Vermeer's Hat (14 page)
Authors: Timothy Brook
THE FIRST DAYS OF CAPTIVITY were grueling. The military officer was in no mood to be lenient. He was also unwilling to keep
them in his own custody any longer than he had to in case his superiors found fault with his procedures, so he marched them
off to Jinghai Garrison, one of a series of walled military posts along this stretch of the coast. The garrison commander
examined them, but having no interpreter he learned very little. He too judged that it was safer to assume the worst than
to later be found to have been carelessly lenient, so he dismissed their claim that they were innocent traders and treated
them as the pirates he assumed they were. He in turn sent them up the ladder of command to the officials in the Chaozhou prefectural
seat, who put them, and the Jinghai commander, through several days of close questioning. Again there was no interpreter,
though after several days officials in Chaozhou were able to locate a Chinese who had worked in Macao and knew enough Portuguese
to do basic translation. To everyone’s surprise, the man recognized one of the Macao merchants, the Portuguese-born António
Viegas, who had sold him cloves several years earlier. Then an officer came forward who had worked as a cobbler in Manila
and knew enough Spanish to translate for the Spaniards. (Las Cortes was surprised that he wasn’t too embarrassed to admit
his profession, as Spaniards regarded shoe repair as a demeaning trade and would deny having such a disreputable past if they
could.) The cobbler-turned-officer was a sympathetic soul, who intervened discreetly on the foreigners’ behalf to better their
situation. Chaozhou officials also found a man who had worked among the Chinese merchants in Nagasaki and had married a Japanese
woman, who was able to translate for the
Guía
’s Japanese passengers.
The Jinghai commander laid out his charge of piracy before his superiors in Chaozhou. He claimed that the foreigners had started
the fighting, attacking the militia like pirates and resisting arrest for an entire day. They had also carried silver ashore
and buried it for future use. Being of so many different nationalities, they could not be on legitimate business but had to
be a gang of desperadoes who had banded together to plunder. Two or three of them were blond, indisputable evidence that there
were Red Hairs among them. Finally, no one could deny that the band included a large number of Japanese, who were absolutely
forbidden to come ashore. The circumstantial evidence was that these were pirates, and that the commander had brilliantly
apprehended them before they could do any damage.
The prefectural officials then wanted to hear from the survivors, particularly on the matter of the hidden silver. When asked
whether any Chinese had taken any silver from him, a Portuguese priest named Luis de Ángulo stated that the militiaman who
captured him had taken the fifty pesos he was carrying in his clothes. As soon as this came out and was translated, all the
Jinghai soldiers present threw themselves on their knees and violently protested that none of them had done any such thing,
as stealing a captive’s property in the line of duty was a serious offense. At this point, all the interpreters asked to withdraw.
They knew what the Jinghai soldiers would do to them if any more of the truth were to come out. It was enough to make the
officials suspicious of the commander’s story, and as other stories of theft surfaced in subsequent questioning, their suspicions
grew. Now the investigation was turned in the other direction, and it was the Jinghai commander who was under scrutiny.
In any matter concerning foreigners, no final judgment could be reached at the prefectural level. The case had to be referred
to the provincial authorities in Canton before any decision was made about releasing Las Cortes and the others to Macao. The
process would end up taking a year.
ANXIETY ABOUT SEABORNE FOREIGNERS WAS not restricted to fishermen or officials charged with protecting that coast against
smugglers and pirates. Lu Zhaolong, a native of Xiangshan, the county in which Macao was located, was a highly educated member
of the Cantonese gentry who rose through the ranks of the bureaucracy during the 1620s to a secretarial posting in the central
government. There is no reason to suppose that the story of the wreck of the
Guía
reached him, though this being an international incident, a report would have had to be sent to the court. Regardless, Lu
kept abreast of what was going on in his home county, if only to keep an eye on the interests of his family and friends.
The presence of so many foreigners along the coast troubled Lu. So too did the far greater number of Chinese who were more
than content to truck and barter with these pirates, especially with the Red Hairs. The Chinese in fact knew little about
these people. The first account of a country called “Helan” (Holland) to appear in the Veritable Records, the daily court
diary, appears in an entry from the summer of 1623. Although the report concedes that “their intention does not go beyond
desiring Chinese commodities,” court officials were anxiously aware of the Red Hairs as yet another uncontrollable presence
along the coast. Some, such as Lu Zhaolong, wanted all the foreigners gone, not just the Red Hairs.
