Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 227 Congo II

ps: Thank you to my classmate Long Aotian for the reward of 100 Qidian coins!
On March 1878, , at the mouth of the Matadi River in Congo, Huang Naishang commanded more than Chinese soldiers and more than blacks to level the land near the river bank.

The climate in Africa is hot. The Chinese soldiers, wearing dark green tropical uniforms, had drops of sweat on their faces and bodies. As they dragged the felled trees, the sweat was thrown onto the wet ground and mixed with the soft soil.

A soldier, soaked in sweat, took off his military cap during a break, held it in his hand and waved it as a fan to drive away the heat, bringing up a hot breeze.

"This area is open and fertile, and is close to the Congo River in the west, making it very suitable for cultivation."

Amid the busy crowd, Huang Naishang pointed to the land around him, his eyes full of hope and caution, and said, "Lieutenant Colonel Xue, His Royal Highness has allowed some of the refugees stranded in Annan to be transferred to Congo for reclamation activities. The first batch of 700 refugees from Minqing, Gutian, Yongtai and other areas of Fujian Province will arrive in Congo in the next week. We must build the new camp before the refugees arrive. We can't let them get infected with tropical diseases and die here."

"According to the advice of the doctor sent from home, my soldiers and the more than one thousand slaves bought from the local chiefs will level the land within a half-mile radius around it. Mugwort will be used to isolate the camp from the woods at the edge of the camp to prevent the new refugees from contracting dysentery."

Xue Yizhong replied.

"Lieutenant Colonel Xue has given it a very thoughtful consideration." Huang Naishang nodded and agreed, "Everything is difficult at the beginning. The first batch of refugees who came to Congo were all poor people who had nothing. They believed in the Han country and went to this disease-ridden wilderness without any effort. As the two of us in charge of the Congo colonization plan, we must solve their worries and not let them come to Congo without food and clothing and without a place to live like they did on the mainland."

"Don't worry, Master Huang. Although this place is a bit barren, the soil is very fertile. In February last year, I and my brothers reclaimed more than 100 mu of wasteland and planted some sweet potatoes. By March this year, the wasteland was already covered with sweet potato vines. The big sweet potatoes under the vines weighed several kilograms. I and my brothers spent more than half a month digging more than 100,000 kilograms of sweet potatoes. In addition to supplying them to the troops and black slaves as miscellaneous grains, there was still a small half of the sweet potatoes that were not eaten. The brothers who were in charge of logistics used them to feed livestock.

Mr. Huang, as long as we grow food here, we don’t have to worry about the harvest. The refugees who come to Congo don’t have to worry about not having enough to eat.”

"This land is indeed very fertile. After the refugees arrive in Congo, we can organize them to grow some rice and vegetables as food supply for the base. Then, after they adapt to the weather here, we can arrange for them to supervise and guide the black slaves to open mines."

"The communication ship relayed a telegram from China yesterday. His Highness ordered us to delay the progress of mining the Congolese copper mine. The copper mine that has been planned for construction will be temporarily sealed and mined after China has coordinated with the European powers."

"Is Lieutenant Colonel Xue's information reliable?"

Huang Naishang said with a frown.

"It should be reliable. The official notification will be delivered when the fleet receiving the warships stops in Congo."

"Exploration personnel have discovered a large copper mine in Kinshasa. Since the country has ordered a temporary delay in mining, I will send someone to notify the exploration team to stop exploring the Kinshasa copper mine to prevent the location of the copper mine from being leaked and causing unnecessary trouble."

Huang Naishang pondered for a moment and said seriously, "The Congo region is rich in resources such as copper, coal, gold, and diamonds. The two copper mines and one iron mine on the east bank of the Ubangi River border the French colony. While the three mines have not yet been mined, Lieutenant Colonel Xue and your men will try their best to restore the explored mining areas to their original state, and station a group of soldiers to defend the east bank of the Ubangi River to prevent the French from expanding their influence to the east bank."

"A company of soldiers under Lieutenant Colonel Frank set out this morning to the east bank of the Ubangi River. The defense of the area near the mine should not be neglected."

Xue Yizhong said, "The foreign legion is an outsider after all. Will there be any hidden dangers if we station them near the mine?"

Huang Naishang was a little worried when he heard that the troops dispatched by Xue Yizhong were foreign legion.

"There will be no problem. The foreign soldiers stationed on the east bank of the Ubangi River are more than 20 kilometers away from the mining area. They don't know the situation in the mining area. In addition, there are more than 100 National Defense Force soldiers guarding within a three-kilometer radius of the mining area. No one, including foreign soldiers, will be allowed to enter the mining area without a permit issued by the troops."

"Lieutenant Colonel Xue has thought carefully and prepared the security work for the mine in advance. I feel relieved now."

Huang Naishang nodded, and the cautious expression on his face gradually relaxed.

Unlike ordinary Chinese who immigrated to China, although Huang Naishang was poor in his childhood, he had the opportunity to receive Western culture after he grew up, which enabled him to break away from the conservative thinking of ordinary Chinese and develop more radical ideas.

