Since the Chu Empire launched its 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.

However, this kind of competition also involves cooperation. After all, the Dutch need a large amount of goods from the Chu Empire, whether it is traditional silk porcelain or new types of industrial products.

They need to import a large amount of goods from the 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 Chu Empire, a super market that can swallow up 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 of the Dutch at present is to purchase high-quality cotton and ivory from India, spices, wood and other specialties from the Spice Islands, then transport them to the Chu Empire for sale, and purchase silk from the Chu Empire on the way back.

Various industrial products such as porcelain, tea, machine-made cotton cloth, civilian iron products, weapons and equipment are transported to various Southeast Asian islands, India and other places for sale.

Finally, they will also take some commodities that are urgently needed in Europe and have relatively high unit prices, such as silk, porcelain, iron products and weapons products, bypassing Africa and shipping them back to Europe for sale in order to obtain super high profits.

The profits from shipping back to Europe are extremely profitable. When some scarce commodities are transported from the Chu Empire to Europe, their prices can rise dozens or even hundreds of times.

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

The Dutch had a demand for the products of the Chu Empire, and they also had a demand for the market of the Chu Empire. This is why the Dutch were willing to abandon Taiyuan Island and continued to make concessions to the Chu Empire in the subsequent series of wars in Malacca.

, there is no fundamental reason to dare to resist with force.

Because once a real war breaks out between the two sides, the Eastern trade that the Dutch have worked so hard to manage will be completely finished...

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

As for the Chu Empire, its ocean navigation capabilities were actually relatively limited in the early days. It was pretty good in the Southeast Asia region, but it began to fail when it came to the Indian Ocean region, let alone Europe.

Therefore, the early Chu Empire also needed the colonial trading companies of the Dutch, Portuguese, and English to replace the Chu Empire in opening these markets.

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

Competition is competition, but trade between each other has never been interrupted.

Even the Portuguese, who had a relatively tense conflict with the Chu Empire over the Haojing issue and the Malacca issue, actually the Chu Empire did not cut off trade with them.

After the Portuguese withdrew from Malacca, the Chu Empire actively invited them to come to the Chu Empire to continue trade.

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

Even now it’s actually pretty much the same.

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

The key point here is that the Chu Empire successively controlled many countries in Southeast Asia, opened up the market forcefully, and then entered Bangladesh, India, and West Asia. It continued to acquire a number of colonies and a large number of trading strongholds. The merchant ships of the Chu Empire

Relying on these colonies and trading strongholds, a large amount of goods began to be transported into Bangladesh and the Indian Peninsula.

This means that the Chu Empire no longer needs these European colonists to serve as second-tier dealers in Southeast Asia and India.

The Dachu Empire could transport its goods to these places for sale on its own, and purchase large amounts of agricultural products or mineral products, local specialties, gold and silver and other precious metals from these places.

From this time on, the East India Company of these European countries began to compete far more than they cooperated with the Chu Empire.

In other words, they are of no use to the Chu Empire and can be abandoned at any time.

At least this appears to be the case in the Southeast Asian and Indian markets. This is why the Chu Empire has gradually increased its colonial activities in the Indian region in recent years. For this reason, it has not hesitated to integrate major armed trading companies and establish the Western Trading Company.

After the establishment of the Western Trading Company, the colonial activities of the Chu Empire in India increased significantly, and their intensity also continued to increase. Not only did they seize many large-area colonies on the east coast of India and opened up dozens of trade

Base port.

Its influence has also penetrated into the west coast of India and the island of Ceylon across the sea from the Indian Peninsula.

As a result, the 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 100 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 Fuso Islands, Indochina Peninsula and Nanyang Islands.

Seizing and controlling the entire Indian peninsula as its own colony has been included in the Chu Empire's overseas expansion plan.

However, before taking over the entire Indian peninsula, the Chu Empire still had to solve one worry, which was to first drive out the Dutch who were still entrenched in the Spice Islands area of ​​the South Seas.

The reason why we did not take action against 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 could export a large amount of industrial goods to the Chu Empire.

