It is the year 1661, and the Sun rises over
the tropical coastline of Ilha Formosa. In this most far-flung outpost of the Dutch
Empire lies the coastal Fort Zeelandia, where a watchman gazes sleepily through the morning
fog. As the mists fade, he spots a massive approaching
fleet of Chinese junks, all united under one man: the Pirate King of Southern China. Welcome to our video on the house of Zheng,
a dynasty of sea lords who fought European and Chinese Empires alike to become the undisputed
masters of the East Asian Seas. At the turn of the 17th century, the Asian
world was one defined by a contrast of cloistered Empires and new, intrepid adventurers. China, ruled by the Ming Emperors, had been
closed off to the world for nearly 200 years. Foreigners were rarely allowed in, and the
Chinese officially weren’t allowed out. To the east, equally isolationist Japan had
recently been united under the Tokugawa Shogunate. By the 1540s, explorers from Europe had arrived
in Asia, seeking the wealth of the Orient. The Chinese and Japanese generally saw these
strangers as uncouth barbarians, but due to their sailing prowess and firearms, the Christians
soon asserted themselves as intermediaries in international trade. By 1580, the Spanish and Portuguese had established
footholds in Manila, Macao and Hirado, port cities that grew into wealthy centers of commerce,
and attracted ambitious entrepreneurs from all over the world. Perhaps the most prominent of these entrepreneurs
were the representatives of the Hoklo people. Hailing from the isolated southern province
of Fujian, these skilled Chinese sailors regularly defied the isolationist policy of Beijing. Prominent communities of Hoklo traders lived
in Chinatowns throughout Asia, while Chinese pirates plied the sea lanes from Malacca to
Nagasaki, preying on unprotected merchant ships. Of all the corsairs on the south China sea,
the greatest was a man known as Zheng Zhilong. Born in 1604 to a wealthy family in Fujian
he was exiled from his home for delinquency and travelled to Macau, China’s seedy window
into the outside world. There he was baptized by the Jesuits and learned
much of European culture. Before long, the ambitious Hoklo found work
aboard a trader. In Nagasaki, Zhilong was adopted by a wealthy
Chinese magnate, and inherited his fleet of ships when the merchant died. Meanwhile, the Dutch, headed by their national
megacorporation, the East India Company, were ready to make their claim on the spices of
the new world. Thanks to the efforts of a certain English
Samurai William Adams, the Protestants had established a factory in Hirado in 1609, and
now sought to get a foothold in China while ousting their Spanish and Portuguese rivals. Zheng Zhilong, however, looked upon these
foreigners and saw an opportunity. As both he and the Dutch spoke Portuguese,
he worked his way into their trust as a translator, and helped the East India Company create a
base in Taiwan. The Dutch soon realized that this bold young
Hoklo at the head of a vast fleet of ships could be a valuable asset to them. Zhilong was quickly offered a position as
a privateer of the Dutch East India Company. It was a simple arrangement: he would be provided
with European muskets and cannons, and in return he was to raid Chinese shores, thereby
pressuring the Ming court to open trade with the Dutch. Never one for scruples, Zhilong was quick
to accept, and his fleet of lightly-armed Chinese junks were quickly converted into
high powered warships. Zhilong soon proved to be an incredibly capable
admiral. Hoisting the Dutch flag, he and his ships
ravaged the Chinese coastline with impunity. His renown quickly grew, and soon, freebooters
and fortune seekers from across Asia had joined his fleet. By 1627, the Hoklo Sealord commanded 400 junks,
crewed by Fujianese pirates, Japanese Samurai, European Mercenaries, and even African Musketeers-
former Portuguese slaves that now served as freedmen alongside their Chinese commander. By 1628, Zhilong had either eliminated all
the other major Chinese pirate fleets, or consolidated them into his own. Naturally, the Ming sent their own navy after
the upstart corsair, but centuries of isolation had left their naval prowess lacking, and
the Hoklo Sealord blew the ineffective Imperial ships out of the water. Before long, Zheng Zhilong was the undisputed
greatest power in the South China sea. It was quickly becoming evident to Zhilong
that he no longer needed the Dutch. After all, why work for some barbarians on
the edge of the world when you can be legitimized by the Emperor of China himself? Switching allegiances, he ‘surrendered’
to the Ming Dynasty. It was an offer the beleaguered Court in Beijing
was unable to refuse. This upstart pirate had already effectively
seized control of their entire southern coastline; better he work for them, they thought, than
for the Dutch. The Hoklo Sealord was appointed “Admiral
of the Coastal Seas” by the Chongzhen Emperor, rendering him no longer a criminal of China,
but one of its most powerful lords. Of course, the Dutch were none too happy about
their most valuable asset turning against them. Deeming that Zhilong was a traitor, they deployed
a fleet of warships to eliminate him. Under normal circumstances, Chinese Junks
were no match for a European warship, but Zhilong was savvy to the ways of western warfare. He soundly defeated the Dutch in 1633, at
the battle of Liaolou bay. To the Chinese, this triumph was a miracle
at sea, with one Ming bureaucrat grimly remarking: "ever since the red barbarians arrived...
