On December 10, 1640, the sun was shining in the Cape Town area. In the wide and beautiful Table Bay, three three-masted sail galen ships flying the flag of the United Provincial Republic are anchored at bow and tail and anchored beside the wooden simple trestle. A few sailors lazily bask in the sun on the docks, flanked by some English vendors selling fruit – all British immigrants who had lived there.

Sailing from Batavia here, the sailors who had survived their lives finally had a temporary habitat. Although Cape Town is a small and unassuming city, it still provides an abundance of fresh fresh water, livestock, grain and fruit for passing Dutch ships, making the voyage from the East Indies to mainland the country less difficult.

Since the Dutch East India Company had acquired the British Fort of Good Hope nine months earlier, the Dutch East India Company had quickly invested heavily in the construction of the port, given its importance to the Dutch Eastern Trade Route. They first brought in 200 Boers (Dutch: peasants) and about 300 German mercenaries from the mainland at the end of June. Two months earlier, Dutch ships returning from the East Indies had dropped some 100 Malays and Chinese who had been exiled by the Batavia High Court. A few days ago, the three ships that had sailed from the mainland to the East had brought a hundred Boers and a hundred French Huguenots to Cape Town.

By this time, the number of official inhabitants of the Dutch colony of Cape Town had reached seven hundred (three hundred Boers, three hundred English, and one hundred French Protestants). In addition, there were more than 300 German mercenaries, more than 100 exiled prisoners from the East, and about 600 or 700 Xhosa slaves who had recently been captured.

Since taking over the local. The Dutch East India Company's chief officer in the region, Hemmer. DeYoung places great emphasis on the development of nearby land. Needless to say, Table Mountain is rich in timber resources. Some of the logging camps that had been abandoned by the British due to repeated attacks by the Eight Banners were also restored by the Dutch. Without the harassment and attacks of the East Coasters, the restoration of these logging camps would only be a matter of one morning.

In addition, about 800 acres of wheat fields opened by the British outside the city were planted with overwintering wheat at the end of May. The Dutch also opened up a large number of vegetable fields next to the wheat fields and transplanted a large number of fruit trees. The newly captured hundreds of Xhosa slaves, along with the Malay and Chinese exiles, began to grow alfalfa and raise livestock in the east of the castle under the watchful guard of the Dutch overseers.

On the whole, it appears that the Cape Town area has undergone a vigorous reorganization by the Dutch for nine months. The face has been completely renewed, and it is no longer the bleak appearance that it had in the hands of the British. Of course, then again, the main reason why the British did so badly was because of the continuous, overt and covert harassment and attacks by the people on the east bank of the northern river fort area.

Now the Dutch East India Company has naturally learned a lesson, and as soon as it bought the Good Hope Fort, it directly approached the East Coast people and asked them to restrain the behavior of the Eight Banners tribe under their rule, so as to avoid some unpleasant incidents with the Good Hope Castle. And if such a regrettable event had occurred, the Dutch could not guarantee the safety of Portuguese ships carrying Ming immigrants to the east coast. In the face of such a naked threat, the people on the east coast, who were beyond the reach of the Far Eastern route, had to swallow this breath for the time being, and sat back and watched the Dutch gradually gain a foothold and develop under their noses.

In these nine months. Groups of Dutch immigrants, either from Europe or from Batavia, came, and they built a wooden pier in Table Bay. At the same time, several coastal defense fort gun emplacements were built; The Fort of Good Hope, built by the British at great expense, was used by De Young as his governor's residence, and most of the 300 German mercenaries were stationed there. Along Fort Good Hope north to the seaside docks, the area became the commercial district of the Dutch Cape Town colony and the settlement of ordinary immigrants.

On this area of about a few tens of acres, the Dutch built merchants, warehouses, dwellings, trading markets, and a Protestant church out of clay, wood, and stone. On the edge of the area, the Dutch built a fence-like wall out of a large number of transplanted fruit tree saplings. Within the wall, only Europeans are allowed to live; Outside the wall, a small number of German mercenaries and European overseers guarded the Xhosa, Malay, and Chinese slaves or exiles who cultivated the land, cut wood and chopped wood, or did the heavy manual labor on the docks and construction sites.

While the commercial facilities in the city were being built, the Dutch did not forget to build their city defenses. The Dutch had seen how badly the British had been squeezed by the Easterners, so they had never relaxed their vigilance against the Easterners.