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

The Dutch are not the only ones running European routes. Spain, which has a good relationship with the Chu Empire and 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 Chu Empire and transport them to Europe.

Sales.

However, Spain does not take the Indian Ocean route, but the Pacific route to Mexico, and then transits through Mexico and takes the Atlantic route back to Spain.

However, the scale of its fleet is very large. The fleet of sailing ships that regularly come to the Chu Empire for trade every year ranges in size from fifty to a hundred ships. Each of them is a Galenic sailing ship with a very large cargo capacity.

In addition to the Spanish, the Portuguese, the English and even the Danes and Swedes are also the partners of the Chu Empire in its current trade with Europe.

Among them, the Portuguese were fighting to the death with the Chu Empire before, but since Malacca was taken away from the Portuguese by the Chu Empire, the Portuguese also recognized the reality clearly and simply stopped participating in Nanyang trade and concentrated on fighting with the Chu Empire.

Through cooperation, a large amount of goods from the Chu Empire will be purchased every year and shipped to India, West Asia, Africa and Europe. The scale of transportation is also not small.

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

What...if they don't cooperate with the Chu Empire, there will be no point in their trading in Asia...

They can't transport local products like cotton from India back to Europe, right...

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

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

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

Not only these European countries, but the Chu Empire has actually opened a number of direct routes to West Asia, especially Egypt.

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

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

This small port stronghold named Hongkou City is just on the south side of the dividing line between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. On its edge is the Bab el-Mandeb Strait guarding the Red Sea.

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

Hongkou City was also the first official colony of the Chu Empire in Africa. Although it was only on a lease basis, the land leased by the Chu Empire had never been returned...

The main reason why the lease was adopted was to avoid conflict with the Ottoman Empire. After all, the purpose of the Dachu Empire in establishing this lease was to do business with the Ottoman Empire, to open up the Ottoman market, and to bypass Africa and allow its own goods to pass through Egypt and the Soviet Union.

In the Yinshi area, land transportation reaches the Mediterranean and then enters the European area.

If this makes the relationship too tense, it will be impossible to develop the market peacefully, and a war will have to be fought... However, the official representative of the Chu Empire, that is, the Western Trading Company, has not deployed enough troops in Africa.

But I can’t fight...

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

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

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

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

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

Not only does Europe need 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 Chu Empire needs to import a large amount of spices every year.

This thing is plant gold.

As long as you can control a spice producing area, it is equivalent to making money while lying down.

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

After they had their wits about them, the Chu people came and slapped them all away and took over the Malay Peninsula!

From that time on, the Malay Peninsula became the overseas territory of the Chu Empire and became the largest spice producing area in the Chu Empire.

But this is still not enough!

With the economic development of the Chu Empire, the people's consumption capacity for spices has become stronger and stronger, and the demand for spices has also increased. This huge demand has even directly driven up the price of spices in Nanyang...

So despite the fact that European merchants all shipped spices to Europe for sale, the Chu Empire actually purchased more spices. However, the distance was short, the routes were transparent, and the Chu Empire’s navy was watching eagerly, so the Dutch sold them to

The spices from the Dachu Empire are not so profitable.

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

Many businessmen in the Chu Empire are very jealous of these.

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

By then, the profits from the Spice Islands will all belong to the empire...well, they will also belong to spice merchants like them!

The instigation of domestic businessmen and the overall strategy of the empire also needed to ensure that Nanyang was completely turned into their own back garden. Therefore, after the Fuso and Luzon affairs were finalized, the empire's senior officials did not hesitate anymore and quickly decided to start the expulsion of the Dutch.

, the plan to occupy the Spice Islands.

The one who performs this task is naturally the Da Chu Empire Navy!

In November of the 23rd year of Chengshun, dozens of warships from the Nanyang Fleet of the Great Chu Empire arrived at Batavia in the west of Java Island.

At the same time, the western end of Sumatra, which is only separated from Java Island by the Sunda Strait, which is tens of kilometers wide, thousands of well-prepared army soldiers also boarded the sea-crossing ships, crossed the Sunda Strait under the cover of the navy, and went directly from

Landing in Banten area, the westernmost tip of Java Island.
To be continued...