At the end of February of the 27th year of the Empire, the West Pier of Nangang.

A passenger and cargo ship was pulled to the berth by a tugboat. The ship was loaded with textiles and iron tools produced in the Cape Town area. In the cabin, Sir Thomas was awakened from his drowsiness. Someone was hitting the cabin vigorously. When he touched his crotch, he was slightly wet. Obviously, he had a spring dream just now. The heroine in the dream was a young and beautiful Portuguese girl. Thomas didn't care about the attitude of the crew, because he could see the girl soon and then turn the dream he had just made into reality. The girl should be waiting on the dock now.

However, when Sir Thomas really landed, he saw his servant holding a thin horse, with wounds on his face, as listless as the horse. The woman who should be waiting for him was not there, and even the horse was not the Andalusian purebred horse given to King Yu. Sir Thomas realized something was wrong.

"Sir, you are finally back, something big happened." The servant saw Thomas and yelled: "London has sent an Earl of Stockton, your... has taken away everything from you."

Thomas was furious and threw the salute to his servant. He rode his horse directly to the British East India Company's shopping mall, which is located in the most prosperous street in Southport City. The red brick and stone buildings have oriental characteristics. As early as during the Peruvian War, Thomas arranged for people to rent land and build a shopping mall. When he broke into the office, he saw the girl he had dreamed about was leaning over on the desk with his butt sticking out, and a naked man walked out of the bedroom inside. Thomas was furious and pulled out his pistol and pointed it at the huge butt, but after gritting his teeth, he still shot the wine bottle on the table.

This is Nangang, and the Nangang area is a colony, but Nangang is not. On the territory of the empire, it is also a crime for foreigners to kill their servants. This is the respect for the right to life by the imperial law. Even Sir Thomas, who has a diplomatic identity, cannot escape, not to mention that the arrival of Stockton almost declared his diplomatic identity invalid.

The woman screamed in fear and threw herself into Stockton's arms, but Thomas directly whipped it with a horse whip. Not only the Portuguese girl, but even the naked Stockton was beaten with bloodstains all over her body until someone pulled them apart.

The woman was taken away, Stockton put on her clothes, the patrolling Sheriff of South Port arrived, questioned the gunshots, and was slapped in the name of fire. After confirming that no one was killed or injured, the Sheriff issued a ticket of twenty taels, warned and left.

"Just, your behavior just now is very ungenius. If it is because of a woman, you should duel with me." Stockton is a tall and thin young man with very white skin and cynical words and doing things like a young man. He is very young and handsome, at least for Thomas.

Thomas said coldly: "Get out of my office. Even if you replace me, you will have to get out of here after the handover is completed!"

Stockton shrugged, placed a document on the table, glanced proudly at Thomas, said coldly, "Treason!" and then left. The document was the order of the London board of directors to replace Sir Thomas.

Thomas sat on the chair, breathed a sigh of relief, covering his face with a document, but tears of incompetence still flowed down. He expected that King William III's ascension would bring changes to the British East India Company. He has been helping the company and himself, but now the company is still a company, but he has lost everything.

Before the Glorious Revolution, the King of England was James II. Because the East India Company was a royal authorized company, the company's biggest profit was that it monopolized goods from the East. This prosperity must depend on government authorization and protection. James II was arbitrary. In order to protect the interests of the company, the number one person in the company at that time, Childer, took the initiative to contribute a large amount of funds to James II. However, the glorious revolution broke out in Britain the year before, and James II's son-in-law and nephew, Prince Orange of the Netherlands, became the king of England, making Childer's behavior seem so out of place.

The original East India Company relied on the import of exclusive Oriental commodities, spices, porcelain, raw silk, silk and tea to make profits. However, in recent years, with the rise of the empire, competitive commodities such as sugar, coffee, tobacco, textiles, etc. have poured in a large number of competitive commodities. Except for coffee, the rest are overseas colonial or local industries. Although the profit margins of the East India Company soared, its reputation in China has become worse day by day. After the Glorious Revolution, someone immediately counterattacked.

The opposition demanded the dissolution of the East India Company and the establishment of a new East India Company. The newly appointed William III abolished the privileges of the East India Company in order to cater to the parliament. With the establishment of the new East India Company, the status of the old company was in jeopardy, and it was Thomas who personally rescued the company.

After hearing this, Thomas contacted Child and asked him to use his relationship to prompt the parliament to grant the New East India Company monopoly, while talking bad things about the new company in Li Junwei's ear. This was a dangerous move, but Sir Thomas won the bet.

The newly established East India Company was very large and formed a large fleet to go south to Cape Town for trade, but was turned away by the Cape Town local authorities. The Cape Town local magistrate told the new East India Company directly that we only recognize the original company. If you want to trade, you must let the UK cancel its monopoly.

This attitude is not because of the personal relationship between Li Junwei and Thomas, but more importantly, the original East India Company is more in line with the interests of the empire. You should know that the original East India Company had abandoned its colonial strategy and turned into a trading company, and the Dutch East India Company also completed the transformation, which means that the two most powerful competitors of the empire in the Indian Ocean disappeared, and the empire would not have to maintain such a large-scale Indian Ocean fleet. The old company had other cooperations with the empire, especially the secret treaty signed by Sir Thomas on behalf of the two companies and the Ministry of Overseas Affairs, which not only helped the empire open up the British market, but also helped the empire fight colonies in the Caribbean and North America.

New companies obviously cannot immediately inherit the old company's strategy. Even if they intend to do so, they will take the opportunity to put forward conditions. Therefore, unless the UK relaxes its monopoly, it is not conducive to the imperial strategy to replace the old company.

