The dominance of the Dutch in the…

The dominance of the Dutch in the Far East had reached its zenith in the previous era, though not everything had gone the way of the VOC.

The lucrative China-Japan trade, which the company had managed to monopolize for a while, had come to an end as the new Qing-regime finally managed to tighten its grip on the last remnants of the Ming in South China, and first reverse the terms of trade with the Dutch, before eventually completely closing the Chinese market to them.

Following the destruction of Ming power by the Manchu, Koxinga, a self-styled Ming loyalist, had led Chinese naval and troop forces of Southern Fujian, in a landing at Lu'ermen to attack the VOC forts on Taiwan in 1661.

The Dutch Governor of Taiwan, Frederik Coyett, on February 1, 1662, surrenders Fort Zeelandia to Koxinga, effectively ending thirty-eight years of Dutch rule on Taiwan.

These forts had been mostly important in the silk trade with Japan, and that trade is now being taken over by the Chinese themselves anyway.

Establishing the Kingdom of Tungning, with his capital at Tungtu (T'ainan)—the first ethnically Chinese state to rule the island—Koxinga, in a move foreshadowing Chiang Kai-shek's flight to Taiwan in 1949, now devotes himself to transforming the large island into a military base for loyalists who want to restore the Ming Dynasty.