Regarding the existing Chinese founding forces in Nanyang, Lin Haijiang has been hesitant again!

Lin Haijiang remembered that the Lanfang Republic, the full name of the Lanfang Great Unified Republic, was a Chinese state that existed on Kalimantan Island in Borneo in Nanyang from 1770, that is, between the 42nd year of Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty and 1885.

The founder was Luo Fangbo, a native of Meizhou, Guangdong, and was later wiped out by the Dutch colonial forces, according to a record in a certain issue of Ming Pao monthly magazine in the 90s of the 20th century with [***] as a special topic, it was a time when many Cantonese people went to Nanyang to make a living. Because the Cantonese were good at business, many of the people who engaged in trade were highly respected by the local chiefs.

At that time, due to the fact that many Europeans went to the local area to harass them, some local Chinese associations recruited group training from Guangdong Province and came to Nanyang to play a similar role as bodyguards, and the most powerful of them was Nanfang Company. Later, many chiefs asked the Southern Company to protect them, so Luo Fangbo, the boss of the Southern Company at the time, established a republic in the local area, and served as the country's general system, overseeing the country's security and coordination between various tribes. The internal affairs of the tribes were still the responsibility of the chiefs. In addition, because Luo Fangbo learned that the foreigners were still very suspicious of the Qing Dynasty, he immediately declared himself a vassal to the Qing Dynasty at the beginning of the founding of the country and sent people to Yanjing to pay tribute.

It is said that this move really made the foreigners very suspicious, so they stopped disturbing the local area. On the other hand, the tribes that had not joined in the early days, seeing the success of the Southern Republic, also expressed their willingness to join the member tribes. At its peak, the sphere of influence of the Southern Republic occupied the entire island of Kalimantan.

Lin Haijiang quickly found Dongwanjin, the capital of the Lanfang Republic, according to the location pointed out by Huang Tao on the map, and Huang Tao immediately introduced: "According to the investigation results of the intelligence agency directly under the General Staff Headquarters, the founding of Lanfang was established in 1777, and that year was set as the first year of Lanfang. The head of state is called the chief of the Tang Dynasty or the head of the Tang Dynasty, which means that the Chinese are the heads of overseas guests, and the major affairs of the country are consulted by the people, and they are inherited in a form similar to the Ming Boiled Election and Zen Rang, the current general system is Liu Asheng, a native of Jiaying, Guangdong, and the year name is Qianxing, its armed forces are very weak, almost the surname of the militia organization, and the lack of professional and effective military models, its sea power is mostly sail gunboats and armed merchant ships with two or three mainmasts, and its land armed personnel are about 5,000 people, and the sea force is about 12,000 people. ”

Lin Haijiang nodded, in such a short period of time, he was already very satisfied that the newly established intelligence agency subordinate to the General Staff Headquarters was able to find out the basic situation of the Chinese regime in the Nanyang area, after all, these intelligence officers lacked professional training and training.

For these Chinese regimes in Nanyang, Lin Haijiang is not prepared to use force to solve the problem, after all, he is also a descendant of Huaxia Yan and Huang, and he is not interested in internal fighting Lin Haijiang at all.

However, in his memory, in 1884, when the Dutch invaded the Republic of Phong, the Republic of Lanfang resisted, but was eventually outnumbered and defeated, and the remnants of the Republic fled to Sumatra. However, still fearing a reaction from the Qing government, the Dutch did not openly claim to have occupied the Lanfang region, but instead set up another puppet to rule. It was not until the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912 that the Dutch officially declared its occupation of the Lanfang region.

After more than 100 years from the founding of the Republic of Lanfang to its demise, the Republic of Lanfang has set up a complete set of executive, legislative and judicial organs with reference to some legal systems of Western countries. Luo Fangbo and these people were all ordinary people in the Qing Dynasty, because they couldn't live in their hometown, so they had to go to Nanyang.

