The Governor of the First Command, with his supreme power, commanded the Dutch in the castle of Geranza and its subordinate fortresses, as well as all the islands of Formosa, and the peoples of the island and its surrounding islands, to pay a friendly tribute to the great Governor and wish you a long and prosperous life, and prosperity to your Excellency and his people.

Great Sir:

On the 17th of the previous month, we received a letter from you that had been written for the past five weeks. We should acknowledge that Your Excellency has tried to awaken our memories of the fact that, for a long time, we have maintained mutual friendship and good-neighbourly relations. We thank Your Excellency for your willingness to continue the long-standing friendly relations between us in the future, as we have done in the past.

On the contrary, we have noted Your Excellency's disgust with the arrogance and unreasonableness of the rulers of Manila, as Your Excellency has pointed out. Your Excellency, having endured the unjust treatment and trade of the sailing ships, merchants, and their goods sent there, was at last enraged, and decided to prohibit all nationals from trading with the people of Manila and its dependencies, and to cut off traffic altogether, not only sailing ships, but also small boats, and to punish those who violated them. We see all this clearly from your letter, and especially from the attachment to the letter, which is the ban you have issued.

Since you are happy to ask for our help, and because of the long-standing friendly relations between the two sides, we understand and agree with your ban, and we should also strictly prohibit our dealings with Manila. In this regard, we may state to your Excellency that Manila was under the jurisdiction of Spain, and that Manila should have been recognized as our friend if we had faithfully observed this treaty. We feel that Your Excellency's request to us is almost superfluous. Because we have seen and heard it through our own personal experience, we are fully convinced of the facts of what the letter says. We dare to assure you that none of the Chinese here want to go to Manila for business, and no ships are ready to go there. Because the merchants were mistreated there, the business was losing money. They were so angry at what they had happened that they didn't want to trade anymore.

We haven't heard a Chinese apply to sail to Manila for business for a long time. In that case, please do not worry. The above important comments are a new kind reply to our team. I hope you will be happy when you receive it.

At the end of this letter, we must not be negligent and kindly tell Your Excellency that our government is in good shape, our business is prosperous, and we are in good health, and we thank God! We kindly wish Your Excellency and the people good health and prosperity.

Your Excellency's faithful friend is a sir

Written at the Château de Geranza

October 17, 1657"

The reply letter was sent from the senior to Fuzhou, and Zheng Chenggong and Zheng Tai read the letter together, which was politely worded but not unmistakable, and more standard diplomatic than the one before him.

Through those politenesses, Zheng Chenggong clearly saw the attitude of the Dutch, that is, they rejected Zheng Chenggong's request for a ban on sailing under the pretext that the Netherlands had signed a treaty. As for the so-called Chinese who are unwilling to go to Manila to do business, such a tone is nothing more than telling Zheng Chenggong that whether they want to be their business or not, Zheng Chenggong has no right to interfere.

"As my brother said, the red hair will not be subdued because of this."

"However, our attitude has shown that it is enough."

"Exactly."

Today's Zheng Group is much stronger than it was in history, and as soon as the ban on navigation was issued, the trade blockade was immediately manifested in Fujian, followed by Guangdong. At the same time, the Qing court has always held a negative attitude towards maritime trade since entering the customs, which undoubtedly deepened the influence of the Zheng Group in the China Sea.

This influence was not only in these two provinces, but also in the Chinese leaders in Nanyang who received Zheng Chenggong's ban on sailing, including Batavia, where the headquarters of the United Dutch East India Company was located, where Kapitan Pan Mingyan and Yan Erguan also immediately responded, calling on the Chinese in Batavia to abide by Zheng Chenggong's ban on sailing and not to go to Manila to do business.

"If a merchant continues to sail to the above-mentioned restricted area after the proclamation of this proclamation, I will order that his family, the ship's owner, and the sailors be detained until the sailing ship returns to China, and its ships and cargo are confiscated, and all persons on board are killed. If a foreigner lends money to my subjects to trade in Manila, he will be punished in the same way! ”

At the gathering of Chinese businessmen in Batavia, Chen Yuanliang, who had just returned here, caught up with such a scene. The news he got earlier when he was in Qiongzhou was further verified here, and he couldn't help but breathe a bad sigh when he recalled that time he went to Manila.

"There is a ban on the country, we should obey it, and we will never set foot in Manila and its surrounding areas until the ban ends!"

Yan Erguan read out Zheng Chenggong's ban from the main seat, and the Chinese businessmen below responded one after another, saying that they would definitely act in accordance with Zheng Chenggong's law. What's more, he praised Zheng Chenggong's decisiveness, and this time he wanted to teach the Spaniards a lesson, so that they would not bully the Chinese if they had nothing to do.

"Can't get used to those guys!"