Truth be told, relations between the East Coasters and the Republic of the Netherlands have been lukewarm over the years. At first, when the East Coasters fought and won the Spanish battle, the Dutch were quite happy, and felt that the East Coasters seemed to be a target to be wooed. Later, however, their perception of the East Coast began to decline dramatically, first with the suppression of both Catholicism and Protestantism.

If the rumors are not wrong, there are still only two Christian churches in the East Coast Republic of China, which are located in Dongfang Port and Ping'an Town. The two churches were said to be under the jurisdiction of an institution called the Office of Religious Affairs of the East Bankers, by which all priests or priests were appointed and had little to do with the Holy See, much to the outrage of some of the pious Lord's people. What's even more excessive is that, according to some gossip, the amount of funds allocated by the Religious Affairs Office to these two churches over the years is not only very small, but also intermittent, so that if the churches want to get some asphalt waterproof materials to paint on the roof, they have to rely on donations from believers. The lack of funding, and the inability to recruit young priests and nuns, weakened the influence of the Lord Jesus on the East Coast, and the souls of many newly naturalized barbarians were not redeemed.

Correspondingly, Taoism and Buddhism from the East have been developing smoothly on the East Coast. The Religious Affairs Department not only gave money to the people, but also introduced various measures to help them proselytize. Although these loosely structured Eastern polytheistic religions had many disadvantages compared to Christianity, they could not stand the partiality of the East Coast government. Nowadays, every time a new town is built, people on the east coast will build religious buildings such as Taoist temples and city god temples, and what is even more alarming is that people on the east coast are now trying to forcibly integrate these religious elements into the daily life and culture of local residents.

For example, the tablets of some soldiers who bravely sacrificed their lives for the country are stored in the City God Temple, giving them great glory, and at the same time, from time to time bring some local community residents or school students to visit and receive so-called patriotic education, so that the original Lord's people can accept the existence of other religious elements and conquer their souls step by step. In addition, whenever there was a wedding or funeral in the residents' homes, the local Taoist temples and Buddhist temples would send people to send some gifts with religious elements, and many of the people of the less wealthy lord also gladly accepted this gift, and at the same time, they gradually began to become accustomed to these pagan religions.

All of this greatly dimmed the glory of the Lord on the East Coast, and angered upright and godly believers.

In addition to religious factors, the pro-Portuguese stance that had persisted for many years on the situation in Brazil also made the Dutch extremely angry. They sold muskets, cannons, sabers, armor, and even wagons, gunpowder, cloth, and everything else that could be used in the war to the Brazilians, which strongly supported the Portuguese in their war effort, and caused the Dutch West India Company to suffer many unnecessary losses.

For the East Coast people to stretch their hands so long, the Dutch West India Company naturally retaliated. Among the ships that followed the British East India Company warships to blockade the east coast, there were many ships from the Netherlands, but they basically did not benefit much. However, fortunately, the situation in Brazil has gradually stabilized in the past two years, and the relationship between the West India Company and the East Coast has gradually eased, but once the situation in Brazil changes, it is only a matter of time before the two sides break out again.

The last point is the most critical economic factor. The textiles of the East Coast people were sold in Brazil, La Plata, New Spain, France, Tuscany, Ottoman and other countries or regions of the Old and New Worlds, seizing a large number of markets that originally belonged to the Dutch, and even squeezed the Dutch textile industry to the brink of collapse for a time.

Later, thanks to the war between the British and the East Coasters for nearly two years, the Dutch took advantage of this market vacuum to seize a large number of markets that were originally occupied by the East Coasters, and vigorously improved the original textile machinery and adopted new factory production methods, which greatly reduced the cost of Dutch textiles and enhanced the competitiveness of their products. However, after the East Coast and the British reached a compromise and returned to the European market, the cheap and high-quality East Coast textiles completely drove the Dutch out of the French and Tuscan markets with an unstoppable momentum, and the Dutch textile industry, which had just regained its second spring, suffered a cold snap again.

With all these ideological, political, or economic entanglements, it would be hellish that a good relationship could be maintained between the Dutch and the Easterners. In the judgment of the Governor of Cape Town, De Young, perhaps in the near future the United Provincial Republic might clash with the East Coasters in Brazil, South Africa, or the Far East—something almost inevitable.

Therefore, at this time, he had to prepare in advance, such as building a strong defense outside the Good Hope Fortress; For example, to support the barbarian Kama tribe who did not deal with the people of the East Coast. (To be continued......)