In fact, he found out the attitude of the British government through the participation of the British navy. It seems that the British government did not hinder Zhu Jinglun from building fortifications at the Pearl River Estuary. From this point of view, at this time, the Englishman was much more amiable than the later Americans, far less overbearing than the American imperialists. Of course, it also means that China is far less threatening to the United Kingdom than China.
Soon, four 1-pound main gun contracts were negotiated with Jardine Matheson, and the price of each gun was 32,000 silver, totaling 122,000. This business satisfied Jardine Matheson, and the profit was quite rich. The only dissatisfaction was that Zhu Jinglun insisted on cash on delivery and said that once the guns arrived in Xin ‘an, he would send the money to the headquarters of Yihe Bank in Hong Kong.
The two sides also signed a formal commercial contract, which clearly stipulated their respective strengths and obligations, and Zhu Jinglun was very sure that once the war started, the deal would be ruined, and he could also use it to ask Jardine Matheson for compensation.
However, it is really necessary to build a battery. Without a battery to defend the Pearl River after the war, Zhu Jinglun can’t guarantee whether the British will come to Guangzhou again and be occupied by the British. It will be difficult to recover it, because at that time, the British troops will be ten times as large as they are now, and how can we make up for such a huge combat effectiveness gap?
In fact, Zhu Jinglun had secretly placed orders with other objects long ago, but he didn’t choose much. He didn’t consider that the French would fight side by side with the British in half a year, and he wouldn’t sell guns to the Russians. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been beaten up by the British and French allied forces a few years ago. The American artillery technology was almost about to break out. The American artillery technology was still good in the American Civil War, but the United States couldn’t trust the mediation in the second crow’s war to secretly spy for the British and French allied forces. Zhu Jinglun believed that once the Americans were allowed to help build the fort, he would change hands
Technology should be credible, especially the latter, and there are not many objects to choose. Finally, Zhu Jinglun chose Sweden.
In fact, as early as Zhu Jinglun and Bai Gui decided to rebuild the fort, the order was given to the Swedes shortly after that, which was at the end of December last year.
At this time, the Swedish merchant ship with Zhu Jinglun’s order is estimated to be returning to Europe soon, and soon a merchant ship will be brought back from Sweden to Zhu Jinglun for artillery and technicians.
Sweden’s artillery technology is not bad compared with Britain, but there is absolutely no time gap. Sweden’s artillery is still famous in Europe, especially in infantry artillery. The most popular artillery is directly named after Sweden. This small country is very talented in the field of weapons, not only now, but even in the 21 ST century, it is one of the few countries in Europe that can design and produce advanced fighters by itself. Their fighters are as good as those in the European Union, producing typhoons and gusts, and they are just as famous as French Mirage planes
Of course, the most important thing is the letter. Zhu Jinglun chose to believe in Sweden, not in countries where steel and manufacturing industries are equally developed. The most important point is that the Swedish East India Company has established a century-old friendship with Pan Jia in the thirteenth bank.
It was this friendship that enabled the Swedes to get this million-dollar order and also took away the deposit given by Zhu Jinglun-including tea and silk in a whole ship of China merchants worth 302,000 silver, which was given to the Swedes. It was Pan Shicheng, the current spokesperson of the Pan family.
Pan Shicheng is willing to guarantee the Swedish reputation and guarantee that the Swedes will deliver the goods completely after taking the deposit, otherwise Pan Shicheng is willing to compensate the government for all the losses.
Pan Shicheng is so generous that he has trusted with Pan Jiarui for decades, and even more so because Pan Shicheng’s patron, Senior Citizen, died!
Section 119 Thirteen Crocodiles
Later generations, anyone who knows in the thirteenth line that people can always quote Wu Bingjian in one bite does not know that Pan Jiayuan in the thirteenth line is deeper than the Wu family.
Wu Bingjian is more famous because an American magazine rated him as the richest man in the world at that time, but he didn’t know that the Wu family’s wealth could be compared with Pan’s.
