“…… Imagine coconuts, bamboos, pineapples, bananas, longans, and in the midst of these plants, a beautiful creek meanders through, the banks are full of wildflowers and grass, and boats are floating on the water. In the middle of this forest, many houses were built out of rattan, reeds, and bark, and then they were planned, leaving streets on one side and different neighborhoods on the other: grass and trees were planted between neighborhoods, and when the population increased, the population of the whole city could be dispersed between the forests. If you think about it this way, you'll have an accurate understanding of Bo Ni, and you'll agree that this kind of unique city will add a lot of fun to strangers passing by. ”

In the port of Brunei at the end of April, a young lieutenant Dinway was unpacking a report written by a Portuguese businessman. The report was written in Portuguese, and Lieutenant Dinway was not difficult to understand because of his years of study. The merchant, who now lives in the port of Brunei, has bought a large pile of camphor, halil fruit, wax, pepper, tobacco and sago, and is waiting for the southwest monsoon to arrive so that he can travel all the way north to China and sell his goods for a good price. As a perennial businessman who runs the Chinese trade, he was naturally targeted by the officials of the National Intelligence Directorate on the East Coast, and then developed into an informant, specializing in helping the East Coasters collect all kinds of overseas intelligence, and now Lieutenant Ding Wei reads the reports forwarded to him by the intelligence officers.

The Portuguese merchant was still in the habit of referring to Brunei as the Mud, apparently because when their people first arrived here, the country was known as the Boys, and its monarch had only recently converted to the Green Religion. But to be honest, even if the Portuguese have arrived in the East for a hundred or two hundred years, there are not too many followers of the Green Religion in the land of the wind and even in the whole of Southeast Asia, most of the Moorish followers are concentrated in the coastal areas, and the number is not too large, and the people in the vast inland areas actually believe in the primitive religion of all animists, and in general this is actually a religious wilderness.

In the case of Brunei Port, for example, less than half of the population in the city believe in the Green Religion, and this is the result of the fact that its monarch took the lead in converting to the Green Religion, otherwise it would be even less. Now in the city, the Green Church priests are busy preaching all day long, persuading people to convert to Allah, but because the port of Brunei is located in the trading center of the windy land, it is an important commercial city, and the merchants and seafarers do not know how many, and it is more difficult for them to come and preach than ordinary farmers, so these priests also painstakingly compose a song to preach, which translates: "The copper money in your hand is the number of days, and you will wear it as a string if you are afraid of losing it; Running from place to place like a deer, loving Allah is blinded; To give up the worldly world, the most important thing is to be true to yourself. ”

It can be seen from this that the clergy have really gone to great lengths to persuade the citizens of this country with a strong commercial atmosphere to become religious. It took many more years for the vast majority of people in Brunei to accept the unique status of the Green Religion, even if it was later colonized by the Christian state. However, at this time and space in the 17th century, a new colonial power broke into the famous commercial port of Brunei, and what changes they would bring to the country and the whole of Kalimantan is known only to Allah, Jesus, Buddha or Celestial.

Ding Wei was a reserve lieutenant in the East Coast Army, in his thirties, very young. His father was Ding Daxing, commander of the Seventh Division of the New Army, which was famous in Denglai, and his defense area was Ye County, the capital of Laizhou, with 3,000 soldiers. In recent years, with the deepening of Denglai's economic development, Yexian County, a city with a good location, has also been favored by Yantai and wants to take back its own business. For this reason, they have already made several rumors through non-public channels, saying that they are studying a compensation plan, that is, abolishing the military management status of Ye County and giving the Seventh Division a certain amount of monetary or in-kind compensation.

It is worth mentioning that this time, Liao Dashuai of Yantai did not mention moving the Seventh Division to other counties, but directly proposed to use economic compensation to recover Ye County to solve this problem left over from history. In fact, with the gradual improvement of the new army system, which was directly organized and trained by the East Coast government itself, the status of small warlords and small feudal towns such as Dong Dalang, Niu Gui, Ding Daxing, and Sun Shouzheng became more and more embarrassing, and it became more and more conspicuous within the Denglai and Ningbo systems.

Therefore, in recent years, the governments of the two places have launched a campaign to reduce the feudal domain and reclaim land, and some results have been achieved. In recent years, the overall reduction of the 10th and 11th Divisions has been a major achievement, and some of the other servant divisions that have not been removed have also been reduced a lot (such as Chen Quanzhong's division of the Fourth Division stationed in Jimo County). All in all, it is a general trend to reclaim land and cut down feudal domains, and the governments of Denglai and Ningbo, whose rule is becoming more and more stable, cannot tolerate the existence of independent hills in their jurisdictions, even if they are already extremely obedient, they must be slowly cut down.

