The year 1679 was reached. In China's coastal waters, it is the season when the north wind is howling, and the annual migrant transportation operation has officially kicked off. But the sad news is that the number of immigrants available for immigration has dropped to 48,000 this year, which will significantly affect the national population data for 1681, which shows that the source of immigration is drying up.

And the number of immigrants is small, so naturally some ships are vacated. At the end of October and the beginning of November, these ships were loaded with all kinds of goods, and they successively moved south from the north, some to Chongmingsha, a dilapidated transit point under the attack of the Qing army, some to Dinghai County, and some to Guangzhou or the port of Geranza.

The port of Geranza was particularly crowded with ships, including a Star-class light cruiser owned by the Bank of Taiwan, which escorted a total of five ordinary ships, large and small, including the armed transport ship "Kuril Islands" on which the company's general manager, Shao Shuguang, was aboard.

It is said that after all these years of development, the strength of Taiwan's banks has been obvious to all, and they can afford to buy all kinds of ships and invest everywhere, but Shao Shuguang still has a soft spot for the "Yaxa"-class armed transport ships leased from the Navy, and the "Kuril Islands" has been his ship for many years. He even planned that in a few years, he would talk to the Navy to see if he could buy the ship for his own use.

Shao Shuguang certainly has this strength! He himself owns 5% of the shares, and his father Shao Shude and brother Shao Yaoguang also hold 5% of the shares.

This time, he arrived at the port of Gerancho by boat to mediate on some incidents that happened on the island of Taiwan a few days ago. It is said that after several negotiations with the Dutch East India Company, although the relationship between the East Coasters and the Dutch East India Company is still repeated, it is much better than at the beginning, and the two sides have not only lifted the cold and even hostile state, but even the bilateral trade has also recovered for the most part. Therefore, when the Fujian Zheng Group and the Dutch East India Company clashed over the reclamation of Taiwan Island, the people from the East Coast, who had a fairly close relationship with both sides, were naturally invited to act as mediators between the two sides.

The main mediator on the east coast side is Shao Shuguang, general manager of the Bank of Taiwan, and the deputy mediator is Lu Fang from Ningbo, who is currently the director of the newly established Ningbo Merchants Bureau and a cadre under Ma Wenqiang, the leader of the development team.

The Governor of Formosa had been informed by the Mainlanders a month in advance, so that when they arrived at the port, the Dutch only checked the documents a little, then respectfully put them down, and escorted them to the Merchant Station which the Shoremen had set up near the docks.

"There have been a lot of red hairs in the city recently, I have inquired, there are about three hundred people, more than half of them are mercenaries recruited from the German region, and the rest are mostly technicians, managers and sailors, it seems that they have been stimulated by Zheng Jing's people, and they plan to strengthen the houses in the city of Geranza. Ah, by the way, there were more than 800 Malay soldiers who arrived at the same time, and these people are now living outside the city, in the wooden hut with the huge 'VOC' sign. My guess is that they must have come from the East Indies, and that the Dutch had built forts and colonized dozens of islands, and that it should not be a problem to organize some Malays to come to Formosa to help in the war. As the liaison person of the Bank of Taiwan, Han Yin, as soon as he received Shao Shuguang and his entourage, began to report.

"There is no need to guess, those Malays must have come from the Maluku Islands, where the Dutch were very powerful, the English, Portuguese and even the Spaniards were beaten, and they basically covered the sky with one hand. It is not surprising that these people came from that island, and in fact it was good that the Dutch did not bring in black soldiers from elsewhere. Sitting on a bench, Shao Shuguang lit a cigarette with a match, and commented: "It seems that Zheng Jing has put a lot of pressure on the Dutch, there are more than 10,000 people in Taipei Mansion now, right?" Obediently, two counties of Taipei (that is, Taipei in later life) and Zhuqian (in Hsinchu in later life) were set up at once, and this Dutch person can't feel the pressure if he wants to! ”

As a matter of fact, the current ruling focus of the Zheng clique in Fujian is still on the mainland, and they do not care much about the reclamation of Taiwan Island. But no matter how careless, after all, it is too close to the mainland and the transportation is too convenient, Zheng Jing only needs to invest a little resources and manpower to carry out a considerable reclamation activity on the island. For example, in the so-called Taipei and Zhuqian counties today, Zheng Jing sent about 20,000 people to come over to reclaim the crops, and there are still more than 10,000 left, divided into two counties, with the official and private reclamation numbers as the main business model, planting rice, sugarcane, tobacco and other crops, and cutting down large trees for shipbuilding purposes.

