Putting aside the poor attempt to deflect the accusations of you trying to shore up your claim by any means possible. It is also equally hard to believe that the Dutch was able to raise a same number of native compared to their garrison.
But sure lets throw in the extra 500 men if you want , or the other "hundreds" of people. Like it would make a dent against the tens of thousands the Dutch Republic raised.
It's not a red herring. The British East India Company is a good example of the amount of resources the Dutch VOC would have had and what they could do with it in terms of how many soldiers they could hire etc. It's not like what you've claimed that these East India Companies had very limited resources and the ability to hire only 10,000 soldiers or so. The reasons why the Dutch East India Company didn't go beyond 10000 soldiers had nothing to do with limited finance and resources but more to do with geopolitical reasons and opportunity of the time.
And example which is completely irrelevant with the subject at hand. Did the VOC raised more troops ? Did it bought more ships ? The answer would be no and no. Saying that they had the financial resource to do so but did not is wishful thinking at it best. Unless you can prove that the VOC had the money on hand by way of ledgers or accounting or if they had fielded an army of corresponding size on the field.
To put it quite simply, if they could then they would had done so. "shoulda coulda woulda" is a pathetic excuse.
The battle at Fort Zeelandia is more significant than you think since it determined the fate of Taiwan over the next hundreds of years. This is the opinion of a few authors who have written about it
"The
Siege of Fort Zeelandia of 1661–1662 ended the
's
and began the
's rule over the island. Taiwanese scholar Lu Chien-jung described this event as "a war that determined the fate of Taiwan in the four hundred years that followed".
"Andrade, Tonio (2008).
.
. New York: Columbia University Press.
."
Maybe for Taiwan, but the rest of the world went along its merry way with none the poorer. Well except for the VOC but not the Dutch Republic.
As for the rest of the post:
It seems that we disagree on the extent of the power of the East India Companies and what their actual purpose was. I tend to think of them as a vehicle for colonization with the financial and political backing of the government, while you seem to think they are private companies with limited private resources that depended on how much money they made or lost and these companies would prefer to have no link to the government.
Opinions are opinions and facts are facts. Just as how your opinion that the VOC can raise bigger armies if they choose so does not ring with the fact that they never did so at any point of their history.
