At the beginning of the Singapore meeting, at the suggestion of the Ming government, only relevant countries with interests in the South Seas were invited. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

This is in line with the interests of countries such as Britain and France, because no one wants too many people to share the cake.

As a result, the countries participating in this meeting were restricted, and the Ming Dynasty, Vietnam and Siam participated in the conference as countries surrounding the South Seas, and France refused to allow Cambodia to send representatives to participate, they did not consider Cambodia to be an independent country, and believed that France could fully represent Cambodia's opinion, and France had Cambodia's diplomatic powers.

Britain supported the interests of France, so Cambodia was not able to come out as a relevant party, but the meeting also passed the relevant provisions of Cambodia, such as in the Ming Dynasty, Vietnam and Siam strongly requested, the meeting passed, France may not arbitrarily abolish the Cambodian royal power written into the content of the protocol, although Cambodia did not join the negotiations, but the status of the Cambodian king was confirmed.

Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, and Spain, as Western countries with colonies in the South Seas, attended the conference, and their demands were to protect their colonies.

The Netherlands, Germany, and Spain all had conflicts with the Ming over the colonial issue, and they were not resolved.

The most disputed area of the three countries is the island of Guinea.

This largest island in the South Seas has long been in the field of vision of the great powers, and it is unreasonable to say that no one has ambitions here, but there is a reason why no one has been able to include this place in the ruling area.

The first is the huge development cost, and this pristine rainforest is very difficult to develop unless it is invested at any cost. In Chinese history, it was not until the Ming Dynasty that the government management in Guangxi and Yunnan began to be strengthened, and the policy of changing the land and returning to the river was implemented, and it was not until the Manchu Dynasty that the sinicization of Guangxi and Yunnan was basically completed, and two thousand years have passed since Qin Shi Huang sent troops to control this area. During the Angkor Dynasty, Cambodia developed huge farmlands in the rainforest and built a large-scale Angkor Wat, but once the dynasty fell, these areas quickly returned to pristine rainforests, and the strong natural ecological forces of the tropics were a strong resistance to human beings.

The second reason is the presence of the United Kingdom, which is separated from the island of New Guinea by the Torres Strait, which is Australia. Britain is reluctant to see other forces enter New Guinea and thus pose a threat to Australia, especially the powerful European countries, which Britain fears the most.

Da Ming happened to echo these two conditions.

The Ming Dynasty was mainly for land and immigration, so Zhu Jinglun supported the Wu family and the Pan family to invest at any cost, and at the same time, the Ming Dynasty also had the greatest resource against the powerful ecological forces of the rainforest, that is, human resources. At the same time, the Ming Dynasty was not a powerful country, at least at that time, it did not pose a threat to Britain at all, and the Ming Dynasty was not developed here in the name of the state, so although the British were vigilant, they never took measures to expel the immigrants of the Ming Dynasty.

However, the reclamation of the Ming Dynasty here made the Germans very angry.

Historically, the Germans developed the South Pacific much earlier than the general public knows, before Bismarck came to power, before the reunification of Germany, in fact, the Germans were active here.

In fact, the colonization activities of the Germans were not much later than those of Britain and France, and as early as the 17th century, some German states began to carry out colonization activities. For example, the Brandenburg-Africa Company, founded by Brandenburg (i.e., the Kingdom of Prussia), colonized the island of Altyn, the Prussian Gold Coast, and the island of St. Thomas (U.S. Virgin Islands). The Duchy of Courland, led by the Baltic Germans, established colonies on the islands of Tobago and St. Andrew's (James Island in Gambia). However, due to the fragmentation of the state, most of their colonies have not been preserved.

By the 19th century, Prussia in Germany was already a very powerful state, especially after the collapse of Napoleon's empire, it appeared as one of the four major European powers for a long time, and Prussia at this time could already compete with Britain and France to a certain extent.

But the Prussian government, presided over by Bismarck, was most concerned with the unification of the nation, and was not interested in overseas expansion, and was deliberately restrained so as not to provoke Britain. However, the German people's desire for colonization was quite strong, and many colonial companies were formed to expand overseas through commercial means.

The pioneers of German overseas colonization were led by the Hamburg merchants, who in 1833 began to establish trading posts along the coastal strips of western and southwestern Africa. In 1844, Hertz & Sons set foot in East Africa. In the 60s and 70s, the Wolmann comptoir in Hamburg had established a large number of trading posts in the vast area between Gabon and Cameroon, and its liners sailed regularly to the coast of West Africa.

Another force in Germany's overseas expansion was the German missionaries, who in West Africa had sent more than 100 missionaries to the region in the 40 years before the German invasion of Togo. In 1840, the Rhein Missionary Society succeeded the London Missionary Society in South West Africa, becoming an important stepping stone to the German occupation of the region. Wherever they went, these missionaries not only preached, but also helped the German government to obtain local information and intelligence.

German Chancellor Bismarck, speaking about the experience of colonial expansion, said: "Preachers and businessmen must go ahead of the soldiers. ”

Bismarck and Zhu Jinglun agreed on this point, because commercial expansion often did not overstimulate the British, so Zhu Jinglun chose to support the overseas expansion of the Wu family and the Pan family, rather than the strong government intervention from the beginning.

