If you casually asked someone how much it cost to ship a cargo vessel from Malaya to London, almost every ordinary person outside the shipping industry would be unable to answer.
Likewise, compared with one million metric quintals of grain costing twenty-three million francs and grain priced at twenty-six francs per metric quintal, the one million metric quintals seemed cheaper per unit.
But that grain priced at twenty-three francs per metric quintal did not include shipping costs, whereas the grain shipped from Spain to France did. The actual purchase price of the grain was eighteen francs per metric quintal, while the remaining eight francs came from losses along the way and freight charges.
When Emperor Wu of Han attacked the Huns, he not only exhausted the wealth accumulated during the Wenjing Prosperity, but also ruined the domestic economy. His supplies depended almost entirely on the homeland. The nomadic tribes had no fixed settlements, and the soldiers he dispatched could hardly encounter the enemy in the desert.
Such a strategy would naturally incur enormous military expenditures. Georgiana vaguely guessed what Napoleon's plan was.
The feeling was strange, like Fred and George: you said one line, I said the next, as if they had come from the same person.
Whenever Napoleon and Egypt were mentioned, aside from the pyramids and the failed expedition, there was also the Suez Canal. It was a shortcut connecting the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. With it, there would be no need to sail around the Cape of Good Hope and West Africa.
Britain had spent so many years developing the coastal ports of West Africa; how could it possibly abandon them? But if military expenditures and freight costs became exorbitant, Britain would have to consider whether it still wanted colonies in India and South Asia.
On