Battle of Liaoluo Bay
The Battle of Liaoluo Bay () took place in 1633 off the coast of Fujian, China; involving the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Chinese Ming dynasty's navies. The battle was fought at the crescent-shaped Liaoluo Bay that forms the southern coast of the island of Kinmen. A Dutch fleet under Admiral Hans Putmans was attempting to control shipping in the Taiwan Strait, while the southern Fujian sea traffic and trade was protected by a fleet under Brigadier General Zheng Zhilong. This was the largest naval encounter between Chinese and European forces before the Opium Wars two hundred years later. Background The Ming dynasty of the 17th century had relaxed its age old practice of banning maritime trade, allowing the Chinese coast to bustle with commercial activity. The Ming navy, however, had been poorly maintained and ineffectual, such that pirates had practically controlled this trade. The pirate leader Zheng Zhilong in particular dominated the Fujian coast, his ships decked with European cannons and mercenaries from Japan to Africa. The Ming court, in its decline, recruited Zheng Zhilong in 1628 rather than to try and destroy him. Although the more piratical elements of his fleet deserted him after he surrendered to the Ming, Zheng's new status as a Ming admiral allowed him to go after his former lieutenants. He was aided in this anti-pirate campaign by the Dutch under the governor of Formosa (Taiwan), Hans Putmans. The Dutch had been trying to gain permission to trade freely in China, without much success. In 1622 they established a position on the Pescadores, but were militarily defeated by the Ming in a war lasting from 1623 to 1624, and this forced the Dutch to withdraw from the Pescadores and establish themselves on Taiwan instead. Zheng Zhilong had promised to lobby on behalf of the Dutch if they in turn helped defeat his former subordinate Li Kuiqi (李魁奇); however, when this was accomplished in February 1630, Putmans received no guarantees about trade. Unbeknownst to Putmans, Zheng Zhilong had not been able to fulfill his promise because he then served a new Governor of Fujian, , who was hostile to the Dutch. Putmans believed that Zheng Zhilong had turned back on his promises, and decided that the Chinese bureaucracy would respond better to violence since he saw that pirates like Zheng Zhilong were recruited into officialdom. As Zheng Zhilong was preparing to attack the pirates and Li Guozhu (李國助), Putmans attacked Zheng's base in Amoy by surprise on 7 July 1633. Dutch surprise attack Zheng Zhilong had adapted European technology throughout his maritime career, decking his ships with European cannons and mercenaries, and in 1633 he had built a new fleet of 30 ships according to European designs: whereas most Chinese junks held at most eight smaller cannons, Zheng's new ships had two reinforced gundecks that could hold up to thirty-six large guns, shooting out of Western-inspired gunports. According to a Dutch account, these "large, beautiful war junks were equipped with large cannons, some