The person in charge of going to Africa to open up colonies was Xie Qinggao, who returned from the Americas last summer and spent a full year in North America, writing thick guerrilla stories, recording the life, language and customs of the local indigenous people, etc., after these books returned to China, Zhou Lang also helped arrange for printing and publishing, increasing Chinese curiosity about the outside world, which is very important.

After Xie Qinggao recuperated for half a year, Zhou Lang appointed him to go to Africa to open up, established a China-Africa company, and appointed him as the governor of Africa. It's a reward for all the hard work he has done over the years, but in fact this person doesn't care too much about these things.

Xie Qinggao's voyage was not a blind exploration, Zhou Lang hired the Portuguese to help him, and also bought sea charts in some parts of Africa from the Portuguese. For Zhou Lang's exploration of Africa, the Portuguese did not see it as a threat, and the Europeans had little interest in Africa in recent years, otherwise Africa was close to Europe, but the Europeans did everything possible to come to Asia instead of occupying Africa, which is completely unreasonable. If the Portuguese cared so much about African territory, they wouldn't want to trade Maputo for Macau. The territory of Africa, for the Portuguese, was only a stronghold of the slave trade, and the occupation of a port along the coast was their ultimate goal, and they were not interested in the interior of Africa at all.

Since Zhou Lang promised to let the Portuguese continue to stay in Macao, and are actively negotiating with the Portuguese on the issue of trade expansion, they are now in the honeymoon period with Zhou Lang's regime, but they have not yet negotiated some technical issues, and the general direction has been negotiated, there is no need to offend Zhou Lang for the black land of Africa, not to mention that Zhou Lang paid for it.

The Chinese were going to Africa to exile prisoners, and it had nothing to do with the Portuguese, so they happily sold some of the charts that Zhou Lang was interested in, and were willing to provide guides.

There are charts, guides, and a transit base in India, which is equivalent to minimizing the difficulty of navigation, and all Xie Qinggao needs to do is to investigate and determine a few feasible footholds in the area that Zhou Lang thinks is suitable, establish a port, and then send the flag people to immigrate.

Zhou Lang also provided Xie Qinggao with twenty warships, and if the African company wants to continue to expand in the future, they will need to operate it themselves, but Zhou Lang feels that I am afraid that they will not need to expand the size of the fleet for a long time, and it will be difficult to even feed this fleet, unless the flag people emigrated soon find gold.

In order to allow Xie Qinggao to maintain the operation of the African company for a long time, Zhou Lang not only gave him monopoly management rights, but also asked him to select suitable areas along the way to establish transit ports, which were not limited to Africa, but any area on the route from China to Africa, including India. These ports can be opened to the outside world and collect taxes to support the operations of African companies. Zhou Lang personally provided Xie Qinggao with several alternative regions, one being Temasek, which would later be Singapore. The establishment of a port in Temasek, so that trade between China and India will choose to stop here for recuperation, and the trade route to the South Seas is also the most suitable place to recuperate, and it should be able to obtain free income.

Before Singapore, trade between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean was transited through Malacca, and the port of Malacca was first occupied by the local indigenous sultans, and the Portuguese took the lead in occupying it, and after ruling for more than a hundred years, it was occupied by the Dutch, until now.

However, the Dutch were very unconcerned about the management of the area, and Malacca had a serious siltation problem, so it was later overtaken by Singapore. Historically, Singapore was founded by the British after the Napoleonic Wars, that is, more than a decade later. Zhou Lang took the lead and seized the place before the British freed up their hands from Europe.

Chea Ching Koh has been to the Straits of Malacca many times, is very familiar with the hydrology here, and he also knows Malay, and immediately after landing in Singapore, he established contact with the local Sultan and raised the issue of buying Temasek.

The lion, the leader of the natives, opened his mouth and asked for a million silver coins, which if the Europeans would have robbed them directly. Xie Qinggao was not a qualified colonist, he chose to bargain with the other party, and he cut 300,000 silver dollars and gritted his teeth to make a deal. He didn't know how much trouble his generosity would get him.

After dropping off some construction and defense personnel on the small island of Temasek, Xie Qinggao continued his advance into Africa, arriving on the African coast three months later, stopping briefly in India, where Karachi was already quite sizable, and the local militia formed by Chinese officials completely broke the defenses of Sindh Province, completely destroying the three Muslim kingdoms and uniting them into a single province, which became a very sizable territory of the Chinese East India Company.

Here Xie Qinggao and Henry Pitt reunited after a long absence, after a while, agreed to help each other, Xie Qinggao wants to gain a foothold in Africa, India on this side of the Indian Ocean will be a more convenient rear base than China, for Henry Pitt, the African company presided over by Xie Qinggao can trade in the territory he manages, that is a good thing, as for the Chinese to exile prisoners in Africa, at this time Henry Pitt, who is bent on the cause of Indian expansion, does not care at all, after controlling Sinde Province, He couldn't wait to take Punjab in the middle and upper reaches of the Indus, and compared to Sindh, Punjab was a worthy object to conquer, his Bengal.

