Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1686 Formosa

It has been a while since Handelman returned to Formosa Island from Jiaozhou Port.

To be honest, in Jiaozhou Port, which has gradually become a new trading city—not just a pure military port—he always feels that people around him are looking at him with strange eyes.Yes, I know that the Dutch East India Company I serve is in conflict with your country and has been deprived of the vital Cape Colony, but it is necessary for me to suffer, to be angry, and to fight with you The so-and-so duel?I am just an employee of the company, and the company pays me a salary of 240 dong a month, and I serve the company's trade in Dunlai, that's all.

Therefore, after clearing the money and goods with the people on the east bank and confirming that the trade of the previous year had been completed, Handelman, the business representative of the East India Company in Denglai, hurriedly "fleeed" from Jiaozhou Port, and went with a ship full of high-grade furs, Whale products, barreled wine, dried fruit, and gold and silver merchant ships went south together through Ningbo Dinghai Port—at Dinghai Port, the merchant ship exchanged the excess gold and silver for raw silk and tea—and returned to Fukuoka in Fuzhou. It was June 1675 at the port of Zeelandia at the southern tip of Hermosa Island.

In June, the southeast wind prevails in the sea off China's coast, so it is the traditional peak season for trade. A large number of merchant ships from the Netherlands, England, Portugal and even France (which have only appeared in recent years and are relatively small in scale) will come to China and Japan from the Nanyang area. Offshore, start the annual trade.

These merchant ships transported all kinds of commodities, gold and silver from Europe (generally speaking, the proportion of commodities is not high, often more than half of the gold and silver) to various ports in China, and then bought back tea, raw silk, porcelain and other things , shipped back to Europe for profit, and the scale of trade has grown rapidly in the past ten years, because mainland China was relatively peaceful during this period, and only a few provinces were at war.

Among these foreign traders, the Dutch East India Company is probably the most successful one.Its merchants set up business stations in many places, and they exchanged goods from various places. For example, they bought buckskins in Taiwan and Siam and sold them to Japan, shipped copper sheets and waste coins from Japan to Vietnam, and then purchased raw silk from Vietnam. For example, the special products purchased from Nanyang are transported to Guangdong, and then the raw silk, porcelain and tea are purchased from Guangdong and transported to Japan, and the copper and gold obtained are transported to mainland China to take advantage of the exchange rate difference to obtain silver. —It is almost unnecessary for them to transport any gold and silver from Europe, and they can easily get a lot of Far East goods, and then send them back to Europe for sale.This can be seen from the fact that Taiwanese merchants are still able to contribute more than 30% of Batavia's profits after excluding the purchase costs of raw silk, tea, and porcelain. They are the most successful merchants in China's coastal waters, bar none.

Of course, the success of the Dutch is not only due to their own shrewdness and hard work, but also the help of the people on the east coast.First of all, people on the east coast used their influence (or face) on the mainland to establish a certain order along the southeast coast, allowing Dutch merchant ships to freely come to Ningbo for trade; secondly, they have not yet stabilized in other parts of the mainland. In the case of providing tea, porcelain and raw silk, they took advantage of the unique conditions of Ningbo Prefecture to stably provide the two bulk commodities of tea and raw silk to the Dutch. Once again, the people on the east coast also exported special-grade flour and wine from Shandong (the white people in the East Indies eat it), and exported all kinds of whale products and high-grade furs from Blackwater to the Dutch East India Company, which also added a lot to them. profits.

Therefore, in the Far East, although the Dutch East India Company and the people on the east coast secretly have a lot of filth, the general interests are still the same, so the relationship between the two parties has been maintained fairly well. It can be seen that he readily helped Dong'an to collect food in Nanyang.

However, this time the East Coast Republic brazenly sent troops in South Africa and quickly occupied the Dutch colony of Cape Town, which suddenly made many people in the Dutch East India Company in the Far East "messy". They subconsciously felt that they should fight back, but At the same time, rationality told them not to do this, because the loss might be even greater, so they were suddenly stupid there, not knowing what to do.However, the 17-member committee in Amsterdam was also "slow to respond" this time, and did not issue the latest order to Batavia in time, making them even more afraid to act without authorization.

