1635 Han style rises again

Chapter 761 Visit of the Indian Task Force ([-])
October 1659, 10, East Coast of India, Fort St. George (now Chennai, India)
Today is a sad day for the British East India Company stronghold of Fort St George.They first watched on the shore that their two armed merchant ships were besieged by as many as ten ships, and finally they humiliated and raised the white flag, lowered their sails and dropped anchor, and surrendered to each other.Immediately afterwards, the ten ships broke into the mouth of the Guwam River one by one, and stopped in the river channel a mile south of Fort St. George.Subsequently, more than 800 armed men boarded the north bank one after another under the watchful eyes of the British in small boats.

There is no doubt that the target of this group of armed men will be directed at Fort St. George, trying to seize the most important stronghold of the British East India Company.

The British set up trading posts on the east coast of India, which can be traced back to 1626. At that time, the East India Company established a business house in Almagao on the Coromandel Coast in southeastern India. In 1639, at a cost of 600 pounds per year, from Raja of Chandragiri (a state in the Bijapur Sultan Kingdom) leased a piece of land along the coast to establish Fort St. George.Since then, the British have used this fort as the core to expand their commercial tentacles to the east coast and inland areas of India.After more than ten years of development, Fort St. George has become the most important cotton textile and handicraft trading base in South India.

Since last year (1658), London has placed all the merchant houses in Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, and the Coromandel coast under the jurisdiction of Fort St. George, making it the regional headquarters of the east coast of India.

Although the East India Company still has an important regional headquarters in Surat on the west coast of India, it seems that the two places should be able to take care of each other and help each other.But in fact, the trade affairs and business processes of the two places are independently operated and managed by the senior managers appointed by the headquarters and the senior merchant committee, and report to London separately, and there is even a certain degree of competition.

Every year the company sent ten to fifteen merchant ships to the East, some as far as China, to trade in tea, china, and silk, one of the company's most profitable imports.A round-trip voyage to India typically takes a year and a half, including time spent loading and unloading cargo and waiting for the monsoon.The fleet usually departs from England in autumn or winter, and if all goes well, it can reach India in about six months, that is, before the rainy season in June.Then, to ride the trade winds, the fleet would leave India early in the New Year and round the Cape of Good Hope to avoid returning to England in the winter.

However, a few years ago, or rather, it should be in the second year (1653) after the outbreak of the Anglo-Dutch War, the British East India Company encountered difficulties in its trade operations.Of course, this difficulty is not due to the deterioration of the local business environment in India, nor is it due to the company's financial problems.Instead, the British were commercially excluded from other countries, or to be precise, they were specifically targeted by certain countries.

In the beginning, under the background of the Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch East India Company headquartered in Batavia dispatched many armed merchant ships to intercept and plunder British merchant ships. A joint fleet was formed to attack British merchant ships.Even, they once drove their ships near the ports where several British commercial houses were located, making it impossible for the British East India Company to carry out normal trade transportation.

Fortunately, the Anglo-Dutch War lasted only two years, which made the British East India Company breathe a sigh of relief.After being blocked and harassed by the joint fleet of Han and Holland for more than a year, the company's trade was almost at a standstill, and the loss was conservatively estimated to be more than 30 pounds.

After the armistice with the Netherlands, the so-called combined Han-Dutch fleet was also disbanded.Just when the British were about to roll up their sleeves and work hard to make up for the previous losses as soon as possible.They were shocked to find that the Qi State in the southern New World seemed to be still targeting them.Whether it is from the purchase of goods in the market or the sale of goods, the other party is in various competitions with the British either explicitly or covertly.

The Hanzhou people also transferred several warships from their homeland—yes, they are professional warships installed by the navy, not armed merchant ships—to attack the company’s merchant ships from time to time.Of course, there is no direct evidence that the Hanzhou people did it for the missing and damaged merchant ships, but the crew members who survived by chance complained sadly that they were indeed attacked by professional warships, and most of the sailors on board They are all oriental faces.

You must know that in the vast sea area of ​​the East, only the Hanzhou people have professional warships, and only they will nervously deploy professional warships to target our British East India Company!
For this reason, the British East India Company sent personnel several times to Hanzhou merchants such as Surat, Anfeng Fort (now Cochin City in Southwestern India), and Ningyang Fort (now Pondicherry, India, also translated as local governance). Stand up stronghold, try to reach a settlement with them, and stop violent attacks against the British.

