May 20, Yongan (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia).

"Toot ......"

With a long and loud whistle, the liner "Qishun" slowly docked at the berth of Yong'an Port, and the thick anchor chain was quickly put into the water.

Fan Agui and the others grabbed the side of the boat, while curiously looking at the dock below, while carefully peeking at Fan Xingbao, for fear that he would lose his temper again and reprimand them for their ignorance and stupidity.

Ever since the passenger ship they were on stopped for a day at the port of Suide in that Shun country for a day, the rich cousin had become a little irritable after losing money at the gambling house at the docks. If you have a slight disagreement in your words, you will be thrown in the face and even scolded. made several brothers of their Fan family in front of him, but Nie Nie didn't dare to say much, so he simply hid in the third-class cabin and didn't see him.

At this time, when the passenger ship arrives at this port known as Yong'an, the sailors will stop for three days, so that the passengers on board can go ashore to breathe, or go into the city to stroll around, taste the local food, and appreciate the exotic atmosphere of the city.

According to the sailors, the city was under the rule of the Westerners four years ago. Later, the Yi people were forced by the pressure of the Qi State and had to give the city to the Qi State.

When Fan Agui and the others heard this, they couldn't help but smack their tongues when they looked at each other.

Obediently, in this part of Nanyang, the Qi State is really domineering, and as soon as his eyes are glared, the Westerners have to kneel and give in, and willingly "give" such a city to the Qi State.

You must know that the city has been operated by the Yi people for more than 100 years, and they have built it as an oriental base, and they have really made great efforts to carry out large-scale construction.

Although I haven't even been to the city to see the excitement, from a distance on the boat, I can see the buildings lined up one after another, all the way to the distance, and many towering spires piercing the city skyline, countless carriages and people pouring from the docks to the city, and clouds of black smoke gushing above the city from time to time.

Such a city has a population of more than 100,000, and the wealth accumulated in it is also tens of thousands. But under the pressure of the Qi State, the Xiyang Yi people gave up when they said they would give up.

This Nanyang, as Fan Xingbao said, as long as it passes through Qiongzhou, all the oceans, islands and continents are the territory of their Qi country!

"What do you see? Gone, gone, get off the boat and breathe. ”

When Fan Agui and the others were stunned, Fan Xingbao beckoned them to get off the boat and land in a rather impatient tone, and after speaking, without waiting for them to respond, he followed the flow of people and walked towards the gangway by himself.

Seeing this, Fan Agui hurriedly followed, and took the duffel bag from Fan Xingbao's hand as if flattering, and followed behind step by step.

"Keep up, don't look around! If you get lost in the city, be careful that the police will catch you and throw you on some remote island overseas to colonize. ”

After getting off the boat, Fan Xingbao turned his head and reprimanded several brothers who were still looking around.

"Oh, I'm provincial." When Fan Agui heard this, he immediately took a few steps and stood beside Fan Xingbao. At the same time, I couldn't help but turn my head to look at the long lines in the distance.

On the west side of the wharf, several long columns of native coolies were boarding the ships one after another, under the watchful eye of armed soldiers.

There were sturdy men, miserable women, and even old men with a gaunt figure, all of them silent, one by one, walking through the empty dock area and boarding the few cargo ships docked at the berths.

After the completion of the project, they will be transferred to Chao Binh Province (which includes Banten, Lampung, Bangka Island, and Belitung Island on both sides of the Sunda Strait in present-day Indonesia), and priority will be given to the construction of a railway from Chao Ping to Lok Betong (Telok Betong, a port in the southern part of Sumatra), in order to better control the Quang Ninh Strait (present-day Sunda Strait).

The fate of these Javanese natives was undoubtedly very tragic, and during the reign of the Dutch East India Company, they were reduced to the lowest level of slave labor, being humiliated and oppressed, and their lives were consumed in never-ending labor.

After the Qi people took over the territory and assets belonging to the Dutch East India Company, they did not usher in the "liberation" of their lives and the turning point of their fate, but continued to be treated as consumables, contributing the rest of their lives to the local construction of the Qi country, sweat and blood.

In order to improve the living environment of Yong'an City, the Qi people carried out large-scale construction of the city's infrastructure, and the native laborers, under the whips and sticks of the overseers, built city roads, cleaned up simple and dilapidated shantytowns, dug sewer pipes, and filled in swamps and ponds.

No, the Dutch dug many artificial canals and ponds throughout the city in order to make Batavia more like Amsterdam, but this also caused more tropical infectious diseases. With the degree of attention paid by the people of Qi to the prevention and control of various infectious diseases, this situation will naturally not be allowed to continue to exist and spread.

Therefore, after the Qi people gained jurisdiction over the city, they not only changed its name, but also invested huge sums of money to transform it accordingly.

After all, the seventy or eighty thousand inhabitants of this city are all people of Daqi, and they can't cause tens of millions of deaths because of a plague or some kind of infectious disease.

