a round shape, were produced at the mint in Mexico City. The obverse featured a lion and castle design divided by a cross, and the reverse bore the early Spanish national emblem.

This type of Peso had already been circulating in the Great Ming for at least fifty years, especially in the Fujian region, where it was locally called "Wedge Silver." The Spanish Peso had a fineness of 95%, and one standard Peso weighed 27 grams, equivalent to 0.7 taels. Its face value was likewise divided into 8 reales, 4 reales, 2 reales, and other silver coins of varying sizes.