Such a colonial situation, to be honest, frightened the Dutch, who were thousands of miles away from their homeland, how could they have seen a colonial wave of such a scale! As strong as the East India Company, the total number of European employees in the Far East is only about 11,000, and this is still in the case of sailors, colonial officials, soldiers, technicians and their families, and scattered everywhere, such as the Fujian Wang Zhengjing, it is really difficult for the Dutch to imagine.

So, like the frightened viper, they raised their heads high and gave a "hiss" warning to the intruders who threatened him. However, Zheng seems to have turned a deaf ear to their warnings, and continued to carry out the planned reclamation mission in an orderly manner, and also sent the prisoners obtained in the war with Li Chengdong to the official camp reclamation in the area of Zhuqian County, and continued the great cause of reclamation.

In this way, the Dutch became Mao, especially when the Zheng began to send people to attack the aborigines of Taiwan who originally paid taxes to the Netherlands, and this provocation became even more intolerable. Therefore, in the first half of last year, the Dutch sent a team to the area around Taichung in the later generations to prevent a Zheng army from capturing the aborigines, because the residents here paid taxes in kind to the Dutch East India Company all year round, which was one of the company's financial resources.

As soon as the Dutch did this, the Zheng clan also reacted immediately, and they transferred some troops from the mainland to the island, threatening to march south and conquer the castle of Geranza. At the same time, Zheng Jing also sent many sailors to operate in the area of the Taiwan Strait, although their small boats suffered a lot against the big ships of the Dutch, but they were victorious because of their large numbers, which caused a lot of trouble to the Dutch. Especially in the summer, when the southeast wind rose, the Dutch had to make a detour northeast of the Taiwan Strait to trade (Zheng's small boats had a shallow draft, which made it very dangerous to get here), which was very uneconomical, and sometimes they could encounter the few galleons that Zheng bought from the east coast, and caused the tragedy of a merchant ship laden with grain sinking into the sea.

After this incident, the Dutch East India Company finally understood how troublesome it was to fight with the snakes. After all, they are businessmen, and profit is always the first consideration, so it is not surprising that the Zheng clan has violated their tax base and affected their income. Now they found that if they continued to oppose the Zheng family, their income might be affected even more, so they wavered and began to contact the people on the east coast to find a way to mediate.

And it happened that the people on the east coast also wanted to improve relations with the Dutch East India Company - didn't they catch a few Dutch merchant ships outside Xiangshui Port a while ago, which made everyone a little unhappy - and it was not in the interests of the people on the east coast to let Zheng and the Netherlands really tear their faces in a comprehensive way, so after a meeting to study and discuss, they agreed to the Dutchman's request for mediation, and entrusted Shao Shuguang, general manager of the Bank of Taiwan, to take full charge of the matter.

When Shao Shuguang arrived at the Château de Gerancha on 5 January, he waited at the merchant station, where he checked the accounts to see if there were any problems, because Governor Hugo Rolle had taken people to the north to check the expansion of the rice and sugar fields. It is impossible not to mention the fact that the Dutch East India Company has vigorously developed the island, that is, they have acquired new land by conquering and seducing the natives, and then planting it with cash crops or grain, and making huge profits by exporting to the east coast and other countries.

In order to ensure that their behavior can continue, the number of Dutch troops stationed on the island has also increased in recent years. Historically, there were 330 soldiers in 1628, 500 white soldiers in 1658, 1,000 in 1658, 1,300 in 1661, and probably nearly 2,000 at its peak, more than half of whom were white soldiers, which shows how much importance the Dutch attached to the island, which provided one-sixth of the company's profits.

