After Portugal made a fortune through East Asian trade, it also faced many internal and external troubles and challenges. After Xiao Lu became an upstart, the news quickly spread throughout Europe, attracting the attention of several countries. They all want to face off against Xiao Portuguese, who monopolizes trade with China.
Spanish admission and a peek into Macau
The first appearance is the big brother Spain, which is different from the little Portuguese is bypassing Africa, from the Indian Ocean to Asia. Neighbor Spain was in the New World for a while, and finally after Magellan completed the global voyage, he knew that he could cross the Pacific Ocean and reach Asia. So the Spaniards opened up an Asian route to replace the Cape of Good Hope. In 1571, the Catholic brother Spain officially established a settlement in Manila, philippines, and then the Jesuit dog-headed military division offered advice and wanted to use Manila as a base to conquer China, and after being taught a lesson, he learned that Daming Brother was not the natives of the Americas and was not easy to provoke, and quickly adjusted the dialogue strategy. Soon Spain and Portugal were united in three seconds, and the two countries merged. But macau horses run and dance. The Portuguese flag was hung, and the original trade was operating normally. However, the Spaniards in the Philippines are still obsessed with the wealth of Macau and continue to send emissaries to China, hoping to do business with China. It's just that Brother Daming and Xiao Lu have a deep "sweet love" and fiercely reject Spain. Seeing that Portugal and China were very tough, the Spaniards touched a nose of ash and turned to Luzon in a gray way, concentrating on the ocean trade between Mexico. After driving out the Spaniards, Xiao Portugu continued to enjoy the trade routes in East Asia exclusively, counting money in Macau to hand cramps.
Sea coachman, the battle for Macau failed
However, not long after the good days, then there was another competitor, that is, the European small fresh Netherlands, the initial Dutch learned that the small Portuguese brought back spices from the East, but also rushed to Lisbon to buy, after all, the spices of the small Portuguese were imported directly from the place of origin, and the price was much cheaper than those Venetian profiteers. The Netherlands was originally a province under the rule of the eldest brother Spain, but later because of the cruel rule of the eldest brother, the War of Independence began in 1568. But in 1580, King Philip II II of Spain was also the King of Portugal, and the Spanish-Portuguese Community, in order to punish the younger brother, blocked the trade between Lisbon and the Netherlands, and suddenly the Dutch supply was cut off. But with the help of commercial spies, the Dutch acquired the secret of The Portuguese voyage and immediately sent merchant ships and warships to the East. In 1601, the Dutch fleet appeared in Asian waters, heralding the imminent War between the Dutch and Portuguese. The following year the Dutch East India Company was formed, and the Netherlands grew as if it were opening up the second vein of rendu. At first, the Dutch were fascinated by the spice trade in the Moluccas, but found Macau very profitable, so they gradually looked to China and Japan. The capture of Macau and the establishment of bases became one of the strategic goals of the Dutch.
In 1605, Dutch warships arrived in Macau and wanted to take Macau for themselves, and the two countries fought in Macau, but the Portuguese defense was strong, and the Dutch returned to No avail, after which the Dutch went to Macau every three to five to harass. But none of them worked out. But the Dutch did not want to give up. In 1611, the Dutch obtained a trade license with Japan, but still could not directly obtain Chinese goods, so the seizure of Macau became the only way out. On April 10, 162, Cohen, governor of the Dutch East India Company, set out from Batavia with eight warships and more than a thousand soldiers, preparing to attack Macau, while the Dutch fleet fought as it went. When they arrived in Macau on 11 June, the number of warships increased to thirteen, but the number of soldiers was reduced to 900. But at this time, Xiao Portuguese's main force was just Chinese mainland, and was helping Ming Ge resist the Qing, leaving only about sixty Portuguese and ninety mixed-race children. In the early morning of June 11, the two sides began a fierce battle, although the Portuguese were small in number, but lucky, the artillery hit the ammunition depot of the Dutch fleet, severely damaging the Dutch officers and soldiers, and the Portuguese united with the blacks to fight more and more courageously, driving the Dutch out of the sea. The Portuguese in Macau defeated the Dutch invasion with fewer victories. Xiao Lu believed that this must be the apparition of the Virgin Mary and decided to designate June 4 as City Day. This tradition was maintained until the handover of Macau in 1999.
Because Macau was difficult to conquer, it also made the Dutch give up the dream of monopolizing Sino-Japanese trade, which turned to the development of Penghu and Taiwan, turned to competition with the Spaniards, and only then did they have a successful war with the national surname Zheng. If the Dutch had conquered Macau, there would have been no later Taiwan. It was too hard to do, the Dutch began to come to yin, deliberately provoking the relationship between The Little Portuguese and Japan, and Japan said that the Little Portuguese wanted to submit to the Pope, and Japan, which was a little unhappy with the trade dispute, learned of it and expelled the Spanish and Portuguese in 1624, and the trade between Macao and Japan was greatly affected, and finally completely interrupted in 1639.
