On August 25, 1699, a merchant ship flying the East Coast flag was just approaching the harbor in the Florida harbor city of St. Augustine.

St. Augustine is now the capital of the Spanish colony of Florida, but the port is small and broken. The river channel is filled with messy ships, and vegetables, dead fish and other garbage floating on the river surface. The government offices on the shore are also inconspicuous. The Spanish soldiers standing guard are yawning, looking like they are not awake.

Gao Yi carried a large suitcase to the dock, and then, with the assistance of an employee who came to pick up the boat, hired a four-wheeled carriage to drive towards the Palm Tree Primary School on Dengzhou Street. Palm Tree Primary School is a school for the children of the East Coast diaspora living in St. Augustine and nearby villages and towns. The school system is the same as in China. It is jointly funded by seven most famous merchants on Denglai Street. It is expected to officially start this fall. Gao Yi, who came from the Gao family, is the first principal.

Gao Yi is the third generation of the Gao family of diplomatic families, but he did not work in the diplomatic or trade system. Instead, he joined the State Intelligence Administration and used the public identity of a teacher as a cover to collect various intelligence from his country. This time he went to the principal of the Dengzhou Street Palm Tree Primary School as the principal, which was also an arrangement by the State Intelligence Administration. Perhaps other teachers in the school were not aware of it, but several investors as school directors were very clear. After all, many of the operations of the State Intelligence Administration require their help.

Dengzhou Street is a relatively famous commercial street in St. Augustine City. Currently, there are more than 60 shops, hundreds of East Coast people live, and nearly a thousand local residents are employed. It is the first-class wealthy place in St. Augustine and one of the city's main sources of taxes.

Dengzhou Street mainly engages in import and export trade, that is, transporting goods produced on the east coast from daily necessities to industrial equipment, including all-inclusive goods, and then purchasing Florida specialties, such as palm oil, dried fruits, seafood, honey, wood, crocodile skin and other goods. The scale of these trades was not very large at first, but after decades of development, it is now very large, with a huge amount of millions of dollars a year. Otherwise, St. Augustine would not have seen commercial streets like Dengzhou Street where merchants gathered in the east coast.

Since there are so many expatriates living in it, it is natural to build primary schools to provide necessary basic education. Therefore, local wealthy merchants contributed money and the country contributed their jobs, and Palm Tree Primary School was established. This primary school is a complete primary school with a full-time school system and the courses are almost the same as those in the local area. It is considered unique in North America. Even the Sucheng Pirate Group, which is currently prosperous, does not have such a complete primary school. Because of this, some local Spanish officials or wealthy businessmen also tried their best to send their children in, and paid high admission fees for this. This greatly alleviated the financial pressure of the school and allowed the school directors to maintain the school's operation without investing anything. To put it bluntly, the current operating model of the school is that the Spanish pays to support the children of the East Coast to study.

As the principal of the school, Gao Yi naturally has enough knowledge. His teacher qualification certificate was also obtained seriously and could stand the test. However, due to his other identity, Gao Yi obviously would not focus on teaching and school management in the future. His main job was to use the principal of the school as a cover to contact the parents of Spanish students in the school, and take the opportunity to influence them, so that they could consciously or unconsciously follow the baton on the East Coast. As for the operation and management of the school, Mr. Bai, director of the Academic Affairs Office, her husband is a cloth merchant in Denglai Street. She has a broad relationship and is very suitable for her to carry out her work.

"Principal, this is your dormitory. I will help you move your luggage in." The carriage stopped in front of a two-story villa. The young man who picked him up said while taking the box attentively.

Gao Yi nodded and said nothing. The two-story "dormitory" was a bit extravagant for him, but this was a show of kindness by local businessmen, so there was no need to refuse. Moreover, this place is more biased, and it is very suitable for conspirators like him to plan various events, which is very ideal.

There were already two servants in the villa, a man and a woman, working. There was no doubt that they were all staff members of the State Administration of Intelligence and were directly led by Gao Yi. Therefore, after lunch, Gao Yi convened the two and held a short meeting in the study, focusing on discussing the current situation and the work priorities of the next stage.