The people on the east bank were also taken aback when they heard the news at first.Especially the Southern Exploration Team and the Bank of Taiwan. The former began to inspect the defense facilities and militia systems in various coastal counties, and the latter began to urgently transport some goods and money stored in Zeelandia Port. The Cirk Sea Squadron also dispatched three "Yaksa" class armed transport ships to help carry, mainly some grain, sugar, spices and sulfur.

As a result, the Bank of Taiwan discovered that the Dutch had "no fluctuations in their hearts" and had no intention of going back at all. Only then did they realize that they might be a little nervous.So the general manager Shao Shude, after repeatedly confirming that there is no problem, sent his confidant, Han Jin, the eldest brother of the Han family brothers, to the city of Zeelandia to investigate. The "Star" class light cruiser transferred from other places also returned to the Hangzhou Bay area after a circle, because they were obviously needed more there.

However, although the war alarm has been lifted, both the East Coast side and the Dutch side have always had doubts in their hearts. They doubt that war will break out one day. Therefore, this is why Hendelman encountered those strange things in Jiaozhou Port. The most fundamental reason for the strange eyes.

Handelman does not have his own residence in Zeelandia Castle, but he has a pretty good relationship with Hugo Rolle, the head of the Taiwan Commercial Station, so he has been staying at Rolle's house these days, a sweltering extremely hot Stone villas are built relatively closed for military defense, making it uncomfortable for people to live in them.

It was the afternoon when Hugo Rolle took a team of mercenaries to the nearby native settlements to collect taxes. The bored Handelman also walked out of the villa and took two stupid horses. The soldiers came out of the core urban area where outsiders could not come in and out casually, and went shopping on the nearby streets.

At that time, more than 2000 people lived in Zeelandia Castle, including more than 1500 company employees, more than 900 Malay slaves and white indentured slaves, and more than 400 women and children, which is more than [-]% more than in history.It is worth mentioning that.Even the Malay slaves, white indentured slaves, and debt slaves brought by the Dutch are much stronger than the natives of Taiwan in terms of identity. Many Dutch people are too lazy to use the army to temporarily arm these people to suppress , It can be said that it is the dog leg of the Taiwan business station, so the treatment is not bad.

The largest number of company employees living in the castle are the German mercenaries. There are more than 700 people in total, equipped with flintlock guns, matchlock guns and some cold weapons. The combat effectiveness is so-so, but it is more than enough to suppress the natives.In addition, other employees are more miscellaneous. They are basically administrators (including station masters, businessmen, accountants, etc.), teachers, missionaries, medical staff, technicians, translators, etc., and there are hundreds of employees in total. human appearance.Many of them are married, and many of their wives are Asian, which can be seen from the more than 400 women and children living in the castle.

Undoubtedly, based on the current profitability of Taiwan’s commercial stations, these people’s incomes are actually quite good—the legal salary of the stationmaster Hugo Rolle is 300 guilders, and the salary of the mercenary leader, Captain Berg, is 100 guilders. Dong, the salary of Pastor Jansen is 110 dong, the salary of senior businessmen is 100 dong, and the above is the high-income class; and in the next level of income, the salary of mid-level businessmen is 50 dong, and the salary of local colonial officials is 70 dong. 10 guilders; even at the lowest tier, soldiers receive 16 guilders in wages, school teachers 25 guilders, and low-ranking merchants receive [-] guilders.

And it's just legal wage income!As we all know, whether it is the Dutch or the British East India Company, its employees also have an important source of income, which is to carry goods back to the mainland.Taking Formosa Island as an example, the colonists on the island colluded with the sailors on the ships that came to trade, and hid some privately purchased goods in the hold of the company's ships, and then sent them across the ocean to Amsterdam. Get huge profits.Captains generally turn a blind eye to these behaviors out of consideration for maintaining morale and other factors, provided that you don’t make it too exaggerated, as the saying goes, when the water is clear, there will be no fish, and so do foreigners. I understand this truth.