In June 1630, five years after the wreck of the
Guía
, Lu Zhaolong sent up the first of a series of four memorials, or policy recommendations, to Emperor Chongzhen. At this time
the court was embroiled in a foreign policy controversy over where the real danger lay: south or north. Who was the greater
threat to the regime: the European and Japanese traders on the south coast, or the Mongolian and Tungusic warriors on the
northern border? This was a recurring conundrum for Chinese policy makers, and the answer determined the direction in which
military resources should flow. Recent developments on both borders were forcing the question. The northern foreigners, who
would soon adopt the ethnic name of Manchu, had taken most of the land beyond the Great Wall and were even now raiding across
it at will. The Red Hairs, Macanese Foreigners, and Dwarf Pirates were disturbing the southeast coast. There was no Great
Wall of China along the shore, behind which the military forces of the Ming dynasty could hunker down and hold a defensive
position. There was only the open coast. Much of that coast was inhospitable to large ships, yet there were island anchorages
enough where ships from the Great Western Ocean could make deals with Chinese merchants and thumb their noses at foreign trade
regulations.
Lu Zhaolong was sure that the greater threat to China lay in the south rather than in the north. As a supervising censor assigned
to oversee the operations of the Ministry of Rites, the arm of the Ming government charged with handling relations with foreigners,
he was in a position to know what was going on there. And this ministry, over the 1620s, had regularly shown itself willing
to find accommodation with the Portuguese in Macao and their Jesuit missionaries. Lu was alarmed. In the first of his four
memorials to Emperor Chongzhen, Lu warned him against having anything to do with the foreigners in Macao.
“Your official was born and grew up in Xiangshan county and knows the real intentions of the Macanese Foreigners,” Lu told
his emperor. “By nature they are aggressive and violent, and their minds are inscrutable.” He recalls that the first contacts
were limited to trading in the lee of offshore islands, then notes that the Portuguese were able to get a toehold at Macao.
“Initially they only put up tents and camped there, but over time they constructed buildings and walled Green Island, and
after that they erected gun towers and stout ramparts so that they could defend themselves inside.” With them came a motley
collection of foreigners. As far as Lu was concerned, this was proof that the Portuguese were utterly indifferent to China’s
strict laws about who was allowed to enter China, on what terms, and how they should conduct themselves when they did. In
particular, by allowing Japanese onto Chinese soil without first obtaining Chinese permission, the Portuguese demonstrated
their utter indifference to Chinese laws.
“There are times when they embark on their foreign ships and force their way into the interior,” Lu reminded the emperor.
“To sustain their immoral intentions, they resist government troops, pillage our people, kidnap our children, and buy up saltpetre,
lead, and iron,” all of which were proscribed for export as military materiel. Even worse was the behavior this provoked
among ordinary Chinese. “Criminal types from Fujian Province go in large numbers to feed on Macao. Those who are induced to
make a living there cannot be fewer than twenty or thirty thousand. The bandits of Guangdong Province rely on them to cause
trouble, in numbers beyond counting.” The key issue was not culture but criminality, especially on the Chinese side.
Two years before Lu Zhaolong addressed his emperor on this matter, the newly enthroned emperor had sided with the faction
that feared the Manchus more than the Europeans, and had agreed to invite a team of Portuguese gunners to travel from Macao
to Beijing to improve artillery defenses on China’s northern border. But the other faction had been strong enough to stall
the delegation in Nanjing. Even if a northern invasion was imminent, they argued, was hiring foreign mercenaries the solution
to strengthening the underdefended border? Had Chinese not originally invented cannon? Why were Chinese munitions not adequate
to the purpose? (Las Cortes in his memoir is scathing about the quality of Chinese firearms.) “How could it be that only after
foreigners teach us are we able to display our military might?” Lu later asked. More to the point, did danger on one border
justify exposing China to danger on another?