this kind of victory has been extremely rare". Be that as it may, there was no mistaking
it - an upjumped Hoklo pirate was now the undisputed master of the East Asian Seas. For a time, Zhilong ruled a vast maritime
Empire alongside his kinsmen, dominating nearly all seabound trade from Manila to Nagasaki. But prosperity was not to last, and dark clouds
loomed on the horizon for the house of Zheng. For decades, the Manchu people had been fighting
a bloody war against the Ming in the far northeast of China. In 1644 they took advantage of a peasant revolt
to storm out of their ancestral homeland and capture the Imperial Capital of Beijing. The peoples of southern China resented the
idea of Manchu domination. To them, the northerners were crass barbarians,
and under their rule, ethnic Chinese were forced to shave their heads into a Manchu
queue, a humiliating act of submission that betrayed their deep Confucian values. For Zheng Zhilong, the path was clear, and
he declared his support for the Ming resistance. It was a dire situation: the Ming Emperor
had committed suicide, while both the northern and southern capitals of Beijing and Nanjing
were in the hands of the Manchu, whose Qing dynasty now controlled two-thirds of China. The south needed a new figurehead to rally
around, so Zhilong found an Imperial Prince hiding in Hangzhou, and escorted him to Fujian. There he was coronated as Longwu, Emperor
of the Southern Ming, a rump state with the city of Fuzhou as its capital. For a time, the Zheng clan was able to use
the natural defensive chokepoints of their domain to protect their Imperial ward, but
before long, crippling food shortages and famine had laid the province low. Spread too thin to defend the hinterlands,
Zheng Zhilong withdrew his troops from the mountain passes and retreated to his coastal
enclaves. As a result, the Manchus were able to march
into Fujian and occupy Fuzhou. The Longwu pretender fled westwards, but was
captured in the mountains, and put to death. Recognizing where the wind was blowing, the
Zheng Patriarch renounced his loyalty to the Ming, and made overtures of diplomacy to the
Qing. In 1646, he attended a banquet hosted by a
Manchu commander, with only his special honour guard of African musketeers as protection. Originally willing to cut a deal with Zhilong,
the Manchus soon changed their mind, and had the sealord arrested. As the story goes, his African vanguard fought
to protect the Patriarch’s liberty, dying to the last man while trying in vain to prevent
the seizure of their lord. With Zhilong imprisoned, anyone could have
been forgiven for assuming the Zheng clique would collapse like a deck of cards. But this was not to be, as one Zheng Sen rose
from the shadows. Born in Hirado in 1624, the boy was the product
of union between Zheng Zhilong and a Japanese woman. He had moved to Fujian as a young child, and
been trained his whole life to one day rule the Zheng’s maritime empire. To his people, he was known as “Koxinga”
- lord of the imperial surname. Unlike his father, he remained fiercely loyal
to the Ming. Manchu forces had burnt down his family manor
and captured his beloved mother, humiliating her until the proud Japanese woman was compelled
to commit seppuku. Driven by his personal honour and desire for
vengeance, Koxinga resolved to continue the fight against the Qing, whatever the cost. At only 22 years old, Koxinga had eliminated
several scheming relatives, and become the undisputed head of his clan. From his fortress at Ancai, he rapidly reconsolidated
the Zheng fleet. By 1650 he had hundreds of war junks at his
disposal, along with 40,000 soldiers, comprised of Ming loyalists, Japanese Samurai, and African
gunners inherited from his father. For the next ten years, Koxinga led his forces
in a dogged struggle against the Qing, at times managing to seize land, and at times
being pushed back to the sea. In Guangzhou, a new Prince had been crowned
as the sovereign of the Ming. While Koxinga pledged his loyalty to this
new Yongli Emperor, the young sealord’s struggle against the Manchus was really its
own isolated theatre of war. The campaign began strongly. In 1651, Zheng troops struck like lightning,
expelling the Qing out of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou. Koxinga himself led the charge inland, with
stories claiming that due to his Japanese heritage, he fought with the ferocity and
