Gao Wujian, the "Fourth Master" of the sixth house of the Gao family, has been in charge of the Taiwan strategy for several years and has sufficient experience in establishing, consolidating and expanding strongholds.
Regardless of the situation Gao Wujian faced when he was in Taiwan, Gao Jingshi thought it would be much easier than going to Nanyang in the future. This is mainly because Taiwan is basically in a "ownerless" state at this time, and the local aborigines have a very low level of civilization. To put it simply, they are still at the level of tribal civilization. There are not even cities, but there are some settlements and small villages.
Gao Wujian, the "Fourth Master", is Gao Jingshi's biological brother and the youngest biological brother. Of course, his identity is very, very unique, so he has extremely high freedom of movement in Taiwan.
It can be said that as long as Gao Pragmatic's instructions are not violated at the strategic level, the leaders of the Gao family servants assigned to him will not have any possibility of disobeying his orders. In other words, his expansion in Taiwan can almost be described as arbitrary.
A young man in his early twenties has mastered an elite force that can run sideways among countless tribes in Taiwan. It is conceivable what his expansion style will be.
Fortunately, although this force was elite, its number was still limited, so Gao Wuguan still used his brains. He did not simply choose to push all the way, but often stabilized one area and attacked the other. He would either play snipe and clam to fight for the fisherman's profit, or kill three people with two peaches. In short, he crushed the local natives in terms of wisdom.
Historically, the Spanish and the Dutch also established short-lived colonial rule in Taiwan. Without Gao's pragmatic intervention, Taiwan would have been contested by Spain and the Netherlands about thirty years later.
In the early 17th century, the continuous rise of the Netherlands caused the trade of Southeast Asian countries centered on Spain to begin to decline. By 1624, the Netherlands successfully occupied Taiwan, and Spain became anxious, because once the Dutch power was established in Taiwan, Spain's overseas trade, especially Asian trade, would be severely hit.
Therefore, Spain could no longer sit still and wait. Not only did it need to start looking for some new colonies, but it also needed to expel the Dutch from Taiwan, so it also turned its attention to Taiwan.
In 1626, Spain assembled a large number of troops, set out from Manila, bypassed the back of Taiwan, discovered the city of Keelung, and successfully landed in Keelung.
Everything seemed to be going very smoothly, and they also discovered a natural island in Keelung, which was a good barrier. The Spanish then built a fort on the island and stationed a small force for defense.
In 1629, Spain began sailing to the northwest of Taiwan, continuously expanding its sphere of influence, and also discovered a freshwater river. If all goes well, Spain will establish its own colonial territory centered on fresh water. The island of Taiwan is large enough, so it is very convenient to engage in food production and cash crops. If the fresh water is controlled, there is no need to worry about the Dutch.
However, Spain's dream did not come true. It soon discovered its mistake, that is: Taiwan is not a place where many forces compete for it. There is not much development on the island, and development is very difficult and requires a lot of Only the human, material and financial resources are needed, but it takes a long time to get the returns.
In addition, there is another problem: there are still some indigenous residents in Taiwan. These indigenous populations are not particularly small, and they are not like the Native Americans who are culturally influenced and have some mysterious fear of white people. Taiwanese natives have two words for their perception of white people: alien.
Being alien means that the two sides must go through war to establish the relationship of victory and defeat, and the relationship of ownership. Such a tough native force is very difficult for Spain to deal with.
Because these natives have not received the baptism of civilization, their cultural level is very low, and they cannot communicate with them at all, so conflicts are inevitable. Due to the existence of these problems, Spain has developed in Taiwan for more than ten years, but has not received any returns and has not achieved the achievements Spain imagined. Moreover, the Spanish upper class still do not understand why they failed - why do they refuse to believe in God? Obviously Americans are very easy to "persuade"!
They want to control this place without finding the limitations of their own plan, which is obviously impossible to succeed. The Spanish royal family invested so much but saw no return, so they regarded this operation as a money-losing deal.
As Spain's biggest rival in Taiwan, the Netherlands had also occupied the south of Taiwan at this time, but they did not abandon northern Taiwan. However, their situation at the time was also very tense and their forces were limited, so they needed to use limited forces to deal with it. battlefield.
But by 1640, Spain almost collapsed on its own in Taiwan. Many of the former military fortresses were dismantled. Some of the soldiers stationed here returned to the Philippines, leaving less than 400 people stationed in Taiwan.
In 1641, the Netherlands saw the decline of Spain, so they tentatively launched an attack on the remaining Spanish troops. In order to better understand Spain's true strength, the Dutch Governor in Taiwan also wrote a letter to Spain, directly telling Spain of his intention to attack the Spanish army.