Because of their lazy personality and small size, the Javanese natives who work are often considered lazy by the overseers and have always been miserable. Punches and kicks are commonplace, and killing and killing people are not uncommon.

Poor food conditions, heavy work, and abuse by the overseers all combined to cause the number of lazy native coolies to decline at a visible rate.

When they finally finished the infrastructure renovation project in Yong'an City, they still didn't breathe a sigh of relief. Qi began to plan the construction of the Guangyong Railway, and established the Nanyang Railway Trading Company through the issuance of shares, which soon raised two million yuan in the society.

As a result, these Javanese native laborers were sent to the railway construction site and began a year-long construction period.

Extreme heat, torrential rains, typhoons, geological landslides, construction accidents, and various diseases have consumed more than 2,300 lives on this 120-kilometer railway line.

In line with the grand plan of the Nanyang Railway Trading Company, more than 2,500 kilometers of railways will be built in the Kaihua Governorate in the next 15 years, and a railway network around the island will be initially formed. According to this level of consumption, to complete the entire railway construction plan, I am afraid that 20,000 or 30,000 people will be filled in the construction site.

Not to mention, the plantations all over the islands, as well as the infrastructure construction and transformation of one city after another, I don't know how many lives of native laborers will be swallowed.

Turen, the fate is indeed really tragic!

When he first arrived in the territory of Qi State, Fan Agui didn't know what fate those natives would face. But from a distance, they were like a flock of lonely and helpless sheep, being ruthlessly driven to the ship by the heavily armed soldiers of the Qi State, and there was no good result when they thought about it, and they couldn't help but feel a little panicked in their hearts.

When we arrive in the country of Qi, what will be the fate of these newcomers in the future?

——

Wes Parks walked out of the Department of Immigration building with a dejected expression, looked up at the fiery midday sun, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and then let out a long sigh.

"How's it going, Wes?" Haber Schmid walked up quickly and asked with concern.

"The examiner thinks that my Chinese is too bad to be a real Qi person." Wes Parks shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands helplessly, his tone revealing a deep sense of loss.

"Oh......" Haber Schmid said with his right hand and patted his arm, reassuringly, "It's okay, Wes. This time there was no chance, and at the end of the year, there was another language test. I believe that after half a year of hard work, you will definitely pass the assessment of the Ministry of Immigration and officially become a naturalized Qi country. ”

"Half a year later, I don't know if I'll ever get the chance to go back to Batavia again." Wes Parks smiled wryly and said, "You also know that as a sailor, I can't control my time at all. …… Oh shit, those square words did stump me! ”

"Wes, we're very unlucky." Haber Schmid said: "I heard that twenty or thirty years ago, as long as you lived in Qi for five years and knew a little Chinese conversation, you could easily become a naturalized citizen. But now, it seems that the state of Qi has become more and more restrictive on Europeans who are not only facing the East, not only must have a five-year residence period, but also have a stable residence, and the difficulty of the Chinese language assessment has also increased a lot. ”

"Yes, the very tolerant policy of Qi back then is gone." Miller Scola next to him listened, and also complained: "As the Qi State became more and more powerful, they began to become arrogant and conservative, and more and more emphasis was placed on Eastern blood and Chinese ethnicity. Oh God, this should not be the attitude that a great nation has. ”

Schmid and Parks couldn't help but shake their heads and lament.

Yes, the Qi State is rich and powerful, controls the vast oceans, encompasses a large area of overseas territory, and the entire Indian Ocean is like their inner lake, with countless countries and nationalities prostrate under their feet, and they have plenty of confidence to maintain this lofty posture.

The Qin State, which was dominant in the east, had a huge population and national strength, and could only nest on the mainland and expand towards the barren northwest region, rather than daring to plunder the edge of Qi at sea.

India, which was once wealthy, has been unable to control the situation of the empire since the Mughal Empire was defeated by Qi, and the governors of various places have become self-reliant, the Maratha Kingdom has taken advantage of the situation, Bengal has formed a system of its own for the control of Qi, and the southern states are all puppet servants of Qi, and the entire subcontinent can be said to have been shattered into one place and reduced to a colonial territory taken by Qi.

The Persian Safavid Empire was under a heavy blow from the Afghan rebels, and its decline was irrepressible, and now with the strong intervention of the Qi State, although the empire's momentum seems to be recovering again, its internal affairs, diplomacy and military affairs are all subject to the Qi State, as if they were a protectorate.

On the European continent, the situation is treacherous, and the countries are constantly strife, even if they are as strong as France, Britain, and Spain, it is difficult to face the situation of Qi on their own.

It is reported that the Qi-British War had come to an end as early as the end of last year, and the English government was running around Europe in the hope of obtaining the necessary diplomatic support so that it could sign a decent armistice with the Qi country.

Yes, England actually began to send envoys to the Qi people in July and August last year, wanting to end the war.

