The African company initially intended to form an army to suppress the Europeans, but gold was fascinating, and European countries greatly overestimated the gold reserves of the Niger River basin. Because there has always been a story in European history about the gold nation of West Africa, they know that the Niger River basin has gold.

In West Africa, the Niger River basin has had three black empires, the Mali Empire, the Ghana Empire and the Songhai Empire. Each of these three empires was known for its abundance of gold, and they were not closed, but traded with Europe, and their history is not very long, so the written record is clear.

In 1324, the Emperor of the Mali Empire, Mansa Musa, made a golden pilgrimage that set him on a pilgrimage from West Africa to Mecca with a large pilgrimage. He brought with him 60,000 porters and 500 slaves, each carrying a gold scepter of about 500 mithkars (3 kilograms), of whom the young slaves were dressed in floral cloth and Persian silk; There are also 80 camels, each carrying a bag weighing about 3 quintals (3.8 kilograms) of gold. On the way to the Hajj, he gave a large amount of alms, and legend has it that he threw gold along the streets of Cairo, causing the price of gold in Cairo to plummet by 12%, so that the price of gold in Cairo during the time of 'Umar (12 years later) had not returned to its original level.

After the Songhai Empire replaced the Mali Empire as the ruler of the Niger River valley in West Africa, the Songhai Emperor Askia Muhammad made a second golden pilgrimage to the West African Empire (1495-1497). The Hajj sent 500 cavalry escorts, 1,000 infantry, a large group of ulemas and 300,000 gold coins, of which 100,000 remained in Mecca.

A hundred years later, the Moroccan Empire, which had emerged in North Africa, defeated the declining Songhai Empire in 1591 by excluding a thousand Moroccan invading troops and capturing the imperial capitals of Gao and Timbuktu. 100,000 gold coins and 1,000 slaves were transported back to Marrakech, the capital of Morocco, as booty, Morocco had a very close trade with Europe, because they once controlled the whole of Spain, and had close ties with the Mediterranean countries, and the gold plundered from West Africa flowed into Europe just beginning the Age of Discovery.

The Moroccans' gold plundering in West Africa lasted for more than a hundred years, and they had a professional term called Sudanese gold plundering. The amount of gold plundered was enormous and widespread throughout Europe. And it's no longer a legend, it's a real existence. An English merchant living in Marrakech saw 30 mules loaded with gold returning from Sudan in 1594. The Moroccan historian Ivrani wrote: "With the conquest of the kingdoms of the Sultans, Moulay Ahmed received so much gold that the jealous were driven mad and the witnesses were stunned." From then on, therefore, Mansur's gifts to the officials were all in the finest golden dinars. At the gates of his court, 1,700 craftsmen rushed day and night to cast the gold dinars. Countless amounts of gold earned him the title of Kim Sodan". The Golden Dinar is strong in the European market, and many European countries have turned to Morocco for borrowing.

Due to the continuous flow of this gold into European countries through trade, even the strongest currency, some kings of Europe have borrowed money from Moroccan Sudan, and are convinced that West Africa has gold, but Morocco was once very powerful, and the Europeans could not penetrate into West Africa, and only established a few footholds on the coast for slave trade, but they did not forget the gold, so they called the West African coast the Gold Coast.

This expedition organized by the Chinese went deep into the Niger River and found a large number of gold deposits, although there is no specific data, but in connection with the historical legend of the gold pilgrimage and the gold plundering of the Sultan of Morocco, the Europeans greatly overestimated the gold reserves of West Africa, on the one hand, the countries were deeply devastated in the Napoleonic Wars, hundreds of thousands of retired soldiers could not be settled, the invasion of Chinese and British industrial products made the economy wither, and a large number of young and strong laborers were idle. At this time, attracted by the golden story, there was an influx of adventurous Europeans into West Africa.

The gold was discovered by the Chinese and African companies, who found that the original powerful empires such as Mali had perished, Morocco had also fallen into civil strife, and the former capital of the West African empire, Timbuktu, was occupied by the Bambara, from the upper Niger River, and then controlled by the Tuareg, a nomadic tribe from the Sahara Desert. These African tribal forces pose no threat at all, and highly organized states no longer exist here.

These conditions have fueled the ambitions of European countries, which not only support their own adventurers to plunder gold, but also support their own merchants to form companies to develop gold mines directly in the form of commercial organizations. To make matters worse, these companies have been granted the right to occupy territories and open up colonies. This is already an act of aggression by the Red Fruit.

Because of the actions of European governments, Chinese and African companies are powerless to suppress the influx of organized European companies with the power of a single company, and these companies hire mercenaries composed of veterans to stake their own spheres of influence and make Chinese and African companies invincible to wolves.