However, the persons in charge of these Hanzhou merchant bases all categorically denied that they had ever illegally intercepted and attacked British merchant ships, thinking that this was an unwarranted slander against them by the British.

The British were irritated by this kind of nonsense, and they were ready to fight with force.They instructed their armed merchant ships to form a fleet of three to four ships as far as possible when performing maritime transportation tasks, and to conduct indiscriminate attacks on Hanzhou merchant ships encountered along the way.At the beginning of the period, the British caught the Hanzhou people by surprise. In a few months, they damaged eight or nine Hanzhou merchant ships one after another, and even captured two ships.

However, when the Hanzhou people woke up, they immediately retaliated wildly.With the cooperation of their two professional warships, they frequently intercepted British merchant ships. In less than three years, there were more than [-] sea battles between the two sides.Although, with excellent sailors and tenacious fighting will, British merchant ships sank and damaged more than ten Hanzhou merchant ships.However, the British East India Company suffered even more losses. As many as eight merchant ships were sunk and captured by the opponent, and more than a dozen were injured and damaged.

This caused the loss rate of the merchant ships dispatched by the British East India Company to the East to exceed [-]%, and the trade volume also shrank by [-]%, which completely dragged the company that was already in financial crisis into the abyss.The company's share price has fallen below face value, and some distraught shareholders have accused the company of aggressive confrontational policies that will lead the company into a bankruptcy situation.

You must know that the British mainland is more than six months away from India, while the Hanzhou is only more than two months away from India, so they can get local support more quickly.Even, as long as the other party is willing, they can send more professional warships to India.Could it be that our East India Company is going to wage an unrealistic war with a regional power that is not weak in force? !
The government of the Republic during this period focused on domestic and European affairs. In order to strengthen the legitimacy of its own rule, the Lord Protector (Cromwell) continued to attack and suppress the Royalist Party, dissolved the Parliament, and even Almost crowned as the new king.

In European affairs, support the war between France and Spain, strengthen the implementation of the "Navigation Regulations" at sea, and safeguard Britain's maritime rights and interests in the English Channel, the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.Even if it pays attention to overseas colonial affairs, it focuses more on the Americas (North America) and the Caribbean.As for the far east, it does not seem to be able to attract the attention of the government of the republic.

Therefore, the East India Company, which could not get more support from the British mainland, had to prepare to bow to the Hanzhou people.Two years ago (1657), they sent representatives to the mainland of Hanzhou to try to resolve the armed confrontation between the two sides in India from the Hanzhou government. Establish formal trade relationships.

Disappointingly, the representatives of the British East India Company received a cold reception in Hanzhou, and the diplomats of this country only had superficial contacts with the representatives, and there was no follow-up.After lingering for several months, he was not received by any senior officials of Hanzhou, and he faintly revealed a trace of hostility.When the representative left Hanzhou in disappointment, he learned that the country had already learned that their visit was under the guise of the British government from the East India Company, so they were extremely indifferent and even a little angry.

The East India Company, at a loss, saw that it could not resist the pressure of the Hanzhou people, and even had a high probability of being completely squeezed out of the Indian market by the other party, so it could only lower its profile and submit to the Hanzhou people.They found the business houses of the Hanzhou people in India, expressed their willingness to obey the maritime trade order they established, and paid a corresponding price for this.

Well, I am resigned, and I will pay you a protection fee. You have the final say on the trade order in this region, and I will not argue with you.

In October 1657, the two parties signed a memorandum of understanding at Anfengbao. After that, the British East India Company’s trade exchanges must be supervised and guided by Indian trading companies. British merchant ships entering and leaving India’s east and west coasts need to go to Qiguo trading offices in various parts of India to obtain trade license certificates. , Each ship pays two thousand pounds before it can go to sea.Otherwise, British merchant ships sailing in Indian waters will not be protected by Qi's cruise fleet.

After more than [-] years of development and growth, the Qi State Navy has finally fully replicated the Zheng Zhilong model "Command Flag Pass System" that they had envied before to the Indian waters.

It stands to reason that the British East India Company behaved so obediently, that Qi's warships and armed merchant ships should not have launched another attack on British merchant ships, let alone attack the British's most important commercial stronghold on the east coast of India - Fort St. George .