They are at the end of their rope and can no longer fight.

In more than two years of war, England lost 70 or 80 warships one after another, and more than 300 large and small merchant ships, and overseas trade and fishing were devastated. The British government was even more heavily indebted, and even if it issued government bonds at an annual interest rate of more than 15 percent, it would not be able to raise enough funds for the war.

The Viceroyalty of New Spain of the Kingdom of Spain began to attack British Belize, the French began to covet the British island of Barbados, and the Dutch people showed a greedy eye for the British Bahamas.

What's worse is that Qi sent a task force to join forces with the Qing navy to use Spanish Cuba as a base to frequently raid and plunder the British North American colonial territories, and even directly launched landing operations in some weakly defended areas, looting coastal towns and destroying local production and living order, making the entire North American territory a lot of noise. While cursing the brutality of the Qi people, they were also full of endless complaints about this war.

The main fleet of Qi once engaged in two large-scale decisive battles with the English Navy near the English Channel, although the English showed great bravery and played a very high level of technology and tactics, sinking and damaging more than ten ships of the Qi State.

However, due to the huge gap in the protection performance and maneuverability of the warship, especially in the face of an ironclad ship, the British navy seemed to be a little helpless, and in the two naval battles, the losses were very heavy, as many as more than 20 warships above the second class were sunk or captured, and other types of warships suffered countless losses, and thousands of officers and men were killed and wounded.

So much so that in the end, part of the captains of the English Navy refused to go out of port to fight.

It wasn't a close battle at all, it was purely a slaughter of Chiguoguo!

The ironclad ship of the other side was obviously hit by dozens of bullets, but it behaved without hindrance, and it took time to blast out round after round of artillery fire, hunting down the English naval warships in front of him one by one.

Since the invention of the steam engine battleship, the Qi people have once again subverted the battle mode at sea!

It is foreseeable that under the threat of Qi's strong maritime force, even if England contacts more European countries and obtains the necessary diplomatic support, it will eventually be forced to sign a contract that may be humiliating due to the unequal situation between the two sides.

On the other hand, through this Qi-British war, presumably the European continent will also be vigilant enough against Qiguo.

More than 20 years ago, the state of Qi began to intervene in the situation on the European continent through the War of the Spanish Succession. At that time, it did not attract much attention from the European continent countries.

A regional power that dominates the Indian Ocean, relying on its strong industrial production capacity, actively expands its trade market, and follows the European Union in fighting against the broken Spain for the benefit of South America.

No matter how powerful they are at sea, will they still be able to reach far away on the European continent?

However, the Battle of Qiying greatly shook the European continent.

The Qi people can really project their sea power to the North Atlantic, which is so far away!

They can also influence the Balkans and the Holy Roman Empire through the Ottoman Empire!

They can also influence the Caucasus and the Russian Empire through the Persian Empire!

They also established close relations with Prussia and Sweden, which in turn influenced the situation around the Baltic Sea!

It can be said that Qi has become an important force in the situation on the European continent. This will also make European countries have to take into account the influence factor of Qi when making a major foreign policy.

Since the establishment of the foundation of the Han continent, except for several invasions by the Spanish Philippines and the Dutch East India Company in the early days, the Qi State has hardly threatened the Qi mainland for more than 80 years. However, it can rely on a series of overseas bases and ports to remotely control the Eurasian continent, and at the same time, with the advantages of various maritime points under its control, it sits on a vast overseas market, and continuously nourishes the country to continue to develop and grow.

Yong'an and the surrounding areas, which were originally the territory of the Dutch East India Company, were under the jurisdiction of the Qi State, and the Chinese and the corresponding ethnic groups (mixed race) were automatically granted overseas national status, which was a great joy.

However, many European-American residents only have the right to reside in overseas territories, and they still need to be screened and assessed by the Ministry of Immigration before they can obtain official national status, which makes many European-American people who want to become citizens of this big country complain and slander the government of Qi for treating them differently and are suspected of "racial discrimination".

Why can those former senior employees of the East India Company, who have a huge worth of tens of thousands, easily pass the assessment of the Ministry of Immigration and obtain the official national status of Qi in three years?

The Qi government not only treats immigrants differently by race, but also dislikes the poor and loves the rich!

“…… Let's talk about it. Compared to the natives who were treated as lowly slave laborers, we Europeans had a glimmer of hope of becoming part of the country. And, even without national identity, we should be content to be able to bathe in peace and stability and earn a salary that is unattainable on the continent. ”

Haber Schmid sat by the window of the tavern, looking sideways at a group of immigrants who might have come from the Qin Kingdom, walking as he looked curiously at the tall buildings on both sides of the street, and said in a faint voice.

These lucky immigrants from the East, as long as they stay in the territory of Qi for a few years, once they submit their applications, can smoothly become official nationals of this country.

The so-called "same people" don't have the same fate!

(End of chapter)