Chapter 2: The Other Side of the Age of Discovery In the end, the interests are still moving, although behind this money is full of endless dirt and blood, almost every trade means a killing, but everyone is blinded by the prosperity on the surface, and they have thrown themselves into the trend of the Age of Discovery.
Even some crazy businessmen go to sea during the typhoon season at the expense of human lives in order to grab more profits—according to statistics, on average, two out of every ten ships going to sea will sink in the sea, and on average, at least one out of every ten people going to sea will die on the sea.
In fact, this data was not so terrifying at first, at most it was only five percent, but after I didn't know which bastard walked back and forth in the sea without any damage during the typhoon season, and brought back some fresh products, making a lot of profits, more merchants could no longer care about the typhoon's obstruction, and joined the navigation industry, so it caused such a high mortality rate today.
Li Zhen can't do anything about this, you can't restrict people from going to sea, right?
People don't want to die, can you stop others from looking for death by themselves?
What qualifications do you have to stop people?
Therefore, Li Zhen, who had no choice, had no choice but to dissuade those businessmen by suggesting and advocating, but unfortunately everyone agreed on the surface, but when it was time to go to sea, they still went to sea, and completely regarded Li Zhen's words as air.
Speaking of maritime trade, we have to say that Yuezhou Port, today's Yuezhou Port is really busy, every day when the ships come and go almost non-stop, and even there is a phenomenon of ship congestion, resulting in a lot of economic losses.
In order to solve this situation, Li Zhen even opened up the port of Quanzhou in Quanzhou to share the traffic.
It's a pity that although Quanzhou Port is not inferior to Yuezhou Port in terms of scale, and Quanzhou is closer to the north and more convenient for the transportation of goods (Quanzhou was the largest port in the world during the Yuan Dynasty, which was in the history books).
But it may be because Yuezhou Port has a better cargo distribution system and corresponding equipment, or other reasons, in short, Quanzhou's merchant ship flow is far less than Yuezhou, or even only half of Yuezhou, but even so, Quanzhou also contributed nearly three million taxes last year, becoming the second largest taxpayer in Lingnan after Yuezhou, even if it is placed in the whole Datang city, it is enough to rank in the top ten.
Speaking of Quanzhou and Yuezhou, we have to mention the Lingnan Naval Region, at this time the Lingnan Naval Region is no longer the only naval region in Datang, after the completion of the construction of the Lingnan Naval District, the Bohai Naval Region with the Dengzhou fleet as the main force has also been established, and even the Jianghuai Naval Region and the Vladivostok Navy have also been completed, but there is no doubt that in terms of strength, the Lingnan Naval Region is the strongest in the entire Datang.
The reason is not because the Lingnan Naval Region was established at the earliest, nor because the Lingnan Naval Region is one of the few ships in Datang that is equipped with two Class A fleets (in addition to the Bohai Naval Region, this is the only navy equipped with two Class A fleets in the entire Datang Mainland, and the rest of the Huaihai Navy is a strong fleet, and the Vladivostok Naval Region even has only one Class B fleet, and the Hangzhou Naval Region that has not yet been built has only one Class A fleet), let alone because the Lingnan Naval Region guards the two major economic towns of Datang and is busy with business.
For the sake of being very rich in hand.
The real reason is actually very simple: don't look at the rise of other naval regions one by one, one is more powerful than the other, in fact, the above fleets are defensive fleets, even the Bohai Naval Region, which is responsible for patrolling the waters of the Japanese country, is only semi-defensive in nature, although they have the qualifications to expand their territory, they have also laid down Hokkaido and part of the northern part of the island of Honshu in the past five years, but their main task is not this, but to defend the safety of the Bohai coastline, which is their most fundamental task.
But the Lingnan Naval Region is different, their main task is to eliminate pirates - that's right, with the great development of the navigation industry, the same brothers of the Great Navigation have also appeared, and because of the huge profits of the navigation industry, more and more people no longer go to sea to do business, but stay on the necessary routes, looting the materials of the past, and the Lingnan Naval Region is relying on fighting with pirates, has accumulated incomparably rich experience, although the losses in the naval battle are not small, but the combat effectiveness has soared, and the following several naval districts have opened a distance.
However, the pirates are not stupid, after being wiped out by the navy, they realized the threat of the navy to themselves, so they quickly changed their strategy, and even some of the maritime merchants themselves are pirates, when there are people, they are maritime merchants, and when there is no one, they can immediately become pirates, which brings great threats to the major shipping routes.
Even later, pirates generally had dual identities, and they would quickly become maritime merchants again after plundering, so even if the navy encountered it, it was usually difficult to justify, and the current means of communication were not developed, which also led to the fact that even if there was an attack, it was difficult for the navy to know at the first time, let alone exterminate it.
Fortunately, the wisdom of the people is infinite, in a gathering of Li Zhen organized maritime merchants, someone put forward the concept of logos, each maritime merchant designed a set of their own unique logos, imprinted in a secret position, if a fleet encountered pirates and was defeated, the government can also track clues through these commodity imprints, and avenge them - after all, the pirates will not be backlogged in their hands when they grab the goods, they will definitely have to make a move, and once the goods circulate in the market, these signs will fall into the eyes of people with intentions and even the government.
The government can find clues to the pirates and eliminate them......
Li Zhen has to admire this person's genius, isn't this the prototype of the trademark?
I really didn't expect that the trademark was actually created to prevent piracy.
It's just that the trademark method is destined to only be applied to some goods, because the trademark of some goods is easy to remove (for example, steel ingots, even if you cast a mark, people go back and take the furnace to melt again, there is nothing?).
Or can't be trademarked (for example, iron ore, every shipload of ore is thousands, if you brand every piece of it, you have to tire people to death), plus the pirates have to be on guard, so this method can only prevent the normal circulation of these goods, but no one cares about these on the black market - although the price of goods on the black market will be very low, but the pirates themselves do no capital trading, as long as the price is not really excessive, they generally will not refuse to sell.