A new Cochinchina was beginning to take shape in the waters of the Mekong Delta and its surrounding coastline. The Chinese shipping network laid the basis for much of the new system of Dang Trong, centred in merchant houses of Canton’s Hong merchants and by the 1760s operating on a grander scale than ever before. The ports and commercial enterprises of the delta and its water frontier depended on a continuous circulation of commodities, primarily rice, cash crop, and a variety of transshipped goods such as tin, gold, and rattan for its prosperity and growth. Tensions grew. The Tay Son rebellion destroyed both the kingdoms of Dang Trong and Dang Ngoai, decimated the kingdom’s population, and obliterated the old Canton trade. The Tay Son’s strength grew out of, and reacted to, 200 years of Nguyen rule. The thirty-year civil war was fought ultimately between the two rival southern powers of Dang Trong (Cochinchina), while the northern power Dang Ngoai (Tongking) had little say about its outcome. Its eventual conquest of Dang Ngoai brought an end to that region’s political economy and commenced the process whereby southern power would come to ascendance on a territory that by 1802 to be known as Viet Nam.

The Second Opium War consisted of two interventions in 1858 and 1860. The first campaign resulted from disputed Anglo- French trading rights in China. Although opium importing into China triggered the controversy, commercial access more generally was at stake. A joint military expedition fought its way up the Peiho River to Tientsin where in a treaty (1858) the Chinese met British and French demands. Implementation proved difficult, however, especially when the Chinese imprisoned foreign diplomats and others. A second expedition, consisting of about 17,000 French, British and Indian army soldiers backed up by the Royal Navy, followed two years later and pushed to and up the Peiho River and on to Beijing. The expeditionary force reached Beijing quickly and secured the allies’ demands. They avoided unduly weakening the imperial government, since only stable government could uphold their trading rights. The campaigns will be examined in new ways, concentrating on the co-ordination of three distinctive armies, logistics, and the Indian army’s role. The war’s most controversial episode - the burning of the imperial summer palace at the campaign’s end - will be re-examined in relation to: the conduct of the war, its contemporary and later impact, and the emblematic use of such destructive acts in ‘colonial’ campaigning.

This chapter deals primarily with the Company commercial policy in East Asia and mainland Southeast Asia but also discusses extensively the first territorial Dutch colony in Taiwan. It highlights the crucial position of Japan where the Dutch could build on their exclusive trading rights in Deshima to procure the precious metals that were necessary for the India trade. The China trade is discussed in connection with the restrictive policies of the Ming and Qing states as well as in the context of the trading interests of the Dutch headquarters in Batavia. In conclusion, a comparison is made between the Dutch position in Mughal India and Qing China as well as between the Dutch Empire and other European empires in Asia.