As full merchants, the Dutch, who had no interest in missionary work, monopolized trade with Japan. Japan learned Western scholarship from the Netherlands, which had a great influence on Japan in the locked countries, called orchid studies. Two years later, the Dutch conquered the Portuguese' Asian stronghold, Malacca on the Malay Peninsula, completely controlling the lifeline of the Eastern trade, and the Portuguese Empire began to fall apart. At the same time, the Portuguese decided to return to sufficiency from Spanish rule and swear allegiance to the new king of Portugal, only to be retaliated by the Spaniards in the Philippines, cutting off trade between Macau and Manila, and Macau was in decline.
The Qing government strengthened its administration of Macau, and eventually Macau fell
In 1644, The Great Qing Brother replaced The Great Ming Brother, but in order to show legitimacy, he also followed the system of the Great Ming Brother and let Xiao Lu continue to do business in Macau. However, in order to prevent Zheng Chenggong and other overseas anti-Qing forces, they adopted a strict policy of sea ban and sea relocation, constantly strengthened the management of Macao, sent heavy troops to garrison the Border of Macao, and set up customs in Guangzhou, that is, to strengthen Macao's tax administration. It also restricted activities such as the construction of additional walls and houses in Macao by The Portuguese. Deny that Xiao Portuguese has the authority to manage the local Chinese.
Soon the time came to the Opium War, which resulted in the weakening of the Qing Dynasty, Macau's neighbor Hong Kong was ceded to britain, and Hong Kong was better than Macau in all aspects, so the role of Macao's foreign trade window was gradually replaced by Hong Kong. After that, Xiao Lu took the opportunity to try to tax the Chinese, stop paying the rent and expel the Officials of the Great Qing, anyway, to see that the Great Qing Brother was a waste. Finally, in 1887, Xiao Portuguese and Da Qing Ge signed the Sino-Portuguese Peace and Trade Treaty, officially obtaining the permanent right of residence in Macao. Macau thus became a Portuguese colony. At the same time, the Portuguese also extended their rule from the southern part of macau to the entire peninsula, and brought Taipa and Coloane into their jurisdiction. In the face of great changes in the international situation and the rise of Hong Kong, although the Portuguese government wants to transform Macao into a free port to recover the decline, Macao's trade policy, port and urban construction are not as good as Hong Kong. Its national strength is also far inferior to that of Britain. Unprofitable, Chinese businessmen have moved to Hong Kong, making Macau quite impoverished. However, after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom incident, Macao brought a glimmer of vitality, and the Portuguese and Austrian governments also gave a little medicine to the economy, that is, pornography, gambling and drugs. Prostitution, gambling and opium industry chains. How did Macau become a paradise for prostitutes, gamblers, and smoking guns?
The British joined strongly, and Macau fell
After the Opium War, the British took Hong Kong, making Macau's economy even worse. For a long time, Macao has been able to survive thanks to the favor of our Qing government, which has made great profits in entrepot trade by bending its knees, but the economic model of relying on the favors of others is not at all a rival of a commercial country like Britain.
In 1845, in order to save the Economy of Macau, the Queen of Portugal declared Macau a free port and wanted to compete with Hong Kong. The free port is that ships from all over the world come to Macao to do entrepot trade, without collecting customs duties or passing through customs officers. It tried to attract foreign merchant ships, but this deprived Macau of its only source of tax revenue, and the economy did not improve, as merchants from various countries left. Unemployed Chinese workers have also withdrawn from Macau, and as a result, Hong Kong is becoming more and more prosperous, but Macau is in a slump. But In the end, Macao turned around by pornography, gambling and poisoning.
Opium became Portugal's hope of saving Macau
Now talk about opium, it's poison. In 1729, the seventh year of Yongzheng, when China was not yet a smoking ban, the Portuguese imported opium from the Indian colony of Goa to Macau, at first the number was not very large, but it was the only foreign merchant who could import opium into China at that time, after which the Portuguese made a windfall from opium, which also attracted the covetousness of other foreigners.
At the end of the sixteenth century, the strongest opponent of the Portuguese finally appeared, that is, the English, who won in the age of the sea. At first, the British also had to sell opium through Macau, but the British were obviously much smarter than the Portuguese, the Portuguese officials came down to sell opium, the British sold it through the East India Company, and the British government directly contributed to the shares, and if necessary, warships and cannons were dispatched. But throughout the seventeenth century. The Portuguese were beaten by the Dutch. The British were very low-key at this time, until 1820, when the Netherlands after four Anglo-Dutch wars, most of the overseas colonies were taken by the British, and the Dutch mainland was also invaded by the French, from sea coachman to farmer, planting farmland for more than a hundred years. Until World War II was annexed by Germany. The newly rising Britain finally found a place to replace Macau, that is, Linglingyang, and then the opium exported to China gradually moved to Linglingyang. Later, the East India Company sold opium directly from British India, which dealt a major blow to the opium in Portuguese India, and the opium industry in Macau declined rapidly. Because Macau is a shallow port, the shallow water, the harbor load is suitable for sailing berthing, and the geographical location is good, so it is very popular in the sailing era as a transit port.