Such a high level of income naturally gave birth to a relatively prosperous local commodity market inside and outside the city of Zeelandia. Many handicraftsmen and small traders from Fujian Province on the opposite side of the mainland operated here to provide services for the Dutch colonists. , in order to obtain a level of income far exceeding that of their hometown, for which some of them even believed in Protestant Lutheranism and became lambs under the hands of Pastor Jansen.

"There are still too few people in Zeelandia. There are less than 3000 people living in the castle, and there are only more than 5000 residents living near the castle, and about half of them are Chinese from Fujian and Guangdong provinces on the opposite mainland. These people Once you are incited and bewitched by others, there may be some uncontrollable incidents." Looking at the relatively prosperous market, Hendelman wiped the hot sweat from his head and said to himself: "Now the pirate country Lord's reclamation operations in the northern part of Formosa Island are becoming more and more excessive, and the number of people is increasing. The colonial strongholds established by the Spaniards have probably been controlled by them. This is really bad news. Batavia What are you thinking? As long as the sugarcane and rice fields in the south are in your hands, you can ignore everything else? In that case, give Mr. Zheng Chenggong another 20 years—no, it may only take ten years if you invest a lot ——His colonizers will probably push the border here? It’s terrible! What kind of attitude should we use to face them at that time, smiling faces or weapons? No one dares to say !"

It is said that Fujian Zheng's pioneering efforts in the northern and central regions of Taiwan are indeed increasing year by year. Although the harsh natural environment makes the death rate of these people extremely high, under the continuous population replenishment (for example, Zheng Chenggong once [-] "prisoners of war" were exiled from Chaozhou Prefecture to the island), many places were cleared out, and some food was initially produced.While not yet self-sufficient, it's pretty good.

The Dutch have always suspected that Zheng Chenggong took the risk of huge losses to colonize the island-the annual death rate of the pioneers exceeded 15%. , the British, and the Portuguese have long been aware of the fact that mosquitoes are the culprit of malaria transmission through the people on the east coast), and the number was even higher before—the people on the east coast may be standing behind them, without the large number of farm tools they provided, Seeds, medicines, tents and other necessities, at the level of the pirate country, it should not be possible to be so fast.

And if the Dutch were just skeptical at the beginning, then after Zheng Chenggong's navy successively acquired two Western-style galleons, the Dutch have basically confirmed that the people on the east coast and Zheng's development on the island are inseparable. This made them very sad-fortunately, Zheng Chenggong's main energy has never been put on the island of Taiwan, and the budget for opening up wasteland on the island every year is also very limited, otherwise the Dutch may be even more sad-and then a little angry, and then It is more peaceful to trade with the Qing Dynasty behind the back of the people on the east coast. Everyone cheats each other, each other.

With the news that the Cape Town colony was occupied by the people from the east coast this time, coupled with the instructions of the Governor of Batavia, Van Goins, the Taiwan Commercial Station has basically confirmed the decision to increase its trade with the Qing Dynasty, that is, every year Add four more ships to Xiangshui or Haizhou Port in the Qing Dynasty for trade, and transport to the Qing Dynasty the army field artillery, coastal defense heavy artillery (with a large number of artillery sighting and weighing equipment), flintlock guns, binoculars and other military supplies that they urgently need. To improve the combat effectiveness of the Qing army.

For example, a few days ago, two ships came from Batavia, loaded with all kinds of munitions, and there were even more than 100 mercenaries recruited in Batavia with many years of war experience. They planned to go north in a few days. The Qing Dynasty can not only add trouble to the people on the east coast, but also get a lot of profits in exchange, so why not do it?

You must know that the officials of the Emperor of Manchuria have now implemented a strict matching trade system, that is, trade according to your satisfaction with the commodities they need. The more military supplies you bring, the more raw silk and tea you will get. On the contrary, there are fewer and fewer, which forced foreign merchants to bring a lot of cannons for trade. For this reason, the Dutch and the Portuguese have expanded a cannon foundry in Batavia and India respectively, in order to satisfy the Manchurian emperor. appetite.

"I hope that the Qing people will complete the innovation and upgrading of military equipment as soon as possible, and completely drag the people from the east coast to the Far East mainland, so that they can talk to us." Hendelman thought: "The British and Portuguese probably also plan to do so. Yes."

(End of this chapter)