them to be a municipality under the direct control of his government.11 With Macao and Nagasaki at the two ends of the marine route between the silk-producing center and its market, the Portuguese throve in the silk trade. They procured silk in the semi-annual fairs at Canton with a fairly large value of transactions. For example, even in 1637, when the Macao-Nagasaki trade was already on its decline, a certain Peter Mundy was still confident to say that the official annual Portuguese investment in silk was about 1,500,000 taels, " which is near to 1,000,000 of rials of eight. " 12 In 1620, the Dutch and the English formed a joint " Fleet of Defence " , with the intention to plunder the Portuguese galliots. Though the Dutch-English alliance was soon to end with the notorious " Amboina Massacre " ( 1623 ) , 16 the Dutch alone continued to blockade Portuguese ( especially in regard with Christianity ) in the court of Bakufu. In short, the Portuguese began to encounter serious troubles around 1620, and their commercial magnificance dwindled. For the time being, the value of Macao ' s trade with Japan still eclipsed that of the Dutch in 1621,