I want to be emperor

Chapter 698

Since the Great Chu Empire launched the Nanyang strategy more than ten years ago and launched large-scale colonial expansion activities in the Nanyang region, it has been in serious and fierce competition with the Dutch.

It's just that this kind of competition comes with cooperation. After all, the Dutch need a large amount of goods from the Great Chu Empire, whether it's traditional silk porcelain or new types of industrial products, the Dutch need them all.

They need to import a large amount of goods from the Great Chu Empire, and then traffic them to various parts of Southeast Asia, India, West Asia, North Africa and even Europe.

At the same time, the Dutch need the Great Chu Empire, a super market that can swallow almost all agricultural products, mineral products, and overseas specialties.

This kind of back-and-forth trade is extremely profitable.

For example, the most typical trade route for the Dutch at present is to purchase high-quality cotton and ivory from India, spices, wood and other specialties from the Spice Islands, and then transport them to the Great Chu Empire for sale. Porcelain, tea, machine-made cotton cloth, civil iron products, weapons and equipment and other industrial products were transported to the Nanyang islands, India and other places for sale.

In the end, they will also detour some commodities that are urgently needed in Europe and have relatively high unit prices, such as silk, porcelain, iron products and weapon products, and transport them back to Europe for sale in order to obtain super high profits.

The profits from shipping back to Europe for sale are extremely lucrative. Some scarce goods are transported from the Great Chu Empire to Europe, and their prices can increase dozens or even hundreds of times.

Its huge profits are also the reason why the Dutch, Portuguese and even the subsequent English, Danes, Swedes, Spaniards and other European countries attach great importance to Eastern trade.

The Dutch have a demand for the goods of the Great Chu Empire, as well as a demand for the market of the Great Chu Empire. This is why the Dutch were willing to give up Dayuan Island back then, and continued to make concessions to the Great Chu Empire in the subsequent series of wars in Malacca. , dare not have a fundamental reason for armed resistance.

Because once a real war breaks out between the two sides, the Eastern trade that the Dutch have painstakingly managed will be completely over...

In the face of interests, the Dutch can tolerate many things.

As for the Great Chu Empire, its own ocean-going navigation capabilities were actually relatively limited in the early days. It was not bad in the Southeast Asia region, but it started to catch up when it reached the Indian Ocean region, let alone the European region.

Therefore, the early Great Chu Empire also needed the Dutch, Portuguese, and English colonial trading companies to replace the Great Chu Empire to open up these markets.

Therefore, in the early days, the Great Chu Empire still adopted a friendly and cooperative attitude towards these European trading companies as a whole.

Competition belongs to competition, but the trade between them has never been broken.

Even the Portuguese, who were in a stalemate with the Great Chu Empire because of the Haojing issue and the Malacca issue, actually did not cut off trade with them.

After the Portuguese withdrew from Malacca, the Great Chu Empire took the initiative to invite them to the Great Chu Empire to continue their trade.

In the early days, the relationship between the Great Chu Empire and these European colonial companies was one of competition and cooperation, not pure hostility or friendship.

Even now it's pretty much the same.

The only difference is that they are more and more dependent on the Great Chu Empire, but the Great Chu Empire is less and less dependent on them.

The main point here is that the Great Chu Empire has successively controlled many countries in Southeast Asia, opened up markets strongly, and then entered Bangladesh, India, and West Asia, and continued to acquire several colonies and a large number of trade bases. The merchant ships of the Great Chu Empire Relying on these colonies and trading bases, a large amount of goods began to be transported into Bangladesh and the Indian Peninsula.

This means that the Great Chu Empire no longer needs these European colonists to be second-hand dealers in Southeast Asia and India.

The Great Chu Empire could transport goods to these places for sale by itself, and purchase a large amount of agricultural or mineral products, local specialties, gold and silver and other precious metals from these places.

From this time on, for the Great Chu Empire, the East India Companies of these European countries have far outweighed their cooperation in competition.

In other words, they are useless to the Great Chu Empire and can be discarded at any time.

At least in the Nanyang and Indian markets, this is also the fact that the Great Chu Empire has gradually intensified its colonial activities in the Indian region in recent years. For this reason, it did not hesitate to integrate major armed trading companies and established the Western Trading Company.

After the establishment of the Western Trading Company, the colonial activities of the Great Chu Empire in India have increased significantly, and their strength has also continued to increase. Not only have they seized many large-scale colonies on the east coast of India and opened up dozens of trade Stronghold port.

The forces are still infiltrating into the west coast of India and the island of Ceylon across the sea from the Indian Peninsula.

In this way, the Great Chu Empire hoped to completely expel the European colonists from the Indian Peninsula in order to monopolize this vast market.

You must know that the Indian peninsula has a population of more than 1 million and is rich in resources. Although the purchasing power of the untouchables at the bottom is low, the purchasing power of the upper class is not bad.