The only way to do this is to strongly protest these actions, contact European companies to assert their rights to other countries, and ask the Chinese government to come forward to support and defend the interests of the companies. The British began to form alliances with other European countries on this issue, claiming that they had the right to exploit Africa's resources fairly.

A dispute over the ownership of gold in Africa has radically exacerbated the tension between China and European countries, which have already entered into an alliance that could start a gold war if China forcibly occupies the area and squeezes out European companies to exploit it.

In order to carve up the land of the black uncles and fight a war, a battle for the tropical region tens of thousands of kilometers away from China and located in the tropics where germs are prevalent, Zhou Lang thought about it and felt that it was very unrealistic.

West Africa is rich in gold, which Zhou Lang believes, but if it is now rumored that the gold production of South Africa is far larger, Zhou Lang does not believe it. South Africa's gold in hand has occupied the commanding heights in the gold standard era, and Zhou Lang's desire for gold is not strong.

He was more worried that the British were once again using diplomacy to unite the rest of Europe, which was not a good phenomenon, and it would be troublesome if the Europeans began to form a tradition of uniting against China.

Xie Qinggao's desire for adventure did not expect to cause such a big trouble.

But Zhou Lang didn't blame Xie Qinggao in the slightest, this person is not good at being an official, not good at money, he is dedicated to exploring the world, and he writes about his guerrilla Xu Xiake-like characters, which are too scarce in China, Zhou Lang can easily find a thousand officials who are eager to be colonial governors, but it is difficult to find a Xu Xiake who is only interested in the geography of mountains and rivers, and it is difficult to find a Xie Qinggao who is only obsessed with exotic customs.

Xie Qinggao has always been the governor of Africa, but business and other affairs are handed over to Zhou Guan's son Xiao Zhou Guan, and Xie Qinggao personally led a team to conduct as many as 100 inspections in the interior of Africa, almost every year. Africa is not only a breeder, but also a living fossil of the evolution of human society, where there are pre-slavery clan societies, slave societies, and great empires. Xie Qinggao was fascinated, the scope of his investigation extended from South Africa to the Zambezi River, and the east coast to the west coast.

Based on Xie Qinggao's investigation, the commercial expansion of African companies in Africa was very rapid, not only controlling the commerce of the Kingdom of South Africa in South Africa, but also establishing several strongholds on the Zambezi River to trade with the slave owners of the Kingdom of South Africa who had expanded here; Commercial posts have also been established on the Congo and Niger rivers.

In Zhou Lang's concept, the value of a character like Xie Qinggao was more valuable than that gold, so when the news of the conflict came back, he immediately asked to withdraw Xie Qinggao and let him get out of the conflict between the company and the European mercenary group to protect his safety.

It was only then that West Africa began to be considered.

The first settlers in West Africa were Europeans, or more precisely Portuguese, who arrived in Asia along the west coast of Africa and finally around the Cape of Good Hope. Later, the Spaniards joined the fray, seizing several strongholds from the Portuguese, such as Malabo on the Gulf of Guinea.

But it was mainly the Portuguese who established a large number of commercial posts here, serving the early Great Sea Trade and supporting the slave trade.

Lagodculamo (Lagos), the starting base of Xie Qinggao's expedition into the Niger River, was established by the Portuguese, and was later captured by the British in 1861 and renamed Lagos. In addition, the Gold Coast, north of the mouth of the Niger River, was also founded by the Portuguese, but the British occupied it, and now the whole of Portugal is occupied by the British, not to mention the colonies.

The agreement between China and Portugal allowed African companies to use any port of the Portuguese, so naturally they were stationed in Lagodracula (Lagos). But the British stationed 100,000 troops in Portugal and supported the puppet Governorate, and even the Portuguese royal family could only continue to stay in Brazil, so the British could easily get the Portuguese colony from the Portuguese government, and this is how the Gold Coast came, and when the news of the abundance of gold in the Niger River Valley spread, the British also immediately transferred the ownership of Lagodracula (Lagos) to the British through the Portuguese Directory.

Taking control of a number of Portuguese ports, the British had a head start in the struggle for the interior of West Africa.

But these ports are still some distance from the mouth of the Niger River, and the African company, because it is the pioneer of the expedition, has established a series of strongholds in the estuary and river basin, and has established contacts with the surrounding black countries and tribes, the British have seized the coastal base of Portugal, and China has built a new base, one with complete facilities, one directly to the target, and it is not possible to say who has a greater advantage.

Zhou Lang decided to win over European countries and open these bases to gold mining fields to countries willing to cooperate with China.