Ding Daxing inherited his father's business, and the family has been operating in Ye County for two generations, with intertwined relationships and interests everywhere. If this is left in the Qing State or the Shun State, it is a proper place to be strong, or the kind that has a name, soldiers and horses, and money and grain, and the court must be careful and careful when dealing with it, for fear that a bad person will rebel and erode everywhere. But under the rule of the people on the east coast, the elite soldiers are stationed everywhere, the muskets, cannons, money and food are sufficient, and there are ships and railways to transfer troops, and tens of thousands of horses and horses are within reach, do you dare to rebel? I'm afraid it won't be extinguished all at once!

Therefore, the Ding family has now begun to learn from the Dong family in Penglai County and send their children out to be officials, so that even if the fiefdom is taken away in the future, they can continue to maintain the wealth and glory of the family by relying on the official relationship. In fact, this is a very good idea, because the people on the east coast are starting to cut the feudal domain, so even if it is for the needs of the united front, they will absorb some of the more obedient children of the feudal towns into the system, and they will also give some preferential policies in business, which can be regarded as an equivalent exchange.

Ding Wei is the youngest son of Ding Daxing, who studied at Yantai College when he was young, and entered the army after graduation, first serving in the first division of the Liaodong New Army, and fighting face-to-face with the Qing court Tatars. Later, he was selected into the officer advisory group and went to Chaozhou Mansion to help Li Yuanyin rectify the army, and his resume is quite rich.

Later, Ding was seconded to the Taiwan Marine Battalion as a consultant and served as a deputy to the training officer, and worked in Xiangshan County for two years. This time, the Dutch East India Company had a bad relationship with the people on the east coast, and Liao Dashuai of Yantai immediately consulted urgently with the Yinxian side, and then adopted a series of measures, including sending a detachment led by Major Lu Xiaozhong of the Navy to the port of Dili for fear of not being safe, and they also sent the light cruisers "Arcturus" and "Old Man" to escort the two transport ships and go directly south to the port of Brunei in the name of trade.

The Sultan of Brunei didn't care too much at first, because there were too many merchants who came to trade with them in this era, Arab, Indian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, British, French, Danish, etc., almost all countries interested in trade in the South Seas would be involved here, and dozens of foreign merchant ships were moored in the port all year round, many of which were even armed merchant ships. Therefore, when the five ships from the east coast first arrived, the port of Brunei paid too much attention to it, and even sent someone to handle the entry procedures a day later.

However, when the East Coasters then disembarked from the ship with more than a hundred armed soldiers, the Bruneians were stunned again. Almost immediately, they mobilized hundreds of soldiers from the city, more than half of whom were armed with muskets, and four army guns. In fact, Western muskets and cannons have been popular throughout Southeast Asia since the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the armies of various countries began to use thermal weapons to fight, and the proportion of thermal weapons in the army is getting higher and higher, far exceeding that of Chinese mainland at that time.

Brunei, as a major trading town in the land of the wind, naturally also had an army equipped with muskets and cannons, so after seeing that the people from the east coast were not coming well, they immediately gathered together, intending to drive them out while the people were not firmly established. Naturally, they kicked the iron plate, this is an infantry company from the Taiwanese Marine Battalion, armed with rifled guns, they only shot from a distance for a while, and then they had to send messengers to negotiate.

As a result of the negotiations, the Brunei side accepted the request of the East Coasters to set up a trading post here and to send a "small number" of personnel to garrison it. According to the agreement, the people of the east coast would respect the power of the Sultan of Brunei to dominate the country, and at the same time have the right to establish a permanent trading post in the port, which can garrison "not more than a hundred soldiers", pay taxes according to the regulations, pay land rent, and refrain from engaging in any illegal activities.

It can be said that this agreement was extremely reluctant for the Sultan of Brunei to sign, but they were deeply impressed by the powerful firepower of more than 100 soldiers of the Taiwan Marine Battalion. His soldiers were enough to bully the mountain tribes in the interior, and it was okay to deal with a small number of sailors from the west—too much, not enough, and when several Portuguese warships arrived during the Spanish and Portuguese mergers, the Bruneians were also very deferential—but when faced with well-organized and well-equipped foreign professional soldiers, they were still a little inadequate, so they were easily frightened by the east coasters, and then signed an alliance under the city, allowing them to establish a trading post in the port of Brunei.