If the entire Indian peninsula can be captured, the huge benefits it will bring will be greater than the sum of the Fusang Islands, the Indochina Peninsula, and the Nanyang Islands.

Seizing and controlling the entire Indian peninsula as its own colony has been included in one of the overseas expansion plans of the Great Chu Empire.

However, before taking over the entire Indian peninsula, the Great Chu Empire had to solve one worry, that is, to drive out the Dutch who were still entrenched in the Spice Islands region of the South China Sea.

The reason why they didn't do anything to the Dutch before was because the Dutch had a large number of merchant ships on hand, and their routes to India, West Asia, Africa, and Europe were able to export a large amount of industrial commodities to the Great Chu Empire.

But now, the Great Chu Empire itself has replaced its role in India, West Asia and North Africa, as for Europe.

The Dutch are not the only ones running European routes. They have a good relationship with the Great Chu Empire, and Spain, which has just reached an agreement to purchase the Luzon Islands, organizes a huge fleet every year to purchase a large amount of goods from the Great Chu Empire and transport them to Europe. Sale.

It's just that Spain does not take the Indian Ocean route, but the Pacific route to Mexico, and then transships through Mexico to return to Spain on the Atlantic route.

However, its fleet is very large. The sailing fleet that regularly comes to the Great Chu Empire for trade every year ranges in size from fifty to a hundred ships, each of which is a Galen galleon with a huge cargo capacity.

In addition to the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the English, the Danes, and the Swedes are also the partners of the Great Chu Empire's current trade with Europe.

Among them, the Portuguese fought with the Great Chu Empire before, but since Malacca was taken away by the Great Chu Empire in the hands of the Portuguese, the subsequent Portuguese people also recognized the reality, and simply did not get involved in the Nanyang trade, and concentrated on fighting with the Great Chu Empire In cooperation, a large amount of goods from the Great Chu Empire will also be purchased every year, and shipped to India, West Asia, Africa, and Europe, and the scale of transportation is not small.

The English, Denmark, and Sweden have not been involved in Asian trade for long enough, and they had no conflicts with the Great Chu Empire in the Nanyang region before. Although there is competition in India, there is still considerable cooperation on the whole...

What... If they don't cooperate with the Great Chu Empire, it doesn't make any sense for them to come to Asia to trade...

They can't transport a native product like cotton from India back to Europe, isn't it...

Their main trade routes are actually similar to those of the Dutch, all of which are to purchase enough various goods from the Great Chu Empire, especially precious luxury accessories such as silk and porcelain.

The above-mentioned European countries and the Great Chu Empire basically had relatively large-scale trade.

In other words, even without the Dutch, the goods of the Great Chu Empire can still be continuously imported into Europe through Spain, Portugal, England and other countries.

Not only these European countries, but the Great Chu Empire has also directly opened several routes to West Asia, especially Egypt.

Although the Great Chu Empire still does not occupy large colonies in Egypt or other North African regions, it still successfully opened up fixed routes and traded with Egypt and West Asia under the control of Ottoman Turkey.

During this process, the Western Trading Company of the Great Chu Empire also acquired a small port from a small local sultan in the name of a concession in the Djibouti region of Northeast Africa to serve as an armed trade base.

This small port stronghold named Hongkou City happened to be stuck on the south side of the dividing line between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, and next to it was the Mandeb Strait guarding the Red Sea.

Because this place is just at the entrance and exit of the Red Sea, it was named Hongkou City.

Hongkou City is also the first official colony of the Great Chu Empire in Africa. Although it is only in the form of lease, the land leased by the Great Chu Empire has never been returned...

The reason why the lease is adopted is mainly to avoid conflicts with the Ottoman Empire. After all, the purpose of the Great Chu Empire to set up this leased land is to do business with the Ottoman Empire and open up the Ottoman market. It is also to bypass Africa and allow its own goods to pass through Suez, Egypt After arriving in the Mediterranean Sea by land, it enters the European region.

If this makes the relationship too rigid, it will be impossible to develop the market peacefully, and then we will have to fight... But the official representative of the Great Chu Empire, that is, the Western Trading Company's deployment of troops in the African region is still too poor. Can't fight...

Through Hongkou City as a transit, the Great Chu Empire and the Ottoman Empire established trade links in Egypt.

Therefore, the foreign trade of the Great Chu Empire does not need to rely on any country. On the contrary, almost all countries that engage in overseas trade these days cannot do without the Great Chu Empire.

This is also the reason why the Great Chu Empire can safely and boldly prepare to kick the Dutch out of the Nanyang region without worrying about any loss in overseas trade.

Besides, the merchants of the Great Chu Empire have always been jealous of the Spice Islands!

Spices these days are hard currency. In the nautical trade, their value is firmer than the traditional goods of the Great Chu Empire, silk and porcelain.

Not only the European region needs a lot of spices, but the Ottoman Empire regions such as North Africa and West Asia also need a lot of spices, and other countries are no exception... Finally, even the Great Chu Empire needs to import a lot of spices every year.