At this time, Britain had defeated the Marat League more than two years earlier, but due to the resistance of individual lords of Marat, the British East India Company fell into a protracted war, which affected the company's dividends, which caused the dissatisfaction of the company's top management, and recalled the expansionist governor Wellesley to the British. After the departure of Wellesley, the governor who claimed to "establish a system of broad alliances and political relations in every region of Hindustan and the Deccan" and "elevate the British regime to the highest position of power in India," the British East India Company's policy in India once again turned conservative and began to digest the fruits of victory.

This is Henry Pitt's best chance, he does not want to see the British East India Company expand again, monopolize the whole of India, although the interests of the British East India Company are the interests of Britain, but not his interests Henry Pitt, he firmly believes that he can better represent the interests of Britain than the managers of the British East India Company, and every development he makes here is to add glory to the British king.

In addition, Sindh Province actually does not belong to India, after the East India Company began to expand, it belonged to the powerful Durrani Dynasty of Afghanistan, which invaded Persia twice in the most prosperous 1747~1770 years, conquered Herat, Neshapur, Mashhad, occupied the area south of the Amu Darya River, and forced Bukhara Nagong. He invaded Punjab nine times, plundered Delhi twice, defeated the Marathas and Sikhs, forced the Mughal emperor to cede Punjab, Mustan, Sindh and Kashmir, and plundered a large amount of wealth. In its heyday, the Durrani Dynasty was the second largest Muslim power after the Ottoman Empire, along with the Mughal Empire in India, from Punjab in the east to the Caspian Sea in the west, the Alaber Sea in the south, and Balkh in the north.

But the history here in India has been repeated, and the rise and fall are much more frequent than in China, and China can last for generations, and here is often the fate of a generation. In 1773, the Durrani kingdom of Timur Shah succeeded to the throne and moved its capital to Kabul, and then the royal family began to have internal strife and conflicts between the various tribes, and the local power began to be divided, and the governors of Balkh and Sindh provinces became independent. The province of Sindh was then divided into three separate small territories. As a result, it was easily taken by the government of the Chinese East India Company. Therefore, the occupied land does not belong to the Indian subcontinent geographically, but administratively belongs to Afghanistan, so it can be said that it has nothing to do with India.

After the occupation of Sinde Province, he also had enough troops, although the mercenary team composed of Chinese soldiers directly under the company was only 3,000 people, but the local militia formed by those Chinese officials was as many as 30,000, and these militia groups were still militia armed without salaries, which made Henry Pitt's military conquest very cheap.

Of course, these militia groups, which are engaged in agricultural labor in peacetime and temporarily recruited in wartime, cannot provide too strong combat effectiveness, but they are enough for defense. At this time, the situation in Punjab gave Henry Pitt enough confidence to divide and disintegrate and conquer it.

At this time, Punjab, like the rest of India, was divided into more than a dozen Sikh military chieftains, the most powerful of which was Ranjit Singh of the Sikh commune of Sukarchakiya in West Punjab, who was ambitious, captured Lahore, the largest city in Punjab, a few years earlier, and then proclaimed himself Mahara (king), constantly attacking other chieftains and forces with force in an attempt to unify Punjab.

Historically, this Ranjit did achieve the consent of the Punjab and also conquered Kashmir, establishing a powerful Punjabi Sikh state, known as the Sikh Empire. Unfortunately, soon after his death, his military leaders attacked each other, and his descendants continued to divide the lands directly under the state in order to entrap the military lords, which led to a great weakening of the state's power, and his empire was conquered by the British East India Company less than ten years after Ranjit's death.

The various powers of India, from the Mughals to the large and small lords, all fell into this fate of rising by military generals, dividing their lands, then causing divisions, civil wars, and finally subjugation. If China has been repeating the rise and fall rate of the establishment of dynasties, the prosperity of dynasties, the extinction of dynasties, and the establishment of new dynasties for more than 2,000 years, India, which is also an agricultural civilization, has repeated the establishment of new forces, and then division, division, civil war, extinction, and the establishment of such a strange circle again. In contrast to China, it is actually a repetition of the feudal system of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties of China, so India is almost 3,000 years behind China politically, and has not yet reached the level of the county system implemented by the great vassal states of China during the Warring States Period.

Due to the rise of Ranjit Singh's power, the other Sikh chieftains around him panicked, and Henry Pitt had reached an agreement with many of them to fight against Ranjit, and Henry Pitt was willing to send troops to help them, and they provided military support, and signed a treaty with the Chinese East India Company, accepted the company's protection, and granted the company a large number of trade privileges. In fact, it was the system of the British East India Company.

It is a bloodless political conquest. It was also the policy of the British East India Company that carried out for decades, and Hyderabad, a kingdom that once stood side by side with the Kingdom of Mysore and the Marat League in India, was conquered by the East India Company.

Henry Pitt's choice of political conquest was not entirely an imitation of the British East India Company, mainly because India was so fragmented that it was beyond the company's power to conquer every prince by force, and it was not necessary to conquer a large number of weak princes by force. Henry Pitt must therefore consider another means of conquest, that is, to make them his vassals by garrisoning them and making treaties.

While the ambitious Henry Pitt was secretly making diplomatic contacts with the Sikh lords of Punjab, Xie Qinggao had already arrived in Africa, and after a survey along the east coast of South Africa, he entered a navigable estuary.

The river was later known as the Buffalo River.