1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 951 The Spaniard's Calculation

The Spaniards are not so arrogant that they think that their force has reached the level that they can crush the two competitors. In fact, the two countries, Portugal and the Netherlands, have also won and lost each other in Southeast Asia for a long time, and the Spanish sailing ships in the northeast The scope of activities in the Asian region is not as active as these two countries. The purpose of establishing a stronghold in Taipei is to contain the Dutch on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is also hoped to use the local stronghold to open up trade routes to Northeast Asia. Follow in the footsteps of competitors.

The Haihan people destroyed the strongholds of fresh water and chicken coops. The Spaniards can also regard this as an accidental result of the raid, but if the Netherlands and Portugal have been beaten before that, then they must carefully consider Haihan. Han's true strength.Although the Spaniards are a bit arrogant, they are not idiots. As long as they are a little more careful, it will not be difficult to collect more intelligence information about the Haihan Armed Forces.

At this time, the population of Chinese settled inside and outside Manila exceeded [-], and there were also a large number of Han merchants who went to the local trade every year. There were countless rumors about Haihan. The Spaniards did not pay much attention to this area of ​​intelligence collection in the past, but now they will After piecing together the intelligence fragments bit by bit, they realized that they hadn't noticed that such a powerful opponent appeared only seven or eight hundred nautical miles away from Manila.

Before that, although the Spaniards knew about the existence of Haihan, they always thought that this group was just a group of merchants who were good at maritime trade, and they never connected them with the image of competitors for sea control.But these so-called "businessmen" obviously played a big show of pretending to be pigs and eating tigers, and only now are they slowly showing their fangs.

The Governor of the Philippines, Aragones, is not an unlearned bureaucrat. Although he grabbed this position by relying on his relationship with the royal family, his ability is not inferior to that of the previous governors. The manager of the Port of Acapulco, a colony of New Spain, had a relatively good understanding of the doorways of maritime trade between the East and the West.The two strongholds in Taipei are also new colonies he organized and opened up after he took office, which can be regarded as one of his political achievements, but what the Haihan people did at the beginning of 1633 has turned his efforts in the past few years into nothing. Bubbles.

Although he has learned that the Haihan people may have powerful maritime forces, Aragones decided to organize an armed fleet to attack Haihan and take revenge for his family's loss in Taiwan Island.However, most of the senior management in Manila, including his staff, thought that there was no need to rush to fight Haihan after comprehensively studying the intelligence collected from various aspects. Even if they lost their stronghold in Taiwan, the Ming merchants would still take the initiative trade with Spain.

The argument for this point of view comes from the massive amount of silver that Spain imports to Ming Dynasty every year through trade means. In recent years, the Manila authorities have sent an average of 400 million pesos of silver to Ming every year, which is equivalent to about 300 million taels of official silver in Ming Dynasty. In the underground transactions between Spain and the smugglers of Ming Dynasty, at least 400 million taels of silver are imported from Spain to Ming Dynasty every year.During this period, Daming's national fiscal revenue was similar to this figure. If such a huge amount of cash was not circulated in the market, it would inevitably cause economic turmoil in the coastal areas of Daming.

The aides believed that in order to avoid the financial chaos caused by the broken capital chain, the businessmen of Ming Dynasty would rely on their natural sense of smell to reship the goods originally shipped to Taipei to Manila for trading. After all, only here can there be inexhaustible cash.However, no large-scale silver mines have been heard of in the territory of the Haihan people, and they certainly cannot fill the cash holes needed by the market.Expulsion of Spain from Taipei seems to be useful, but in fact, it can only cause some small troubles for Spain, and will not change the status quo of Ming's dependence on Spanish cash input.

The staff even suggested that Aragones ordered the expansion of the port of Manila to prepare for the arrival of more Ming maritime merchants.According to their predictions, the negative reaction to the interruption of the supply of cash silver will appear at the earliest in the spring and summer of 1633. At that time, the Daming Maritime Chamber of Commerce will abandon Haihan, who is unable to produce enough cash silver, and chooses to bring the goods south to Manila. Trade with Spain.

