Struggle in the Steam Age

Lawrence did not personally participate in the expansion of the power on the island this time. After all, it would be too cheap for those guys who are at most equivalent to local hooligans to take action himself. And unlike when he first came to the island, during this period of time he has also cultivated a team that is reliable enough to handle various situations in his absence.

But now it seems that the group of people Lawrence trained before obviously did a very good job. They succeeded in quelling the scattered riots in the small settlements in the northwest of the island that had surrendered to themselves in a short period of time, and re-established the grassroots management institutions there.

In a way, it's a good thing that these people are jumping up and down. Because after killing them, the local tyrants can be cleaned up, and this power vacuum is naturally very beneficial to Lawrence and the others to rebuild their own new order in the local area.

However, the new order Lawrence mentioned is not to copy everything in the area under his own control. To give the simplest example, the industries in the area controlled by Lawrence are basically taking the road of collective industry and mass production, and these northern In addition to the land handed over or confiscated by the leaders, there are also many small pieces of private land in the territory.

At the beginning, after receiving a description of the local situation from the dispatched office team, Lawrence tried to ask his subordinates to buy the land directly, but unfortunately, because of the traditional habits of these people, they were not willing to give up their own sites. So it took them a long time to acquire less than 1/10 of the land.

Under such circumstances, it was natural that someone proposed to Lawrence to directly use the compulsory redemption rights owned by the lords to redeem the land of those people, but this was rejected by Lawrence. Because he knows that this compulsory redemption right must be limited to emergency situations, otherwise it will affect the credibility of Lawrence and the island's regulations.

However, considering that such small producers are bound to be unable to compete with mass-supported and organized industrialized mass production, in order to avoid some bad situations in the future. So Lawrence brought up one of some abandoned plans he had made before coming to the island, the mutual aid cooperative plan.

After replacing the previous buy-back scheme with this co-operative scheme, the new scheme quickly moved forward. On the one hand, this new plan sounds really good, and the group of church priests sent later convinced these people of Lawrence's promise in this regard.

On the other hand, everyone had seen the combat effectiveness of Lawrence's armed forces when they cleared up the gangs in these settlements. So they also realized that it was not a good idea to confront Lawrence and the others. So naturally they agreed to Lawrence's cooperative plan.

In such a step-by-step advancement, those scattered settlements were brought under Lawrence's rule in just half a month. Although it is said that the unified planning and planting of crops cannot be carried out temporarily because the crops have already been planted in the fields, some basic work can basically be done now.

For example, you can concentrate on building the roads and walls around the various settlements this time. Another example is to sell a batch of front-loading rifles and provide certain training at a low price, so that these people can It can have a stronger defense against the invasion of small groups of goblins or wild beasts.

The most important thing is that they need to build several docks that can berth for ships and load and unload goods. After all, these settlements are almost all settlements not far from the sea, so after they are brought into the control of Lawrence and the others, it is natural to open up transportation lines to Ensure the circulation of various items.

This set of work is very familiar to the group of staff sent by Lawrence, because Lawrence and the others have built it all the way from New Sauer Port to Oxhorn Bay, so in the face of the current situation The time is naturally very experienced and does not need too much guidance.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Lawrence deployed manpower and began to count the population that is now under his rule. It turns out that the human population under his direct control has just exceeded 800,000, which is equivalent to the total human population on the island in the information he received before coming here.

But other than that, there are about 40,000 to 50,000 people on the island who are not under Lawrence's control. Except for about 20,000 people who live very scatteredly and cannot be contacted for the time being, the remaining 30,000 people are from Tanas Town and the surrounding people who are on the territory controlled by those lucky guys.

Naturally, these people are the targets that Lawrence needs to win over in the next step. He believes that with his strong strength and sufficient resources as the backing, he should be able to gradually win over these people. After the preparatory work is completed, it will be a smooth matter to deal with the difficulty of those evil people with their strength.

In addition to humans, the island and the tauren who came from the surrounding area after that sporadically brought the population of the tauren to more than 4,000. After all, the tauren itself is a kind of intelligent creature that is powerful but not very fertile, so it is actually quite good to be able to gather so many tauren on the island.

The Ratman is just the opposite. There was no Ratman on Shaw Island before. The current rat community on the island was formed only after Fatina obtained Lawrence's permission to gather compatriots who were willing to immigrate to the island. But even so, there are now more than 8,000 ratmen on the island.

Among them, 6,500 ratmen are concentrated in caves in the mountains and in the surrounding plantations assigned to them, while the remaining 1,500 ratmen live in various human settlements and work with humans. . From a certain point of view, they are already the most familiar alien race on the island.

In fact, there were about 12,000 rat people who were willing to emigrate to the island at the beginning, but Fatina and their horned rat priest took the initiative to take on the task of screening after considering the carrying capacity of the island. The optimization is to introduce ratman immigrants bit by bit, and at the same time give priority to those ratmen who are useful to the island as much as possible.

The latest immigrant was the group of Loka murlocs, with about 30,000 people. And after working hard for this period of time, they successfully established new settlements in many shallow sea areas, and at the same time made up for 1/3 of the settlement by planting some fast-growing seaweed and following the ocean fleet of humans for ocean fishing. needed food,

Besides that, most of the remaining roca people are employed by humans to do various jobs and grow the seaweed that can make plastic. Therefore, they were able to support themselves in less than a month after An arrived here, and they did not need Lawrence to continue to send them relief. And from this point of view, they can be considered to have successfully established a foothold in this territory.

In addition to these permanent residents, there are now 10,000 to 20,000 people who live temporarily on the island, including foreign sailors, temporarily hired labor, and fishermen who rely on the island to carry out fishing. These people are naturally an important part of the island, and Lawrence also believes that the situation on the island will soon attract some people to settle on the island.

Because Lawrence had trained a group of clerks before, this census went very smoothly, and it only took a week to complete the census while subduing those scattered settlements. After completing the census, Lawrence also had a general understanding of the current situation under his command.

The biggest effect of this census is to allow Lawrence to determine how much manpower he may be able to use for a long time, because after the settlements on the island are brought under his command one by one, a large number of people like this in a short period of time will be brought under his command The possibility will naturally be greatly reduced.