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AHC/WI: Hong Kong, Macau and...Yangjiang?

T

Tom Colton

domesticated humans?!
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Singapore
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Part 2 of the Tom Colton Goes to China and Gets Inspired to ask WI series

Guangdong Province has the dubious honour of bordering both Special Administrative Regions of China, namely Macau and Hong Kong, but it's not like those two are the only island ports in the region.

Of the various others in this stretch of the Southern Chinese coast such as Swatow and Sanshui, the one which I wish to bring specific attention to is the one I stayed at last week, namely the city of Yangjiang.

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It's right on the western bit there, with Macau being located right next to Zhuhai and Hong Kong, of course, labelled as Xianggang. As you can see, not unlike Hong Kong, Yangjiang's Jiangcheng district (see below, pink) comprises both a mainland municipality, and an island.

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Hailing Island (pink bit, island) is approximately 106 square kilometres in size (which makes it about thrice the size of Macau and slightly bigger than Hong Kong Island) and has a pretty decent bay which supports a crapton of fishing vessels on its southwestern coast (the bit in the brackets on the map on the right) and a very pretty beach. It also houses the Maritime Silk Route Museum, which contains a shipwreck I' m interested in for my PhD but that's another matter entirely.

Given that the Dutch tried multiple times to take Macau from the Portuguese and failed (with the most memorable attempt being in 1622 during the Dutch-Portuguese War), what's stopping them from turning around trying to grab/settle Hailing? If that's unfeasible, what would it take post-Opium Wars to get Hailing to become a third European enclave as permanent as those of Macau and Hong Kong? What implications would this have on the rest of the Century of Humiliation-era Chinese politics?
 
It'll probably depend on the time period when the Dutch take over the Yangjiang. Guangzhouwan, for example, was a damp squib compared to Hong Kong or Macau in terms of development, population, etc... If Dutch takes Yangjiang after the fall of the Canton System, I doubt it'd be considered a valuable part of the Dutch Empire, especially with substantial land holdings in Asia that they are already in control of.

If the Dutch manage to get a hold of Yangjiang in the 17th century, it'll have a more substantial influence on the Dutch expansion in East Asia, I imagine. Maybe it'll prove to be a valuable substitution after the loss of the Dutch Formosa?
 
Problem with Yangjiang may well be that it's not as favourable due to further distance to Guangzhou. It's worth remembering that the PRD was the economic and geographic lifeline of the European trade in China, and Portugal having Macau allowed them to dictate the trade in the region for as long as they did. It also bears mention that the Dutch, being the mercantile people they were who were cautious as hell about throwing money around, probably saw no economic utility in Yangjiang without the Portuguese breathing down their backs in Macau. Taking Hong Kong Island was favourable to the British because the decline of Portuguese fortunes and power in the PRD, in addition to the balance of power they held after the First Opium War, allowed them control over Guangzhou as the most established and (at the time) most open port in China.
 
Hmm, so a Dutch takeover in the 1622-1662 timeframe would probably be the most interesting in terms of ramifications?
 
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