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tionsonforeigntradeintimeswhenitfeltthebordersweresecure,butthemaritime
borderrarelyfeltthisway.Toomanyprivateoperatorsworkedthecoast,especially
Japanese, and when the court found itself unable to control piracy and smuggling,
it preferred simply to shut down all private trade. This usually had the effect of
only increasing piracy and smuggling.
What the Lis offered was access. They had business and official contacts inside
Fujian province, or so they claimed, so bribes to the right people might just open
trade opportunities there. China was the highest card in Li Dan's pack. As long
as the English and Dutch in Hirado had no contacts inside China except through
the Lis, there was money to be made by convincing them to finance a campaign
of bribery. The expectation that Emperor Wanli would soon die - he did not ob-
lige his weary subjects until the summer of 1620 - fuelled anticipation that his
policies might be overturned, as they were so spectacularly half a century earli-
er when his father came to the throne as the Longqing emperor and rescinded the
ban on maritime trade. If the Li brothers could get in early, they could manage the
newwaveoftrade.Alternatively,ifnothingchanged,aturnoveratcourtstillraised
the happy prospect that officials appointed under Wanli would be recalled, which
would mean having to bribe the new slate of officials appointed by the emperor's
son. This would then be a lovely opportunity for the Lis to go back to their foreign
tradepartnersandlevyasecondroundofmajorbribes.Undertheseconditions,the
English factory in Hirado leaked money for years in pursuit of the chimera of the
China trade.
Werethebrotherstellingthetruth,abouteithertheirexpensesortheirprospects?
Certainly it would have been hugely profitable to them to pry open trade with Ch-
ina and be the sole agents of the English in that trade. Li Dan did many times as-
sureCocksthathewasdealingingoodfaith,promisingthathewouldreturnallthe
money Cocks had given him if in the end the venture failed. In reality, however,
the chances of accomplishing this were slim. Some counsellors in Beijing argued
that opening maritime trade was the solution to both piracy and regional poverty,
but court anxieties about domestic instability along the coast - plus the monopoly
that the imperial household held over customs receipts - meant that the coast was
rarely open for more than a year before it was closed again. The instability at court
created a golden opportunity for entrepreneurs such as the Lis to take advantage of
the benefits that prohibition brings to those who know how to flout it.
Cocks's eager but perhaps reckless stewardship of EIC operations pushed his
relationship with Li Dan onto an ever more ambitious, and ever more expensive,
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