Spain's reply gave the Netherlands hope, because the biggest hope the Netherlands saw in it was "arrogant tone" and "blind confidence."
In 1642, the Netherlands sent an expeditionary force to attack Keelung, and 369 soldiers successfully landed in Keelung. These more than 300 Dutch soldiers knew that their opponent was an army composed of 400 Spanish soldiers and countless Taiwanese natives. Although the Spanish defense measures were in place, the Dutch had occupied the commanding heights on the island in advance and opened fire. Bombarded Spanish strongholds. Finally, after six days of fighting, the Spanish colonial army surrendered.
Afterwards, they surrendered the Spanish national flag and all their weapons, and the surrendered soldiers were sent back to Spain. Because the battle was so hasty, the Philippines did not have time to provide assistance. Although the Philippine Governor was dismissed because of the battle, Spain had no plans to fight back.
After the Netherlands occupied Keelung, they found that Keelung was not as valuable as they thought, so they only formed a symbolic army to defend here.
The above historical facts illustrate a key point: For Europeans, the cost of ruling Taiwan is very high. Both the West and the Netherlands think it is not cost-effective, so they have not made serious large-scale investments for long-term rule.
This is a bit strange. Gao Pragmatic believes that Taiwan is of great governance value (as mentioned earlier, I won’t go into it here). Why is there such a big difference in the understanding between the two sides?
The reason is very simple. When Spain and the Netherlands occupied Taiwan, they were not aiming at Taiwan itself, which had a low degree of civilization. In fact, the two countries' occupation and competition for Taiwan were essentially aimed at the Ming Dynasty and Japan.
Then what? The Spanish indirectly obtained trade qualifications with the Ming Dynasty through the presence of the Portuguese in Macau. The Dutch had always failed in their efforts to trade with the Ming Dynasty, but they succeeded in obtaining certain trade permissions in Japan.
At this moment, it was meaningless for the Spaniards to occupy Taiwan, and of course they were too lazy to entangle with the Dutch in Taiwan. To put it bluntly, it is that simple. The economy not only determines the economy itself, but also determines the political direction and military actions.
But that was the original history, and the current situation is very different from the original history.
First of all, due to time constraints, the Dutch have not yet arrived. The European trade leader in East and Southeast Asia is Portugal. Portugal's trade with the Ming and Japan existed at the same time; Spain had just entered the country not long ago and had not yet obtained permission to trade directly with the Ming Dynasty (but Ming merchants could trade in the Philippines). Its trade with Japan had just started and could basically be ignored.
At this time, changes came, and Gao Jingjing used a battle in Luzon to tell the Europeans: What you call the Far East is decided by Ming Dynasty and Jinghua.
This war was originally launched by taking advantage of the Spanish Armada's expedition to Britain. Considering Spain's losses in this battle, even if they were in their most arrogant era, it was impossible for them to consider counterattacking the Philippines - in fact, this was exactly what Portugal was doing. Without obtaining direct authorization from the king (because the king of Portugal is also the king of Spain, Philip II), the governor of Goa will send a special envoy to Dingnan to discuss the reasons for the peaceful transfer of Malacca.
The Portuguese did things according to their own customary understanding, so they did not know that Gao Pragmatic's actions did not represent the "Ming Empire". They only thought that this was the Ming Empire showing its suzerainty over the countries in East Asia, so they were defeated in Spain. Under such circumstances, the Portuguese directly lost the courage to resist.
According to the preliminary verbal agreement reached between Special Envoy Alfredo and "Her Excellency Baroness Huang Zhiting", Portugal needs to completely abandon its colonial behavior in Southeast Asia. With his highly pragmatic understanding of the Europeans, he believed that the Portuguese were most likely to be acting treacherously and secretly intervening through their trading power in the so-called "Spice Islands" to hinder Beijing's Nanyang strategy.
Of course, the Portuguese may regard Jinghua's Nanyang strategy as "the Ming Empire's actions to strengthen its Nanyang suzerainty." Therefore, in the eyes of Portugal and even Spain, these lagging actions are actually part of their colonial war with the "Ming Empire."
In the Southeast Asia region, there are countries such as Aceh, Tammu, Banten, Sumatra, Johor, Borneo (Brunei), and Sulu that have formed national organizations for a long time. There are also many tribes or tribal alliance groups. In short, there are many small countries.