However, after the Industrial Revolution in the 1760s, there were ships such as machine ships, which had a large draft. A deep-water and wide port is needed. So britain, which had acquired the deep-water port of Hong Kong after the Opium War, replaced Macau with the more flexible East India Company. However, it was later discovered that some of Hong Kong's opium still had to pass through Macau to and from Chinese mainland, which allowed the Portuguese and Macao governments to get some oil and water from it. Because Macao is located in the Xijiang River network area, there are many ports, small ships are very convenient to travel, and Macao Chinese businessmen have close commercial relations with the mainland coast. In 1845, Macao became a free port again, which was equivalent to opening a door for smuggling, so Macao became the opium smuggling center second only to Hong Kong, a large amount of opium entered Macao in the form of smuggling, and many Chinese businessmen also made great profits in the opium industry chain. From the transportation, storage, boiling, and sale of opium, it is completely independent. On the one hand, the attitude of the Macao government is to shield.
Macau began to recover through human trafficking
On the other hand, another special trade that can make a fortune is allowed, that is, trafficking in human beings. Human trafficking is an old Portuguese practice. At the beginning of the Age of Discovery, the Portuguese were known for their african slave trade. After the Opium War, China became a semi-colony, and the Western powers had a strong demand for coolie labor, these Chinese workers were commonly known as piglets, and the recruitment office became a piglet house. Piglets would go to the United States to build railroads, or worse, to Peru to dig up bird droppings and do low-level labor work. Selling piglets is a lucrative trade, so Macau has opened a large number of piglet restaurants. The current St. Paul's Street is home to piglet houses. Most of the exports of Chinese workers after the Opium War came from Macao, because the Portuguese and Macao governments pumped a lot of oil and water from it, not only supported the purchase and sale of people, but also announced various management measures to ensure order. For Chinese businessmen, although the purchase and sale of human beings is legal in Macao, it is morally unreasonable, so how can they sell their compatriots? However, the cost of buying and selling piglets is low, the profit is high, and it is also protected by the Portuguese and Australian governments, so Chinese businessmen have changed their shops into piglet restaurants, and there is a division of labor layer by layer, there is a big piglet head, which has a piglet head, a piglet, a piglet rope, etc., and the piglet head is responsible for signing a contract with foreigners, and the piglet rope is like a salesman who deceives people everywhere.
In the late 180s and 1950s, the piglet trade in Macau flourished as much as 30,000 to 40,000 people living on the piglet business. This group of underworld merchants, human traffickers, goons, hooligans, and gambling addicts are also the key to the rise of Macau's gambling industry. At that time, in order to lure Chinese workers abroad, one of the means was to set up a situation to lure Chinese workers to gamble in casinos. After the bankruptcy of the family, they will be forced to sign a deed of sale. Then it was sold by piglet heads, which were almost risky, but the profits exploded. Many Chinese businessmen made their fortunes by buying and selling piglets.
After the ban on human trafficking, Macao began to revitalize its economy with gambling as its main business
In 1874, the Portuguese and Macao governments were forced to stop the piglet business under pressure from both sides at home and abroad, and Macao's economy fell into a desperate situation. But fortunately, the gambling industry has risen, and these Chinese businessmen who have made a fortune by piglets have transferred their money to the gambling industry. Since the opening of Macau, the special industry of gambling has been popular in Macau. In the middle of the eighteenth century, although prostitution and gambling were banned in Macau, gambling and prostitution in Macau were already quite common at that time. Since the opening of Macau, dock workers and construction workers from Guangdong have also brought all kinds of gambling. After the Opium War, Macau's economy was in a slump, in order to revitalize the economy, the Governor of Macau legalized gambling, but the bigger key point is that around 1867, the Guangdong government banned gambling, so that gamblers had to go to Macau and Hong Kong, which deviated from the royal law, but Hong Kong also banned gambling in 1872. A large number of Hong Kong gamblers with strong gambling skills went to Macau to gamble together, and Macao became a gambling paradise. Therefore, in the late Qing Dynasty, the streets of Macau were always full of gambling houses opened by Chinese, and the Portuguese and Macao governments also made a fortune from gambling taxes. At that time, gambling taxes accounted for 65 to 75 percent of Macau's tax revenues, so Macau supported the black economy, opium, human trafficking and gambling. An important part of the black economy is the sex industry. Macau's famous red light district, Fulong New Street, has a history of more than 150 years, and before 1862, it was deserted. In order to develop this area, the Governor of Macao encouraged businessmen to develop here, was allowed to prostitute, gamble and smoke opium, open for business here, was demarcated as a tobacco house and a gambling hall in the north, a brothel in the south, to create a perfect yellow, gambling, poison one dragon, in its heyday, there were more than sixty brothels, prostitutes exceeded thousands of people, so the yellow, gambling, and poison were a family, and the Macao government made a lot of money by relying on the black industrial chain. There are also historical factors. Chinese mainland because of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom incident, a group of refugees and local tycoons came to provide cheap labor and development funds respectively, which is a perfect combination of the two, because just when Hong Kong was about to rise, the decline of Macao had to let Macao move closer to pornography, gambling and drugs, creating a new era of Macao's economy.