British Trading District

British Trading District

Requires

  • Buildings:
  • Arts:

Enables

  • Units:

Basic Building Statistics (can be modified by difficulty level, arts, skills, traits and retainers)

  • Cost: 10500
  • +1500 to wealth from ports in this province
  • Coastal defences will be disabled once the port's health falls to 50%
  • Coastal defence range: 10
  • Coastal defence level: 2
  • Enables recruitment of Rank 1 foreign veteran
  • +3 to possible trade routes (sea)
  • Recruitment capacity (ship under construction): +2
  • +10 per turn to town growth from trade within this province
  • Improves export capacity (increases trade values) by +250
  • -2 to happiness from modernisation

Clan Effects

  • +4 to modernisation (clan development)
  • Establishes trade routes with the Western Powers.

Description

"Not the Home Counties, or even Liverpool, but jolly British, by Jove!"

A British trading district improves the port defences in several ways, and improves the value of exports to the outside world. While the Victorian era is seen only as a period of rampant colonialism on the part of Britain, a considerable amount of wealth was generated as a result of trade concessions. Substantial profits could be generated by "managing", or controlling, a nation's trade, rather than running the place. This had been the original purpose of the East India Company: actually ruling India was an almost accidental consequence of the Mutiny in 1857, and the imposition of British government control rather than private enterprise in Company affairs. It was yet to dawn on the British Civil Service that, while ruling large swathes of the world was all very nice, an empire was extremely expensive in terms of money and manpower.