Chapter 693: Must Ming and Spain Go to War?

Shanghai, the long Huaihai street, the Wu family garden, inside the study.

"Your Excellency the Grand Justice, the place where we now stand — including Mr. Urdia's property, including the bustling streets outside, the crowded docks, the busy factories, and the two fortresses guarding the mouth of the Wusong — all of this was built in just four short years! It is truly unimaginable! That the Chinese could build their cities at such speed... And your Manila? Nearly seventy years now, and how many houses have been built? Its present prosperity is far below Shanghai's, is it not?

Do you know, every day more than two hundred thousand construction workers labor in every part of this city, and an equal number of artisans labor in the shipyards, ironworks, textile mills, and all manner of other handicraft workshops in the eastern part of the city!

All the artisans and construction workers of the whole of Holland put together perhaps do not equal the artisans and construction workers this one city of Shanghai possesses!

And moreover... the potential of a hundred million people has hardly begun to be tapped! A hundred million people... How many does France, the most populous country in our Europe, have? Not even twenty million, is it? If France had a hundred million people, what a scene that would be!"

A France of a hundred million people... Cavallero's heart gave a jolt!

In the seventeenth century most European countries faced the problem of slow population growth, while Holland, England, and Spain were the exceptions.

Holland and England's populations increased considerably, while Spain was exactly the opposite — its population fell from over six million to over 5.2 million!

Of course, that refers to the population of the Kingdom of Spain proper, not including the populations of the various colonies. Counting the colonial populations, there were still over ten million. But among those ten million or so colonial subjects, precious few could fight for the Spanish world empire.

Yet the vast Spanish homeland had only a little over 5.2 million people... that truly is a problem! Neighboring France has seventeen or eighteen million!

Never mind a hundred million — even these not-quite-twenty-million Frenchmen are enough to give Spain a headache. If there truly were a hundred million, all of Europe would be speaking French!

"The Chinese have a hundred and thirty million!" Van Diemen shook his head repeatedly. "There is not enough food to eat! If there were a hundred million Frenchmen without bread to eat, what would happen to us Dutch and you Spanish?"

We would wait to be wiped out! Cavallero thought to himself: what else could happen? Seventeen or eighteen million Frenchmen are already hard enough to fight — if there were a hundred million, could Spain and Holland even exist?

"The French still believe in God!" Van Diemen said. "The hundred and several tens of millions of Chinese here do not even believe in God!

They have already learned to cast bronze cannon of every model, Spanish-style light and heavy muskets, Dutch-style galleon gun-ships, and plate armor with quite decent defensive strength. Grand Justice, what do you say they will do?"

"Mister Ambassador," Cavallero said, his brows tightly knit, weighing his words, "you mean to say... that we Europeans in Asia should unite to stop the expansion of the Ming Empire?"

"No, no, no..." Van Diemen shook his head repeatedly. "The House of Habsburg is the leader of the Western world; we Dutch are merely the wagoners of the sea."

What? Now you remember the House of Habsburg is the leader? Cavallero thought to himself: where were you all before?

"Mister Ambassador," Cavallero shook his head and said, "I think you know very well what the Spanish Empire is like now... The war in Germany and the war in the Netherlands have already exhausted the empire's strength. We cannot possibly organize a great expeditionary force to deal with the Ming Empire!"

The Eighty Years' War plus the Thirty Years' War, plus wars with the Portuguese or with whoever else, had already left the Spanish Empire unable to bear the burden.

The silver flowing in from the Americas was not even enough to pay the interest on the debts incurred by those wars.

Cavallero added: "And moreover, the Ming Empire of today is far too much stronger than the Ming Empire His Majesty Philip II wished to conquer!"

Philip II was the second king of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty. He was essentially a war maniac, and a religious fanatic as well. He fought wars his whole life and squandered every bit of the Spanish colonial empire's inheritance! When he died, he left a colossal debt of one hundred million gold coins to his son Philip III — merely paying the interest required two-thirds of the state's fiscal revenue.

Before the Invincible Armada that cost Spain ten million gold coins was thrashed by England's pirate navy, Philip II had wanted to organize an expeditionary force of twenty thousand men to conquer the Great Ming... That expedition, before it even began, came to nothing because of the Armada's catastrophic defeat.

Van Diemen of course knew that the Spanish Empire was now an empty shell, and he did not expect that his own fanning of the flames could provoke a war between the Spanish Empire and the Ming Empire.

"Your Excellency the Grand Justice," Van Diemen shook his head and said, "I think you have misunderstood my meaning... I wished to make you understand that there are now a hundred and several tens of millions of Chinese who need enough food to fill their bellies. And food can only come from fertile land! Their expansion southward is precisely in search of food.

But how much land is there in the south? Chenla, Siam... that is all! It fundamentally cannot solve the problem. You must understand, a hundred and several tens of millions of Chinese will continue to multiply! Perhaps in a few more decades, their population will exceed three hundred million!

By then, what they will need is boundless fertile plains... and we Dutch hold no plains such as they want!"

Only then did Cavallero suddenly see the light. "The New World!"

There was as yet no United States of America. England's and France's holdings in the New World were not large, and the great plains of central America still lay empty.

New Spain was the foremost power in North America — not only occupying what would later be Mexico and Florida and other places, but also holding more than half of the western coast of America!

If the Ming Empire were to cross the Pacific in search of land suitable for cultivation, it would inevitably come into conflict with New Spain... Therefore a clash between the Spanish Empire and the Ming Empire was unavoidable!

"Indeed," Van Diemen said. "The conflict between the Spanish world empire and the Ming Empire will be unavoidable... As a believer in God and a European, I sincerely hope that the Spanish Empire may be the victor in this struggle to defend God and the interests of Europeans!

May God bless Spain, amen!"

At the same time, far away in Nanjing, the Zhu Emperor — who was vexed over the inauguration of the Calm Sea Army and the Golden Jar Army — also received Luo Dagong's six-hundred-li express dispatch and learned of the Spanish envoy's arrival.

Although the Spanish Empire was already at death's door, for the present this empire was still the standard-bearer of European colonialism!

Moreover, this country was unlike the wagoners of the sea, the Dutch. Holland was a penny-pinching nation of merchants. Although it had certain conflicts of interest with the Great Ming, on the whole the two could still cooperate — merchants keep economic accounts; they would never borrow a hundred million gold coins at usurious interest to fight a war against the Ming Empire that was doomed to lose money!

But Spain was different. Ever since they had struck the mountains of gold and silver in the Americas, they no longer lived by careful calculation, and when they fought wars they simply did not care about money... to the point that the state had gone bankrupt several times over!

And what most vexed the Zhu Emperor was this: although the Spanish Empire had long ceased to be the overlord of the seas, they still controlled the sea power of the Pacific — because New Spain was closed, other European countries could find no economic interest in the Pacific, and so took little interest in it. Thus the weakened Spain still controlled the Pacific and resolutely excluded any competitor.

So it was that Japan's request to trade with New Spain had been flatly refused by the Spanish, and the Great Ming's proposal for Pacific trade negotiations, submitted to the Spanish Governor-General's office in the Philippines, had likewise gone unanswered — until now... The Great Ming had just destroyed the kingdom of Champa, and Spain's envoy had arrived in Shanghai.

They were not coming with good intentions!