Gein, the cause of the second attack on British merchant ships by the Qi State Indian Trading Company was the Banten War that occurred a few months ago.At that time, when the Qi State Marine Corps and armed local soldiers captured the city of Banten, they raided the British East India Company's shop in Banten, and killed the manager of the shop, dozens of employees, and guards.

After the British merchants in Batavia learned of this incident, they quickly returned to India and publicized the incident, accusing the Hanzhou people of brutality.The misfortune suffered by British business partners in Banten has aroused the anger of many British businessmen.

Under the turmoil, more than 100 people gathered at the Nellore British Commercial House on the south bank of the Bennell River, and then hired more than 20 local armed men, and blatantly attacked the Indian trading company stronghold in the same place, wantonly insulting and Killed five Hanzhou people and more than [-] local employees to avenge their companions who died in Banten.

After this tragedy spread to Ningyang Fort, it immediately caused a violent shock.It just so happened that four armed merchant ships from the mainland also brought the news that the British had induced Aceh pirates to attack Atlantis (now Great Nicobar Island, India), which made the Indian business community even more angry.New and old grudges, simply calculate together, must teach the British a harsh lesson.

The senior shopkeeper of the trading company in charge of the east coast of India immediately mobilized in Ningyang Fort and several nearby trading houses, assembled more than 500 armed guards from all over the country, and spent a lot of money to hire more than [-] local armed forces. Under the leadership of its battleship "Xingming", a group of five ships rushed towards Fort St. George aggressively.

The crusade fleet of the Indian Trading Company ran into two merchant ships under the British East India Company near the Coveran Sea.Seeing that the ships of Qi State were approaching menacingly, and they didn't seem like a normal trade fleet, the other party turned around and ran away knowingly.

Immediately, the five Qi ships launched a arduous pursuit of the two British merchant ships.The British merchant ship fled for less than an hour, and then decisively threw the cargo on board into the sea to reduce the weight of the ship, trying to escape back to Fort St. George before being stopped by the opponent's professional warship.

However, what was unexpected was that just as the two British merchant ships got rid of the entanglement of the professional warship many times by virtue of their superb handling, and were about to sail near the port of Fort St. George, five ships suddenly appeared from the north. And lined up in a fan-shaped surface, and surrounded them head-on.

In the process of approaching quickly, the lookout on the British merchant ship wailed in despair. The five ships on the opposite side turned out to be flying the flag of Hanzhou, and there were many portholes and muzzles on both sides, all of which were professional warships!

After a futile struggle, the two British merchant ships felt that it was difficult to get rid of each other, so they could only fly the white flag and declare their surrender to the Qi warship that besieged them.

The Qi State Task Force communicated with the captain of the "Xingming" for a while, and immediately joined the battle queue to attack Fort St. George.It is estimated that it will not take much time to help the Indian trading company fight a battle, and breaking the British stronghold will also bring some benefits to the officers and soldiers under it.

"Where is Commander Luo of your fleet?" Commander of the task force, General Guangwei (Rear Admiral) Mir watched the landing troops safely set foot on the north bank of the Old Warm River, and was busy setting up camp and building simple fortifications on the spot. Then he asked Yang Yongdong, the captain of the "Xingming" and Lieutenant Xuanjie (Major) who rushed over.

"Sir, our commander took two warships to escort three merchant ships to Bandar Abbas in the Persian Empire a month ago." Yang Yongdong replied respectfully.

"You Commander Luo probably wants to personally investigate the hydrology and coastal geography of the Arabian Gulf (Persian Gulf)." Mir nodded and said with a smile: "However, according to the Barbary pirates, the coastal area on the southwest side of the Gulf, They are all desert sandy land, and the temperature in summer is extremely high, which is not suitable for human survival at all. It may not be easy to find a suitable place to stay."

"We, Commander Luo, heard some Persian businessmen who came to India say that there are still some tribal peoples living together in the coastal area on the southwestern side of the Gulf. So we searched and looked around, maybe we could find a relatively suitable colony. If it’s not good, we can also find a foothold on the Persian coast through the Persian Trading Company.”

"You Commander Luo has a heart." Mir nodded and said: "Presumably he did this to expand the size of your Indian fleet and control the sea area, so he is a little impatient to find a stronghold in Persia!"

(End of this chapter)