The Wu family’s prosperity is mainly due to the fact that the first generation is Wu Bingjian’s father Wu Guoying, the second generation is Wu Bingjian’s brother Wu Bingjun, and when the fourth generation head Wu Chongyao, the Wu family will go downhill.
However, the Pan family is more than the Wu family. They voluntarily quit after accumulating huge wealth.
Pan’s family made a fortune by saying that Pan Zhencheng, the chief merchant of the first thirteen lines of the Wu family, had an ordinary farmer’s father, who had a unique spirit of hard work and hard work of China farmers, worked hard to support five children and insisted on sending them to school.
Pan Zhencheng inherited this fine system, but forced by family poverty, at the age of 13, he ventured out to sea as a boatman to sell goods to foreigners in the Philippines. Pan Zhencheng learned Spanish, Portuguese and English during the long-term business dealings with foreigners.
With these advantages, when Pan Zhencheng was 24 years old, that is, in the third year of Qianlong’s reign, he joined a Fujian fellow villager and a foreign firm in Guangzhou. After earning enough money, he went back to his hometown to buy land with many China businessmen. At this time, Pan Zhencheng also accumulated a sum of money to apply to the Qing government to set up his own foreign firm, which is the famous Tongwen Firm.
Pan Zhencheng didn’t intend to make a quick sum of money and left. His business has always been honest and credible, and he has won the trust of foreigners, saying that he is the "most reliable businessman" and the "most trustworthy and only person among the merchants". In the end, he often advances him as much as 100,000 yuan in advance, which makes Pan Zhencheng’s business even more powerful.
Ten years later, Tongwen Bank has become the largest firm in GD. Soon after, Qianlong closed the trading ports of Fujian, Zhejiang and other places. Guangzhou entered the era of one-port trade for more than ten years and also entered the era of Pan Zhencheng.
Pan Zhencheng was elected by the government to be the general manager of Guangzhou Thirteen Merchants in the 25th year (176), and he has been holding this position for the last 39 years. French businessmen not only accumulated huge wealth, but also maintained a prominent position in front of foreigners. According to a French businessman who did business with Pan Qi at that time, he described in the French magazine that Pan’s family consumed as much as 30,000 francs a year, more than a king’s real estate in western Europe.
Just as Wu Bingjian intends to support Americans, Pan Zhencheng also supports the Swedish East India Company, whose strength was still weak at that time. The reason is very simple. This is a diplomatic strategy at the level of luxury businessmen. Pan Zhencheng can’t see that the British are the only one. He needs to train competitors for the British East India Company, just as big companies such as Apple in the United States always train different suppliers to compete and then make profits for themselves in the future, so shopping malls will also have a very good diplomatic strategy. This is probably how western diplomatic methods are developed.
Because of this, Pan Zhencheng established a strong trust with the Swedes and even participated in the business of the Swedish East India Company, in which he invested heavily.
Pan Zhencheng is the biggest merchant of the famous Swedish cargo ship Gothenburg. You know, this ship was built by Sweden, and the Swedish king had high hopes for it. Later, Pan Zhencheng gave a glass portrait of himself to a Swedish businessman and kept it in the museum of Gothenburg, Sweden. Pan Zhencheng was also the first China businessman to make the draft do business with foreigners.
At the beginning of the famous Wu family’s prosperity, Wu Bingjian’s father Wu Guoying learned how to do business with foreigners when he was a buddy in Pan’s firm.
Therefore, it can be said that the Wu family helped to grow up in the Pan family. Pan Zhencheng has a kind of China businessman’s cultural inferiority mentality. After he became rich, he did not train his grandson to continue his business, but devoted himself to training his talented grandson to study in the imperial examination and be an official. His son, Pan You, was admitted to the sergeant’s court in Qianlong’s year and participated in the compilation of the four libraries. Pan Zhencheng was honored as a businessman at the same time.
