Page:Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China.djvu/26

 it was given by the authorities at Bantam to their "linguists" to interpret they intimated that they dare not for their lives translate the bold missive. Dittis and his brother negotiators, when the communications were put before them, undertook to translate them and also forward them by a certain agency. But they suggested that the one couched in a threatening tone should not be sent "for that violence would avail nothing." They further urged that they should "proceed in the negotiation in a pacific manner and trust to the character which the English had of late acquired of being a 'peaceable people.'" How far this shrewd advice was entertained we have no means of knowing, but there is little to think that James' peppery periods ever offended the august imperial eye. Whatever may have been done in that matter the fates were against the success of the negotiation. The affair dragged on for several years and was only brought to a close when the Firando factory was vacated in 1623. From first to last the negotiations cost the Company a great deal of money. Dittis alone is represented to have disbursed 13,000 taels.

As has been indicated the unjust implication of the English in the piratical transactions of the Dutch had a very injurious influence on the coarse of the negotiations for a trade with China. That prejudiced feeling was intensified when, as happened in 1619, the English entered into a treaty of defence and alliance with the Dutch. This arrangement was ostensibly designed to further the interests of both countries, their forces being joined in a "joint endeavor," to use the words of a clause of the treaty, "to open and establish free commerce in China and other places of the Indies by such ways and means as the Common Council shall find expedient." But in practice the Hollanders turned the arrangement to their exclusive advantage. They used the English when it suited them to do so, dragging the English ships into a blockade which they instituted against the Chinese junks proceeding to the Manilas, and in other ways compromising the English name with the Chinese. But when equal facilities were claimed at the ports occupied by the Dutch the demand was emphatically declined. Ultimately the ill-assorted union came to an end as it was bound to do. A tragic outcome of it was the massacre of Amboyna, an episode which left a deep stain on the English name until it was wiped out by Cromwell. Another consequence which flowed from the connection was the creation in the minds of the Chinese and the Japanese authorities of a strong distrust of the English. It is difficult to say to what extent this feeling influenced the course of events, but there is little room for question that it militated very seriously against English interests for a long series of years. We may gather some notion of the prejudice excited from the successive despatches of the Company's agents whose writings became increasingly doleful as the time went on and the consequences of the alliance were more clearly revealed. Thus, Richard Cock, the factor at Firando, in 1621 wrote to the Company's agents at Batavia in these terms: "Gonrockdono, the Governor of Nangasaque (Nagasaki), with all the merchants of that place, Meaco and Eddo, taketh the Spaniards' and Portugals' parts against us, giving the Emperor to understand that both we and the Hollanders are pirates and thieves and live upon nothing but the spoil of the Chinese and others; which is the utter overthrow of the trade with Japan, no one daring to come hither for fear of us. By which reports the Emperor and his Council are much moved against us. The King of Firando, who has married the Emperor's kinswoman, is now our only stay." He added: " The Hollanders are generally hated throughout all the Indies, and we much the worse thought of since we joined them."

After the rupture with the Dutch the English for some years confined their operations largely to the Indian trade. But they continued to cast longing eyes in the direction of China and Japan. The Dutch, who had early in the struggle with the Chinese seized and fortified a position in the Pescadores, were able to establish in course of time an indirect trade with China by way of Tywan in Formosa. This did not escape the notice of the English factors at Batavia. Writing home they furnished particulars of the Hollanders' operations, and at the same time painted a glowing picture of the prospects offered in this direction. "The trade of China now likely to settle at Tywan," they stated with a curious mixture of metaphors, "is as an ocean to devour more than all Europe can minister; wrought and raw silk



in abundance and many necessary commodities that all parts of India must have. These are to be purchased with the pepper, spice, and sandal wood of these parts at prices as we please; also with the silver of Japan springing from the said silk of China, and by all probability with every sort of European commodities, especially woollen cloth, for the greatest part of the Chinese Empire stretcheth into the cold climate and is defended with infinite troops of soldiers whose necessities do require more than we can guess at until experimented." In another communication the advantages of Far Eastern trade were further expounded. "For these mighty monarchies Japan and China abounding with riches and also civilised peaceably to respond with all; but in a climate requiring that which neither themselves nor their neighbours enjoy or can be supplied but by the English which is clothings answerable to the magnificence of these nations, defensible against the cold and convenient for their employments in travel, wars and weather."

"Those clothes which now they wear is silk, in Summer seasons passable, but in the Winter are enforced to bombast or to wear ten coats one over the other, and that is useful. Silk being thus their clothing and all growing in China, a stop of that intercourse were so material that silk in China in one year would be as dust or dung and Japan beggard for want of clothing."

"But such stop of intercourse and devised extremity needeth not; for the natural enmity between those two nations hath so framed all for our purpose, that could Japan be furnished with any other clothing, not one Chinese durst peep into their country; which the Chinese well know; therefore, though tolerated by Japan, yet none cometh but by stealth, which would cost their lives if known to their governors in China."

The Dutch at this time were sharply antagonistic to the English at all points where their interests touched. They resented the action of their rivals in withdrawing from the treaty of defence, professing to look upon it as a gross breach of faith towards themselves. Their dominant feeling, however, was one of jealous apprehension lest the English should secure a foothold in a domain which they had marked out for their own special exploitation. This policy of exclusiveness was pursued with a persistency which could not fail to leave its marks on English trade at a period when the country's influence was not at a particularly high level in Europe. Still, the English factors at Batavia were by no means disposed to leave the Dutch with a free hand in the Far East. In 1627 the Presidency at Batavia sent home a long despatch strongly urging the desirability of making another attempt to open up trade with China. They wrote:—

"Concerning the trade of China three things are especially made known to the world."

"The one is the abundant trade it affordeth; the second is that they admit no stranger into their country; the third is that trade is as life unto the vulgar, which in remote