This thing is plant gold.

Anyone who can control a piece of spice production is tantamount to making money lying down.

In the past, the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Kingdom of Aceh, the Kingdom of Johor and other parties fought back and forth in order to compete for the right to trade spices on the Malay Peninsula.

After the dog brains were played among them, the Dachu people came, and then they were all blown away with a few slaps, and they monopolized the Malay Peninsula!
Since then, the Malay Peninsula has become the overseas territory of the Great Chu Empire, and has become the largest producer of spices in the Great Chu Empire.

But this is still not enough!
With the economic development of the Great Chu Empire, the people's ability to consume spices has become stronger and stronger, and the demand for spices has also increased. This huge demand has even directly pulled up the price of spices in the Nanyang region...

So don’t look at European merchants who ship spices to Europe for sale, but in fact the Great Chu Empire actually purchased more spices, but the distance is short, the route is transparent, and the Navy of the Great Chu Empire is watching, so the Dutch sold it to The spices of the Great Chu Empire were not so profitable.

However, limited by the limited production of spices and the single source, in the past ten years, the Dutch have made a huge amount of money from the Great Chu Empire by relying on the spice trade.

And for these, many businessmen in the Great Chu Empire are very jealous.

The navy has long been encouraged to kill the Dutch and then take over the Spice Islands.

At that time, the profits of the Spice Islands will all belong to the empire... Well, they will also belong to these spice merchants!
The instigation of domestic businessmen, coupled with the overall strategy of the empire also needs to ensure that Nanyang is completely turned into its own back garden. For this reason, after the Fusang and Luzon affairs were finalized, the high-level empire did not hesitate any longer and quickly decided to launch the expulsion of the Dutch , the plan to occupy the Spice Islands.

And it is naturally the Navy of the Great Chu Empire to perform this task!
In November of the 23rd year of Chengshun, dozens of warships from the Nanyang Fleet of the Chu Empire Navy approached Batavia in the west of Java Island.

At the same time, the west end of Sumatra Island, which is only separated from Java Island by the Sunda Strait, which is tens of kilometers wide, thousands of army soldiers who had been prepared for a long time also boarded the sea-crossing ships and crossed the Sunda Strait under the cover of the navy. Landed in the Banten area, the westernmost point of Java Island.

Then it went straight to Batavia, tens of kilometers away.

When the army and navy started their operations, in order to demonstrate the benevolence and virtue of the Great Chu Empire, the officials of the Department of Confucian Affairs of the Ministry of Ritual and Education of the Great Chu Empire who accompanied the fleet also sent a letter to the Dutch East India Company authorities in Batavia in time. Ultimatum.

A naval soldier of the Great Chu Empire disappeared in the port of Batavia. He asked the Dutch to immediately open the city gate and allow the Great Chu Empire to send people into the city to search and rescue, otherwise all consequences will be at your own risk!
When the people of the Dutch East India Company saw this ultimatum, they were almost choked to death by a mouthful of old blood!
I have seen shameless people, but I have never seen such shameless people.

If you want to seize our Spice Islands, just say it, if you want to fight, go to war, and make up any excuses, excuses are fine, but it is still a bad excuse that the natives shook their heads when they heard it.

A soldier is lost and needs to go to the city to search and rescue?
Just kidding around Nima International, Lampung Port, the nearest port of your Nanyang Fleet, is hundreds of kilometers away from Batavia!

You lost a soldier, none of our Dutch business!
Moreover, you are looking for an excuse to go to war anyway, can you be more serious?Change to something more reliable?

However, the Dutch obviously overestimated the ability of the Department of Civil Affairs of the Ministry of Ethics and Education of the Great Chu Empire to find an excuse for war. It is already very embarrassing for them to be able to come up with an excuse for a soldier to get lost.

The Great Chu Empire has fought many wars, but the number of excuses is really not many, and it was used once when fighting the Fusang people.

For a long time, the people of Great Chu have believed in: the real empire, direct action without force.

Looking for an excuse to lose a soldier now is due to the fact that the Dutch are considered a colonial and seafaring country at any rate, and they are barely civilized people, not barbaric natives who don't understand anything; and after this battle, it is estimated that the two sides will You have to continue to do business and continue to sell the goods to Europe.

So wars belong to wars, but the necessary civility and etiquette are still required, so at least one has to send a formal ultimatum to declare war.

If it were an ordinary indigenous country, the Secretary of the Feudal Affairs would not bother to talk nonsense with you, and you would expect the Secretary of the Feudal Affairs to send someone to deliver you an ultimatum, which is overthinking.

A country with no strength really can't get the treatment of an ultimatum from the Great Chu Empire's Feudal Affairs Department!
Obviously, the Dutch still have the qualifications these days. Although the reason for the ultimatum is very fucking, but at least they have it...

Speaking of which, the Great Chu Empire still gave the Dutch face.

(End of this chapter)