Chapter 627 The Dutch’s plan

June 12, 1631, Batavia Port, Java Island, South Asia.

Since Cohen began serving as the third governor of the Dutch East India Company 12 years ago, the city of Batavia has become the main target of the Dutch in Asia. After Cohen drove away the Banten army that originally occupied it, the East India Company

The headquarters also moved here, and huge resources were invested in running the city of Batavia, gradually turning it into the political and economic center of the Dutch in Southeast Asia.

The Dutch transported huge rocks from the Coromandel coast of India, teak from Zabala in East Java, recruited a large number of hardworking Chinese workers from the Ming Dynasty, and built this big city on the northwest coast of Java Island. The canals here are similar to

The excavation of drainage channels, the construction of houses and harbors, and the construction of city walls and fortifications were mostly completed by Chinese craftsmen from the Ming Dynasty. The Dutch also attach great importance to Chinese who are good at engineering construction and commercial trade, and introduce Chinese people every year.

The resources invested in immigration are huge.

Governor Cohen also formulated an operating model, which was to hand over the contracting rights of all retail businesses, including coastal trade, to the Chinese leader Kapitan. The Dutch, on the other hand, appointed the Chinese Kapitan to control the local overseas Chinese society.

Indirect rule. In 1619, Cohen appointed his close friend Su Minggang as the first Kapitan. Although this position was elected by Chinese elders through a relatively democratic method, it must be recognized by the Dutch before he can take office. Because of this

The nature of the position is that of the Chinese interest representative and intermediary in the Dutch Government House.

Every overseas Chinese needs to pay a head tax in Kapitan Province on a monthly basis. This tax accounts for more than half of the East India Company's comprehensive tax revenue in Batavia, which shows the importance of the Chinese in local society. And Batavia

In addition to the East India Company's own fleet, more than 90% of Via Port's maritime trade objects came from the Ming Dynasty. It is no exaggeration to say that the Chinese are definitely one of the necessary conditions for the rise of Batavia.

However, something has gone wrong in recent months this year. After April, the number of ships returning to Batavia from the north has decreased a lot for no reason. Three merchant ships were originally scheduled to return from Damuan Port during this period.

, one month after the scheduled time, it has not yet appeared, and this situation has not occurred in the past few years, which has attracted the attention of the Governor-General and the East India Company's senior officials. Of course, they do not know yet,

Among the merchant ships heading north from Batavia to Taiyuan Port, some unlucky ones have quietly disappeared during the voyage.

According to the usual climate conditions, there will indeed be typhoons in the South China Sea at this season every year, and shipwrecks and fatalities are not unheard of. However, the Dutch have been traveling on this waterway for many years. How to choose one during the typhoon season?

It is a relatively safe route to avoid dangerous sea conditions. The Dutch captain on each ship has mastered relevant skills. If three sailing ships that set out every half month actually encountered extreme sea conditions at sea and disappeared, then

The possibility of this is really slim.

After a meeting, the senior officials of the East India Company thought that there were only a few possibilities. The first was a shipwreck, in which case the missing merchant ships would of course be impossible to find; the second possibility was that these sailing ships were intercepted at sea.

If it is the latter possibility, then the situation is more complicated.

The Netherlands has two strong rivals in the Far East that have been fighting for many years, one is Portugal and the other is Spain. Portugal has weakened greatly in recent years. Not only has it become a vassal state of Spain, but it has also repeatedly fought against the Netherlands in the Far East.

After the defeat, the Dutch had already robbed many colonial sites in the Indian Peninsula and Southeast Asia. It can be said that the hatred is as deep as the sea.

In order to intercept the Ming Dynasty's export trade share from Spain, the Netherlands has also sent many armed merchant ships to cruise on the route between the southeastern coast of the Ming Dynasty and Manila in recent years, intercepting and killing Spanish sailing ships, intercepting Ming Dynasty merchant ships and coercing them to use their destinations.

The land was changed to Batavia in the south. This approach naturally aroused the dissatisfaction of Spain. However, the two sides have not yet distinguished themselves, and interceptions and counter-interceptions at sea are still going on day after day.

Performed.