This large fleet was forced to return to Britain and could only sell its goods to the Caribbean and American colonies, but this caused a lot of trouble because the East India Company was a licensed company and generally did not go to the Americas to grab food. Therefore, the fleet returned to Britain in the Caribbean, but luck was extremely high. Even though she chose to return around the North Sea, she still encountered the French Navy and lost more than a dozen ships, which made the new company collapse.

The trade scope of the East India Company is the entire East. Although there are many countries in the East, there is only one overlord, and no country can avoid the empire and enter the East trade. Therefore, the new company immediately sent people to Lisbon to seek a diplomatic solution, but Lisbon had long received news and his attitude was completely consistent with Cape Town.

Thanks to King Yu's cooperation, Thomas went to Cape Town, ordered eight large flying scissors directly at the shipyard, and formulated a larger trade plan.

However, the next strategy went against Thomas' design. According to Thomas' design, the new company was directly bankrupt. In the process, Child lobbled and bribed the parliament and the king. Anyway, Britain was fighting with France, Scotland and Ireland (James II led Scotland with the support of the French king, and Ireland Catholics opposed the new king). They needed money, and the company gave it money to get what they wanted.

But Sir Thomas underestimated Child's greed. He not only wanted to make good friends with the king and the parliament and regain the authorization, but also wanted to annex the new East India Company and expand the scale of the company. Child quickly succeeded, and the two companies merged and formed the United East India Company. Child even imitated several colonial companies of the empire, allowing the king to occupy five percent of the company's shares.

But the problem lies in the merger. Many policies of the East India Company are ulterior motives, especially the secret treaties signed with the Empire. Not to mention the local parliament in the UK, even a few people in the board of directors knew about it. This treaty also stipulates that once Child leaves office, the treaty will be temporarily suspended, or Child must find a chairman of the board of directors who recognizes the treaty to take over. Therefore, the shareholders of the old company do not know that there is this secret agreement.

But after the new company was annexed, the board of directors was reorganized. A guy named Papiron of the new company was in charge of the property committee. Although he did not know about secret contracts, he could know all the trade behaviors through the financial committee, and soon discovered the trick. Child directly admitted to him the existence of secret contracts. Child believed that the company was for profits, and Papiron's family was also one of the shareholders, and would not stop such secret contracts that brought profits to the company. Unfortunately, Papiron was a patriot.

Papilen could not accept the secret agreement, but he did not dare to tear it apart. Once the secret agreement was made public, the East India Company would definitely be banned, and this large company that already has a share capital of 1.4 million pounds will be gone. After all, this secret agreement hurts all British people. The secret agreement has long stipulated that once the treaty is torn down, the trade authority granted by the Empire to the East India Company will be cancelled, and it will not guarantee its safety, which can almost declare the death penalty for the East India Company.

Papilen chose to tell William III about this matter, and King William also agreed not to make it public. In addition to keeping his 5% stake, King William has actually become a shareholder of the Dutch East India Company, and the secret agreement also includes the Netherlands, and William himself prefers the Netherlands.

In the end, these people decided to first put the East India Company under the leadership of the Patriots, so Papilen replaced Child in charge of the East India Company, and the Earl of Stockton came to South Port on behalf of William III to replace Sir Thomas. The Earl not only represented the East India Company, but also had the status of a diplomat, negotiating the purchase of Spanish American colonies, and enlisted the empire to join the Grand Alliance to fight against France and other matters.

Thomas understood everything and was about to leave immediately. In the hall of the mall, he met the Earl of Stockton. Thomas didn't want to pay attention to him at all, and Stockton said in front of everyone: "What, Sir, are you going to meet His Highness Yu of the Empire?"

"So what, so what, no?" Thomas responded plainly. That's what he planned. Now only King Yu can help him regain power. He also firmly believes that King Yu will do this. After all, patriots have mastered the East India Company and are not good for the empire.

Stockton laughed and said mockingly, "I bet that His Highness the Prince will never see you. He met me the first day I came, and three days ago he came here in person, sent some gifts and invited me to go to the Caribbean."

Thomas's cold face suddenly changed. King Yu even told Stockton about the Caribbean. Then Stockton really won King Yu's trust. He was done by himself and everything was done.

Thomas walked on the streets of Nangang City in a daze, obviously unable to accept all this. He bought a bottle of rum and drank it in big mouthfuls. He thought a lot, thinking about his own retreat, living in seclusion, resigning to his younger brother, who was already the Earl of the Empire, or finding a chance to kill Stockton to relieve his anger, but no matter what the result was, he lost and could never come back. Thomas walked like this until he was hit by a wool-carrier.

When he woke up, Thomas was already lying in the hospital. He felt pain all over his body, especially his chest and right leg. His face was white, but his head was fixed and unable to move. He heard the familiar Chinese language, and several people were spitting and discussing the battle in Chile. Until he shouted, the people surrounded him and called the doctor, Thomas realized that he was now in the Army Hospital.

On that night, Li Junwei came to the ward, and Thomas saw the face clearly and chose to close his eyes. Li Junwei knew why he was like this and said, "You shouldn't treat me like this, because I'm for your own good."

"Your Highness, please spare me. I know that my wisdom is not half as good as you, and I can't guess your thoughts. If I have any value, please say it. If not, I hope to go to Lisbon, where I still have a small manor." Thomas said.

Li Junwei smiled and said, "What I said is true. If you stay by my side next, to be honest, your ending will definitely be miserable."

"Why?"
Chapter completed!