Chapter 1185: Brother Shun, We Have Been Bullied by the Ming

In the year 1664 of the Western calendar, the third month of the fifteenth year of the Shun joint reign, in the city of Syriam.

This prefectural city at the southernmost tip of the Shun Empire was the only seaport of the Shun, a feudal military state hemmed in by the Great Ming among the mountains of southwestern China. Around the tenth year of the joint reign, as the fighting between the Shun and Siam gradually died down and the great feudal lords of Burma one after another accepted the reality that the Shun had replaced the Toungoo dynasty, this place became the greatest artery of exchange between the Shun Empire and the world. Silk and porcelain from Sichuan, cotton and horses from India, arms from the Western Ocean and from the Great Ming (the Great Ming exported arms but could not monitor where they ended up) — all converged here from thousands of miles away.

But unlike the Great Ming's commercial metropolises, which were everywhere saturated with the evil stench of capitalism, this trading city belonging to the Shun Empire had not the slightest whiff of capitalism to offend the nose.

It was a thoroughly stern and dreary trading port!

Here at Syriam, trade could only be conducted within the designated market of the Maritime Trade Office, and all merchants coming to port could trade only with the Syriam Maritime Trade Office — they could not deal directly with Shun merchants, nor with other merchants who had come to port. Any merchant who violated this rule was severely punished, usually by confiscation of goods and expulsion from the country!

Apart from having a single trading counterpart, merchants coming to port were also forbidden to wander about at will. They could only take the air along the banks of the Great Shun River (the Rangoon River) inside the market — and the reason it was called "taking the air" was that this market was in fact a prison city. High walls surrounded it on all sides, and it had only two entrances: one leading to the docks, the other to the city of Syriam. Both were guarded by the Shun's long-service garrison troops (that is, garrison troops serving long terms), and all passage in and out was strictly controlled.

According to the regulations, ordinary merchants could only move between the "prison-city market" and the docks — and the passage between the "prison city" and the docks was not even a normal road, but a corridor fenced in with wooden palings. Merchants coming to trade could only pass through this corridor with their goods, and trenches had been dug on both sides of it, the bottoms of the trenches filled with sharpened wooden stakes, making passage utterly impossible.

Because the Syriam Maritime Trade Office worked rather slowly, during the busy trading season merchants coming to port had to queue and wait to do business. Therefore, when merchants entered the market they first had to draw a number, then take lodging in the designated thatched huts inside the market, and then wait patiently.

The thatched huts were of course crude, and the food was extremely monotonous — only meat-filled flatbread, some fruits and vegetables, and a rice wine brewed from rice. If one did not care for it, one could bring one's own dry provisions, or one could go hungry — but one could not spend money to buy anything good to eat!

Because there was nowhere to buy it. Inside the market there were simply no shops supplying food. Moreover, to prevent merchants coming to port from trading in violation of the rules inside the market, merchants were not allowed to carry gold, silver, copper cash, or any other currency into the market — so they had no money with which to buy anything anyway.

Without money, how did they trade?

By barter, of course.

Unlike the Great Ming, which was so keen on accumulating gold and silver, the Shun Empire had no need of gold or silver, and no need of a trade surplus (with no need of gold or silver, no surplus could arise), and naturally it would not accept a deficit either. The Shun's foreign trade had one purpose only: the mutual exchange of what each side had and lacked.

That is, using silk and porcelain produced in Sichuan to exchange for the cotton, horses, and arms that the Shun Empire needed.

And among all the foreign merchants coming to port, the Western merchants who arrived bearing Western muskets and cannon were without doubt the most welcome. Because the long war between the Shun Empire and the Great Ming Celestial Dynasty was still grinding slowly on!

From the eleventh year of the joint reign onward, on the many battlefronts where Ming and Shun territory met — Shaanxi, Huguang, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou — no fewer than 250,000 Shun garrison troops were in service and at war all year round (the Shun garrison troops now numbered 500,000, so half were in service and half at home in the countryside). Though the fighting was not very intense, the year-round drain still placed enormous pressure on the Shun court, whose material resources were limited.

Not only was the supply of munitions extremely tight, but because so many garrison troops and civilian laborers were called up for service, the consumption of grain was also astonishing.