Although he wandered overseas, he still thought that he was the people of the Qing Dynasty, and the ancestral tombs and ancestral halls, as well as relatives, friends and relatives were all in China. If they set themselves up as kings, for the Qing Emperor, it would still be a rebellion, and the emperor could do the work of raiding his house and digging graves and destroying the ancestral hall, and he would even send troops to the sea to carry out expeditions.

Therefore, Luo Fangbo did not dare to establish himself as a king and set up a country, but only used a so-called company name, claiming to be a republic, at first they also sent an envoy back to China, met with the emperor and asked to be a vassal state, wanting to include the land of West Borneo into the territory of the Qing Dynasty, or become a vassal state. The Qing emperor did not accept it, simply ignored these outcasts of the Celestial Empire, or simply could not tolerate the Han people in the south to establish a state overseas.

So the Lanfang Republic is a tragedy from beginning to end, one is eager to be recognized, and the other is too lazy to take care of it, can he be recognized by the Lanfang Republic? For Lin Haijiang, this is still unknown, but Lin Haijiang's own warlord reading system has also conflicted with the basic norms and system of the Lanfang Republic itself, and what Lin Haijiang needs is a stable Southeast Asia, and all discordant factors will be completely eliminated.

Lin Haijiang could not allow any kind of crisis in his backyard, his first step strategy was to unify resources, the second strategy was to get out of the second-rate forces such as Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands, and the third step was to deal with the British forces.

However, Lin Haijiang knew very well that it was very difficult for the British to get out of the way, and it took an opportunity to get the point of entry, and only when the strategic potential of the British Empire itself was greatly weakened would there be a forced abandonment of the interests of the Far East, and although the French in Indochina had not yet fully invaded Annam at the moment, a small force did infiltrate Annam through missionary and other means.

In view of the new round of colonization frenzy in the 19th century, the large-scale colonial aggression carried out by the European powers that completed the industrial revolution and had strong ships and guns in their hands, Lin Haijiang felt that he had more than enough strength to solve, and there were many things that needed to be solved urgently, but in the final analysis, they had to be solved one by one.

In the early morning, Lin Haijiang, who had not slept all night, watched the fleet leave the port, and for this punishment, Lin Haijiang had already excluded Dalhousie and Rosseff, who were also waiting for a reply from China in the city of Guangzhou, so as not to cause unnecessary tension and misunderstanding, and Dalhousie immediately notified the Imperial Far East Fleet, which had just received reinforcements.

Since the Battle of Malacca, the British Far East Fleet has ceased patrolling the Strait of Malacca and sent warships to evacuate small troops and expatriates from several unfinished forts in Singapore to Hong Kong.

The British side very sensibly avoided the advantages of the armored protection cruisers in the old port, and at the same time took advantage of Lin Haijiang's psychology that he did not want to have bad relations with Britain and France to the end, and the British parliament always believed that India was where Britain's fundamental interests lie, while the Far East was where their dumping interests were located, and there was a fundamental difference between the two.

On the last day of March 1858, according to Lin Haijiang's calculations, his punishment fleet should have arrived off the coast of Yueben, and Lin Haijiang knew very well that it was impossible to completely blockade Yueben with only seven armored protection cruisers, and that the United States, Russia, France, Britain, the Netherlands, and other countries had interests in Yueben in order, and wanting to completely blockade Yueben would be tantamount to clashing with the interests of the European powers in Yueben, which was also what Lin Haijiang was trying to avoid at this stage, before his wings were full. Lin Haijiang will adopt a passive defensive posture towards Britain, France, Russia, and other countries, and in the international political region, no country is completely isolated or out of the system, and almost all countries are involved in different interests and ties.

So while waiting for news from the city, Lin Haijiang spent several days with experts and engineers at the Krupp Artillery Company in the old port, and there was no news about the punitive fleet that went to the city, but there was a very bad news from the port of Batavia. Governor General of Count Botto left office, and his successor, Earl Hinkson, did not buy Lin Haijiang's account at all, and threatened to be completely clear about the Chinese power in Batavia, saying that the Chinese were their pigs and sheep in captivity, and that it was natural for the white race to enslave the colored people.

