Chapter 268: The Origins of the Portuguese

After watching the astonishing gas-crane unloading performance, Alonso ordered his attendants to present the diplomatic documents to the dock officials. Having waited patiently on board for nearly two hours, he boarded a handsome triangular-sail boat and crossed back over the Taijiang — this time the boat came directly to the Dayuan Island dock.

Unlike the bustling, noisy wharves along the Taijiang shore, the Dayuan dock was quiet and beautiful. The terraced cement gravity dock was paved with dark-red polished marble slabs, and the moment an outsider stepped onto the pier, the scent of power and wealth seeped out thick and heavy.

Two young men in hand-tailored gray linen Western suits and blue fine-cloth shirts were already waiting at the dock. Beside them stood the "world's" only Ministry of Foreign Affairs 8-seat electric sightseeing car, reserved exclusively for receiving nobility.

After exchanging a few pleasantries, the Portuguese Special Envoy was invited into the cream-white, canopied sightseeing car.

Both young men were staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and one of them had taken French as an elective. So once Alonso was seated in the sightseeing car, he began chatting quite happily with the young man in French.

The 17th century was precisely the era when French was gradually replacing Latin; by the late 17th century, French would formally supplant Latin in high society. Thus, in the present age, any European noble of genuine cultivation could usually handle both French and Latin with ease.

Once the sightseeing car started, it quickly rounded the former Dutch Trading Post — already demolished and rebuilt as the Harbor Affairs Hall — then followed a scenic Binjiang cement road, slowly heading toward the embassy district.

Though Alonso strove to maintain the proper reserve, when he saw those glass halls and electric cars, the cement roads, and the garden-style coastal scenery lining both sides, he could not help but discuss it all with his host.

Yet he received no answers to these questions: the electric car soon came to a silent stop before the main gate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' official hall.

Since the foreign-style houses along Binjiang Road had all been sold to foreign powers, the Ministry had kept its official hall in the original location for the sake of day-to-day dealings. Apart from adding annex wings to the existing structure, no major alterations had been made.

Cai Feiming was already in position before the official hall, smiling. After exchanging a few words with Special Envoy Alonso in Spanish — a language Alonso was more familiar with — both sides returned to the hall; the envoy then presented his documents, everyone exchanged a few more polite formalities, and the set diplomatic ritual was complete.

The Transmigration Nation's diplomatic enterprise nowadays was no longer the makeshift operation it had once been. After Alonso met Cai Feiming in this ceremonial capacity today, it would be difficult for the two sides to meet again in the future. Normally, envoys from a place like Macau were handled in substantive negotiations by Cai Feiming's deputy, Tang Qiao.

Once the ceremonial formalities were concluded, Alonso and his two attendants were invited back into the sightseeing car. It continued along Binjiang Road for another ten-odd minutes, then stopped before the gate of an attractive Chinese-Western fusion-style villa.

The Special Envoy had no time to admire the scenery on this stretch of road; his attention was fixed on the several villas he passed along the way: the flags of the Dutch, the Japanese, and the British fluttered from their roofs.

After staring intently at the Japanese Trading Post for a few moments, the envoy's expression turned heavy, and he sighed inwardly.

Alonso certainly had reason to sigh.

In this plane of existence, because of the presence of the Transmigrators, history was slowly veering off its previous track. Setting aside the increasingly obvious changes on the Ming Dynasty's side, even the colonizers who had traveled thousands of miles to reach East Asia were seeing their fates altered, bit by bit.

First, the Dutch.

Because a certain power that knew history inside out had been working mischief behind the scenes, in this plane the Red Hairs had their trading post shut down by the Japanese a full year earlier than in history.

Of course, the Dutch hadn't really suffered too great a loss. After all, at Dayuan they had obtained specialty goods a hundred times more abundant than anything in history: Ming Dynasty local industrial products.

And the Portuguese had likewise felt the change in history, though this change had come a little later: just recently, the Shogunate had formally issued the order to close the Portuguese trading post in Hirado.

In real history, the Portuguese trading post was not closed until the Shogunate's Sakoku policy, eleven years later.

As for the ostensible reasons? They were numerous — the deluded Christian Daimyo of southwestern Japan, the ceaseless rebellions of Kirishitan believers, the uninterrupted practice, dating from 1534, of trafficking Japanese female slaves to Macau and assigning them to Malay and African slaves to produce offspring and increase the value of the slaves...

The Portuguese had too much dark history — so much that the Shogunate could produce a mountain of it the moment it cared to look.

In fact, this expulsion of the Portuguese was the result of a coalition of Japanese Sea Merchants, at the strong urging of the Crossing Faction entrenched at Dayuan, once again joining forces early this year to lobby the Shogunate.

And the current Shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, under the combined influence of political maneuvering, money, and various industrial goods, had formally ordered the expulsion of the Portuguese just a short while ago.

Sometimes, turning hostile is that simple: the great Japanese merchant consortiums that historically had been the pillar sustaining the Portuguese presence, constantly trading gold and female slaves with the Portuguese — this time, they defected. For no other reason — Dayuan could simply provide greater profit.

In stark contrast to the pleasant atmosphere of the preceding months, once the news of the trading post's closure arrived, the nobles and merchants of the Macau City Council erupted in a chorus of wailing.

One had to understand: just the day before yesterday, during the casual chatter before meetings, the happiest, most enduring, most inexhaustibly relished topic had been the Dutch being driven out of the Japan trade.

Now they were even. The Portuguese knew that before long, every power on the East Asian seas would be able to mock them mercilessly — just as they had mocked the Dutch.

And what shocked the Macau Council even more was: hot on the heels of the Shogunate's official dispatch, another official document arrived in Macau, brought back by merchants returning from Dayuan — the "Proclamation on the Immediate Blockade of the Taiwan (Formosa) Strait."

The content of the proclamation was simple: the Japan trade had been monopolized by the Cao Clan, and henceforth any vessel attempting to sail to Japan, regardless of nationality, would be sunk without exception.

The issuer of this document was the Fujian Coastal Defense Mobile Corps Commander: the Great General Cao Chuan.

The Portuguese were utterly enraged. This was a naked provocation: the back-to-back arrival of these two official documents laid bare the fact that this pirate chief was the black hand behind the closure of the Portuguese trading post.

The Councilors could not believe that a pirate who had just obtained a petty official post from the Ming Empire would dare to issue such an arrogant proclamation to all the maritime powers of East Asia — even if this man Cao's power base had recently defeated the other Fujian Pirates.

Yet the Councilors' fury was quickly extinguished in the presence of the witnesses sent by Liu Xiang — ten pirates who had personally participated in Li Kuiqi's series of campaigns resisting Cao Chuan testified before the Council.

After cross-referencing this with the testimony of the Portuguese merchants returning from Dayuan, the Council — now possessing a new understanding of this Mobile Corps Commander's military strength — urgently dispatched senior Councilor Alonso to Dayuan to probe the situation and negotiate.