Pan Zhencheng left a legacy before his death, which made Pan Jiasun never bear the responsibility of being a general merchant. His deeds of being a general merchant were not recorded in his family tree. His two generations of successors, Pan Youdu and Pan Zhengwei, did not record in the family tree that they had ever been in business, that is, they cleaned up the genes of Pan’s businessmen and completely transformed them into a poet. Pan Youdu sent his first last words even more than his father.
After several generations of efforts, Pan Zhencheng withdrew from the business world after the fourth generation, and Pan Jiatong Fu Hang also sold it to the Wu family.
Pan Shicheng is not the same as Pan Zhencheng. Pan Shicheng’s grandfather is Pan Zhenlian and Pan Zhencheng’s brother, and they also made a fortune in business in Guangzhou. However, Pan Shicheng’s father, Pan Zhengwei, who always wanted to join the Hong Kong merchants, applied to the Qing government to become a foreign merchant, but he was not approved. However, they secretly made a lot of money by using their uncle Pan Changyao Liquan to enter the British East India Company, and they also saved the government 50,000 lines of business tax and silver every year. When Pan Shicheng handed it over, he inherited the family business up to 20 million.
You know, Pan Shicheng is just a branch of the Pan family, and the property can be on a par with the Wu family. Pan Changyao is also not underestimated. Pan Changyao’s liquan line is also famous in the thirteenth line. Although it finally closed down, it has also left its mark in China history
The most famous thing is that in 114, Pan Changyao sued the merchants in new york City for defaulting on their 12,000-yuan payment in the United States Supreme Court. Because the Manchu court would not have a commercial dispute between China merchants and foreign businessmen, it always felt that once there was a conflict, Pan Changyao was humiliated and had to sue in the United States.
Pan Changyao also wrote to US President Madison in 115, asking the United States to pay attention to the letter from the merchant of the regulatory country. Three letters were written in Portuguese, English and Chinese and left in the American Museum and the National Archives of the United States. Unfortunately, Pan Changyao finally won the lawsuit, but he did not get the money back. One year later, Liquan Bank failed to get the payment.
Pan Changyao, Pan Zhencheng and Pan Shicheng can be said that none of them is worse than the Wu family. However, due to the concept of attaching importance to agriculture and suppressing business unification, Pan Zhencheng, the core family of the Pan family, chose to retire and become a gentry of farming and reading, which gave the Wu family a chance to rise. People have to suspect that the Pan family is interested in supporting the Wu family to replace their own status, otherwise they are worried that they will not be able to get away. The same story later happened in Wu Bingjian and they tried their best to get out.
It can be said that compared with the famous Wu family, the Pan family is a giant crocodile with deeper hidden, more profound and deeper knowledge.
Different from Pan Zhencheng’s family, Pan Shicheng’s family insisted on doing business in the end, and his father tried his best to participate in business, not to mention that Pan Shicheng donated two hats to a higher level by donating officials, and at the same time found a big patron, Senior Citizen, who had to continue Pan’s trade, which was still flourishing after the crow-crow war.
Pan Shicheng obviously walked out of the path of Hu Xueyan’s former officials and businessmen, and tried his best to have a backer in the imperial court as the biggest money. Whenever the imperial court was in trouble, he would spare no expense to make political investments. For example, in the 21st year of Daoguang, Pan Shicheng donated 40 pieces of guns of 5,000 kg, 3,000 kg and 2,000 kg successively to the first Raven War, to the military and coastal defense, to build warships and mines, to undertake arms production, to help foreign countries, to build shipyards and to build pharmaceutical factories. During the second Raven War, he was not idle.
However, a large amount of political investment didn’t pay off. As a result, his big backer, Senior Citizen, was ordered to negotiate when the British and French allied forces had just captured Tianzhu. As a result, the British recognized Senior Citizen’s concealment of Guangzhou from the emperor many times. They didn’t believe that Senior Citizen drove Senior Citizen back to the capital. After he returned, he was given the death by Emperor Xianfeng and changed to Gui Liang and Huashana to negotiate.