Formerly Macklin. Before returning to China, Lieutenant Colonel Wentuk revealed an extremely important piece of information to Lin Haijiang, that is, Count Sinkerson had brought two ironclad ships with a displacement of about 5,000 tons, two third-class battleships, and six fourth-class cruisers from the Netherlands, and the army that came with them was as many as 5,000 people.

Lin Haijiang was a little depressed, is Earl Hinkson a madman who lacks military common sense? Only two ironclad ships with an overall backward design and firepower system dare to argue with themselves with nine ironclad ships?

Lin Haijiang knew that the defeat of Britain and France in the Far East had become a secret that few people knew in their own countries, and under the deliberate blockade of Britain and France, no one in Europe knew that there was a Chinese force in the old port of Sumatra in Southeast Asia and a highly deterrent ironclad fleet.

Therefore, the Earl of Hinkerson jumped out and shouted like an idiot, and the Netherlands also discovered the excellent performance of the attached ironclad ships in the Crimean War, so they hurriedly built three of them, and sent two of them to Southeast Asia, because the Dutch knew that Britain and France had not yet deployed ironclad ships in Southeast Asia, and hoped to rely on these two ironclad ships for the benefit of the Netherlands to stabilize the situation in Southeast Asia.

The Earl of Hinkson stood in the original belonging to Macklin. In the Doge's Palace, the Earl of Botto, arrogantly ordered the servants to dismantle the objects and sculptures that he looked unpleasant. During his tenure, Count Botto made the city of Batavia prosperous and stable, paid more than twice as much in taxes as his predecessor, and he himself was also very rich, and this time he returned to China was also high.

How could all this not make Earl Hinkson indignant! At the same time, it also brought an invisible pressure to Earl Hinkson, and the two began to feud since childhood, and later fought for his girlfriend. Botto hit Hinkson hard, and finally got the beauty back, for which Earl Hinkson spent most of his life paying tribute to Macklin. Count Botto's revenge.

After all, it was he who used his family's connections to move up and down to bring Macklin. Count Voto is transferred if he is unable to surpass Macklin's results during his tenure. Count Botto's words, then Count Hinkson himself and his family will become an embarrassing joke, and it will be difficult for Congress to use it again.

On the first day of his arrival in the port of Batavia, Earl Hinkson discovered Macklin. Count Botto was so kind to the local Chinese that Count Hinkson breathed a long sigh of relief, because he already regarded these Chinese as his own cows, and all he had to do was squeeze more money out of these wealthy Chinese.

For the many exhortations around him, Earl Hinkson took it as a deaf ear, Macklin. Count Boto did not have a decent army and fleet in his hands, so he naturally had to deal with the so-called pirate organizations, and he had the strength to completely sweep the old port and strategic Sumatra.

Perhaps out of disappointment with Count Hinkson, a large number of Dutch merchants chose to leave the port of Batavia temporarily, but almost all of them deliberately remained silent on one issue, that is, the astonishing force possessed by the old port of Limhaijiang.

Due to the dominance of the Earl of Hinkerson and the original Macklin. The harsh crackdowns of the merchants close to Count Botto, and the almost fivefold increase in taxes, united the Dutch merchants of the port of Batavia like never before, and they all wanted to see how the Count of Hinkson got out of his way.

Lin Haijiang, who had only slept for a while, was woken up by Ben John, who was in a hurry to find another site, as the deputy chief designer of the Hamburg shipyard and the chief designer of the shipyard in the old port, after inspecting the Mawei shipyard.

Ben John said to Lin Haijiang very angrily: "The geographical location of Mawei determines that it is not suitable for the important task of selecting a large shipyard at all, what do you need?" Mawei can build river gunboats at most, if you need armored protection cruisers or larger capital ships, then you must relocate the site, Mawei can only be used as a base for training junior skilled workers, if you build river gunboats, you don't need me, the chief designer of the old port shipyard, just find a ship designer! ”

Ben John spoke very quickly, the translator on the side was sweating a little, Lin Haijiang patiently waited for the translation to be completed, he knew that the stereotypical Prussian people's serious and responsible spirit in dealing with work and career was unmatched by any nation in the world.