Germany's expansion in the South Pacific was also quite early, before Germany was unified into a single country, also organized by merchants from Hamburg, and the Godfroy firm was the first to develop commerce, and in 1857 they bought land in the Samoan Islands in the Pacific Ocean, and gradually controlled most of the trade in this area, earning the title of "King of the South Seas". This title is not for nothing, because Gaode Commercial Bank really has a strong control in Samoa.

By 1878, the trade of the South Pacific islands such as Samoa and Tonga had reached the scale of imports of 1,395,600 marks and exports of 2,477,200 marks.

After the reunification of Germany, it was impossible for the German government to ignore the strong colonial enthusiasm of the people, especially since Bismarck had just kneaded a divided Germany together, and urgently needed to win the support of various states and slowly condense the loose federation into a real empire.

Therefore, after 1870, the German government officially began to intervene in colonial expansion, accepting the protection requests of some German trading houses in West Africa and other countries, and issuing them protection certificates.

In the South Pacific, also after 1870, trying to establish a colony, the German colonists urgently demanded the occupation of the Bismarck Islands and the eastern part of New Guinea, because the western part was occupied by the Dutch, and the eastern part of the country had not yet been asserted by any Western countries.

But at this time the British felt threatened, and more precisely the Australian colonies.

Germany, which had just defeated France and unified the German nation, made the West not yet accustomed to this suddenly powerful power, and they were afraid of it. While the German colonists were agitating for the government to establish colonies on the island of New Guinea and other places, the Australian colony of Queensland strongly demanded that the British government occupy the area, telling the British Empire that it was rich in gold mines.

Especially in 1874 and 1875, the colonial authorities of Queensland repeatedly asked the mother country government to occupy East New Guinea, but the British really had a headache with too many colonies, and the high maintenance costs made the British government have begun to hesitate to expand the colonies, and they were once very conflicted to occupy Hong Kong, not to mention these deserted places. The British government rejected the Queensland colony's request on the grounds that "Her Majesty already has enough black subjects".

But the Queenslanders were so worried about the German occupation that there was only one strait from Queensland, and they chose to take matters into their own hands and make the facts a given. So in 1875, the Queensland authorities sent armed men to cross the channel and occupy the Moresby Bay on the island of New Guinea near the Australian side, and without the permission of the mother country, they hoisted the British flag in New Guinea to assert sovereignty. As a result, the British government not only did not support it, but after hearing the news, Prime Minister Gladstone immediately ordered it to be withdrawn, and in order to calm the panic in the colonies, the British government guaranteed that Germany would not occupy the place.

However, the following year (1876), Germany sent troops to occupy the area, and Britain was shocked and began a struggle with Germany for New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Under strong British pressure, Germany was never able to establish an area of de facto control, but some of the trading houses built in the Solomon Islands continued to operate with the acquiescence of the British.

Daming intervened in this area under this circumstances, the first reclamation action occurred in 1875, a year after the occupation of Taiwan, Pan Shi Tongwen Xing took the lead in establishing a reclamation land in the northeast of the island of New Guinea, although the Germans were dissatisfied, but their trading houses were not stronger than Tongwen Xing, and their government did not claim power here, the Germans could come here, the Chinese could also come here, and the British were only vigilant against the colonial expansion of various governments, and the development of commercial nature, Basically acquiesced.

In the cracks, the Pan family operated for several years before successfully opening up several agricultural bases and immigrating tens of thousands of people.

At this time, the British government finally began to contact the Ming government to express their attitude here.

The Ming government said that it did not plan to include it under the jurisdiction of the Ming government, but since there were Ming businessmen in the development, the Ming government would also firmly support the interests of the Ming businessmen.

After getting the clear attitude of the Ming government, Britain no longer asked, Britain still does not plan to include where to include the British colony, because where the development cost is obviously too high, and Britain in Australia is less than two million people, Australia has not yet developed it, there is no interest in the development of more primitive rainforest areas.

In addition, Britain is worried that its occupation of this place will also stimulate Germany, which is eyeing here, Queenslanders have set up flags here, and the British government has ordered him to withdraw, obviously it is not only a matter of development costs, they are more worried about the political conflict between Germany, after all, a strong Germany that has just been unified has to let Britain adapt for a while, and they have to be afraid for a while.

The German government, on the other hand, feared the attitude of the British, having already failed once, knowing that the British could not allow them to establish a sphere of influence near Australia, and that Bismarck, who had just passed through the crisis of the war with France in 1875, was under joint pressure from Russia and England, and did not dare to risk expanding here and thus offending the British.

As a result, the Pan family successfully operated here for several years.

After finding out the situation in this area, the Wu family also joined here, and unlike the Pan family, who established a stronghold in the north of the island of New Guinea, the farthest from Australia, the Wu family began to enter the southern part of the island of Guinea.

When the Wu family entered here, the British were also very concerned, but the Ming government had an ambiguous attitude, and at the same time, the British found that the reclamation of the Ming Dynasty in this area brought a lot of benefits to British merchants.