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

To be honest, in Jiaozhou Port, a place that has gradually become an emerging trade city - not just a pure military port - he always feels that people around him are looking at him with a strange look. Yes, I know that the object of my service, the Dutch East India Company, has clashed with your country and has also been taken away from the crucial Cape Town Colony, but I need to suffer, angry, and then duel with whom of you? I am just an employee of the company, the company pays me a salary of 240 rupees a month, and I serve the company's trade in Denlai, that's all.

Therefore, after clearing the payment and goods with the East Coast people and confirming that the trade of the previous year had been completed, the East India Company's business representative in Denglai, Handelman hurriedly "escape" from Jiaozhou Port and went south with a merchant ship full of high-end fur, whale products, barreled wine, dried fruits, gold and silver, and went south through the Dinghai Port of Ningbo. At Dinghai Port, the merchant ship replaced the excess gold and silver with raw silk and tea, and returned to the Port of Lelanzha at the southern end of Formosa Island. It was June 1675.

In June, the southeastern wind prevails in China's offshore seas, so it is a traditional peak trade season. A large number of merchant ships from the Netherlands, England, Portugal and even France (it only appeared in recent years and are relatively small in scale) will bring them from the South China Sea to the coast of China and Japan to carry out annual trade.

These merchant ships will carry all kinds of goods from Europe, gold and silver (generally, the proportion of goods is not high.

Often more than half of the gold and silver are transported to various ports in China, and then they buy tea, raw silk, porcelain and some other things, and transport it back to Europe to make profits. The scale of trade has grown rapidly in the past decade because mainland China is relatively calm during this period, and only some provinces are fighting.

Among these foreign traders, the Dutch East India Company is probably the most successful. Its merchants opened trade stations in many places and poured goods from various places back and forth - for example, purchasing deer skins in Taiwan and Siam for sale to Japan, transporting copper sheets and waste coins from Japan to Vietnam, and then purchasing raw silk from Vietnam; for example, purchasing specialties from Nanyang to Guangdong, and then purchasing raw silk from Guangdong, and then transporting raw silk from Guangdong to Japan, and then transporting the copper sheets and gold from mainland China to obtain silver by using the exchange rate difference. All of these are all in total - they almost do not need to ship gold and silver from Europe, and they can easily get a lot of Far Eastern goods and then send them back to Europe for sale. This can be seen from the fact that after deducting the purchase costs of raw silk, tea and porcelain, the Taiwanese merchants can still contribute more than 30% of the profits to Batavia. They are the most successful merchants offshore in China, no one.

Of course, in addition to their own shrewdness and efforts, the help of the East Coast people was also invaluable. First, the East Coast people used their influence (or face) in the mainland to establish a certain order in the southeast coastal area, allowing Dutch merchant ships to come to Ningbo to trade freely; secondly, when other parts of the mainland were not able to provide tea, porcelain and raw silk, they took advantage of Ningbo's unique conditions to provide tea and raw silk to the Dutch, while opening up a source of wealth for themselves, and also gave the Dutch East Indies Company the opportunity to make a fortune; secondly, the East Coast people also exported extra-grade flour and wine from Shandong (eating from white people in the East Indies), and exported various whale products and high-end fur from black water to the Dutch East Indies Company, which also added a lot of profit to them.

Therefore, in the Far East Ocean, although the Dutch East India Company and the East Coast people secretly had a lot of dirty things, their interests were still the same in general. Therefore, the relationship between the two sides has been maintained quite well. This can be seen from the Dutch who have been very happy to help the East Coast to arrange food in the South Coast.

However, this time the East Coast Republic brazenly sent troops in South Africa and quickly occupied the Dutch Cape Town colony, which suddenly made many people from the Dutch East India Company in the Far East. They subconsciously felt that they should fight back, but at the same time, reason told them that they could not do this, because the losses might be greater, so they were foolish there and didn't know what to do. However, the seventeen-member committee of Amsterdam was also "slowly responded" this time and did not issue the latest orders to Batavia, which made them even more afraid to act without authorization.

