Everyone in the Purple Tent knew that the Javanese Yuan and the Ming Dynasty had been hostile for a long time. Therefore, Guo Kang was very suspicious that asking Sun 100,000 for help was self-deprecating.

If you count the vassal princely states and tribes, the power of the Javanese Yuan covers almost half of the South Seas, and it seems that the strength is very large. But in reality, their territory was dotted, and not contiguous like the Central Plains of the Ming Dynasty, the rivers of the Timurid Khanate, and the Balkans of the Purple Horde. The real territory of the Javanese dollar is a series of large and small seaports and surrounding annexed areas.

Merchants used these port networks to provide ships with supply depots and safe havens to maintain the shipping lanes. Outside the port area, there are generally handicraft clusters, followed by large areas of plantations, mines and tree farms.

The handicraft area is home to a large number of craftsmen who maintain ports and ships and produce all kinds of goods for trade. Timber was used for seafaring, raw materials for mines, and plantation estates for food rations for nearby residents and cash crops for trafficking.

Outside of these places, it doesn't matter much about them.

Between the ports, outside the Javanese Yuan reclamation area, there are numerous indigenous groups, large and small. Some were primitive tribes, while others had already formed more well-established princely states. The Javanese were generally interested in them, demanding only that they obey them, join the trade network, abide by their own trade rules, and pay an indefinite amount of tribute. Some tribes with relatively reliable planting capacity will be required to grow a set of crops, which will be purchased by merchants in a centralized manner. The upper limit of jurisdiction, which is generally the case.

In the past, the great powers and hegemons in the South Seas region adopted this structure, which was later called the "mandala system". For the natives, although the Javanese yuan is more managed, the overall nature is not too much. This is also a tacit understanding gradually formed with the locals in the more than 100 years since the Yuan Dynasty conquered Java.

On the other hand, the Javanese dollar can't actually trust the locals.

The backbone of the armed forces of Javanese Yuan is the family and fleet of wealthy merchants such as the Sun clan of Yangzhou, the Chen clan of Fujian, and the Wu clan of Lin'an. In addition, there are also the Nguyen and Hu clans who came to defect after the annexation of Annam (Vietnam) by the Ming Dynasty; After the defeat of King Liang, the Dali Duan clan who escaped and so on. These Jiangnan Han people, Jiaozhi people, and Dali people formed the core part of the army.

Since the number of people was still too small compared to the Ming army, the Javanese Yuan would also organize larger peripheral armies as a supplement, with Champa and Siam being one of the main sources. They oscillated back and forth between the Ming and Javanese Yuan in an attempt to maintain their independence, and thus tended to turn a blind eye to the latter's efforts to recruit troops on their own turf.

In addition, the Javanese Yuan also widely recruited mercenaries to fight for themselves. To the east, there are gangs of ronins from Japan. To the west, there were Turkic forces in exile after the Delhi Sultanate was crushed by Timur. Although these people have uneven combat effectiveness, they are also a supplement to the military power of the Javanese Yuan.

As for the natives of the islands of the South Seas, the Javanese Yuan had little confidence in their combat effectiveness. In the early days, the indigenous armies of the vassal were also mobilized to fight, but their extremely poor performance led the Javanese officers to believe that the side effects outweighed the positive effects.

Most of the indigenous armies have little effect other than replenishing their numbers, and only consume supplies in vain. On the battlefield, they will always collapse quickly, bringing negative psychological effects to their allies. This kind of person, if you take him with you, it is better not to bring him.

Theoretically, if rigorously trained, the indigenous army should not be so bad in combat. But the Javanese Yuan has dealt with various indigenous forces. Many of them were only temporarily subservient and resentful of their struggle for ports and land. Therefore, Java Yuan was not at ease to train them, and only occasionally sent a few vassals to be cannon fodder, and could not even face the Ming army, so he could only suppress other tribes.

And with the expansion of trade, the ocean-going trade routes became more and more smooth, and they gradually discovered some new ways.

Timur's westward expedition broke through the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, allowing it to enter a long-lost unified situation. After that, the smooth trade routes allowed an endless stream of Slavic slaves to travel from South Russia, through the Caucasus, along the two rivers into the Persian Gulf, and then all the way to the East. Soon after, the Purple Horde joined in, opening a route from Constantinople to the port of Damascus, allowing the flow of slaves to continue to increase.

These white slaves were unfamiliar with each other and did not speak the same language. For the Javanese Yuan, the native slaves were unreliable and could easily arouse the wrath of the local relatives, but the white slaves did not have these shortcomings. Those who are more loyal and robust can also be supplemented by the march.

Thus, from that time on, the Javanese Yuan became one of the main buyers of white slaves, filling them into plantations in Java, Luzon and Borneo.

Because the Ming Dynasty monopolized a large number of handicraft products and tried to crack down on the trade of the Javanese Yuan all day long, the Javanese Yuan has been trying to replace the smuggled goods of the Ming Dynasty, which has become increasingly risky and unstable in recent years, with home-produced products. These silks, ceramics and ironware, although still somewhat problematic, are also quite marketable in the West, allowing them to make a lot of profits.

However, Western buyers are often unable to provide valuable and long-term supply of bulk products to bring back the ship. Returning if it's not full is a waste of valuable capacity. The trans-Indian slave trade made up for it.