When Western colonists were unable to colonize the entire region for a while, they often chose to start with a fortress-like trading station, and then slowly accumulate strength and divide and disintegrate the indigenous forces, and finally achieve the goal of swallowing the entire colony at a very low cost (which is very important), and the East Coasters were no exception.

Considering that Brunei Darussalam is probably the richest in the land under the wind - nonsense, of course it has to be rich, otherwise you will be able to survive when you are full - and it is also the weakest country in relative power, so as long as the people on the east coast continue to accumulate and continue to invest, then it probably won't take too long to settle this small city-state.

In fact, the East Coasters have planned for this as well. For example, before Ding Wei came, Shangguan vaguely asked him if he planned to gradually reduce the personnel of the Seventh Division of the Servant Army, and then emigrate overseas and settle in Brunei? If they could, the people of the East Coast would not hesitate to support their family to be a local overlord in Brunei, which is much stronger than being trapped in such a small place as Ye County, and the economy is not at the same level at all.

Dinway conveyed this to his father, who was "shocked" and "suspicious" at the same time. The shock is of course because it seems that the people of the East Coast will not delay for too long, maybe it is just around the corner, and the Yexian that their family has run for two generations will not be able to pass on to the third generation, so they are a little surprised and sad. Suspicion is better understood, although Ding Daxing's cultural level is not high, he also knows that Brunei is located in the South Seas, where the humidity and heat are unbearable, and the environment is harsh, which does not seem to be a good place. The only advantage is probably that it is located in a key area, and the business is relatively developed, which is very profitable. But their Ding family is not a poor and scumbag of hard work, is it necessary to go to the miasma land in Nanyang to desperately seek wealth? It doesn't seem necessary!

Therefore, Ding Daxing was a little hesitant, he still had to worry about the old brothers to discuss and discuss, and see everyone's opinions. After all, this kind of matter is not a matter of his family and surname, but a major matter related to the 3,000 officers and soldiers of the Seventh Division and more than 10,000 family members. Ding Wei couldn't wait for them to negotiate a result, so he took an infantry company on the right wing of the Taiwan Marine Battalion to the south by boat, and came to Brunei Port to establish a stronghold, laying the foundation for the East Coast Republic to advance into the land under the wind.

Their trip was also strongly supported by the Bank of Taiwan, which has a strong government background. The large colonial trading company sponsored a batch of medicines and 100,000 yuan in cash, and planned to follow in their footsteps south to Brunei, where they would establish a trading post and slowly encroach on the trade of the windswept land, where a large amount of money and goods flowed. Making more money and controlling more trade routes is what companies like them have been pursuing.

Of course, the Navy was also very happy. Because it means that they have another foothold in the South Seas, and the combined fleet's cruising route is more complete, which is very important for them to expand their influence. In particular, the location is not far from the vital Strait of Malacca, and it may not take even ten days to sail westward, but it may be possible to reach the port of Malacca in a week, which is undoubtedly of great significance for ensuring the safety of migrant transportation and expanding trade routes.

Therefore, you can see that Lieutenant Ding Wei led people into the port of Brunei, an important city-state in the land of the wind, the navy ships escorted the whole process, and the Bank of Taiwan, which can be called the money bag enterprise of the four feudatories in the Far East, also contributed money and goods, and a group of people carried them to gain a firm foothold here.

Ding understands what he should do next. This infantry company of the Taiwanese Marine Battalion will remain here for a while until the trading post is completely completed—compared to the local Malay bamboo and wooden houses, the eastern shore trading post is made of stone, like most of the Western colonizers of this era—and then there will probably be new initiatives in the mainland, and his father will probably come up with a charter from the Ye County side, and a large number of officers and soldiers from the 7th Division of the Servant Army and their families will come in droves, so that they will have a foundation here in Brunei.

All in all, Ding understood that he relied on the navy and the Bank of Taiwan, and all his actions here in the future were to serve the Bank of Taiwan's participation in the trade of the South Seas. This piece of fat meat makes no sense to be left to Western merchants or Moorish merchants, who have worked hard in the Far East for decades, and now have achieved a huge advantage along the coast of China, and it is almost time for troops to enter the South Seas and participate in the trade of the land under the wind.

This confrontation with the Dutch East India Company was also a key factor in prompting the upper echelons of Denglai and Ningbo to make up their minds. And once they have made up their minds to join the game of Nanyang, then they will strictly follow the plan and execute it step by step. The port of Brunei must be occupied, and it is also a high probability that the Sultan of Brunei will allow him to continue to be cool for the time being, and he will be replaced in the future. And after Brunei swallows it, it is very clear where the next soldier will be!

The Dutch East India Company is probably feeling a lot of pressure now, right?