Fortunately, Sichuan and the Yunnan-Guizhou lands under Shun rule had maintained a relatively high rate of population growth over the past twenty years or so. Rural labor was therefore already in surplus, and even with 500,000 men (garrison troops and civilian laborers in equal halves) withdrawn from agricultural production for long periods, no farmland in the countryside had been left to go to waste.

Not only was none left waste, but the area under cultivation grew every year — the surplus population made possible the large-scale opening up of terraced fields, so the arable land of Sichuan and Yunnan-Guizhou increased year after year.

At the same time, the pressure of population growth was also forcing the Shun court to intensify the development of Burma. From the thirteenth year of the joint reign onward, every year tens of thousands of households of Sichuan peasants whose land had been seized by garrison-soldier households were organized by the Shun court's Revenue Government Office to leave their homes and come to miasma-ridden Burma to reclaim and settle the land.

And Syriam Prefecture, situated on the coast, was precisely the area where the southbound Sichuan peasants concentrated and settled. Thus, on his way from the "prison-city market" to the city of Syriam, Brus van Diemen passed two brand-new, fortress-style villages belonging to Sichuan immigrants.

His present status was that of special envoy of the State of Batavia — in the name of special envoy of the Dutch East India Company he would not have been able to secure a meeting with Li Jicheng, the Shun Imperial Grandson stationed at Syriam, because an East India Company envoy would be treated by Shun officials as a merchant of low status.

In the Shun Empire, merchants were the last of the four classes of the people.

The city of Syriam was a triangular bastion fort, very ingeniously constructed, occupying a triangular island south of the Syriam market at the confluence of two rivers. The island had originally been a delta, with water on two sides; the one side that had originally been connected to the land was now cut off by an artificially dug channel, turning the delta into a triangular fortress.

And on the northwestern side of the triangular fort — the side where the artificial channel lay — there was, nestled against the channel, a market town enclosed by a wooden palisade. It was somewhat more flourishing than the "prison-city market," and within the town there were shops run by native merchants and by Han merchants who had come from the north.

By the time Brus arrived, however, these shops had all closed, for the day was already dark and the hour of the town's curfew had come.

"I am Gao Yidao, Administrator of the Affairs of Syriam Prefecture, come by the order of His Highness the Imperial Grandson, Governor-General of Military Affairs in Burma, to ask questions!"

In the market town outside the city of Syriam, in a reasonably respectable post-house, Brus van Diemen at last met a person of consequence.

Gao Yidao, Prefect of Syriam, younger brother of the Shun Empress Dowager Gao Guiying. Like the other Shun officials, Gao Yidao also followed the plain and simple path. This Shaanxi man, advanced in years and long in high office, wore a faded blue cloth official robe, no hat, his graying hair done up in a topknot.

Brus van Diemen hastily rose and performed the Chinese clasped-hand salute, then said in Chinese: "This humble official, Van Diemen, envoy of the State of Batavia, greets the Prefect."

"Ha ha ha! Envoy Van speaks Chinese quite well!" Gao Yidao waved a hand at Brus. "Sit, sit. Sit down and talk. This is not the Ming country here — we don't stand on so much ceremony!"

In truth, the ceremony here in the Shun was far greater than in the present-day Great Ming! If Brus had come as a representative of the East India Company, he would have had to kowtow with his head striking the ground to Gao Yidao.

"Thank you." Brus murmured his thanks and sat down with an air of ease.

"Speak, then. What has your Kingdom of Bala sent you here to do? To offer tribute, or to seek friendship?"

Brus van Diemen smiled. "Neither. Our State of Batavia has come to seek aid from the Shun Celestial Dynasty!"

"Seek aid?" Gao Yidao stroked his graying beard. "Who has been bullying you?"

"The Ming country!" said Brus van Diemen. "Our State of Batavia, the State of Johor, the State of Aceh, the State of Perak, and the State of Patani have always lived in harmony in the region of Malacca, at peace with the world. But in recent years the Ming country has repeatedly sent troops to invade us. The year before last they even stormed the State of Patani, killing countless people and committing every kind of evil — truly outrageous! And so our State of Batavia, the State of Johor, the State of Aceh, and the State of Perak have had no choice but to join forces to resist the Ming. But our national strength is truly limited, and we cannot defeat the Ming army, so we have sent me to seek aid from the Shun!"

(End of Chapter)