In 1866, in order to make a living, the eighteen-year-old Huang Naishang was baptized by an American priest and entered a church opened by Americans in Fujian to work as a handyman. During the six or seven years in the church, Huang Naishang, in addition to reciting the Bible, also diligently learned English and cultural and scientific knowledge. He was exposed to the history of expansion and development of the United States since its founding, and developed the radical idea that China should learn from the United States, organize the Chinese people to immigrate to Southeast Asia by the government, and open up the Nanyang region as a Chinese colony.

Huang Naishang, who was only in his early twenties at the time, had radical ideas and no one agreed with his concepts. It was not until his later years that Huang Naishang made up his mind and took out all his accumulated wealth and borrowed money from other places to save up enough initial immigration start-up capital. He then bought 3,000 acres of land on the island of Kalimantan and recruited more than 1,000 Chinese from his hometown of Fujian Province to come to the island of Mantan in Kalimantan to carry out reclamation activities.

Huang Naishang was from Fuzhou. After the reclamation farm had taken shape, Huang Naishang named it the New Fuzhou Reclamation Farm, hoping to develop the reclamation farm on the island of Borneo into a new breeding ground for the Chinese, just as the British had developed colonies such as Australia and New Zealand.

By 1903, the first batch of purchased land had been completely reclaimed. Huang Naishang felt satisfied. He sent his son-in-law and the younger generation of his clan, Fu Laojia, to recruit new immigrants, and negotiated with the British colonists to expand the scope of the reclamation farm. However, after seeing the prosperous development of Chinese farms, the British colonists were worried that more and more Chinese people gathering together would bring instability to the local area. Therefore, they not only rejected Huang Naishang's request, but also put pressure on the other party, either to agree to the British conditions and allow British businessmen to sell opium on the reclamation farm, or to disband the reclamation farm.

The British used opium to open China's door. A large number of Chinese lost their country and families because of opium addiction. Opium also gave the Chinese a negative image of the sick man of East Asia. Huang Naishang, who had been poor in his childhood, was well aware of the harm of opium. When he was in charge of the reclamation farm, he prohibited all Chinese on the farm from smoking opium. The British once again put pressure on him with the opium issue, which touched Huang Naishang's bottom line. In anger and feeling powerless, Huang Naishang refused the British colonists' demands, sold the reclamation farm to local Chinese and Chinese workers on the farm, returned to his hometown alone, and soon devoted himself to the revolutionary cause.

Huang Naishang's original fate was the same as that of many Chinese victims who died of starvation. It was changed by the rise of the Han Dynasty in South America. After immigrating to South America in 1873, Huang Naishang used the knowledge he learned in the church to be recruited as a section-level diplomat by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was in urgent need of people who understood Western culture and mastered Western languages. After three years of work, he was gradually promoted to a deputy director-level official. (The official ranks from low to high are section, department, bureau, department, ministry, cabinet, and twelve levels.)
In early 1877, Huang Naishang suggested that some of the refugees stranded in Southeast Asia be evacuated to the colonial outposts opened up by the Han Dynasty in Africa. This would not only solve the resettlement problem of Chinese refugees, but also increase the proportion of Chinese in African outposts and strengthen the Han Dynasty's control over the colonial outposts in Africa.

The climate in Africa is hot and tropical diseases are prevalent. Even if the Han Dynasty could provide a large amount of the anti-dysentery drug quinine, the Chinese would still face great obstacles in expanding their influence in the local area.

Deep down in his heart, Li Mingyuan was not willing to allow Chinese to immigrate to Africa. Therefore, based on the experience of later generations, after the collapse of the ruling power of the great powers in Africa, none of the outsiders left behind could maintain their regimes. South Africa, Rhodesia, Mozambique, one after another white-dominated African countries were overthrown by blacks, and the surviving whites were reduced from rulers to the ruled and accepted the jurisdiction of the black government.

Due to poverty, cultural backwardness and other factors, Africa's population is growing rapidly. In later generations, blacks not only left Africa, but also took root in various parts of the world, including the United States, Brazil, Britain, Germany, mainland China, and Russia. Not only are there blacks in economically developed areas, but even in Russia, which has a very cold weather, and the mainland, which is still a developing country, there are also a large number of blacks.

Li Mingyuan had no intention of clearing out the blacks in the Han Kingdom's strongholds in Africa, but he also did not want to see the Chinese and white people left behind in Africa suffer the same fate. Therefore, when he first saw the suggestion submitted by Huang Naishang, Li Mingyuan rejected it. Later, after careful consideration, he approved Huang Naishang's plan and promoted his organizational level to a director-level official, responsible for the Han Kingdom's colonial affairs in Africa.

From a long-term perspective, with the rapid development of science and technology, the unfavorable factors that restrict the expansion of the Han Dynasty's colonial power in Africa will quickly disappear. Immigration ships can transport larger immigrants from the Far East and settle them in African strongholds. Moreover, the expansion of the Han Dynasty in South America will not stop. Once Argentina and Uruguay are completely annexed, the Han Dynasty can bring the Chinese who remain in the African strongholds back to the country, thereby reducing the number of Chinese in Africa.

(End of this chapter)