martial discipline of a Samurai Lord. By 1652, his vast navy had fanned out and
established control over a 13,000 Km strip of coastline [should be 1300?], stretching
from Zhejiang to Guangdong, while his control of rich sea lanes from Japan to Vietnam kept
his soldiers paid and fed. Taken aback by this stunning string of defeats,
the Qing were forced to bring Koxinga to the bargaining table. In 1653, they wheeled out their prized hostage,
Zheng Zhilong. The old patriarch implored his son to capitulate
just like he did, but Koxinga was undeterred. He spurned his fathers’ pleas and left him
to his fate, thus in 1654, war resumed. In 1656, the Manchu Prince Jidu sailed down
the south coast at the head of a massive fleet to confront Koxinga in open battle. The wily sealord proved a tough opponent on
his home turf, burning down the capital cities of Zhangzhou and Guangzhou and scorching the
countryside to starve his enemy, before utterly destroying the beleaguered Qing fleet off
the Kinmen islands. With the Manchus now direly short on ships,
Koxinga crossed his own personal Rubicon, and in 1659, launched a full-scale campaign
to retake the Imperial Southern Capital. The offensive started out strong, with Zheng
forces sailing down the Yangtze river and seizing the fortified towns of Guazhou and
Zhenjiang. By August, their army of 85,000 was at the
gates of Nanjing itself. Much of Manchu occupied China watched with
bated breath, ready to rise up should Koxinga reign victorious. And yet, it was not to be. Although he had Nanjing on the ropes, the
sealord did not attack immediately, instead giving the Qing garrison a two week grace
period to surrender themselves, during which time he entertained his troops with glamorous
festivities. This gave the Qing time to call for reinforcements,
launch a fierce counter strike into Koxinga’s army, and force him to retreat. The failed siege of Nanjing was a turning
point for Koxinga’s fortunes on the mainland. He’d lost his momentum, while in the east,
the other pocket of Ming resistance was smashed when the Yongli pretender suffered a crushing
defeat and was forced to flee to Myanmar. This meant that the Zheng clan stood completely
alone against the full, undiverted might of the Qing army. Koxinga knew that holding the mainland was
now becoming more and more unlikely, and that in order for his maritime dynasty to survive
he would need to relocate to a more secure base. For that, he looked eastward, to Taiwan. In the eyes of the Chinese Emperors, Taiwan
had long been an island that existed beyond the boundaries of civilization. The principal inhabitants of the land were
the native Aborigines, the ancestral cousins of the Malay and Filipino people; they had
inhabited Taiwan for thousands of years. Living along the coastline was a small community
of Chinese Hoklos. Numbering about 50,000, many of them had migrated
to the island to avoid the ongoing war in China. It was the Dutch East India Company, however,
who were the masters of the Island, ruling from their power bases of Fort Provintia and
Fort Zeelandia. Capitalists before all, Taiwan generated the
Company a tidy profit, and they were unlikely to give the island up without a fight. Nevertheless, the Hollanders proved to be
despotic rulers, for the Chinese were taxed heavily, while the Aborigines were subject
to exploitation and Christian assimilation. The arrival of the great fleet of Zheng would
be a spark upon an island ready to erupt into chaos. On April 30th, 1661, Koxinga came upon the
west coast of Taiwan at the head of four hundred junks and 25,000 men. They docked in the Lu’erman peninsula, where
the local Chinese settlers greeted Koxinga with delirious joy, rushing to help the army
make landfall. The Dutch garrison numbered only 1140 soldiers
and eight warships, led by Governor Frederick Coyett. Being so direly outnumbered did not render
their situation hopeless. European weapons were still far superior to
Chinese ones, and in their eyes, one Dutchman with a musket was worth 100 Chinese armed
with spears. Indeed, Koxinga’s forces lacked modern firepower,
with only his Africans having access to European rifles. In order to prevent the rest of his army from
landing, Governor Coyett deployed four of his eight warships, led by the flagship Hector. In response, Koxinga dispatched 60 junks to
engage. For a while, European firepower reigned supreme,
