Xinshun 1730

Chapter 697

After the initial contact, in order to cooperate with the follow-up negotiations, Du Feng took people to observe the elite troops of the Kandy Kingdom in order to determine the extent of Dashun's concessions in the follow-up negotiations.

This degree of concession is reversed.

If the troops can fight, some Dutch fortresses with very important terrain cannot be abandoned.

If the troops are unable to fight, not only can some less important forts be abandoned and returned to the Ceylonians, even some key forts can also be abandoned.

Just keep Colombo, Jaffna and Trincomalee.This point is the bottom line required by the Privy Council. Beyond this bottom line, the mission can be freely used.

Ceylon is not Afghanistan. It is surrounded by sea. Even if there are mountains and plateaus, as long as they don't rush into it, it will be no difficulty to control the coastal plain. As long as Dashun's navy can maintain its advantage east of the Cape of Good Hope.

In fact, Du Feng despises the army of the Kingdom of Kandy in his heart.The opponent obviously couldn't fight, and even the Dutch were blocked into the mountains by the Dutch, so the level can be imagined.

After the visit, this idea is even more firm.

Just looking at the weapons and equipment, they are actually pretty good.It was much stronger than the ordnance before the Dashun military reform. There were more than a thousand British brown basses, and there was also an artillery unit equipped with field guns instead of imitated naval guns.

But regardless of the good equipment, Du Feng can tell from some details that even if he fights with Dashun's arquebus troops before the military reform, there is no advantage here.

Organization, code of conduct, technology, and discipline are all in a mess.

Du Feng absolutely agrees with Liu Yu's idea of ​​making reverse concessions, and of course he agrees with Liu Yu's statement that "the era of the Bastion is over".

With the improvement of the stability of wooden grenades and the extensive use of Mini bombs, this kind of bastion structure originally designed to defend against solid bullets and line soldiers has actually lost its value in the first-class army.

Of course, the bastions of Dashun in the northwest and northeast are of great significance.Especially the several bastion areas in the northwest region can directly use three to five thousand soldiers and horses to suppress the stability of the northwest region and dare not rebel.

But if Dashun is the attacker, the bastion is meaningless.Giving up to the Kingdom of Kandy can not only show infinite sincerity, but also reduce the size of the defenders, so as to prepare for the subsequent large-scale cross-sea attack.

Because Kandy's army is weak, they can take it back at any time.

This is one reason.

Another reason is the consideration of governance.

There is specialization in the art field. Du Feng and other military representatives inspected the army of the Kandy people, and the members of the Privy Council and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the envoys naturally inspected the social level.

They came to the conclusion that the country of Ceylon was not easy to conquer.Even if it is conquered, there will be rebellions one after another in the follow-up.

For one thing, this country has writing.

Second, this country has a unified belief.

Thirdly, this country has its own history books.

Fourth, the country has a 2000-year history with organized government.

Finally, the race of this country is relatively unified, all of them are Sinhalese.In view of the fact that those messy ethnic groups in India cross the sea and invade from time to time, they have their own national consciousness in the long-term confrontation.And this national consciousness is bound together with Buddhism.

The last point is both an advantage and a disadvantage.

The advantage is that in the face of Western invasion, the national awakening based on Buddhism is easier to unite the people.

The disadvantage is that when faced with "colonists" like Dashun, this kind of national awakening based on religion makes it difficult to unite the people.

Dashun didn't bother to care what they believed, and if they believed in Buddhism, in the eyes of the ruler of Dashun, it was not a big problem.

The starting point of the resistance movement of the Ceylonians in history is also very, very interesting.After the British drove away the Dutch, they just defeated Napoleon. The Industrial Revolution had already begun, and Britain was invincible, so its self-confidence exploded.

This kind of irrational self-confidence brought about by the power of the country led them to make a decision: they believed that the theory of Christianity was the best, and an open debate should be held to let the people of Ceylon know that Buddhism was not good enough.

But they obviously forgot one thing, Buddhism engaged in debate, and it was also top-notch in ancient times.In ancient Chinese stories, apart from the star-level debate masters in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, after the Qin and Han Dynasties, the senior debaters in the stories were generally monks.

What the British envisage is to completely collapse Buddhist theories through public debate, so as to quickly promote Christianity.

But the reality is that Buddhist eminent monks not only have a very high level of debate, but those missionaries who debate are speechless. sports.

This is a story that happened in later generations. Of course, it is impossible for Dashun to "learn history as a mirror" from this story.

But Dashun, or China's historical characteristics, determines that Dashun will not take this wrong path.