After listening to this analysis, Aragones also felt that it made sense. He has been in power for several years and has done some research on Daming's economic situation. He knows that Daming's domestic cash has always been relatively dependent on external input, and the three most important Among the channels, Spain is one of them.The other two are clearly Japan, as well as Portugal and the Netherlands.Dongying produced its own silver mines, but its output was far less than the silver mines controlled by Spain in the Americas. Portugal and the Netherlands did not have the Pacific route controlled by Spain, and almost all their silver was shipped from far away Europe. , neither the quantity nor the cost of use can be compared with Spain.

The Spanish family accounted for about [-] to [-]% of the cash imported into Daming from the outside every year, and the rest was divided among the other families.Under such a ratio, the loopholes caused by the sudden interruption of cash input cannot be made up by any company in a short time.Although the Haihan people are extremely rich, it is probably impossible to raise millions of taels of silver to subsidize trade needs in just a few months.Although the capture of the Spanish stronghold is really annoying, it can indeed be put aside for a while, because once there is a fight with Haihan, the maritime merchants in Fuguang and Guangxi will probably give up going south to Manila during this period in order to avoid the chaos of war.Aragones planned to put the time in the second half of the year, and then settle accounts with the Haihan people after the annual sailing fleet departs for the Americas.

So Aragones followed the advice of his staff, and only sent a written protest letter to Sanya through an intermediary for Haihan's start of war on Taiwan Island, condemning Haihan's undeclared war and demanding that it be taken back to the local area of ownership.Of course, the effect of this kind of written protest can be imagined. After it was sent out, it was like a stone sinking into the sea, and not even a bubble appeared.At the same time, Aragones also ordered the expansion of the port of Manila's wharf, as well as the improvement of the port's freight and storage facilities to prepare for the upcoming tide of merchant ships.

Then it was the summer, and not many Ming maritime merchants came south to Manila for trade as expected by the staff.Aragones had to reduce the size of the fleet to the Americas by half because there was not enough cargo to ship, and hurried on the road in the last period of time before the ocean current changed.

By this time, the script obviously did not match the actual plot, and Aragones certainly knew that this was an extremely serious mistake in the judgment and speculation of the staff.After the fleet left the port of Manila, Aragones immediately sent several members of his staff to prison on charges of "corruption of public funds", "deception", and "dereliction of duty".There is no way, someone has to take the blame for such a major mistake, and it is obviously impossible for the governor to play this disgraceful role, so he can only wrong these think tanks who have worked for him.

The so-called "collapse theory" of the staff at the beginning has unknowingly become a big joke, but Aragones knows that the group of people under his command are not rich and rich, so the inference he made is not groundless, and he himself agrees with it at the beginning The staff's speculation.Pushing people out is just to deal with domestic accountability, but Aragones will not fool the country and let it go, he still has to figure out what happened, so that the economic situation of Ming Dynasty is not moving towards the previous situation at all. development in the expected direction.The news from all sides was slowly pieced together, and it was only gradually that the Spaniards realized what happened after the Battle of Taipei.

The fact that the Spaniards were forced to withdraw from the southeast coast had indeed caused an obvious shortage of cash in the coastal areas of Daming, but the Haihan people were clearly prepared for this situation. On the one hand, they raised nearly one million taels of cash in advance. Silver was transported to Penghu as a reserve. On the other hand, the Fujian government and business circles also jointly guaranteed Haihan, and promoted the use of a paper voucher printed by Haihan locally.Although the settlement field of this kind of vouchers is mainly concentrated in bulk trade, and has not been widely circulated among the people, it has greatly alleviated the situation of lack of cash.