After the death of Senior Citizen, Pan Shicheng was very worried about being tied up. He was worried all day. You know, he and Senior Citizen were allies. He paid the court for Senior Citizen to help him play and invite the emperor to be rewarded. They were very close. The plaque hanging in front of Pan Shicheng’s mansion, Haishan Fairy Pavilion, was written by Senior Citizen of Guangdong and Guangxi.
Just when Pan Shicheng was worried that he would be tied down by the conviction of Senior Citizen, Bai Gui found him. The purpose of Bai Gui looking for him was to hope that Guangzhou businessmen could go to Xin ‘an to trade and block the excuse that foreigners had to go to Guangzhou. At this time, Bai Gui was about to receive the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, and Pan Shicheng knew that he was well informed.
But Bai Gui didn’t look for Pan Shicheng, but Pan Zhencheng’s family. When Pan Shicheng received the news, he took the initiative to ask his kindred for help and reached an agreement with his kindred. He had withdrawn from Pan Zhencheng’s family and handed over all his family business to Pan Shicheng.
Therefore, it was Pan Shicheng who came to Xin ‘an to establish a business in the name of Pan Jia, the four major merchants, instead of the authentic Pan Zhencheng family, the chief merchant of thirteen firms.
However, it’s nothing that Pan Shicheng took over the Pan family’s business. After all, Pan Shicheng is a salt merchant, but his main business is tea except salt. Others are famous tea makers. A famous tea vessel called Pan Hu is made by Pan Shicheng in Yixing.
Therefore, he is no worse at making tea than his family, whether it is expensive or Zhu Jinglun, it is recognized that Pan Shicheng has replaced Pan Zhencheng’s family under the banner of the same trade in the past
For Swedish businessmen and Pan Shicheng, that is another story.
Section one hundred and twenty Swedes windfall
It is conceivable that such a trade journey, no matter how difficult it is, will be lost even when it comes to China.
What’s even more tragic is that he came to China just in time for the second Raven War launched by the British and French allied forces. As a result, he stayed in Hong Kong without even entering Guangzhou. He was finally so poor that he didn’t even have enough money to pay the crew. The drunkards tried to beat him several times.
Adolf, the director of Chiwan Port of Zhu Jinglun, waited for the opportunity. Since the spring came, he took those nondescript businessmen to inspire the last hope of the crew and sailed to Chiwan. The result was of course the deepest despair.
At the end of the road, he remembered the diary of his ancestor Colin, which had helped him many times. He had read through it many times during his depressed trip to China, and he also took some letters with him from Pan’s family to Colin.
With the last glimmer of hope, he inquired about it and knocked on the door of Zhang Panshi, who had just been in Chiwan, under the guise of the same line.
Pan Shicheng, a businessman from such a small and lonely western country, is not uncommon. At first, he didn’t care about entertaining Adolf and his party casually. At the same time, he sent someone back to Guangzhou to confirm whether these people cheated the family. Some old people really remember that decades ago, the Swedish East India Company confirmed that Adolf didn’t cheat the letter and it was indeed Pan Zhencheng’s handwriting.
Hospitality is a system of China people, especially the rich people. When they see the descendants of their old friends a hundred years ago, they feel as if they were poor relatives in the backcountry who came to ask for help. They have changed their studies and trained four academicians and six jurens. Pan Zhencheng’s family was kind enough to ask his kinsman Pan Shicheng to help the Swedes.
The family asked Pan Shicheng not to refuse. After all, he took over all the business of others, and he just took a break and collected Adolph’s movable property. loose woman planned to lock it in his warehouse and rot it, and also chatted with Adolph and them.
I know some stories about Sweden, and I know that Sweden was once richer in Gustav’s time, and in the later years, I also protected some Nordic hegemony, but that’s all.