Many officials at court supported the idea of taking advantage of European ballistics to help China defend its borders. The
most spectacular evidence of the superiority of European gunnery occurred in Macao in 1622. In June of that year, a fleet
of VOC ships descended on Macao in the hope of grabbing this lucrative trading station from the hands of the Portuguese and
taking over the China trade. The assault might well have succeeded, had the Jesuit mathematician Giacomo Rho not been doing
the geometry calculations for one of the gunners defending the town. The gunner Rho was working with managed to score a direct
hit on the cache of gunpowder kegs that the Dutch attackers had brought ashore with them. Perhaps Rho’s shot had as much luck
as aim in it, but that didn’t matter. Rho was honored ever after for his mathematical prowess for saving Portuguese Macao
from the Dutch.
Some Chinese officials took from this victory the complacent lesson that foreigners fought each other and China had only to
manipulate them against each other, in this case by allowing the Portuguese to trade but barring the Dutch from doing so.
“We don’t spend a penny,” declared Governor General Dai Zhuo in Canton, “and yet by employing the strategy of using foreigners
to attack foreigners, our power extends even beyond the seas.”
Lu Zhaolong did not agree that China should look to foreigners for a solution. Employing Portuguese gunners signified weakness,
not strength. Others at court took a more aggressive view. For them, Rho’s victory proved that China had to acquire better
technology to defend itself. The Chongzhen emperor thought so too, and had already sent an edict giving the go-ahead to the
Portuguese artillery team even before Lu sent in his first memorial.
2
Gonçalo Teixeira Correa led the delegation of four gunners, two interpreters, plus two dozen Indian and African servants.
One of the translators was Chinese, and the other was the senior Jesuit priest João Rodrigues, who had for years headed the
mission to Japan. Rodrigues was already known to Chinese officials in the south, and not trusted. In Canton, Judge Yan Junyan,
a friend of Lu Zhaolong, regarded Ro-drigues as a meddler in China’s internal affairs. He suspected that the old Jesuit was
more than just an interpreter, but he had to respect orders from Beijing and allow him to pass through Canton.
Despite the imperial authorization that the delegation should approach Beijing, officials who shared Lu Zhaolong’s opinion
put up resistance at every turn. The team got stalled at Nanjing, just as the previous delegation had. Officials would not
permit them to proceed farther without explicit confirmation from the emperor that they should do so. Rodrigues claimed in
a report home that they were waiting for a favorable wind to carry them up the Grand Canal, but he was trying to save face
all round. At long last, on 14 February 1630, the imperial edict arrived: proceed to the capital with all haste. Manchu raiding
parties had been spotted moving in the vicinity of the capital. The services of the foreigners were needed.
Sixty-five kilometers south of the capital, a band of Manchu raiders crossed the Portuguese gunners’ path. It was a chance
encounter, but a piece of incredible good luck for the faction that advocated the use of European technology. The gunners
retreated to the city of Zhuozhou nearby and mounted eight of their cannon on the city wall. The cannon fire did no real damage,
but the effect was enough to persuade the Manchus to depart. No real battle ensued, and no real victory was earned. Still,
it was all the supporters of the expedition at court needed to sweep aside the objections of opponents such as Lu Zhaolong.
Once Teixeira and Rodrigues were in the capital, they realized that their party was too small to make much difference in a
full campaign against the Manchus. Four gunners stood little chance of turning the military tide against the Manchus, who
were superbly commanded and had rapid deployment capacity, to say nothing of capable Chinese gunners working on their side.
The Portuguese decided to capitalize on the sudden boost to their reputation by proposing that another three hundred mounted
soldiers be recruited from Macao. Perhaps, and this seems very likely, they were put up to it by the vice-minister of war.
The vice-minister was Xu Guangqi, who happened to be the very official who spearheaded the first request for military support
back in 1620. He wrote to the throne on 2 March 1630 explaining that European cannon were cast more adeptly and from better
metal than Chinese cannon. They used more volatile gunpowder, and better sighting gave them greater accuracy. After much deliberation,
the emperor asked the ministry of rites to submit a concrete proposal concerning these arrangements. In the intervening time,
the vice-minister of war was transferred to the post of vice-minister of rites. From that position, Xu submitted a formal
proposal to the emperor on 5 June to send Rodrigues back to Macao to place an order for more cannon, recruit more gunners,
and bring the lot up to Beijing to stiffen the Ming border forces. The same month, no less a figure than Giacomo Rho, the
Jesuit mathematician who saved Macao, arrived in the capital at the invitation of the same vice-minister.
