As early as 1632 the English East India Company had already discussed the feasibility of setting up a trading post either in the Pescadores or at the port of Anping (Zeelandia). By May 1626, however, the Spanish had already constructed a fort called San Salvador at Keelung Harbor and two years later built another fort called Santo Domingo at Tamsui. In the meantime, Jan Pietersz Coen, the Dutch empire-builder from Batavia (in Indonesia), had claimed Taiwan as a colony of the Netherlands. By September 1642, the Dutch forced the Spaniards to abandon all claims to the island and established Taiwan as one of their nineteen main trading centers in Asia. During these times, the British were not welcome to do business with their European adversaries on the island of Taiwan. However, a group of Ming dynasty loyalists and pirates, led by Koxinga, drove the Dutch out of Taiwan in early 1662. Koxinga intended to establish a kingdom on the island first, then use Taiwan as a base to reconquer China from the Manchus, who were already attacking China proper. Against this historic backdrop, the British offered to trade weapons, which Koxinga’s troops desperately needed, for Taiwanese products such as sugar and deerskins. Thus, it took the British nearly four decades to fulfill their desire to enter the Taiwan trade.