Chapter 272: Looking at New Zealand From a Distance

Chapter 273 Looking at New Zealand from a Distance

Joey seemed a little regretful:

"If the tens of thousands of guards could be used to build roads, the 'King's Road' between Tunisia City and Ariana might have been completed by now.

Currently, various parts of Tunisia are also learning from France to build "King's Road", "Local Road" or "Branch Road". It's just that it's impossible to build it as luxuriously as France. The so-called King's Road here is only more than ten meters wide.

"Guards?" Joseph looked at Joey. He almost forgot about this group of people.

"Yes, Your Highness. Although many guards fled to Anatolia during the uprising, more than 30,000 people remained in Tunisia. At present, they have all been driven to Djerba Island. "

Djerba is a small island in the east of Tunisia. The natural environment is very poor. If it is not supplied from the mainland of Tunisia, the island cannot support 30,000 people.

Joey continued: "These people are not like the captives captured in Algiers. They are very familiar with Tunisia and even have some connections. If they are asked to build roads, some people will escape soon."

Joseph narrowed his eyes when he heard this. So many people are a huge fortune in this era!

Don't get me wrong, he did not intend to sell the Tunisian Guards as slaves. He disdains to be a human trafficker.

Where to use these tens of thousands of people?

Joseph thought for a while and said to Joey: "It is too inhumane to let these people wait for death on the island. We must try to find a way out for them."

"What do you mean?"

"There is an undeveloped golden island in the Pacific Ocean-New Zealand. We can let the Tunisian Guards go there to work and live. "

Joey recalled and hesitated:

"Your Highness, I remember that the British had colonial claims there..."

Joseph smiled:

"They only discovered it a few years ago and have not carried out any colonization. New Zealand is still ruled by the Maori indigenous people. ”

In fact, it was the Dutch who first discovered New Zealand, and "New Zealand" is a city in the Netherlands. After British explorers went there, they thought the island was extremely desolate and the natives were very cruel, so they didn't think of colonizing New Zealand until 1837.

And Joseph planned to get there first, after all, New Zealand is an important wool producing area. The natural conditions there are so good that you only need to drive the sheep to the grassland and send people to collect wool every year, and even shepherds are not needed. Before Australia developed, New Zealand was the world's largest wool producing area!

Compared with Britain, the two biggest shortcomings of France's textile industry are the lack of a vast colonial market and the lack of wool producing areas.

Britain itself is the largest wool producing area in Europe. If France wants to compete with Britain in industry in the future, the textile industry must not fall behind, and the value of New Zealand will be reflected.

In this era, Europeans are not willing to go to the distant Pacific Ocean to make a living. When the British colonized New Zealand in the 19th century, only about 2,000 people went there. But Joseph has more than 30,000 people!

Although there are still many old, weak and disabled people among them, at least half of them can actually be put into production. Just send a few thousand French to manage them, and you can quickly open up the colonial situation in New Zealand.

Of course, how to deal with the indigenous Maori people in New Zealand is also the key to whether New Zealand can be successfully taken. In this regard, Joseph has various lessons from the British colonization of New Zealand in later generations, so he naturally has a good idea about this.

Joan is just a local official in Tunisia, and he has no research on the country's Pacific strategy. He does what the prince says, and nods:

"Your Highness, I will transport some food to Djerba Island for a while, and then send someone to count the number of people. When the navy's transport ship arrives, it can be directly loaded and taken away."

"Then I'll trouble you." Joseph said, "But it's not the navy that will pick them up, but the Gemini Trading Company. "

He originally wanted to bring the Dutch together to form the United East India Company and let this company handle the development of New Zealand.

However, since the Netherlands was beaten badly by the British in the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War a few years ago, it has always been a little afraid of Britain, so it has not made up its mind to cooperate with France until now.

Then this piece of fat meat can only be handed over to the Gemini Trading Company.

Since the incorporation of the Tunisian Navy's ships, the transportation capacity of the Gemini Company has been greatly improved. Now more than 70% of the Russian-French trade is operated by the Gemini Company. In addition, trade with Nauru, the Caribbean and the United States is also involved. It is already a company of considerable size.

Thinking of this, Joseph couldn't help but sigh, compared to Dutch, Maozi is really straightforward in doing things. In addition, Maozi's character has another advantage - if he treats you as a friend, he will really help you. Alexei almost got all the preferential treatment that Russia could get for the twin companies, which greatly increased the trade volume between Russia and France.

Of course, even brothers have to settle accounts clearly. The twin companies can be responsible for trade and transportation in New Zealand, but only French people can go to the island.

The main course of the dinner is still the tagine pot that Joseph likes very much. It's just that he came in a hurry this time and didn't bring the royal chef with him, so the taste is slightly worse than that in the Palace of Versailles. However, there are also some Tunisian local specialties such as roasted camel meat, grilled sausage with nuts and yogurt, and... a dish that seems to be fried meat moth.

Joseph naturally ignored the last dish, ate it heartily, and then returned to the conference room.

At this point, he finally heard Joan talk about the important matters he was going to deal with before coming to Tunisia this time.

"Your Highness, those rumors probably appeared last month." Joan reported, "In addition to people spreading rumors on the streets, there is also a pamphlet about this."

He signaled his assistant to bring a pamphlet and handed it to Joseph with both hands:

"The most core point is that most Tunisians come from Egypt and are the people of the prophet. The Berbers have lived in the desert since ancient times, and they have nothing to do with Rome. In addition, the rumors also fabricated many stories about Europeans, especially the French, persecuting Tunisians. It advocates that Tunisians should kill us or drive us out of North Africa."

"Oh?" Joseph looked at the pamphlet in his hand with some surprise. These rumors obviously want to disrupt France's rule over Tunisia, which belongs to the category of cognitive warfare. Anyone who can come up with this idea in the 18th century is definitely a political genius!

However, if we want to engage in cognitive warfare, the super genius of this era is far inferior to an ordinary person who has personally experienced the cognitive war between major powers in the 21st century.