Because the dispute over the "Three Religions" began in the Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties and lasted until the Tang Dynasty. After hundreds of years of religious conflicts, the initial confluence of the three religions was finally completed in the Tang Dynasty. Buddhism and Taoism have built a special worldview that can be inclusive and integrated.

Han Changli's "Writing begins with the decline of eight generations, Dao aids the world's drowning" is not just to describe his writing style.Because what high-end literati pay attention to is "writing to convey Tao", and the most important thing is "Tao".

From the invasion of Buddhism in the Han Dynasty, the Taoist uprising, to the 13th year of Zhenguan’s Hongwenguan three religions debate, to Han Yu’s anti-Buddhism and Laos, and then to the Tang Dynasty Taoism and Buddhism went hand in hand and were used by the rulers, and finally to the Song Dynasty. , and finally completely transformed the local Taoism and Buddhism, making them completely reduced to two harmless religions that are not popular and cannot enter the mainstream political circle.

The Buddhism that Dashun understands is not the same as the Buddhism in Ceylon.

It is precisely because of this ignorance that a situation that is quite beneficial to Dashun has already been formed.Because I don’t understand it, I think that the Buddhism here is similar to that of Dashun; because I think Buddhism is similar, there is no special requirement for religion, and there is no such thing as extermination of Buddhism in Dashun. Action: Since the Song Dynasty, there is no need to destroy it, because it has been completely castrated and basically harmless.

Fundamentally, Dashun doesn't want to touch religious issues, and everything follows fate.

Moreover, Dashun itself is anti-Christian, and the country is banning religion on a large scale, which is extremely strict.Therefore, in order to show favor, Dashun can allow some Ceyloners who were forced to convert to Christianity to believe in Buddhism again, so as to win the hearts of the people of Ceylon.

The politicians in the Dashun decision-making circle do not understand primitive Buddhism, and the policy of letting nature take its course has disintegrated the soil for the anti-colonial movement in Ceylon: Dashun, it is unimaginable that in name, the Sangha Status, above the king.If they understand Buddhism based on their understanding of Dashun Buddhism, they naturally don't think there is anything wrong with Buddhism.

Liu Yu didn't know much about religious affairs, but he was very concerned about the policies of European colonists in the colonies.After collecting a lot of intelligence on Southeast Asia and India, he strongly agrees with a policy of the Netherlands.

That is to use a large number of middle and low caste people as colonial officials, and must refuse to use high caste people as colonial officials.

Although it is hard to hear, the fact is that the majority of the middle and lower caste groups prefer the policies of the colonists relatively speaking.Compared with the caste system that imprisoned them, the Roman law system of the Dutch can let them breathe a sigh of relief.

It is not the ethnic groups that can organize the people of Ceylon.In a country with distinct castes, nationalism must be based on religion.

No religious basis, high caste, low caste, say they are a family, compatriots, do people of low caste believe it?Especially the members of the lower caste who can be officials in the Dutch colonial government but have been fishermen in Ceylon for a lifetime and cannot be transferred. Will they feel that they are a family with the higher caste?
However, the prerequisite for the awakening of nationalism based on religion is religious confrontation.Religious confrontation is the easiest thing to intuitively feel "who I am and who I am not".

But on Dashun's side, or Dashun's garrison in Ceylon, this confrontation is vague.

Sailors and some soldiers may have sex today, steal tomorrow, or rob the day after tomorrow. Many people are basically scum and soldiers, but they will still go in to worship when they see temples.Such a garrison is naturally different from those in the Netherlands and Portugal, and the local people don't think there is a big difference: you see, they go in to worship and burn incense when they see the temple, which is similar to us.

Some things have already been done by predecessors in the hundreds of years from the Han Dynasty to the Sui and Tang Dynasties.This made Dashun achieve the effect of "governing by doing nothing" purely and unintentionally on the religious issue, and purely unintentionally disintegrated the most possible national awakening of Ceylon.

Various factors, such as deliberate calculations, unintentional actions, accidental gains due to ignorance, or Dashun's policy inertia since ancient times, all made the Dashun Mission in the first round of the Kandy Dynasty During the negotiation, the king of Kandy gained great favor.

There are six treaties in total.

The most important land issue is naturally placed in the first paragraph.

Dashun will station troops in Colombo, Trincomalee and Jaffna.The surrounding land is also temporarily ruled by Dashun.

Dashun will return the Ratnapura fortress area to the Kandy Dynasty, allowing the Kandy Dynasty to garrison troops, and use this fortress as a dividing line for different governance methods in the Colombo area: any businessman who enters the Kandy Dynasty must obtain the Kandy Dynasty permission, and thus entered.

Intuitively speaking, this Ratnapura fortress area is the dividing line between the coastal plain and the mountainous area, and it is also the border area ruled by the Dutch.