With the strength of the two rivals, Portugal and Spain, it is not impossible to intercept and kill Dutch merchant ships in the South China Sea, and their motives are also very sufficient. It can be said that they are very suspicious targets, and they are also the targets that the Dutch are most suspicious of now.

In addition to these two forces, some people have also proposed other possibilities, such as the South China Sea pirates and the Haihan people who have become famous in Qiongzhou Island in the Ming Dynasty in recent years. There are many South China Sea pirate forces, but their strength is not too strong.

It will be more difficult to kill the Dutch merchant ships, because their old sailing ships are difficult to intercept the much faster Dutch sailing ships at sea.

However, the Haihan people on Qiongzhou Island have certain suspicions, because their deeds have been well-known in recent years, and even the East India Company, which has not established direct trade relations with them, has received a lot of relevant intelligence.

These Chinese descendants who are said to come from overseas have a completely different approach from the Ming Dynasty. They are good at engineering construction and maritime trade, have a large number of skilled craftsmen, and also have extremely high standards in the military. In the eyes of the Dutch,

In addition to their appearance, the Haihan gang behaves completely differently from the traditional Chinese in their minds. This group of people is high-profile and aggressive, and they are expanding externally very quickly.

Only a year or two after the Haihan people settled in the south of Qiongzhou Island, they had already trained an army to go on a cross-sea expedition to Annan to assist the northern court in the Annan Civil War against its southern opponents. Although it is rumored that the size of this army is not large, just

It was only a few thousand, but its combat effectiveness and achievements impressed the Dutch onlookers. Originally, some people in the East India Company thought that they should launch a military attack on Haihan, a potential competitor, and eliminate this potential competitor in its early stages.

The opponent had no chance of further trouble, but after understanding Haihan's combat methods and achievements, the original main combatants gave up the idea of ​​taking the initiative to attack and chose to wait and see what happened before making any plans.

This is not because the senior officials of the East India Company think that their military power cannot defeat the Haihan people, but they are indeed afraid of the Haihan people and do not dare to attack easily. Because there are two other powerful opponents in the South China Sea, if they concentrate their firepower to deal with Qiongzhou

On the one hand, the Haihan people on the island are likely to cause a backlash from the Ming Dynasty, and on the other hand, they may also be robbed by Portugal and Spain, their two old rivals. Once the Haihan people cannot be dealt with quickly, it is likely to cause complications and turn the war into a direction that cannot be achieved by themselves.

The direction of control continues to develop.

But giving up the use of war to deal with Haihan does not mean that the East India Company has given up its attention to Haihan. In fact, after Haihan assisted the Annan court to end its civil war two years ago, the East India Company was specially established

A department to collect and organize various information about Haihan. Although the Dutch could not enter Qiongzhou Island themselves to obtain first-hand information, they could still inquire about Haihan from the Ming Dynasty maritime merchants who had trade relations.

A lot of news.

According to the information collected from various aspects, the East India Company believes that Hai Han's maritime armed forces have even surpassed the Portuguese in the near future. The reason is that Hai Han expelled the local Portuguese after conquering Hoi An City in southern Annam.

, and confiscated part of their property. However, instead of fighting with the Haihan people, the Portuguese secretly sent people to Qiongzhou Island to negotiate peace, and even signed a cooperation agreement on commerce and trade.

In the past year, the Dutch were shocked to discover that the Portuguese were buying weapons from the Haihan people and equipping them in their strongholds in Southeast Asia and the Indian Peninsula. This discovery really shocked the Dutch, because they also knew that the Portuguese

Human nature has always been to act as second-hand weapons dealers, refurbishing weapons that had been eliminated on the European battlefields and selling them to the Ming Dynasty at high prices. In order to earn high profits from the arms trade, those damn Portuguese second-hand dealers were even salvaging sunken ships.

, so that the weapons on the sunken ship can be sold to the stupid and wealthy Ministry of War of the Ming Dynasty.

Originally, this business was also very coveted by the Dutch, but after the battle in Penghu a few years ago, the path for in-depth cooperation between the Netherlands and the Ming Dynasty has basically been blocked - at least during the term of the current Governor Cohen.

