However, Roger's plan may not be realized in the near future, compared with the current shortage of military officers in the Haihan militia group, the gap between the supply and demand of agricultural technicians in various overseas territories is more obvious.

The core members of the Haihan Ministry of Agriculture are composed of the family of agricultural expert Yuan Ruoxiu, who have rarely left Sanya to go out with the increase of age and physical condition in recent years, and spend most of their time in Shengli Fort, only showing their faces at important meetings, helping the younger generations to formulate and review some large-scale agricultural reclamation projects. At present, the Ministry of Agriculture is the only son of Yuan Ruoxiu Yuan Qiuye and his apprentice Gao Huan, Yuan Ruoxiu's professional field is cash crops, but the inheritance of his father's business is not Yuan Qiuye, who specializes in poultry and livestock, but the apprentice Gao Huan.

In the past five years, Gao Huan has naturally accepted many naturalized apprentices to pass on the knowledge of cash crops he has mastered. But a few dozen apprentices are simply not enough to cover the needs of Hainan Island's agricultural development. Hainan Island has a land area of more than 30,000 square kilometers, and roughly calculated that each senior agricultural technician under his command is responsible for an area of several hundred square kilometers.

Of course, this calculation is not accurate, and there is not so much area on Hainan Island that can be developed into agricultural land, and more than half of the agricultural land is grain arable land, and the area of land used for growing cash crops is actually relatively limited. Gao Huan and his apprentice technicians were more diligent and hardworking, and they were barely able to cover the cash crop plantations in southern Qiongnan and parts of central Qiongzhong.

However, with the continuous expansion of Haihan's sphere of influence in recent years, especially overseas territories, cash crop plantations have gradually become an important project for overseas territories to generate income. Even Hong Kong Island, a region where entrepot trade is the main business project, is trying to start construction of mountain plantation parks in Victoria Hill, Cameron Hill, Pony Hill, Jardine's Hill and other areas on the island.

At present, the planned plantations on Little One Island in Hong Kong alone include more than 20 varieties of cash crops. Among them, oil crops include oil palm, cashew nuts, etc.; spice crops include lemongrass, pepper, basil, vein, etc.; fiber crops include abaca, acena, ramie, Javanese kapok, etc.; beverage crops include coffee, cocoa, tea tree; medicinal materials include sand kernels, morinda officinalis, betel nut, notoginseng, etc.; fruit varieties are the most, including bananas, lychees, pineapples, mangoes, avocados, longans, pumpkins, guavas, etc.

Of course, not all of these crops are suitable for planting in the natural environment of Hong Kong Island, and the first batch of these cash crops are still experimental in nature, and if the planting effect is not satisfactory, they will probably be planted with other crops in a few years. The Haihan Territory, which is based on several coastal ports in southern Annam, does much the same, except that rubber trees, coconut palms and some varieties of crops endemic to tropical regions are added to the list.

Compared with the isolated Anbuna Islands, whether in Hong Kong or Annam, the labor needs generated by large-scale plantation development are easier to meet on the mainland, while the Ambuna Islands have to buy slaves in large quantities to alleviate the local labor shortage. In the short term, the cost of plantation development in the Anbuna Islands will undoubtedly be higher than in the mainland. If Roger wanted the Ministry of Agriculture to take special care of the plantations in the Ambuna Islands, he would probably have to pay more to hire agricultural technicians to go south.

However, this application process is not a simple operation from Ambuna Island to the Ministry of Agriculture, in fact, due to the scarcity of agricultural technicians, and their knowledge of agricultural technology is still a very small number of people in this era, so the relevant application and transfer must also obtain the approval of the Ministry of Security, and then submit to the Executive Committee for approval.

Fortunately, although the Anbuna Islands are small and remote, there is a cadre on the island, Li Dagui, a former field worker of the Ministry of Security, so there is an unofficial communication channel between the Ambuna Port Management Committee and the Haihan Security Department. With Li Dagui mediating in the middle, the Ministry of Security silently approved the application of the Ambuna Islands.

The Ambuna Islands now have garrisons, industries, and a growing population, and if there's anything else that Roger can't reassure Roger, it's probably the Dutch to the south. Although an armistice was reached at the end of last year, it was only an armistice, and since the Netherlands had already suffered more than one defeat on the battlefield last year, relations between the two sides were far from harmonious. The main targets of the Haihan troops stationed on the island of Ambuna were still the Dutch in Batavia.

Although Batavia is more than 600 nautical miles from the Ambuna Islands, the closest maritime stronghold of the Dutch, the Tameran Islands, is less than 200 nautical miles south of the Ambuna Islands, and it is only a two- or three-day voyage from a full battle.

The area was occupied by the natives of the islands when the Middle Eastern Indian fleet attacked the port of Ambuna last year, but the Dutch quickly realized the severity of the loss of the islands after their defeat at the Battle of Ambuna. During the armistice negotiations between the Dutch and the Haihan last year, the East India Company again sent an armed fleet to attack and seize control of the Tammelan Islands. The aim of the Dutch was to set up an advance base in close proximity to the Ambuna Islands, to monitor the movement of the port of Ambuna on the one hand, and to prepare for the next counterattack on the other.

However, this hand of the Dutch did not make much practical difference, as they soon learned that control of the Ambuna Islands had changed hands, and that the mysterious pirates who had defeated them had been expelled from the area by the Haihan militia, which had obviously achieved great success in the South China Sea in recent years, was more difficult to deal with than the baseless pirates. Under the circumstances of the East India Company at that time, it was certainly an extremely unwise choice to start an all-out war with Haihan, and the Dutch could only eat Coptis dumb in the end, acquiescing in Haihan's control of the Ambuna Islands.