If Dashun is used as an analogy, it is roughly equivalent to Shanhaiguan.This fortress was built by the Portuguese and later occupied by the Dutch. It is an important checkpoint for the Netherlands to defend against the army of the Kandy Dynasty.

However, for Dashun, it doesn't mean much.There is no need for a military confrontation with the Kandy Dynasty for the time being, and returning it to the Kandy Kingdom can greatly demonstrate sincerity.

And this fortress itself is also outdated.

It was built in the first year of the apocalypse, and within the next hundred years, it will be a first-class fortress. It can really achieve the effect that a small number of defenders can repel thousands of troops.

But now, for Dashun, the only resistance that this broken fortress can play is to consume a batch of shells, and there is no value for one man to guard against ten thousand men.

Rajsingh is not a child either, so of course he never dared to think, and never thought that Dashun would return the land.At most, I just hope that Dashun will speak some reason.

Unexpectedly, Dashun was not only reasonable, but also returned the land, which was even the most important stronghold in his opinion.

Once the first clause of the treaty was proposed, it immediately paved the way for subsequent negotiations, and the negotiations became extremely smooth.

The second article is about economics and trade.

On Dashun's side, the legal person of the commercial organization, instead of the Dashun court, presented ten elephants and twenty war horses to the King of Kandy every year.

On July 7 every year, elephants and war horses are sent to the capital of Kandy.

The reason why July 7th was chosen is because this day has special significance in Buddhist circles.

It is said that it was on this day that Sakyamuni opened the altar for the first time after attaining full self-consciousness. In the deer park of Benares, he officially began to converse with Mahakasyapa, Moggallana, Fuluna, Subhuti, and Relic. The day when Fu waited for the five disciples to give lectures.

Dashun will implement a policy of religious freedom, except for Catholicism, any belief is acceptable.

Dashun will transform some churches in coastal areas into temples, and invite eminent monks from Dashun to preside over them.Sinhalese who have been forcibly converted are encouraged to return to Buddhism; the Kingdom of Kandy will not prevent Buddhists from visiting the Temple of the Tooth Relic.

In return, which can be regarded as the demand of the Kandy Kingdom, Dashun will obtain the exclusive monopoly of goods such as cinnamon, betel nuts and gems, and allow Dashun merchants to enter the Kandy Kingdom to purchase goods under legal conditions and the king's approval.

From the second onwards, it's all about trade.

Including Dashun helping the Kandy Kingdom to establish a customs... Although this customs has nothing to do with the sea, but is inland, it is still called a customs.

The goods entering Kandy will pay 5.00% value tax to the King of Kandy according to law; Dashun merchants can contract the mountain forest land in Kandy; Dashun merchants can contract coastal areas for pearl mining; Dashun has the obligation to be the King of Kandy Provide arms trade, as long as the King of Kandy gives money, Dashun can sell muskets and cannons...

It seems that this treaty is quite beneficial to Kandy.

It was useless to use one soldier, not only took back the crucial Ratnapura fortress area, but also got the tariff without even thinking about it.

If you have money, you can buy a gun.As long as there are guns, the rule can be stabilized.This point, Rajsingh is still clear.

But in fact, this treaty is also quite beneficial to Dashun.

The small-scale peasant economy in the Kingdom of Kandy has little purchasing power at all.At most, Dashun sells some cotton cloth here. As for light luxury products such as silk and porcelain, there is not much difference between adding or not adding the 5.00% tariff.

The value of Ceylon lies in the origin of cinnamon, betel nuts and gemstones, rather than a consumer market.Just like India, for Dashun, it can only be a source of raw materials in the early stage, and it needs long-term efforts to transform it into a consumer market.

In this era when Indian cotton cloth can force Britain and France to issue cotton cloth bans, it is difficult for Songjiang cloth and Jinling cloth to open up sales in India in the short term.

To put it in a more ruthless way, in the future, we will find a way to destroy India's handicraft industry, disintegrate India's small-scale peasant economy, cause bankruptcy and poverty on a scale of millions of people, and disintegrate the scale of tens of millions of people brought about by the old agricultural system. famine.

Ceylon, as the base of Dashun going out to India in the future, it is best not to cause social turmoil, try not to meddle in Ceylon's internal affairs, and try not to dump excessively towards Ceylon: the market is too small, it is not worth it; dumping There are too many, social unrest, and more money will be spent on suppression, which will seriously affect the pace of entering India in the future.

In fact, the entire treaty is equivalent to using an invisible line to enclose the Kandy Dynasty.Dashun controls the estuary and foreign trade, and you can fiddle around with the enclosed areas as you like, and Dashun will not take care of them for the time being.How to rule and how to govern is your own business.

(End of this chapter)