"...The Florida colony has developed very rapidly in the past few decades. It currently has a population of more than 30,000 white people, which is considered to be relatively large. There are no statistics for the Mestiso people, but there are still ten times more. They mainly engage in agricultural work, and a small number of them join the army. As for the Indians, there is no exact statistics, but it is certainly not as many as the Mestiso people. The number of black slaves is even smaller. It is strange that the Spanish did not like to use black slaves very much, and it seems that there is no such tradition. Maybe it is because they can drive a large number of Indians."

"The native white nobles had a bad impression of the Peninsula people. They did not intend to succumb to Madrid's will. As we understand, once the Bourbons members entered Madrid, they would likely declare independence. The only obstacle might be the more than a thousand soldiers from the Peninsula stationed on the outskirts of St. Augustine, who were loyal to the royal family."

Gao Yi listened silently to the conversation between the two, and wrote a few sentences in his notebook from time to time, while thinking silently in his heart. His mission to Florida was actually very clear, that is, to instigate the independence of the colony, to break away from the control of the Spanish royal family, integrate into the political and economic circles of the East Coast people, and become a pawn of the East Coast government in the North American continent. Given the current population of hundreds of thousands of people in the entire colony, Florida is actually very potential. Once it develops well, it will inevitably become a very influential country in North America.

In fact, local aristocrats were also very prosperous for independence. After all, Madrid levied a lot of taxes locally in order to make up for the financial deficit. At the same time, merchants from the peninsula often have great influence. Even in Florida, it is difficult for native white nobles to compete with them, resulting in the loss of a lot of benefits. Once independent, the situation will be different. The newly established government agencies will inevitably be dominated by locals, and foreign peninsula people will lose their privileges overnight and their competitiveness will no longer be possible. Moreover, this country can deeply integrate into the East Coast Economic Circle, which is also of great benefit to the business of native white families. In short, what they lose is "a shackle" and what they get is "the whole world", and there is no reason for them not to be independent.

"Finally follow the movements of several large families and make sure they don't change their minds. St. Augustine's army is not a problem. Let them pay for money, buy weapons from us, ask instructors, and develop their own armed forces. After training well, can't we compete with those loose Spanish soldiers?" Gao Yi put down the pen in his hand and said, "In order to avoid attracting the attention of the Spanish colonial government, the transaction location should be placed in the Bahamas."

Speaking of which, although Air Canada has been deeply engaged in the Mobile River area of ​​North America in recent years, it has also put the operation of the Bahamas on the agenda. The reason is not that it is because it is interested in the resources on the island, but it is still unbearable for the invasion of pirates hiding in the archipelago. So it mobilizes ships and manpower to go to the island to clean up the pirates' nests. At present, they have occupied the Grand Bahamas and established a stronghold on the island to use as a way to shelter the wind and repair the ships.

However, it is said that they want to transfer the island to the navy. Because they have almost no interests here, and they cannot see the prospect of profit, and have been financially subsidized. Instead of doing so, it is better to sell it to the navy who is interested in taking over. Anyway, as long as they don’t fall into the hands of the pirates, they don’t let them continue to use this as a base to make trouble and disrupt the trade order. It’s too late to colonize both sides of the Mobile River, who has time to play with you on the island!

The Navy is actually not as interested in this island as imagined. However, considering that the entire archipelago is still a homeless land, except for the British, New Providence Island is controlled by the British, most of the islands are in a state of unowned state or have no fixed owners become paradises for pirates. Then, if you don’t take it for nothing, you will take it first. The Waiyuan Island (Trinida Island), which the government currently controls, is somewhat southerly. If the Bahamas can control it and make it one south and one north of the Waiyuan Island, then its control over the entire Caribbean Sea will be greatly enhanced, and the situation is incomparable.

Gao Yi has a deeper understanding of the navy, but he has a deeper view, that is, once the East Coast people control the Bahamas, the surveillance of Florida will be stronger. If the country succeeds in independence, its foreign trade line will also be under the control of the East Coast Navy, and the benefits are also very great. Considering that the East Coast people may have to regard Florida as a "trash can" in the future and receive a large number of Mestiso people who migrated from Paraguay, Charcas, Peru and other places, this may arouse the disgust of the locals. It will become very meaningful to firmly control the Bahamas and control Florida from east to west with the Air Canada territory in the Mobile River. Disobedient? Unwilling to accept more people to grab resources? Are you not afraid that my East Coast will march on both sides and destroy your new regime?
Chapter completed!