with Hector alone blowing eight junks to smithereens and forcing the rest to scatter. But, in an unfortunate twist, a lit fuse hit
the ship’s gunpowder magazine, causing it to explode, and the other ships to flee. Koxinga landed the rest of his troops unopposed. At the head of a 4,000-man vanguard, the admiral
advanced upon Fort Zeelandia, where he was accosted en route by a contingent of 240 Dutch
gunmen. The Chinese were able to negate their enemy’s
firepower by outflanking the musketeers, killing half of them. The island natives, meanwhile, defected en
masse to Koxinga. They burned their Christian schoolbooks and
struck out in their tribal war parties, hunting and beheading any of their former colonial
masters they could find outside their fortress walls. Following these setbacks, the Dutch attempted
to reason with their foe. They and Koxinga had been functioning business
partners prior to this, and it had been the Chinese Admiral’s father who helped them
settle on Taiwan in the first place, so why attack now? The sealord replied: “Hitherto this island
had always belonged to China, and the Dutch had doubtless been permitted to live there,
seeing that the Chinese did not require it for themselves; but requiring it now, it was
only fair that Dutch strangers, who came from far regions, should give way to the masters
of the island." Koxinga gave the garrison at Zeelandia a choice. If they flew his flag over the fort, he would
accept their surrender and allow them to sail to Batavia unharmed. If they wished for war, then they were to
fly a red flag. Meanwhile, the Chinese had encircled Fort
Provintia. Lacking in freshwater, the Dutch commander
there surrendered. Koxinga ruthlessly ordered the men in the
fort executed, and the women taken to become concubines for his officers. He hoped this would terrify the garrison in
Zeelandia into quickly giving up. Inversely, this did little but steel Dutch
resolve. On the morning of May the 4th, a red flag
flew over Zeelandia. The Hollanders were ready to make their last
stand. On May 25th, an overconfident Koxinga launched
a full-scale assault on Fort Zeelandia. This was a mistake. Well entrenched in their walls, the Dutch
decimated the exposed Chinese with their muskets and artillery, killing over a thousand, while
losing only three men in the defense. Realizing his only real option was to wait
them out, Koxinga used his navy to cut off Zeelandia’s access to the sea, then settled
in for a long siege. The fort would hold out for ten months, during
which time the Chinese army chafed. Running low on supplies, they resorted to
plundering Aborigine lands for food, resulting in the tribes around fort Provintia rising
up against them, killing over two thousand of Koxinga’s soldiers. Meanwhile, a fleet of eleven Dutch warships
arrived from Batavia in August to reinforce their Company comrades. Seeing no value in Taiwan and longing for
home, many of Koxinga’s men secretly abandoned the siege and sailed back across the strait,
forcing the sealord to use violent discipline to keep his army in line. Slowly but surely, the tides began to turn
once more. By autumn, Koxinga had put down the Aborigine
rebellions and re-secured their allegiance. While in September, he fended off a two-pronged
assault from the fortress garrison and their naval reinforcements. His Junks performed a false retreat maneuver
to lure the Dutch ships into narrow waters, where they were sunk, captured, or forced
to flee. On the landward side, skilled Chinese archers
and deadly African gunners kept their foe pinned against the fortress walls. The coup de grace came in January of 1662,
when a German defector entered the Chinese camp and made Koxinga aware of a strategic
redoubt that overlooked Zeelandia from atop a hill. Acting quickly, the sealord ordered his men
to storm the redoubt, which they did in due order. With the Dutch now completely exposed to Koxinga’s
firepower from above, the fight was over. Governor Coyett offered his surrender on the
1st of February. He and his men were allowed to take their
personal belongings and leave the island in safety. On the 17th of February, the Dutchmen marched
out of their fort in full regalia, boarding their ships, and sailing to Batavia. European colonialism in Taiwan had officially
ended. For Koxinga, Taiwan was always meant to be
a temporary base from where he could strike back to retake the mainland. However, he was shrewd enough to realize that