The East Coast people were also startled when they first heard the news. Especially the Southern Development Team and the Taiwan Bank, the former began to inspect the defense facilities and militia systems of each coastal county, and the latter began to transport some goods and payments stored in the Port of Rhlanzha. At that time, the Okhotsk Sea Squadron of the Navy's Third Fleet also transferred three "Yaksa" class armed transport ships to help with the transport, mainly some food, sugar, spices and sulfur.

As a result, the Taiwanese bank later found that the Dutch had "no fluctuations in his heart" and had no intention of retaliating. Then he realized that he might be overly nervous. So after repeatedly confirming that it was not at all, General Manager Shao Shude sent his confidant, Han Jin, the boss of the Han brothers, to Raranzha City for investigation, and confirmed it correctly, and finally ordered the company's ships to start trade again. The two "Star"-class light cruisers transferred from other places also shook for a while and then returned to the Hangzhou Bay area, because they were obviously needed more.

However, although the alarm of the war was lifted, both the East Coast and the Netherlands had always been suspicious in their hearts, and they might have doubts that the war would break out one day. Therefore, this is the most fundamental reason why Handelman encountered those strange looks at Jiaozhou Port.

Handelman did not have his own residence in the castle of Geranzza, but his relationship with Taiwan's merchant station manager Hugo Roll is pretty good, so he has been living in Roll's home these days, a very hot stone villa, and it was built for military defense, making it uncomfortable for people to live in it.

It was afternoon, and Hugo Roll took a team of mercenaries to the nearby native settlement to collect taxes. The bored Handelman also walked out of the villa and took two stupid Malay soldiers. He went out of the core city where outsiders could not enter and exit casually, and went to the nearby streets.

At this time, more than 2,000 people lived in the castle of Jelanzha.

Among them, the company employs more than 1,500 people, more than 900 Malay slaves and white indentured slaves, and more than 400 women and children, which is more than 60% more than in history. It is worth mentioning that even the Malay slaves and white indentured slaves brought by the Dutch, debt slaves, etc. are much better than the Taiwanese indigenous people in terms of identity. Many Dutch people are too lazy to use the army, and they are temporarily armed to suppress them. It can be said that they are the tycoons of Taiwanese business stations, so the treatment is quite good.

The largest number of employees in the castle is German mercenaries, with a total of more than 700 people, equipped with flintlock guns, coercine guns and some cold weapons. They have combat effectiveness, but it is more than enough to suppress the natives. In addition, other employees are relatively complicated, basically all administrative personnel (including business station managers, businessmen, accountants, etc.), teachers, missionaries, medical staff, technicians, translators, etc., and there are hundreds of people in total. Many of them are already married, and many of their wives are Asians. This can be seen from the fact that more than 400 women and children live in the castle.

There is no doubt that with the current profitability of Taiwan Business Station, these people's income is actually quite good - the legal salary of the merchant station's website Hugo Roll is 300 rupees, the salary of the mercenary leader Captain Berg is 100 rupees, the salary of the Reverend Yansen is 110 rupees, the salary of senior business staff is 100 rupees, and the salary of the above high-income class; and among the income at the second level, the salary of the intermediate business staff is 50 rupees, and the salary of local colonial officials is 70 rupees; even at the lowest level, the salary of soldiers is 10 rupees, the school teachers have 16 rupees, and the low-level business staff can receive 25 rupees.

And this is just a legal salary income! As we all know, whether it is the East India Company in the Netherlands or the United Kingdom, its employees also have an important source of income, which is to carry goods back to the local area. Taking the Island of Shermosa as an example, the colonists on the island colluded with the sailors on the ships that came to trade, hid some privately purchased goods in the bottom cabin of the company's ships, and then sent them across the ocean to Amsterdam to make huge profits. The captains generally turn a blind eye to these behaviors for the sake of maintaining morale and other factors, assuming that you should not make it too exaggerated. As the saying goes, there will be no fish when the water is clear, foreigners also understand this principle.

