Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 230 Congo IV

ps: Thanks to classmate DLD 93 for the 200 Starting Coins and classmate I am watching Haigou for the 100 Starting Coins for the support!
Colonial development at the national level has never been a sentimental action. Although the Chinese troops tried their best to avoid conflicts with indigenous tribes, in the process of repeatedly going deep into the interior of Congo and establishing trading points near the main channel and tributaries of the Congo River, the National Defense Forces had hundreds of battles of varying sizes with the local indigenous people.

Thanks to the advantage in equipment, there were few direct casualties in direct combat. However, due to the complexity of jungle combat, many soldiers were ambushed by the natives or bitten by poisonous creatures such as snakes and spiders, and eventually died due to lack of effective treatment.

The number of non-combat casualties was difficult to control effectively. Many officers of the National Defense Forces, while complaining about the poor medical skills of the military doctors, also took out their anger on the indigenous tribes who refused to cooperate.

On January 1875, , young and strong men from the Gaod tribe were killed for attacking a pioneering team of the National Defense Army.

On February 13, the Alatak tribe was completely wiped out. On May 8, the National Defense Forces eliminated the largest indigenous force around Aketti. Two thousand young black men were captured and forced to do hard labor...

The National Defense Force's powerful attack on the indigenous tribes not only caused some small black tribes that managed to escape to become more hostile to the Chinese, but also strengthened the Han government's control over the Congo region.

Matadi is the only large-scale stronghold established by the National Defense Force in the Congo region. The National Defense Force's African colonial forces, foreign troops and the earliest refugees to arrive in Congo are all distributed in the area around Matadi. After the National Defense Force took the initiative to eliminate hostile indigenous tribes, the Han government gradually established small trading points integrating trade and military control along the Congo River.

Small trading points are generally built against the main channel of the Congo River. Each trading point is stationed with a small National Defense Force team of five to twenty people and about twenty black servants. They use the weapons and supplies transported by the fleet to maintain the safety of the waterways near the trading points and implement a deterrent policy against the nearby indigenous people.

As the Han country's domestic support for the colonial development of the Congo continued to increase, Huang Naishang and Xue Yizhong had established 26 small trading points in the Congo. Through the interconnected trading points, the National Defense Forces established a tight grid chessboard in the vast interior of the Congo. When any hat point on the chessboard was attacked by indigenous forces, the neighboring National Defense Force soldiers could quickly arrive at the battle site by boat and strike the attacking indigenous people.

With trading points as the mainstay and the main channel of the Congo River and its many tributaries as chains, Li Mingyuan borrowed the Japanese army's cage policy and achieved good results in the Congo region. One by one, the indigenous tribes blocked by the grid composed of trading points were eliminated, and more and more indigenous tribes gave up resistance under the threat of force from the National Defense Force and chose to cooperate with the National Defense Force.

The Umudu tribe is the most submissive among the surrendered tribes, and Masamba, as the tribal chief, is the indigenous chief who cooperates most with the National Defense Force's actions.

Although there are more than twenty indigenous tribes that have surrendered to the National Defense Force, not many of them are as sincere as Masamba.

In order to reward Chief Masamba for his contributions in mobilizing the young and strong people in the tribe to assist the National Defense Force in combat, Huang Naishang, after consulting Li Mingyuan, allocated 200 square kilometers of land around Umudu where Masamba was located to his tribe, and appointed him as the first native king of Congo, responsible for managing more than a dozen indigenous tribes around Umudu.

The feudal system of local kings was an idea that Huang Naishang came up with based on the British experience in colonizing India.

In India, British colonists retained partial rights for hundreds of Indian kings and indirectly managed vast areas that were beyond the reach of colonial forces through them.