in the short term, this was impossible. So, instead of reigniting war with the Qing,
he set to building a new society on his Island. He established a system of government that
modeled the Imperial Ming Court, while migrants from the mainland flooded onto the island,
fleeing Qing persecution. Taiwan, a region long considered a barbarian
backwater to the ethnic Han, quickly developed into the most prominent haven of Chinese culture
untouched by Manchu rule. Koxinga’s crowning achievement would also
be his last. Three months after expelling the Dutch, he
became infected with malaria. Unable to cope with the disease in Taiwan’s
tropical climate, he died on the 23rd of June, 1662, at 37 years old. His son, Zheng Jing, succeeded the legendary
sealord. He reconstituted his Taiwanese domain as the
independent Kingdom of Tungning, and for twenty years maintained its liberty against both
Dutch and Manchu invasions. It would be under his weaker, illegitimate
child, Zheng Keshuang, that Taiwan finally fell to the Qing in 1683, ending nearly a
century of the House of Zheng’s domination over the South China sea. People across the Chinese speaking world honour
the memory of the house of Zheng and their greatest Patriarch for their own differing
reasons. The Taiwanese people look upon Koxinga as
their cultural forefather, with a reverence bordering on Godhood. His resistance against the mainland is often
compared with their own separate identity from the modern People’s Republic of China. In China itself, the Zhengs are hailed true
patriots, whose noble resistance against the Manchu and European foreigners alike rendered
them heroes to their people, while their ultimately failed desire to reconquer the mainland from
their island base serves as an echo to the contemporary goal of political unity between
the two nations on either side of the Taiwan Strait. Indeed, while the reign of these ambitious
sealords was relatively short in the grand scheme of Chinese history, they will live
on in the social memory of millions of people for many years to come. We have more videos on Chinese history on
the way, so make sure you are subscribed to our channel and have pressed the bell button. We would like to express our gratitude to
our Patreon supporters and channel members, who make the creation of our videos possible. Now, you can also support us by buying our
merchandise via the link in the description. This is the Kings and Generals channel, and
we will catch you on the next one.
I read a book about him years ago.
His father was one of the wealthiest merchants in China, running trade trade between Fujian and Japan when it wasn't really legal.
He was also half Japanese, and spent a lot of his childhood in Japan.
And he kicked the "foreigner devils" out of Taiwan.
Generally an informative video, however there is a major mission point there. The narration makes it seems like China at that time have no modern weaponries. The source used for that video is therefore either old, or one sided (doesnt incorporate Chinese languange primary sources)
In fact, in the 1600s, Koxinga and China in general was already ample in gunpowder and firearms based warfare, the Chinese troops commanded by Koxinga not only had muskets/arquebuses, but also numerous large cannons which they used to bombard fort zeelandia. I recommend Tonio Andrade's book titled Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China's First Great Victory Over the West
In his book, Andrade compares Chinese seventeenth- century military capabilities with those of the Dutch, especially on four levels. His conclusions are, first, that the technology in guns was about equal but that second, the military discipline of the Chinese was better than that of the Dutch, whose discipline was vaunted in Europe at the time. Third, as for ships, the ability of the Dutch ships to sail to windward gave them an edge over Chinese. Fourth, although the Chinese outnumbered the Dutch by a large margin, the Renaissance fortress configuration, with corner battle- ments, allowed the Dutch to hold out for many months before surrendering. That was long enough for Koxinga to study and absorb the technology of the Renaissance fort and incorporate it into his own counterstrategy. Each side had elements of relative strength, and the elements were not static in terms of relative advantage. Thus, Andrade proposes, during the seventeenth century China was fairly similar to Europe in terms of military capabilities.