Such a high income level naturally gave birth to a more prosperous local commodity market inside and outside the city of Gerlandzha. Many handicraftsmen from Fujian Province opposite the mainland operated here, providing services to the Dutch colonists to obtain income levels far beyond their hometowns. For this reason, some of them even believed in the Protestant Lutherans and became herding lambs under Pastor Jansen.

"There are still too few people in the city of Jelancha. There are less than 3,000 people living in the castle, and there are only more than 5,000 residents near the castle. About half of them are from the opposite mainland, Fujian and Guangdong provinces. Once these people are incited and bewitched, they may cause some uncontrollable things." Looking at the prosperous market, Handelman wiped his head and said to himself: "Now the Pirates' Reclamation Action in the northern part of Shermosa Island is getting more and more and more people. The Spanish were then

The colonial strongholds established were probably controlled by them, which is really bad news. What is Batavia thinking? As long as the sugarcane fields and rice fields in the south are controlled by themselves, can they ignore anything else? In that case, give Mr. Zheng Chenggong another twenty years - no, if it is invested heavily, maybe only ten years - his colonists will probably push the border here? It's really terrible! What attitude should we use to face them at that time? A smile or a weapon? No one dares to say it!"

Speaking of the current development efforts of the Zheng family in Fujian in northern Taiwan, the central region are indeed getting higher and higher every year. Although the harsh natural environment makes the death rate of these people extremely high, with the continuous population supplement (for example, Zheng Chenggong exiled 10,000 "prisoners of war" from Chaozhou Prefecture to the island at one time), many places were still cleaned up and some food was initially produced. Although it was not yet self-sufficiency, it was quite good.

The Dutch have always suspected that Zheng Chenggong was risking huge losses to colonize the island - the annual death rate of pioneers exceeded 15%. This is the number after the East Coast people taught them how to prevent malaria (in fact, mosquito nets, gauze curtains, Dutch, British, and Portuguese had long known through the East Coast people that mosquitoes are the culprit of malaria transmission), and it was even higher before - there might be people behind them. Without the large amount of agricultural tools, seeds, medicines, tents and some other necessities they provided, it should not be so fast with the level of the Pirate Country's surname.

If the Dutch were just suspicious at the beginning, then after Zheng Chenggong's navy successively obtained two Western-style sailing ships, the Dutch had basically confirmed that the East Coast people and Zheng's pioneering on the island could not be separated, which made them very sad. Fortunately, Zheng Chenggong's main energy has never been placed on Taiwan Island, and the budget for pioneering on the island every year is also very limited, otherwise the Dutch might be even more sad - and then a little angry, and then he carried the East Coast people to trade with the Qing Dynasty with more peace of mind. Everyone cheated on each other, and each other.

The news that the Cape Town colony was occupied by the East Coast people this time came, and coupled with the instructions of Governor Van Goens from Batavia, the Taiwan Trading Station had basically determined a great decision to trade with the Qing Dynasty, that is, to increase four ships every year to go to the Qing Dynasty Xiangshui or Haizhou Port for trade, and to transport the army field artillery, coastal defense heavy artillery (with a large number of artillery sighting and weighing equipment), flintlock rifles, telescopes and some other military supplies to improve the combat effectiveness of the Qing Dynasty.

For example, a few days ago, two ships were launched on Batavia, loaded with various arms, and even more than 100 mercenaries with many years of war experience recruited in Batavia. They planned to go north to the Qing Dynasty in a few days, which could not only cause trouble for the people on the east coast, but also exchange for a large amount of profits. Why not do it?

You should know that now the officials of the Manchu emperors have implemented a strict matching trade system, that is, trade according to the degree of satisfaction of the goods they need. The more military supplies you bring, the more raw silk, the more tea you get, and vice versa. This forces foreign merchants to transport a lot of cannons to trade. For this reason, the Dutch and the Portuguese have expanded a cannon casting factory in Batavia and India respectively to satisfy the appetite of the Manchu emperor.
Chapter completed!