At this time in the 17th century, the importance of the island of Taiwan was increasing day by day because of the trade with the East Coast and the Qing Dynasty, and it had provided more than one-third of the profits of the Dutch East Indies, which was very amazing. In order to maintain this profit, the Dutch also continued to send men and soldiers here, and at the same time built forts, docks and ship repair yards, and operated them as important bases - by 1678, the Dutch East India Company had stationed more than 2,500 soldiers in the stable control area in the southern part of the island of Taiwan, of which about 1,500 were mercenaries from Germany, not counting the sailors of some armed merchant ships stationed in the country and the officers and soldiers who sold them to the batteries.

The presence of these armies greatly increased the deterrence and control of the Dutch, and also allowed them to control more indigenous people, acquire more land, and produce more supplies. For example, in 1678, the Dutch forcibly purchased more than 10,000 tons of grain at low prices from the aborigines in the area under their control, and then exported it to Ningbo and Denglai, reaping huge profits. The East Coasters have withdrawn, and with the importance and investment that the Dutch East India Company now attaches to the island of Taiwan, they will probably slowly turn the island into a base for the production of commodities such as timber, sugar cane, rice, etc., with Chinese mainland as the main export market. If the Dutch want to continue this kind of business in a stable manner, there is no doubt that the first factor is the stability of the external environment, so it is normal to find a way to reach an understanding with the Zheng family of Fujian.

On January 10, 1679, the Dutch governor Hugo Rohr finally returned to the castle of Geranzay and had a long talk with Shao Shuguang and Lu Fang. In this conversation, Rohr said that they could recognize the presence of the Zheng group on the island of Taiwan and no longer seek full domination over the entire island of Formosa and the Pescaldo Islands.

Governor Luoer's statement suddenly relieved Shao Shuguang and Lu Fang, and felt that the possibility of success of this mediation operation was greatly improved. After all, the Zheng family should not want to completely tear their faces with the Dutch, because there is no benefit to this, on the contrary, there are countless troubles, so everyone can sit down and talk and compromise with each other, and the matter will not be handled.

Of course, the Governor of Rolle also vaguely said in the conversation that the bottom line they can tolerate is to take the watershed in the middle of the island and the Zheng Group as the boundary, with them in the north giving up (they didn't invest any resources anyway), and in the south being the jurisdiction of the Dutch East India Company, and the two sides will not cross the line and interfere with each other, and live in friendship.

This condition, Shao Shuguang thinks it is still relatively fair and reasonable, if the Zheng group does not even recognize this, it is a little too greedy, and the people of the East Coast will not support their proposition. What's more, it is not in the interests of the people on the east coast to let the whole island fall under the rule of any party, and it is not in the interests of the people on the east coast to let the Zheng group and the Dutch East India Company divide the north and the south, so as to maximize the interests and influence of the people on the east coast - of course, he also believes that Zheng Jing, the new head of the Zheng group, will not be so wise that he can't even grasp the proportions, and it is indeed enough to occupy half of the island of Taiwan as a way out for them.

After talking about these things with the Dutch, Shao Shuguang did not rush to leave by boat, but stayed on the island for about ten days. During this period, the Dutch governor Hugo Rohr also invited him to an important ceremony, the baptism of the free citizens of the city of Geranza. Most of these so-called "Dutch free citizens of Formosa descent" were children who had lived in Dutch families for a long time, who had grown up to be assimilated and then found an opportunity to hold a collective initiation ceremony, and were considered the more trusted confidants of the Dutch colonists.

These free citizens, there are probably less than 100 people in the city of Geranza today, most of them are young children brought back after the conquest of the aborigines many years ago (for example, in history, in 1645, the king of the big belly in the northern part of the island of Taiwan, brought back 15 children), this group of about 20 people who have joined the church, will basically gradually enter the city's management system in the future, starting from low-level civil servants to serve the Dutch colonists.

Shao Shuguang watched the Dutch ceremony with great interest, and thought to himself that the Dutch were indeed flexible enough, and compared with the Spaniards, Portuguese, English, and East Coasters, they had the best attitude towards the aborigines. This probably has something to do with the fact that there are many immigrants in their country, and the concept of ethnicity and race is not without these businessmen, but it is certainly not as strong as that of people from other countries, which may be one of the reasons why they have been able to achieve such great success in business, although I don't know how long their success can last under the oppression of the powerful Kingdom of France!