The British policy of relying on local kings to govern the Indian region was very effective. In the great uprising that broke out in 1859 and swept across India, many colonial outposts controlled by British colonists were breached by Indians, and British soldiers, the elderly and the weak in the colonial outposts were slaughtered. However, many Indian local kings who were local rulers and from the same clan as the rebels did not join the ranks to fight against the British colonists. On the contrary, they gathered their armed forces to rescue the British colonial troops who were besieged in various isolated outposts by the rebels, and helped the British colonists hold out until the arrival of reinforcements. Then, under the leadership of the British army, they defeated the rebellious Indian people.

After the Indian Uprising was suppressed, the Indian people who revolted were brutally persecuted, while those Indian kings who wholeheartedly followed the British white masters were also rewarded handsomely. In view of the Indian kings' hard work in the uprising, the British not only recognized the kings' right to manage their territories, but also gave them more power.

The local princes and nobles of India had always been obedient to the British rule until the signing of the India-Pakistan partition agreement. The Indian princes and nobles, knowing that they had been betrayed, gave up their illusions about the British. The British gave up the Indian kings they had supported, and instead wooed Nehru and others to form an opposition force. From a long-term development perspective, this was undoubtedly a wrong move. In the Congo region, Huang Naishang did not consider the outcome of the Congo region nearly a hundred years later. He just improved the ruling structure of the Han Kingdom over the Congo based on the experience he gained from the British.

Huang Naishang had two plans for his colonial rule over Congo. One was to establish direct rule in strategically important and mineral-rich areas such as Matadi, Kinshasa, and Sangigani, with colonial institutions managing the local area. The other was to exercise indirect rule in primitive areas deep in the interior of Congo, far from shipping routes, by appointing indigenous chiefs as local kings.

Masamba was Huang Naishang's first attempt to implement the system of enfeoffment of local kings.

In October 1877, after learning that he had been canonized as the local king by a nobleman from afar and with the help of a translator who had a basic understanding of Chinese in the tribe, Masamba excitedly knelt on the ground and accepted the canonization from Huang Naishang according to the strange etiquette he had learned.

The certificate for enthroning Masamba as the local king was a yellow cloth edict and a seal made of fine iron.

The yellow cloth edict was easily damaged in the African rainforest, so Mabasan arranged for the people in the tribe to place it in his big house. Although the black iron seal could not be used as a weapon, it was a symbol of the king's identity and was always carried by Mabasan.

Near the fleet's dock, Masamba, a dark and fat man in his thirties, first found Huang Naishang standing in front of the crowd. He then started chattering in the indigenous dialect while gesticulating with his hands.

"Sir Huang, King Masamba has brought us good news. The tribe that attacked us last time was defeated by them. The more than one hundred black natives behind us are gifts from King Masamba to us."

Xue Yizhong understood what the other party meant half by relying on the translation and half by watching Masamba's gestures.

"King Masamba has made another contribution to the National Defense Force." Huang Naishang looked at Masamba with appreciation and said with a smile, "Lieutenant Colonel Xue, let the brothers receive the captives brought by King Masamba, and then take ten muskets from the ship and give them to King Masamba."

In addition to the standard weapons equipped by the National Defense Forces, Huang Naishang also received more than 2,000 Dreiser rifles that had been eliminated by the National Defense Forces from the country. Most of these rifles were sealed up as backup weapons in emergencies, and a small number were given as rewards to indigenous tribes that assisted the National Defense Forces in combat.

Xue Yizhong nodded, waved his hand and sent more than thirty soldiers forward to receive more than one hundred black natives, and then escorted them to the riverside and lined them up.

"Raise your gun, load, ready... fire!"

Bang, bang, bang, bursts of gunfire rang out, and more than a hundred black prisoners were shot and fell into the river.

When dealing with tribes that resisted the National Defense Force, Xue Yizhong had always tended to directly eliminate them. This time was no exception. He simply executed the black prisoners by shooting, and left the rest of the work to the blacks under Masamba. The National Defense Force soldiers and two hundred refugees from Fujian Province, with the cooperation of the Umula blacks, began to expand the Kisangani trading point.

(End of this chapter)