Battle of Macau

The Battle of Macau in 1622 was a conflict of the Dutch–Portuguese War fought in the Portuguese settlement of Macau, in southeastern China. The Portuguese, outnumbered and without adequate fortification, managed to repel the Dutch in a much-celebrated victory on 24 June after a three-day battle. The battle is the only major engagement that was fought primarily between two European powers on the Chinese mainland.

After the Portuguese gained permission from the Ming mandarins in Guangdong to establish a permanent settlement and trade base in Macau in 1557, the port of Macau benefited greatly from being the intermediary of the lucrative China–Japan trade, since the direct routes were banned by the Ming court due to fears of the wokou pirates. Portugal's success in Macau drew the envy of other European maritime powers who were slower to gain a foothold in East Asia. When Philip II of Spain became King of Portugal after the 1580 Portuguese succession crisis, Portuguese colonies came under attack from Spain's enemies, especially the Dutch and the English, who were also hoping to expand their overseas empires.^{[citation needed]}

Macau had encountered the Dutch in 1601, 1603, and 1607, but the Dutch invasion of 1622 represented the first real attempt to capture the city. The Dutchmen, frustrated that their trading post at Hirado was unable to compete with the Portuguese traders at Nagasaki as a result of the latter's easy access to China, hoped that the capture of Macau would grant them a commercial base in China while at the same time depriving the Portuguese of the profitable Macau–Nagasaki route. The fall of Macau would also leave the Spaniards in the Philippines without means of support and make it easier for the Dutch to mount an attack on Manila.

Despite the raids, the Portuguese authorities had not raised an extensive defensive system for the city because of interference by Chinese officials. Macau's defenses in 1622 consisted of a few batteries, one at the west end of the Macau Peninsula (later site of the Fort São Tiago da Barra), and one at each end of the southern bay of Praia Grande (São Francisco on the east and Bom Parto on the west), plus a half-completed Fortaleza do Monte that overlooked the Cathedral of St. Paul.

The sorry state of Macau's defenses became known to the Dutchmen when the Dutch ship Gallias seized a Portuguese ship carrying a case of letters off the coast of Malaya at the end of 1621. Judging by these intercepted letters and information available from Japan, the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies Jan Pieterszoon Coen considered that Macau was not in a position to resist a serious attack, and set his invasion plan in motion.

Before the invasion, the Portuguese authorities, aware of the territory’s lack of artillery and the imminence of the Dutch attack, sought help from Spanish East Indies in the name of Iberian Union. The Captaincy General of the Philippines answered by sending some pieces of artillery (this was essential in providing cannons for the city's defenses) and one hundred Castilian and Filipino soldiers.

At Batavia, headquarters of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Coen organized an initial fleet of eight ships for the expedition to Macau, with orders that any Dutch vessel encountered along the way was to be incorporated into the invasion fleet. The soldiers that composed the landing force were specifically selected, and even among the crew there were fewer lascars and Malays than usual; it had been customary for Europeans to carry locals for navigation.

Coen was so satisfied with the fleet that when he wrote to the VOC directors at The Hague he expressed regret for not being able to lead "so magnificent an expedition" in person. The VOC directors did not share Coen's enthusiasm in this venture, stating that they had enough wars at the time, and ordered Coen to wait until they could make a more informed decision. But the fleet, under the command of Cornelis Reijersen, had already left Batavia on 10 April 1622 before the order was sent.