As a political, military, and economic force, if the Zheng Group is regarded as a company, the most powerful and complementary departments under it are the security and trade departments.

When Zheng Zhilong was there, the two departments cooperated tacitly, but when Zheng Chenggong was taken captive and the Zheng group split, in fact, the various "companies" that split out basically only had a security department, no trade department. Even Zheng Chenggong only cooperated through some old business relationships, which can be regarded as self-made. The original trade department, that is, the commercial organizations under Zheng Tai's jurisdiction, chose to cooperate with Zheng Cai and Zheng Lian, who were the strongest at the time, to ensure the interests of maritime trade.

Zheng Chenggonghuo, Zheng Cai, and Zheng Lian brothers, not only reunified the Zheng group militarily and politically, but also regained the old trade department.

However, no more than when Zheng Zhilong was there, there was a huge supply and market of Daming behind him, and Zheng Chenggong, who only occupied a corner of the land, could only rely more on overseas Chinese, and through trade with Japan and Nanyang, he controlled more of the sources and markets there to create profits, and fed the army under his command with profits.

This was not limited to the beginning, and even later the recovery of Fujian and Guangdong provinces, the territory was larger, the supply of goods was more abundant, and there was a larger market, Zheng Chenggong still did not relax trade with Japan and Nanyang, but sent more merchant ships.

The re-emergence of the Zheng Group in the Zheng Chenggong era is not lacking in the support of the Nanyang Chinese, and it is the support of the Chinese community that has brought it a stable supply of goods. On the other hand, the Nanyang Chinese have been ignored by the Ming court for a long time, and at the same time they have been oppressed by the Western colonial authorities, so they are more in urgent need of the support of political and military powers. The two sides were originally dependent on each other, and Zheng Chenggong was more willing to stand up for the Nanyang Chinese than the Ming court.

The implementation of the ban on navigation was originally Zheng Chenggong's attempt to make an example of the Spaniards who had been the most ruthless in oppressing the Nanyang Chinese over the years, and even slaughtered them repeatedly. Naturally, the Chinese people in Nanyang were happy to see this happen, and they used their respective connections to speak out to other Chinese people they knew well, so as to ensure that the ban on navigation could be more forcefully enforced.

In Fuzhou, Zheng Tai had diverted the original trade volume with the Spaniards to other places, such as Batavia, Malacca, Dayuan, Pattani, Siam, Japan, Annam, and Balimpang. As far as the Zheng Group is concerned, this ban will naturally not be a situation of killing 1,000 enemies and 800 deaths, they have more options, Manila has always been just one of them, and it is not an irreplaceable one.

Zheng Tai was busy all day long about the ban and the impact of the ban, in contrast, Zheng Chenggong was preoccupied with the military, either training the troops or making plans. The recovery of Fujian and the rapid economic development of Guangdong have undoubtedly given Zheng's Group greater action to counterattack and occupy more markets and sources of goods, which is already the first priority of Zheng's Group at present.

The attitude of the Dutch did not have any impact on Zheng Chenggong, because he did not take this matter to heart from the beginning. With such an attitude, it was not until a month after the arrival of the reply letter, with the delivery of an urgent letter from Guangdong, that he found Zheng Tai, who was already too busy, to bring up the old matter again.

"Red hair, this is going to win over? They are too bold! ”

"Their courage has never been small, brother, do you remember how they co-opted Li Kuiqi, Zhong Bin, and Liu Xiang to fight against their father, and now it's just a repetition of the old trick."

When Zheng Zhilong was appeased, he used the Ming court to get rid of the control of the Dutch. At that time, the Dutch naturally refused to give up, and simply co-opted other forces of the Yan Siqi group, such as Li Kuiqi and others, to confront Zheng Zhilong. Zheng Zhilong was once very uncomfortable tossed by these sworn brothers, but with his back to the Ming Dynasty, he successively eradicated these former partners one by one, and finally became the overlord of the China Sea.

Compared with Zheng Chenggong, Zheng Tai was originally picked up by Zheng Zhilong, and witnessed how Zheng Zhilong eradicated those powerful pirates along the coast of Fujian and Guangdong. During this time, Zheng Chenggong mentioned those names again, and the old things inevitably woke up in his mind, especially those dangers were vivid.

"It's a pity that they underestimated it."

"Yes, Chengcheng has never let me down, and this time is no exception!"

………………

"Oh, then I want to thank you.