When the "Southern Xinjiang Community" in Beijing was unable to launch a formal war against Nanyang due to the domestic situation in the Ming Dynasty, it could only abandon military means as much as possible to expand in these areas, and instead resorted to military, political, and economic threats or co-optation methods to respond flexibly. , which in Gao Wugujian's opinion requires a lot of skill, and he was a little worried about whether Gao Wugongjian would mess it up.
Everyone discussed for a long time, especially Gao Mo, who used the latest map of the situation in Nanyang based on the information from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to explain the current complex situation in Nanyang in detail to the Gao pragmatic couple and Liu Xin. Finally, Gao pragmatically decided to let Gao Wujian hand over the tasks in Taiwan first. , came to Beijing to report his work to him. After the report, he had to communicate with Gao Wujian in person - of course, it could also be understood as a face-to-face meeting.
By the time these things are finished talking, it's already getting late. Not long after the four people returned to the industrial layout arrangements in southern Xinjiang from the Nanyang issue, news came from the servants of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, reporting the latest developments in the palace and cabinet.
The Chief of Ceremonies sent the emperor's latest edict to the cabinet, which promoted him to be a pragmatic and pragmatic pillar of the country and a senior official; the first-grade wife of Jin Huang Zhiting, "with her original position, has the power to control Siam, Bago, Myanmar, Nanzhang, Cambodia and other countries." Play". The cabinet received the imperial edict, quickly signed it and approved it, and sent it to the Sixth Section. The six subjects were also passed quickly, and a signature was attached, forming a legal order.
The biggest difference between this imperial edict and the previous imperial edict is that almost all the content related to the "Dingnan Protectorate" has been removed, but a little bit has been retained, that is, the sentence asking Huang Zhiting to "take charge of Siam and Bago in his original position" , Burma, Nanzhang, Cambodia and other countries."
"With the original position" means that Huang Zhiting's official position is still "Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Annan", but she "temporarily takes charge" of the "Shuwenbizuo" of Siam, Bago, Myanmar, Nanzhang, Cambodia and other countries. ".
What is "Shuwenbizuo"? It was that they originally needed to give a symbolic report to the emperor, talk about the domestic situation, and ask the emperor for instructions on what to do - of course these were all superficial things, and the emperor would not even check whether what they said was the truth. The emperor's replies were usually all clichés, and they probably just taught them to govern the country with benevolence and righteousness. Both sides were talking nonsense to each other.
But nonsense is nonsense, this is still a form of "the king and his ministers call each other", and it is an important evidence to determine who is the king and who is the minister. At this time, the emperor asked Huang Zhiting to "take charge" - that is, to "temporarily take charge" of the matter, but it definitely did not mean that Huang Zhiting became the supervisor of rites.
In fact, this means that in the future, in southern Xinjiang, except for the Annan Dutong Division, the Dutong Envoy Mo Maoqia will directly report to the emperor. Other countries will report to Huang Zhiting, and Huang Zhiting will be ordered to reply to them on behalf of the emperor.
The Director of Ceremonies can also make approval on behalf of the emperor, but the Director of Ceremonies must approve the approval of the Emperor. In fact, the Director of Ceremonies seriously said that he only signed and sealed the emperor's signature, and did not have the authority to approve - through other means such as deceiving the emperor. Or it does not count if it is achieved by obscuring the words used in the emperor's oral instructions.
The power Huang Zhiting enjoys now is different. She is a "temporary supervisor" - it doesn't matter for now. Anyway, she is a "supervisor" now. Since she is a supervisor, it means that she is only responsible to the emperor himself. How to answer these kings specifically? Her business.
Originally, the emperor did have the right to "manage" these vassal states in theory, but that was just a theory. The emperor did not station troops in these places, and he was far away. This so-called management had never happened.
However, it was different when this power was given to Huang Zhiting. Her husband's several garrison troops were the de facto regular armies of various countries in southern Xinjiang, and she herself sat in Dingna City on behalf of her husband. This administration itself was the actual administration, only the name was missing, and now the emperor had given the name.
Southern Xinjiang has actually been handed over to the pragmatic management of Representative Huang Zhiting, and it only lacks a unified administrative structure.
However, this is only the emperor's first edict. In addition to this edict, there is another edict: the Ministry of Civil Affairs selects and nominates Chen Yubi, Chen Jingbang, and Xu Xuemo as the candidates for the successor of the Ministry of Civil Affairs. The date of the recommendation is Set for three days later.
The second boot has basically landed.
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Thanks to book friends "Yun Fu Yue Yu", "Altay's Old West", and "Cao Mianzi" for their monthly support, thank you!
