Chapter 1401: Financial Hub
Joseph continued along this line of thought.
He considered establishing a "Health Screening Department under the Medical Laboratory," charging a unified fee to provide physical examinations for nobles using the latest technology. This could also include a series of subsequent treatments, medications, medical devices, health tracking, and other value-added services like maintenance.
He immediately shook his head. The name was cumbersome, hard to remember, and lacked flair.
'Hm, "Royal Sanatorium" it is.'
Nor could the location be in a remote, insignificant place like Montreuil—surrounded by dilapidated villages, it simply wouldn't match the expensive examination fees.
And since the laboratory couldn't be built in downtown Paris, where would be suitable?
Joseph mused for a moment, then quickly settled on the optimal location: the Palace of Fontainebleau.
This was a royal resort palace located 55 kilometers southeast of Paris, construction of which began under Louis VI. The buildings and gardens together spanned over a hundred hectares.
When Louis XVI was younger, he would occasionally come here to relax for a few days, but later, due to France's financial difficulties, he largely closed it off.
Furthermore, there was plenty of empty land nearby, and the King's Highway connected it to Paris, making future real estate development even possible.
With this in mind, he smiled at Le Monnier: "Monsieur Le Monnier, perhaps you could conduct your experiments at Fontainebleau while 'vacationing' there."
"Ah?"
"From now on, all medical laboratories will be moved to the south side of the Palace of Fontainebleau. I will assign dedicated personnel to handle those 'enthusiastic' nobles. Of course, you may also bring some students to assist with this; I guarantee the compensation will be very generous."
He outlined the concept of the "health examination institution" to the doctor and instructed him to prepare. Eman, however, grew more anxious, softly reminding him: "Your Highness, moving to a place as far as Fontainebleau might cost 200,000 francs..."
Joseph winked at his loyal butler and said in an even softer voice, "Don't worry, a single examination will cost a minimum of 800 francs."
Eman's eyes widened instantly, and he silently retreated to the doorway.
Even calculating at a one-third profit margin, they would break even after serving just seven or eight hundred people.
In truth, he didn't realize that the examinations themselves were the least profitable part.
If a problem was found, treatment and medication fees could easily amount to thousands of francs.
Even if no issues were detected, one could still breathe the fresh air at the Palace of Fontainebleau, engage in health and wellness activities, and perhaps buy some health products.
Accommodation fees, service charges, and health product purchases could just as easily bring in several thousand francs.
One must remember, a physical examination isn't a one-time affair. Those with ample means would responsibly get checked once a year.
Especially in a place like Versailles, where ostentation was common, if Noble A only visited the Fontainebleau Sanatorium once every two years, they might even feel too embarrassed to greet Noble B, who went twice a year.
Once the sanatorium became popular, building a circle of resort villas around it and selling a dozen or so would easily recoup the over one million francs invested in the medical laboratory.
After Doctor Le Monnier bowed out, Joseph resumed discussing the location of the Bank for European Settlements with the two ministers.
He had just begun when he suddenly recalled the medical laboratory, which also found it "difficult to establish itself" in Paris, and his eyes lit up.
The settlement bank could entirely follow the Royal Sanatorium model!
Who said a settlement bank had to be built in Paris?
Paris was already overcrowded, and as Europe's clearing center, the settlement bank would inevitably attract people from various countries for business, placing even greater pressure on Paris.
It would be better to place the settlement bank in another province, which would bring more foot traffic to the local area and stimulate the economy.
Just as Joseph was about to articulate his idea, a sudden flash of inspiration struck him.
'Hmph, his thinking still wasn't grand enough! Why limit himself to just the settlement bank? They could completely relocate the Paris Stock Exchange, the agricultural futures market, and even the Banque de France to a single city, transforming it into France's financial hub.'
As France's sole political, economic, and cultural center, Paris siphoned vast resources from across the nation, but its development was becoming increasingly sluggish—an excessive concentration of population would make the city unwieldy, causing living costs, transportation, land, raw materials, and other expenses to climb rapidly.
Currently, ten units of resources invested in Paris might only yield three units of output.
However, both the government and investors had no choice but to continuously pour resources into Paris, because a multitude of national functions were concentrated there, making it irreplaceable.
If financial functions could be relocated to other cities, vast resources would follow. In just a few years, or perhaps a decade, a new core region could emerge, whose output efficiency would surely be several times higher than Paris!
Joseph then considered that this opportunity could perhaps be used to address France's "unipolar imbalance" problem.
Due to various historical reasons, France relied excessively on the Greater Paris region, to the extent that the French people commonly acknowledged the saying, "France has only two provinces—Paris and the rest."
This not only hindered the development of regions outside Paris but also presented enormous risks due to the overconcentration of national functions.
Historically, any trouble in Paris would inevitably lead to nationwide upheaval.
In the face of foreign enemies, if Paris fell, France would immediately lose all its fighting capability.
Furthermore, many industries that weren't actually suited for Paris had to be established around the city due to financing or market concerns.
All of these were extremely detrimental to national development.
As for where would be suitable to become the new financial hub?
Joseph quickly identified several cities: Marseille, Lille, Cologne, and Bordeaux.
Cologne was the first to be excluded. It was simply too close to the Rhine River; if war broke out, the nation's financial center would be right on the front lines, and that risk was too great.
Bordeaux, deep inland, had limited development potential and was promptly ruled out.
Of the remaining two locations, Lille, leveraging the Port of Calais, could radiate its influence across the middle and lower Rhine region from Brussels to the Palatinate, thereby impacting nearly half of Germany.
The Port of Marseille, on the other hand, was a hub for Mediterranean trade, extending its reach to Italy, North Africa, Spain, and even the Ottoman regions.
One could say both had their advantages and disadvantages.
But Joseph immediately realized that the Port of Calais, facing the English Channel, would at least for now still be threatened by the British fleet.
The Mediterranean Sea, however, had virtually become a French inland sea, offering far greater security than Lille.
Furthermore, while the market and trade volume around the Mediterranean were currently lower than in the north—where Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia were among the European nations, whose economic scales were incomparable to Italy and the Ottoman Empire—Joseph knew that once the Suez Canal opened, the situation would undergo a revolutionary transformation.
More to come tonight.
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