Chapter 262 Winning
Franz's bold words of "letting everyone in Austria have clothes to wear" are not empty words. With the expansion of the market space within the empire and the formation of a relatively stable cotton supply chain, clothes with low price advantages will flow into all parts of the country with the help of favorable transportation conditions.
In this way, it can not only reduce production costs, but also greatly meet the people's demand for daily necessities and boost employment.
At the same time, these clothes are also a weapon in the hands of the Austrian Empire. For example, Saxony, its strongest textile industry, has cotton provided by Austria, and the market is dominated by Austria. As an intermediary, it can only choose to follow Austria's footsteps.
In recent years, Prussia, the second largest country in the German Confederation, has been in a state of discomfort. Originally, its own pillar industry - the once glorious textile industry in Silesia has been on the decline, and it has to face the trade dumping of the giant British on the Confederation.
It was not easy to establish the German Customs Union, but the Austrian tiger came out halfway. Originally, the Prussians hoped to use state subsidies to support their own clothing industry to fight against the Austrians, but the heavy blow from the Americans directly killed them.
Not only did they lose millions of thalers, but they also spent a lot of manpower and material resources, but they ended up having to sell the factories and machines cheaply. What was even more unacceptable to them was that Austria became the ultimate beneficiary of this big acquisition.
However, compared with the disastrous defeat in the clothing market, Frederick William IV had a more headache, that is, the dissatisfaction of the constitutionalists in Prussia.
The military led by the Junker nobles took a tough attitude and advocated taking this opportunity to abolish the constitutionalists and crack down on and weaken those speculators, which could be said to be a two-birds-with-one-stone strategy.
Due to the food crisis in previous years and the influence of the Austrian Empire joining the German Customs Union, the strength of the liberal constitutionalists in Prussia was much weaker than in history, and the voices of the Junker landlords continued to grow.
However, William IV did not have the courage to break this fragile political balance. He was worried that once the liberals were no longer restraining him, the conservatives and the military would dominate the world, and eventually, like a wild horse running away from the monarch's control, he was even more afraid that this move would repeat the tragedy of the French Revolution.
At the same time, another dangerous force was growing rapidly in Prussia, that is, the radicals. The views of these people were much more threatening than the conservatives and liberals combined. For example, they firmly supported the abolition of the monarchy and replaced it with a republic.
In fact, not only Prussia, but also the entire German Confederation was full of such voices, and even Austria was not immune.
Especially in some small principalities, it was more serious, and even the ruling party of the country was a republican. This made William IV so frightened that he could not sleep all night, so he and the conservative leader Metternich jointly enforced the law more frequently.
But even so, the situation did not show any signs of improvement. He now did not want to anger the constitutionalists, nor did he want to hand over the precious power in his hands. After thinking about it, I decided to be a wooden man who turned a deaf ear to those voices for the time being.
Although it was constantly challenged by radical thoughts in politics, Austria could be said to have made frequent successes in the fields of economy and trade.
After its ready-made clothes entered the German Customs Union and the Apennine Customs Union, they also flowed into Serbia, Wallachia and Moravia, as well as the Balkan territories under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire, along with the convenient transportation of the Danube River.
Unfortunately, this batch of ready-made clothes did not cause much waves in this area. The main reason is that the living standards in these countries and regions are too low.
Compared to ready-made clothes, the poor locals prefer to buy coarse cloth. Although the profit of the cloth business is lower, as the saying goes, there is meat on the fly legs, not to mention that this is just a stepping stone.
In fact, Franz's real intention of advocating the opening of the Balkan market is to export culture so as to cultivate a group of spiritual Austrians.
After the Turkish-Egyptian War, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire had opened their doors to Austria. The only problem was that the clothes sold to them needed special modifications to make them more in line with the local aesthetics.
In fact, after years of "Westernization Movement" by Ali and the Ottoman Sultan, these two places have cultivated a large group of spiritual Europeans, so Austrian goods can be sold here unexpectedly.
However, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire also have their own considerations. With the end of the war in the Near East, the French have temporarily withdrawn from the competition, and the remaining two powers, Britain and Russia, one hopes to dominate their market, and the other never hides its ambitions for their land.
Although the British are gentler than the Russians, their trade hegemony is still a bit unbearable for Turkey and Egypt.
At first, the goods imported by the British seemed to be good quality and cheap, but after the French, a strong competitor, withdrew, they tore off their masks and showed their bloodthirsty fangs.
The first to increase in price were weapons, followed by cotton cloth and saltpeter. In just one year, the prices of commodities other than grain and timber almost doubled.
The trade of grain and timber was dominated by the Russians. They did not manipulate the prices, but the output was difficult for the Ottoman Empire to accept.
Magid could only borrow money from the British to build ships, and a large amount of grain became war reserves.
Meguid was not an incompetent monarch, and he quickly recognized the problem, which was that the Ottoman Empire was becoming increasingly dependent on Britain and was getting less and less profit from trade.
In the past, a high-quality carpet could be exchanged for twenty guns, but now it can only be exchanged for ten, and they are still old-fashioned flintlock guns, not the latest percussion guns.
Meguid knew that this was what would happen if there was only one tiger in the mountains, so he hoped that another tiger would appear and let them compete so that the Ottoman Empire could obtain the maximum profit.
In fact, the first person he thought of was the French. Although they had been supporters of Egypt, Magid believed that France was the only country in the world that had the ability to compete with England on the economic, political and military levels.
Not only him, many of the Ottoman high-level people who have been to Europe are full of admiration for France, a country that once almost ruled Europe by itself.
From a historical perspective, the Ottoman Empire was at its most glorious when it relied on the "Holy Alliance" formed with its half-brother France to suppress the Habsburgs. I think of the time when Suleiman the Magnificent devoured thousands of miles like a tiger, defeated Hungary, beheaded its king, besieged Vienna several times, and made all European countries pay tribute.
Unfortunately, the French did not intend to give their once close comrade-in-arms the opportunity to revisit their old dreams, and ruthlessly rejected Magid's proposal. Guizot, the leader of the pro-British faction, even reached an agreement with the British to jointly control commodity prices.
Russian products are not competitive at all, and no normal person would choose Russian products. The Prussian products were superior to those of their eastern neighbors, but their scarcity and high shipping costs made them prohibitive.
General goods were simply not enough to offset the huge impact of British goods on Near Eastern trade. At this time, there was no German craftsmanship that would be talked about by later generations. Prussia is now known as Yiwu in Europe, and their products are famous for their low-quality and low-quality imitations.
Originally, due to the feud between the two parties, Austria itself was not in Magid's consideration. He had no good impression of this country. In addition, the other party's behavior of taking advantage of the situation during the war in the Near East deepened his disgust.
But when he saw those cheap ready-made clothes, he was shaken. Magid soon showed his agility as a qualified monarch, and he decided to let the Austrians join this beast competition in order to lower the price of British goods.
As a result, with the official encouragement of the Ottoman Empire, Austrian products quickly became popular in the Near East. The British immediately felt the pressure and had to cut prices on their goods, causing profits to plummet.
You must know that the Anglo-Saxons have never been players who abide by the rules, so they immediately found the Americans and prepared to solve their competitors at the source.
Previously, the newly inaugurated President John Tyler made a request (Harris died of illness) to redefine the boundaries of the United States and British North America. The British, who wanted something from the other side, had to agree to their demands and promised not to cross the border again and invade American territory.
Soon the clothing products of the Austrian Empire withdrew from the Anatolian market.
Just when the British were complacent about achieving their goal, they didn't know that this was actually a deal reached by representatives of Franz and John Taylor, making the latter once again owe the former a huge favor.
The Americans won the border negotiations, and the Austrians successfully completed their plan to show weakness to the British. After all, Franz doesn't want to be remembered by the British. What Austria needs most now is time. Magid successfully used the goods of his former enemy to suppress the price of British goods.
After this game of chess, everyone felt that they had won.