However, the lack of cash in the market did not last long. From the turn of spring and summer, the Haihan people began to settle and cash out some payments temporarily paid with vouchers, and what they used turned out to be a large amount of gold.There is reliable news that the gold is not the wealth accumulated by Haihan in the past in trade, but from the chicken coop area in Taipei they recently occupied at the beginning of the year.After the Haihan people occupied the local area, they couldn't wait to recruit a large number of miners along the coast of Fujian to mine mineral deposits in the area, and a certain scale of Haihan troops had been stationed there for protection.

Aragones believes that this information is one of the main reasons why the Haihan people waged undeclared war on the Taipei area. They must have pre-determined through some channels that there are gold mines in the area, and then brazenly launched this war.And the output of this gold mine can probably make up for the shortage of precious metals in Daming's domestic circulation, so it won't be greatly affected by Spain's withdrawal.The Haihan people have calculated all the subsequent developments, and it is no wonder that Ming businessmen did not flood into Manila after the war.

If the business reputation of the Haihan people was not so high, then the circulation coupons they used probably would not be able to play the role of firefighters in the Daming market. If there were no gold mines in Taipei, it might not cause the Haihan people to covet them.But none of these hypotheses came to fruition. The Haihan people captured Taipei, opened a gold mine, and successfully overthrew Spain's position in the Ming foreign trade market. These were the real goals behind the war.

In addition to admiring the means of the Haihan people, Aragones can also be sure of another thing. This group of Haihan people are by no means just greedy for small and cheap businessmen. The political, economic, and military means displayed by domestic opponents in this matter are all commendable.This is not a pattern that ordinary smugglers can play, but a big chess game that can only be operated by genuine high-level players.

Only at this time did Aragones truly understand why the Portuguese wanted to hug Haihan's thigh, and the Dutch could still swallow their breath and tolerate Haihan's arrogance after suffering a few times.Presumably they are not without temper, but they really understand Haihan's strength, and they don't want to fight him head-on anymore.Of course, Aragones can probably guess that his European neighbors must be laughing somewhere at the Manila authorities for their missteps. Its share has also been replaced by Haihan and other forces.

Although Aragones did not give up trying to solve the problem by force, he also knew that this would not be easy.According to the information we have, Haihan has a professional army with thousands of people. The weapons and equipment are not inferior to European countries' guns, artillery, and sailing giant ships. With few defeats, it is known as the number one ever-victorious army in the South China Sea.With such an armed force, Aragones is really not sure of victory.

The situation of Spain's garrison in the Far East is similar to that of the Netherlands. Because the country's immigrant population is extremely limited, a considerable part of the army is a trained native confederate army, and its combat effectiveness is relatively worrying.The army actually composed of nationals is not large, and most of them are just part-time soldiers who are immigrants for a military salary. The overall combat effectiveness is still not comparable to that of the professional army.If the Dutch have already suffered several defeats at the hands of Haihan, then Aragones has little confidence that he can do better than the Dutch.

After the time entered the second half of the year, news first came that the Haihan army had conquered the Zhoushan Islands off the coast of Hangzhou Bay in Daming, wiped out the local pirates and established a stronghold, and the local government of Daming seemed to have accepted this matter by default.Not long after, new news reached Manila that the Haihan Fleet went to Miyako Island in the East China Sea, and wiped out the Eighteen Zhi Remnants who had once been famous on the southeast coast of Ming Dynasty.

The previous piece of news means that Haihan's control over Daming's coastal waters has increased a lot, covering almost all areas that can engage in maritime trade. It is probably only a matter of time before they monopolize Daming's maritime import and export trade.The latter piece of news means that the Dutch have basically lost their competitiveness and commercial rights along the coast of Daming. Without the middleman Shibazhi, if they want to continue to maintain trade with Daming, they have to hand over the trade orders to Haihan Apart from this middleman, there seems to be no other way to go.From this point of view, the Portuguese were the most shrewd. They hugged Haihan early in the morning and basically kept their position in the Ming Dynasty's foreign trade system.

(End of this chapter)