The change of sovereignty over the Tamelan Islands has not been hidden from Haihan's eyes, and at the end of last year, some Daming maritime merchants had already taken the initiative to inform Haihan of this change. However, compared to the nervousness of the Dutch, Roger, who took over the Ambuna Islands in the second half of last year, did not care so much about the Dutch in the Tamelan Islands. This is because compared to the Abuna Islands in the north and Bangka and Belitung Islands in the south, the conditions of the Tameran Islands are not a suitable place for development and construction.

Although the Tamelan archipelago is composed of 17 islands, the only one that barely meets the standards for port construction is the natural harbor on the main island of Temelan. However, there are a large number of shallow coral reefs in this harbor, which is not suitable for construction as a large commercial port or military port, and is barely at the level of a fishing port. Secondly, the size of the island is too small, and there is no valuable product on the island, and there is no natural environment suitable for the development of grain farmland, let alone the conditions for garrisoning troops if there are no Dutch immigrants who voluntarily settle in such places. Therefore, although he knew that the Dutch had taken control of the Tamberan Islands, Roger was not particularly worried about this place. If he needed to, he could take the troops stationed on the island south at any time and wipe out the small number of Dutch stationed there.

Roger's real concern was that the Dutch would reorganize their maritime forces to seize the Ambuna Islands after they had recovered in Southeast Asia. Although Roger was not afraid of war, that did not mean that he would be willing to fight the enemy on his own turf - even if he did, he would like it to be on the territory of the Dutch in the south, rather than on the Ambuna Islands, where he had worked so hard.

Since Roger took over the port of Ambuna in August last year, except for the time when he went to Fujian to participate in the war, he has been busy with various local construction and development affairs almost every day. In addition, because of its geographical location and natural environment, the Anbuna Islands are subject to many restrictions in terms of development, for example, the application for a senior agricultural technician to be stationed on the island has to be approved by the Ministry of Security, which makes Roger have to devote more energy to coordinating all aspects of the relationship. If the future Hai-Dutch confrontation wants to use the Ambuna Islands as a battlefield, it will definitely be unacceptable from Roger's point of view.

Haihan's current policy is to bring in a large number of immigrants from the outside world, and the main source of this must be the Ming Dynasty in the midst of war. Part of the purpose of Haihan's advance attack on Penghu was to open up the shipping route from the South China Sea to the north and absorb refugees from the war-torn areas in the northern Ming Dynasty. In the foreseeable next two to three years, the main direction of expansion of the Haihan will probably be on the northern mainland, and it will no longer take the initiative to provoke disputes and wage war in the South China Sea.

If the Dutch realized that the strategic focus of Haihan was shifting to the Ming Dynasty and there were signs of intervening in the Ming civil war, perhaps they would once again move their minds to recapture the Anbuna Islands. And once the war resumes, all of Roger's governance measures in the port of Ambuna will become a bubble, and even if he can defeat the Dutch here, the island's industry will be greatly affected, which is exactly what Roger does not want to see.

But this fear disappeared completely on the morning of July 4, when a merchant ship returning from Batavia to Daming brought a piece of news that left Roger stunned for half a minute.

Peterson Cohen, the current governor of the Dutch East India Company and the ruler of Batavia, died of illness half a month ago. Of course, due to the butterfly effect caused by the crossing to this plane, his death has been delayed by two years and nine months from the original date of September 21, 1629, which is quite lucky.

However, Cohen's death was not the main reason for Roger's surprise, after all, this incident had long been expected by Haihan, but he didn't know when it happened. The crux of the matter was the suddenness of Governor Cohen's death, which led to some problems in the East India Company's choice of successor.

Although the headquarters of the East India Company was located in Batavia, almost all of its management shareholders were in the Netherlands, which led to a power vacuum in Batavia for a certain period from the time Cohen's death to the time when the shareholders received information that the board of directors was discussing the appointment of the next governor.

Although Batavia City also has a council of shareholders' representatives, the council does not have the power to directly appoint or dismiss officials of the rank of the governor, and who would not be tempted by the position left by Cohen after his death, as long as he can get it?

Before Cohen's death, of course, there were several preferred successors, such as Jacques Spikes and Hendrik Brower, who had been his right-hand men. Unfortunately, however, the two men were killed at the Battle of Ambuna last year, and Spikes, though he escaped with his life, was clearly unfit to be the Doge of the East India Company - and if he had won, he might have been. And the unlucky Brovo was killed by the Haihan militia in the chaos and was directly out. These two military attachés, who served as governors of Batavia one after another in the original history, inexplicably lost the opportunity to climb to the top of their lives because of the appearance of Haihan.

In addition to these two men, there is also Anthony van Diemen, who was entrusted by Cohen with many years of maritime exploration in the Far East. Van Diemen's contribution to the Maluku Islands earned him a letter of appointment as Admiral from the Parliament of the Dutch Republic, and in terms of status, strength, and achievements, Van Diemen is indeed the most suitable candidate to take over the post of Governor at present. Of course, in the original history, he was also the ninth governor of the East India Company.

However, in this plane, due to various reasons, the timing of his succession is very different from the original historical trajectory, and there are many people who intend to compete with him for the governorship. At least four members of the council in Batavia had declared themselves to be running for the governorship, and Van Dimen, though in his hands the military power, did not dare to use it to suppress the other contenders, because they represented the majority shareholders of the company, and these big men were not something he, a commoner from the countryside of Coolenberg, could afford to provoke.

But Van Dimen would not pass up the opportunity lightly, because he saw the other contenders as mere rhetorical and rhetorical civil officials in the castle, who did not know how to deal with the natives of Southeast Asia, nor what the Ming Empire to the north had towards the East India Company. Putting the company in the hands of such people is really going to end sooner or later