It was impossible, because Gao Wenlu, the Dutch general who was killed by the Ming Dynasty in Penghu, was personally appointed by Cohen. It was impossible for him to just silently swallow the knocked out tooth.

But judging from the current situation, it is obvious that the Portuguese have given up the business of selling second-hand weapons to Ming Dynasty, because the price they can sell to Ming Dynasty cannot be lower than that of Haihan, and they are no longer competitive in this business.

Then there is no doubt that Haihan has replaced Portugal as an arms dealer. This can be seen from their almost unrestricted expansion of their territory on Qiongzhou Island. It can also be seen that the Guangdong officials of the Ming Dynasty have no regard for their existence.

What indulgence.

Behind this seemingly smooth business change, there is a fact that makes the Dutch very uneasy - since the Haihan people dare to sell weapons to the powerful Ming Empire, at least it means that they are not worried that the Ming Dynasty will force them to hand over these weapons.

The method of manufacturing weapons. In other words, their assessment of their own strength should be higher than that of the Ming army.

Although the Haihans never took the initiative to contact the Dutch after their appearance, and showed neither goodwill nor hostility, for the East India Company, the Haihans are definitely a potential competitor worthy of attention. Their territory

It is expanding outward from Hainan Island at an alarming rate, reaching the national border south of Annan in the south, and reaching Fujian across the sea from Damuan Port in the north. Given time, will this force continue to move south and compete with East India?

The company competes for the ownership of Southeast Asia, and no one dares to take this guarantee. Therefore, regardless of whether the disappearance of Dutch merchant ships in the South China Sea is related to Haihan, the East India Company has already regarded it as one of the suspects with the ability to attack.

Although the real reason is not yet clear, three ships have now disappeared, and the East India Company's senior officials cannot sit back and watch the situation continue to deteriorate. Some actions must be taken. Governor Cohen gave an order, and the station in Batavia

The Dutch armed forces in the port began to move, and it took twenty days to prepare a maritime search and rescue fleet, ready to set off north and follow the usual route of Dutch merchant ships to find the truth.

Although it is a search and rescue fleet, in fact, few people in the fleet regard "rescue" as the mission of this trip. Finding three ships that have deviated from their course in the vast South China Sea is almost like finding a needle in a haystack. This trip can

You'd be lucky to find even a few clues about a missing ship.

The commander appointed by Governor-General Cohen for this fleet was Van Longen, a pure-blood citizen of the United Provinces of the Netherlands and an experienced captain at sea.

The reason why Captain Van Loungen is described as pure blood is because in the 1960s, when the northern provinces of the Netherlands launched anti-Spanish struggles, Van Loungen's ancestors were the first to break away from the rule of the Spanish Habsburg family.

He was one of the founders of the Union. When the "United Provinces of the Netherlands" was established in 1581, his ancestor was also fortunate enough to be one of the leaders of the republic.

However, after two generations, Zuyin no longer has so many benefits to enjoy in Van Loungen. In addition, his position in the family is not the first choice heir, so he and other young Dutch people who can't find a way out.

Like many people, they chose to join the fleet and go to the distant east to seek a future of success.

The few blessings left to him by his ancestors came into play at this time, so that he did not have to start as a sailor at the lowest level, but was directly recommended by political leaders to join the East Indies, which has become prosperous in the Far East in recent years.

The company also used the family's financial resources to order a three-masted armed merchant ship for him. Of course, the ownership of this merchant ship did not belong to Van Longen personally, but his family accounted for most of it, and the East India Company accounted for the majority.

30%, Fan Longgen actually only owns 10% of the ownership, which is equivalent to taking the ship and joining the gang.

With the help of his family, Van Longen came to the Far East as Cohen's right-hand man, and soon became the new governor's right-hand man. After staying in the Far East for twelve years, Van Longen had already transformed from a handsome young man who was just starting out.

A middle-aged uncle with an unshaven beard. The ships under his name have also expanded from the original one to a fleet of seven sailing ships, covering the vast waters from Japan and North Korea to the Java Islands in the South China Sea. Although

He still had to pay most of his income to the family and the East India Company as dividends every year, but the increase in overall income allowed him to live a very decent upper-class life in Batavia.
Chapter completed!