So he smiled slightly, beckoned the translator and said, "Don't worry, I will say a sentence and you will translate it." ”

Lin Haijiang ordered the guards to pull open the curtain of the battle map, pointed to Hainan Island and said: "Mr. Ben John, please look here, this is China's second largest island after Taiwan, called Qiongya!" The long axis of the island is northeast to southwest, about 300 kilometers long, northwest to southeast is the short axis, about 180 kilometers long, with an area of 33,900 square kilometers, which is the second largest island in China after Taiwan Island. Qiongya is separated from the Qiongzhou Strait in the north and faces the Leizhou Peninsula. The Qiongzhou Strait, which is about 20 kilometers wide, is a maritime corridor between Qiongya and the mainland, and a shipping passage between the Beibu Gulf and the South China Sea. ”

Lin Haijiang patiently waited for the translation and then continued: "There is a good deep-water port on the island, and there are also rich resources such as Shilu rich iron ore, copper, manganese, aluminum, coal and Sheephorn Ridge crystal mine, etc., I plan to build a large shipyard here by the end of this year at the latest, and the supporting smelting, metal processing, machinery manufacturing, etc. will also start at the same time." ”

Ben John looked around the map for a while and suddenly said, "Lindudu, this island doesn't seem to be under your authority?" ”

Lin Haijiang smiled slightly: "What does it matter?" If we need it, bring it over! ”

Ben John nodded with satisfaction and said, "With your commitment, I am much more relieved, and after dinner, I will study with you about the construction of the Warrior-class battleship you envisioned and the equipment of the echelon turret." ”

After sending off Ben John, Lin Haijiang was completely sleepy, it can be said that Ben John this time was a wake-up call to him who was unwilling to face the reality, although the Mawei Shipyard is famous in China's modern history, but it is not a good choice, because of the lack of infrastructure near Mawei, steel, copper, aluminum, manganese, coal and other resources need to be transported.

The real purpose of the Mawei shipyard in history is just an explanation of the countless silver consumed by the imperial court in Nanyang, Lin Haijiang looked at the strategic map of Hainan on the word Qiongya more and more dazzling, after the attack on Hainan was followed by the construction of Hainan, large-scale renovation, paving roads, the equipment he ordered in Prussia will also arrive at the old port at the end of the year, Lin Haijiang felt that it seemed very necessary to speed up the strategic deployment of Hainan Island.

Another important link relative to Hainan Island is Taiwan, between Taiwan and Hainan, Lin Haijiang first chose Hainan, because Hainan is far away from the ability of the Qing court, for the Qing court, Qiongya is just a place to send people to commit crimes, to Qiongya and Ningguta is just a south and a north, Qiongya not only has no tax revenue, but also needs to subsidize hundreds of thousands of taels of the imperial court every year to maintain the island garrison to suppress the Li rebellion from time to time.

Therefore, at this moment, when the Qing court is in internal and external difficulties, the loss of Qiongya will not cause the Qing court to react excessively, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is still separated from the Qing court between the two Guangzhous, although the foundation of the Taiping army is not afraid of the Nanyang naval division entrenched in the two Guangzhous, but its decision-making level, especially Yang Xiuqing, knows the terrible things about Lin Haijiang, for Yang Xiuqing, Lin Haijiang is like a monster hidden in the fog, only the moment he shows his fangs and claws to bite the prey will reveal his true strength, and Yang Xiuqing has always had a hunch, The person behind the sale of foreign guns and cannons to himself was Lin Haijiang.

Taiwan for the Qing court has an unusual significance, the history of the Qing court three times two platforms, the consumption of countless silver, the death and wounded of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, showing a so-called determination, now the Fujian Navy has become his Lin army, Fujian and the Taiwan Strait are only a stone's throw away, so when to take Taiwan is also determined by Lin Haijiang's strategic arrangement.

While Lin Haijiang was thinking hard about Hainan's strategy, Governor Sinkerson of Batavia was brewing a large-scale anti-Chinese storm, and the end of this storm was the old port where Lin Haijiang was located.

(To be continued)