Just when Deng Fei was about to stand up and angrily denounce the Dutch's statement, which was full of hypocrisy and sophistry, Wang Zhusheng, who was from Kapitan in Bacheng, saw something bad and hurriedly stood up and cupped his hands and said: "Master Deng, I have a few words that I don't know what to say." Shouldn’t you tell me?”
Deng Fei glanced at Gerald Hester Jacobs, calmed down the anger in his chest, and said to Wang Zhusheng: "Mr. Wang, please speak."
Wang Zhusheng looked grateful, and said with cupped hands: "Master Deng, Mr. Jiang, and Mr. Hong, I am here to serve as Bacheng Kapitan. Although I am entrusted by the Dutch, I usually work for us Tang people. This time Wang has been entrusted by thousands of Tang elders in the city, hoping to explain to you what happened fifty years ago. Although the Dutch did something excessive, the root cause was the chaos caused by the unruly people with evil intentions."
"Ah?!" Deng Fei and the three of them had expressions of disbelief in their eyes.
Just listen to Wang Zhusheng say again: "According to the villain's inquiries in Xiamen and Ba City, this Batavia was originally under the jurisdiction of the local Crow Band, and was later occupied by the Dutch. At that time, Ba Wang punished those who were unruly and lawless. Ceylon is allowed to return only after meritorious service and atonement. Ceylon is the birthplace of the Dutch. It is far away from Bacheng and is often invaded. We Chinese in Ceylon have fought hard and won many battles. , and also repelled Shengfan."
"Ordinarily, these Chinese have made meritorious service and atone for their sins, so they should return to Batavia. However, the then King of Ba and the Dukes of the Council were worried that they would all withdraw and cause trouble and harassment. So they wanted to get rid of the Chinese in Batavia. Select the best and go to replace them. But think about it, the Chinese in Bacheng are innocent, and they are definitely not willing to leave their homes and careers to go to Ceylon. So some people took advantage of the fact that they had more people and money to resist the Dutch. They even conspired to start a rebellion to kill all the Dutch."
"Think about it, if you were a Dutch government official, you would never tolerate such an act of betrayal and forgetfulness. Therefore, King Ba ordered his soldiers to attack. Alas! Since ancient times, swords and guns have no eyesight in battle formations, so it is inevitable to hurt innocent people. But later, King Ba also felt that he had gone too far and regretted it. Therefore, the two sides were very peaceful in the past few decades. Tang Chuan came here and recruited him diligently. Before leaving, he gave many condolences. Even if the security in the city is slightly tight, it should be It makes sense. However, we, the people from the Tang Dynasty, will still be in charge of trade matters, and they will not dare to embarrass us."
"..." Deng Fei and Hong Tao looked at Kapitan Wang Zhusheng's convincing and conclusive tone, and were a little confused for a moment. This was so different from what they had imagined before! Who is this guy from?
Jiang Fan on the side twirled his beard with his hands, squinting his eyes and thinking silently. He was not confused, but remembered that there was a sentence in the telegram sent by Zhao Xin yesterday about the Batavia battle proposal, which was talking about people like Wang Zhusheng: "The Kapitan man is named Hua Shang, but he is actually a businessman." Foreign slaves and compradors. There is no sense of national responsibility in these people. They are a group of sophisticated self-interested people who are obviously capable but never consider helping their own people. They are extremely hateful!"
At this moment, in Jiang Fan's view, these people are not only hateful, they are simply killable!
In fact, the reason why the "Hongxi Massacre" happened was that on the one hand, the Dutch coveted the wealth accumulated by the Chinese and deprived them of it through massacre; on the other hand, the Chinese comprador group headed by Kapitan had a great influence on the bottom Chinese. Cruel exploitation and even inaction were also important reasons for the Dutch to take action.
All of this starts with the development of the sugar plantation industry in Java. The root cause is economics.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the sugar cane cultivation industry in Java developed rapidly and was almost completely controlled by the Chinese. Encouraged by the East India Company, sugar plantations spread across the countryside around Bach. As many as 130 sugarcane plantations belong to 79 Chinese, 4 Dutch and 1 Javanese.
As the Chinese population in Batavia increases, the effective operation of many local political affairs depends not only on the unique relationship of mutual trust and cooperation between Kapitan and the Dutch-Indian authorities, but also on the leadership and coordination of the Chinese The authority of human Kapitan.
On the one hand, the Chinese were directly under the jurisdiction of Kapitan and Lieutenant (transliteration, meaning assistant) appointed by the Dutch. These Chinese officials acted as compradors in all matters involving the East India Company. Strong institutional ties were established between the Chinese and the Dutch through tax contracting, hospitals, orphanages, guardianships and other institutions. On the other hand, the private business interests of East India Company officials and Chinese businessmen were becoming more and more closely intertwined. A large number of illegal private trades conducted by the Dutch were ostensibly handled by Chinese businessmen.