Saying these words with a smile, Chen Kai stretched out his hand and invited the Dutch to sit down, and then continued: "The Spaniards have been bullying my Ming merchants for a long time, and there are even massacres in the 31st year of Wanli and the 14th year of Chongzhen, that is, the two in 1603 and 1639 in the Yeli calendar. And the Spaniards, who have long been stained with the bloodiness of Moorish, are naturally undoubtedly with beasts. The ban on Manila is a righteous move. As for the loss of trade, your lord's trip will surely benefit the official. ”

Chen Kai's mouth is either Yeli, or Moorish, and he also speaks of a civilized world, such a knowledge and "East and West" tone really made the Dutch present dumbfounded. Such a person is something they have never seen in East Asia for so many years, and if they have to assume, they believe that the governor in front of them has gone to Europe to study, otherwise there is no reason for this to be like this.

In this line, the three people present here are all Dutch employees of the East India Company, to be precise, they are all the directors of the Dayuan Merchant House. They were appointed by the new governor of Taiwan, Yu Yi, to come here, to put it bluntly, to win over Chen Kai to divide the strength of the Zheng group. For this opponent, they have studied it for a long time, but Rao is so, but this first face still startled him, and the original confidence immediately dropped a few percent, and the difficulty increased, and the confidence in his heart naturally decreased a little.

At this time, Chen Kai's eyes fell on them, and the three of them were even vigorous and sold Chen Kai the idea of free trade. In their words, the Netherlands has the largest fleet in the world, handling an incalculable amount of cargo and money. Now that the Zheng group has launched a trade blockade against the Spaniards, they think it is better to give them their share. At the same time, they also heard about Chen Kai's series of economic rejuvenation measures in Guangdong, and praised him, hoping that the United East India Company of the Netherlands would be able to carry out deeper trade contacts with the Guangdong business alliance.

"I'll know what shit you're going to pull as soon as you pout your ass."

Sitting at the top, Chen Kai smiled and listened to the description of the person in charge of the merchant hall who spoke Chinese very well, and they made a good prediction about the prospects of cooperation, believing that Guangdong needs a trading partner like them.

Chen Kai understood from the beginning, and as soon as their greetings were sent to Chen Kai, he had already understood the simplest truth, if they wanted to strengthen trade with the Zheng Group, they should go to Fuzhou as soon as possible, not Guangzhou. Because the headquarters of Zheng's Group is there, it is also a branch in Guangzhou, even if the strength of this branch is not much worse than the headquarters, there is no such reason at all.

Chen Kai listened to their descriptions with great interest and asked about some matters, and even showed great interest. But in the interest of interest, Chen Kai has to look at the detailed trade agreement, and then decide whether to cooperate with them according to the trade agreement.

Things went unexpectedly smoothly, and they had prepared for that agreement, so they immediately took it out and sent it to Chen Kai's case. However, Chen Kai said that he was busy with official business and couldn't read it immediately, so he needed to leave the agreement and take time to read it.

"It will take about two or three days, after reading it, I will send someone to find you, and you will send someone to find you, you will be in the city of Guangzhou for a few days, and you will have your own officials to come out."

"Then thank you Governor Chen."

Chen Kai's boldness made them greatly increase the success rate of this action, not only making up for the previous decline due to difficulty, but also further strengthening it. Even if he is the most pessimistic among them, he believes that even if the agreement is not reached, he and Chen Kai will reach a certain friendship, which will always be beneficial in the future.

In the next two days, under the guidance of the guide sent by the governor Yamen, they toured the city of Guangzhou, enjoying the scenery of the lake and the mountains. Even every meal is a delicacy, which makes them experience the flavor of Cantonese cuisine. There is only one point, that is, the guide never takes them to visit the Qinglou, and it is a pity that there is no color in the wine.

In this way, they spent two days happily in the city of Guangzhou. Two days later, Chen Kai invited them to the governor's yamen again, but the trade agreement was missing. As for the lack of agreement, Chen Kai's explanation turned out to be that he had sent someone to Fuzhou and handed it over to Zheng Chenggong.

"Since you have come, you must also know that this official is an illiterate person who has not even taken the test as a child, so I can't understand some words in the agreement. The surname of the country is the master, he has taken the Xiucai exam, worked as a prisoner, and worshiped Qian Muzhai in the southeast as a teacher. Therefore, the official sent the agreement to Fuzhou and asked the surname of the country to help take a look. ”

"You ......"

Such an agreement was clearly intended to hide from Zheng Chenggong, but Chen Kai actually sent the agreement to Fuzhou, and treated each other with a smile on the front foot, which sold them backhandedly, which really made them dare not believe their ears.

It's just that it's not just that, Chen Kai put away the courtesy he had always treated, and drove them out as soon as he saw them off. Before sending off the guest, he shouted even more: "Go back and tell Yu Yi that I am not Li Kuiqi, not Zhong Bin, and not Liu Xiang." My name is Chen Kai, and the surname of the country is a combination of civil engineering, with a combination of one plus one and about two. So, if you want to cooperate, you should find whom, don't talk to me about these salty and light things, I don't like to listen. ”

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