On October 13th, 1872, there was a sudden frenzy of dumping of railway stocks in Austria-Hungary's Vienna stock market. The concentrated sell-off was of British Rail stock. The big sellers were all aristocrats and capitalists with close ties to the upper echelons of Austria-Hungary.
Throughout 1872, the price of railway stocks in Europe's bond market slowly fell. Even though China's national policy of repairing railways had pushed up British railway stocks, the stock market was very sensitive to news, and at the same time very forgetful. The rise in stock prices was wiped out in less than ten days. Three months later, there weren't many people who could remember such a thing.
Therefore, the effect of the concentrated dumping in the morning was that everyone was trying their best to find out about the news. After lunch, a piece of news began to circulate wildly in the stock market. China didn't import British locomotives and components in the whole of 1872.
When the bad news came, the stock market investors immediately recovered their excellent memory. At the beginning of the year, the good news that China was going to build railways made some investors believe that British railway companies would receive good revenue. Even though the number of American railways continued to decline throughout 1872, investors who had a passion for railway stocks still maintained a lot of confidence. Now that two pieces of bad news arrived at the same time, the entire Vienna stock market fell into a full-scale dumping frenzy.
The signs that showed the latest share prices were changing every second. The shares of the British railway companies fell like crazy, and so did the shares of the American railway companies. The selling began to spread at an unprecedented speed. Traders ran back and forth, and the scrapped or empty documents were thrown into the air by the angry investors and traders, falling like snowflakes from the sky. Investors who held railway stocks crowded around the table, leaned against the wall, or simply sat on the floor. They put the trading documents on the wooden floor of the exchange and hurriedly filled in the contents of dumping railway stocks.
After dinner, the investors who had already dumped their railway stocks released another piece of news. China didn't care about the British ambassador's tough demands at all, and reduced the amount of cotton and wool imports from Britain. When this news came out, a large wave of people had already decided what to dump the next day.
The collapse of the Vienna stock market directly caused a chain reaction in the European and American stock markets. London, Paris, Frankfurt, and New York financial markets panicked, and railway stocks fell one after another. In addition to the plunge in British railway companies, shares in the cotton and wool industries also plunged.
By December 1872, the stock market had barely hit rock bottom. The main problem in Britain and America is the wave of corporate, bank and securities firm failures.
China, on the other hand, still held three meetings, and the third meeting reduced the number of immigrants outside the border to 50,000 households. The Mongolian issue became one of the key issues in the year 73. Other work had to continue.
The United Kingdom was not as calm as China. The United Kingdom's problems came from abroad. The United States and Germany's imports to the United Kingdom had been greatly reduced. The export-oriented United Kingdom was greatly affected. In order to protect domestic industries, the two "emerging market" countries, the United States and Germany, increased the high tariff barrier policies that were already implemented. The US tariff was already at 43%, and there was not much room for it to increase. When Germany was still Prussia, it established the North German Customs Union. The Franco-Prussian War was so fierce because South Germany still had some reluctance to part with the destroyed Rhine Alliance. The newly established Germany set up tariff barriers to protect its own industry.
Although France also implemented trade liberalization, after the Franco-Prussian War, France was saddled with war reparations of 500 million francs, and was short of funds. As for Russia … It was good enough that Russia did not apply for foreign loans. Expecting Russia to become a dumping ground for British goods was overestimating Russia's financial resources.
In 1847, the total value of cotton textiles imported from Britain to India was only 3.132 million pounds, and in 1855 it increased to 6.677 million pounds. In 1844, the tax collector and administrator of India's Mandurah district wrote: "Many of the five thousand weavers' families in the city of Mandurah do not have the money to sustain themselves for more than one meal a day." As early as 1834, the Viceroy of India, Bendinck, reported to London: "The tragic situation is unparalleled in the history of commerce. The Indian plains have been whitened by the bones of the cotton weavers."
Between 1857 and 1859, Britain's cotton textile exports increased from 390 million pounds to 480 million pounds. In the increase, India accounted for the majority. In recent years, Britain's cotton exports to India were almost twice as much as the total cotton exports to Europe and the United States. Exports to China, Japan, Java, and other places were also very large, more than 60% of the exports to Europe.
The demand for textiles in Java had reached its limit. The biggest reason why the Japanese Meiji government was able to overthrow the shogunate was that foreign goods entered the Japanese market and took away too much gold and silver from the Japanese market. After Britain and China signed a secret treaty against Japan, China allowed Britain to control Japan's customs and commercial activities.
"In general, there are not many countries in the world that Britain can benefit from in the short term." Li Xin, the trusted Minister of Foreign Affairs, frankly told the standing committee the latest information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A large part of this information was thanks to Uncle Ma. Uncle Ma immersed himself in reading in the British Library. After summarizing the information he had read, he gave a copy to China.
After listening to the report, several people blinked their eyes, not understanding what it meant. Wei Ze was overjoyed. With the Chinese's habitual thinking, it was indeed not easy to understand what this meant. What did the poor economy of Britain have to do with China?! Of course, the Chinese in the 21st century could clearly see the problem. With the economy in such a state, war was the easiest choice.
If they could open the market in China, British goods would have a market. More importantly, Britain's economy would have confidence. For industrial countries. Confidence was more important than capital. After the First Crow, the whole of Europe thought that they had completely opened the market in China. All the manufacturers were desperately stocking up, ready to go to China to make a big profit. The result was disappointing. In the end, they caused an economic crisis in Europe. It also sowed the seed of the Second Crow.
There was another thing that Vézé found funny. He had thought that China would be the first to find a reason to go to war in 1875 and attack the British. In this war that Vézé imagined, he had been distressed for a few days about how to find a reason to go to war. Now the general direction was right. China and Britain were once again on the track of war. However, the reality was completely different from what Vézé had imagined. This was a good lesson. Vézé hoped that he would not make such a low-level and easy mistake in the future.
"I think the British will take some measures to force us to continue buying British goods." The former Minister of Commerce, Li Xin, explained to the Standing Committee.
When the Standing Committee of the Politburo heard this, everyone was immediately angry. "It's up to us whether to buy their goods or not. Do you think the British will dare to come to our door?"
Since Vézé had decided not to think preemptively, he interrupted, "This matter will not start immediately. Everyone, hurry up and finish the work at hand. The war will wait."
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