In the early days, Kapitan's authority among the Chinese was unquestionable. They were all elected and appointed by the Chinese elders living in Bacheng in a fairly democratic manner. The Chinese's head tax was paid at the Kapitan government office and then transferred to the East India Company.
However, all the employees in the plantations and the Chinese businessmen far away from the city were not under the jurisdiction of Kapitan and Lezhenlan in the city, but were placed under the direct supervision of the Dutch judicial officers and their subordinates. Despite this, according to the rules, the Chinese operators of these plantations must pay the head tax for their employees through Kapitan every year.
Under this kind of twisting policy of neglecting the near and far away, given the poor nature of the Chinese, there are definitely not many who actually pay taxes according to the rules. The planters would rather bribe the magistrate to be accommodating than go to the city to pay Kapitan a head-count tax. After all, the more illegal workers there are who don't pay taxes, the more profits the Chinese businessmen can make. The Dutch judicial officers were not happy about this and just took bribes. As a result, Kapitan's prestige has declined and corruption has flourished.
Finally, those Kapitans and Loi Chin Lans who invested in sugar cane plantations became part of the fraud, creating a vicious cycle in which short-term corruption replaced long-term cooperation. The Chinese workers at the bottom were exploited by these people, and at the same time they had to borrow loan sharks to repay the expenses of the snakeheads. Once someone was dissatisfied, Chinese businessmen threatened to report to the Dutch.
The widespread fraud caused the price of cane sugar in Bacheng to be lower than that of cane sugar in British Bengal, and sales dropped. As a result, the Dutch East India Company suddenly significantly reduced the purchase price and quantity of cane sugar, thus directly hitting the local sugarcane planting industry. , a large number of Chinese who ran plantations became victims.
Many of the bankrupt sugarcane plantation operators are ordinary Chinese. They had no capital when they started their businesses and had to rely on loans to operate. Not to mention the Chinese who rented land at high prices to operate plantations. Like the tenants who brought clearings, they first had to ensure that the landlords made profits.
Bankrupt Chinese workers and small Chinese businessmen flocked to the countryside in droves. The decline of the sugar industry made the livelihood of Chinese in other industries in the city increasingly difficult. The Dutch's taxation measures and extortion made these people like squeezed sponges. Thousands of old and young people lost their land, money and jobs, leaving them with only three options, or waiting to starve to death. Either beg for sporadic relief or steal.
News of the growing turmoil in the countryside could hardly reach the ears of the wealthy people in Bacheng. Dutch officials in the countryside felt it was wiser to conceal the truth; while Kapitan and his Lei Zhenlan only needed to spend a few hundred taels at this time. Money can help these miserable compatriots, but as big landowners, they are indifferent to this.
The loss of Kapitan's authority in rural areas has led to the separation of urban Chinese and rural Chinese, and an explosive situation is inevitable.
In the spring of 1740, the powder keg was finally ignited, and the scandal came to light that Dutch East India Company officials had sold residence permits to Chinese sugar plantations. This incident forced the Bacheng authorities to propose a radical and unrealistic plan to force Chinese workers to immigrate to Ceylon, so as to once and for all solve the problem of Chinese workers wandering in the countryside.
But what do the Dutch actually do? After they sent the Chinese workers out to sea, they killed them directly or threw them into the sea. The survivors fled back to the Batavia countryside, forcing others to decide that it was better to fight and survive than to sit there and wait for death.
When the Chinese workers outside the city began to revolt, the Chinese in the city remained indifferent. Even the origin of the riot was Kapitan's own plantation at that time. By the time the Chinese labor rebels defeated the Dutch's first attack and began to storm the gates of Batavia, the relationship between the Dutch and the Chinese had completely disintegrated.
Revenge and the fear of being robbed triggered a bloody massacre that lasted for three days, and the evil in human nature was completely unleashed. The East India Company authorities made a fortune from the massacre, and so did everyone involved.
Just like the "St. Bartholomew's Night" when Catholics massacred Protestants in French history, all the Chinese in Batavia, men, women, old and young, were brutally killed by the sword. Even pregnant women and infant babies were killed. Not immune. No less than a hundred shackled prisoners had their throats chopped off one after another like sheep being slaughtered. Some Dutch people had provided asylum to many wealthy Chinese citizens in the past, but on this day they actually attacked these Chinese in order to divide their property.
A German carpenter named Georg Berhardt Schwarz said in his later memories: "I knew that my Chinese neighbor had a fat pig, so I planned to take it for myself. When my boss - -When the carpenter saw what I meant, he patted me on the shoulder and told me to kill the Chinese man first and then rob him. So I picked up a rice pounder and beat to death this Chinese man who often drank and ate with me. neighbor."
However, things didn't stop there. Schwartz later found a pistol in his neighbor's house, took the gun outside and shot the Chinese he saw. He said: "I gradually became accustomed to this. To me, killing a Chinese is like killing a dog."
Zhao Xin made it very clear at the end of the telegram. He warned Deng Fei and others not to think that taking down the city of Batavia would be enough. What you are dealing with is a pyramid with the Dutch at the top, Chinese businessmen as compradors, and the bottom. The colonial system in which Chinese workers were brutally exploited.
To deal with this system, it is useless to defeat the Dutch. Because the center of the pyramid is filled with Kapitan, Lieutenant, Secretary, loan shark groups, population groups, gambling groups, and even opium dealers who are similar to the big landowners in the country; these people are all The Dutch comprador is as intricate and tightly connected as a vine.
Therefore, the Dutch and Spanish colonists were certainly enemies, but the Chinese comprador groups that had taken root in Southeast Asia had irreconcilable conflicts with Beihai Town.
He asked Deng Fei and the others to think carefully. It was okay to fight against the Dutch, but what would happen after the fight was over? In other words, war is like love. It is easy to start but difficult to end. If not, it will end in a "grave".
The purpose of launching the war is nothing more than political and economic interests. As a political power, or as the leader of Beihai Town, it is impossible for Zhao Xin to let the Thor come all the way just to collect debts from the Chinese fifty years ago, and then Just pat your butt and leave.
The attack on Annam was for Dong Deng and Lang Son, and for the magnetite and coal mines in northern Annam; the attack on Batavia was for the ultimate control of the Sunda Strait, and then the economy of the entire Southeast Asia. It is easy to sign a big-cake agreement with Ruan Fuying, because Zhao Xin knows that the other party's strength is not enough to unify Annan in the short term, but it is different in Java.
Not to mention that VOC has 10,000 soldiers and tens of thousands of employees throughout Southeast Asia, with strongholds all over the East Indies and Spice Islands. If Beihai Town wants to completely eliminate the Dutch, it will not only require force, but also economic means. It will take only a few years or even ten years. After several years, the situation could not be controlled at all.
After listening to Wang Zhusheng's words, Deng Fei suddenly felt that even if he defeated the Dutch, as long as the North Navy did not set up government management or station troops here, these guys might still invite the Dutch back!
At this point, neither Deng Fei nor anyone else had the time to explain to Wang Zhusheng and others what happened back then. These compradors have their butts crooked to begin with and are willing to be slaves to foreigners, just like the "Li picking melons" in another time and space.
Only then did Deng Fei finally understand what Zhao Xin meant. To completely change the fate of overseas Chinese, it was not just the struggle between Beihai Town and the Western colonists, but also the confrontation between classes; how cruel class struggle is. , but he knew very well that maybe it would be a river of blood.
"Zhao Xin, this bastard, no wonder he asked me to come to Southeast Asia. That was his original idea!"
Just when Deng Fei was in trouble, Wang Yuanfang was leading two hundred men from the special operations battalion, struggling forward in the jungle more than 60 miles east of Bacheng. Their goal was to capture the fortress located twenty miles east of Bacheng one day later.
This group of people set off from the Thor before dawn in order to avoid the surveillance of the Dutch. After the sun came up, these people had entered the jungle.
Wang Yuanfang, who had been a scout in the south for many years, was also very troubled by such a combat environment. In such an environment, the troops cannot disperse and organize coordination according to time, nor can they organize coordination according to the order of battle. They can only rely on visibility to support each other and rush to meet their needs.
In fact, the biggest problem in jungle warfare is not snakes and insects, but communication. Even if there is a GPS in another time and space, it is useless. You must know that in a hot environment, whoever can wear headphones all the time is definitely considered a hero. Even if someone can insist on wearing it, the hot and humid environment will reduce hearing, and hearing is very important for mountain and jungle combat.
Because of their outstanding performance in the short-term training on Da Cham Island and their bravery in killing the enemy in the Battle of Hoi An, Wen Dai and Rapini, who had been promoted to second class soldiers, walked 20 meters in front of the team as the vanguard. Different from the past, Wen Dai did not use a walkie-talkie to communicate with the rear. Instead, he imitated frog calls from time to time to guide the teams behind.
When the two saw a large tree lying down in the weeds, they did not step over it directly, but went around it from one side, and then used the sound of frogs to alert the people behind. The reason for this trouble is that there is probably a snake under the tree trunk.
Suddenly, Wen Dai's ears moved as he was advancing, as if he heard something. He immediately signaled to Rapini, and the two of them immediately surrounded a big tree in a tacit understanding.
When Wen Dai saw the guy squatting in the grass clearly, he slowly retracted the gun, and then pulled out the dagger from his thigh. When the other person was attracted by the noise Rapini made, Wen Dai jumped out like a tiger, using his left arm He put a hand around the other person's neck, and then put a dagger across the person's throat.
At this time, the man in Wen Dai's arms had his hat knocked off, revealing the pigtails on his head. Wen Dai knew that this might be a Chinese, so he shouted in a low voice: "Don't scream, or I will stab you to death. Do you understand?"
The man he was hugging hurriedly said "Hmm" twice, and then was thrown into the grass by Wen Dai. He took a few deep breaths, and when he turned around and saw his attacker clearly, he suddenly I was so scared that I peed.
"Ghost!"
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