Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 322: Clouds Moving in the South Sea
Like a stone dropped into the water, the news that the Han army repelled the British expeditionary force and forced Britain, Brazil and Chile to accept peace talks spread to Southeast Asia, instantly causing a wave of unrest. At the same time as the Han power expanded to Southeast Asia, the British colonial authorities began to accelerate the colonization of the Malay Peninsula. In January 1874, Clark, the governor of the Straits Settlements, used the throne dispute in Perak as a pretext to quell the dispute.
Under the pretext of signing the "Bangka Treaty" with the chieftains of various Perak states, Perak officially became a British protectorate. The British government began to send resident officers to Perak in accordance with the provisions of the treaty and intervene in Perak's internal political and economic affairs. Perak was the first state to be protected by Britain among the indigenous kingdoms on the Malay Peninsula. After taking control of Perak, in October of the same year, civil unrest broke out in Selangor, and the British government again used the excuse of maintaining local stability to send resident officers to the state. …

At the end of 1878, Clark resigned and Frederick took over as Governor of the Straits Settlements. He changed Clark's step-by-step expansion style. Less than half a year after taking office, he summoned the chiefs of the local states in Negeri Sembilan to give up their political and military autonomy, and the Indian colonial army sent by the British colonial authorities would take charge of local defense. In July 1879, facing the futile situation of the British expeditionary force in South America and the rapid expansion of Chinese power in various parts of Southeast Asia, Frederick sent telegrams to the London government and his direct superior, the Governor-General of India, explaining that the Chinese immigrant groups in Southeast Asia had become too big to be eliminated and the number of Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia must be curbed. At the same time, in order to balance the Chinese power, he suggested introducing laborers in India and replacing local indigenous armed forces with Indian colonial troops and police forces to assist the British colonial government in managing the affairs of the Straits Settlements.

Dividing and restraining the various ethnic groups in the colonies, having the British colonial authorities act as arbitrators, and maintaining colonial order have always been the means of control that the British are good at.

Since the British began colonizing the Malay Peninsula, some Indians followed them into Southeast Asia.

In the early days, the Indians who came to the Malay Peninsula were mainly prisoners serving their sentences. They were often used as free laborers to do tasks such as clearing jungles, filling swamps, and cleaning roads.

As the Malay Peninsula developed faster and the British colonial government increased its infrastructure construction, Indian convict laborers took on more responsibilities.
He undertook most of the construction work, such as Fort Canning Castle, Pearl's Hill Hospital, the Straits Settlements Government Building and the Cross-Island

The construction of bridges across the Singapore River and other projects,

The submissive and docile working attitude of Indian prisoners was recognized and welcomed by the colonial government. In the eyes of British colonial officials, compared with Chinese prisoners (in the early days, there were also Chinese prisoners from Hong Kong who were sent to the Malay Peninsula to serve their sentences, but because British colonial officials believed that the Chinese were difficult to manage and often fought, they stopped sending Chinese prisoners to Southeast Asia to serve their sentences), Indian prisoners were more law-abiding and easy to manage. Especially after the anti-British uprising in India in 1857, these Indian prisoners were intimidated by the cruel methods used by the British colonists in suppressing the uprising, and they dared not show any resistance and honestly buried their heads in hard labor.

The Indian prisoner laborers' obedience and willingness to allow the British to ravage them won them the British's praise and improved their social status. After the 1840s, Indians gradually played more diverse roles in the economic and political structure of the Malay Peninsula. First, they served as low-level laborers, engaged in physical labor such as plantations and mining. Second, they served as middle and lower-level colonial officials in the colonial government, assisting the British in handling local affairs. Third, they served as servant troops and colonial police, responsible for suppressing armed rebellions against British rule.

The last category is businessmen who took advantage of the political and economic privileges granted by the British to steal economic benefits through unfair competition and squeeze the living space of their competitors, mainly the Chinese businessmen in Southeast Asia.

In order to strengthen the armed forces of the Straits Settlements, the London government agreed to Frederick's request and ordered the Governor-General of India to dispatch a 300-man Sikh detachment and a 500-man Indian colonial detachment to the Malay Peninsula to obey the orders of the Straits Settlements Government. In early October, Britain and China signed an armistice agreement and the situation in South America stabilized. At this time, the London government once again sent a group of 10 laborers to the Malay Peninsula through India.

Within two or three months, Indian colonial troops, armed police, and laborers entered the Malay Peninsula one after another, causing great panic among the indigenous chiefs and Chinese Kapitans who were already worried about the complete loss of political and military power. The indigenous chiefs in Negeri Sembilan, Pahang, Perak and other regions protested to the Straits Settlement Government, protesting that the British had violated the agreement and transferred the local military management rights from the indigenous army to the Indian colonial army.

In the face of protests from the indigenous chiefs of the Malay Peninsula, the Straits Settlements Government simply appeased them but did not make a clear statement, and Indian troops and police forces continued to pour into the Nanyang region.

Negotiations with Britain were fruitless, and the indigenous chiefs and Chinese Kapitans were unable to change the decision of the Straits Settlement Government on their own. After careful consideration and evaluation, the indigenous people of the Malay Peninsula and the Chinese Kapitans jointly placed their hopes for help on the Taiping Society, or more precisely, on the Han army behind the Taiping Society.

Nanyang is an important transit hub for the transportation of immigrants between the mainland and South America. Every year, dozens of fleets and medicinal material merchants travel between the two states, bringing a large amount of real news about the South American Han Kingdom. After eleven years of influence and the actual experience of arriving in the South American Han Kingdom in person, the Chinese in Nanyang understand the strength of the South American Han Kingdom better than those in the mainland.

In the early years, Peru and Brazil had no influence on the Chinese in Southeast Asia, and they had no impression of them. Therefore, defeating the above two countries at most made them feel that the Han Kingdom was quite powerful and could defeat countries with a much larger population and land area than their own. During the Argentine War, the British expeditionary force with a total of nearly 15,000 people invaded the interior of Argentina and fought against the Han army. As a result, they not only failed to drive the Han army out of Argentina, but also suffered more than 4,000 casualties.

During the Opium War, Britain only dispatched more than 10,000 troops and defeated the army of the Qing Dynasty. The same army performed completely differently on the two battlefields. Doesn't that mean that the same number of Han troops were far superior to the Qing Dynasty's army?

Before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the Manchu Qing court still maintained a superficially strong position in the world. After comparing with the Qing army, any rational and objective Nanyang Chinese could see the rapid rise of the South American Han Kingdom. Seeing the strength of the South American Han Kingdom, ordinary Nanyang Chinese looked forward to the arrival of the next batch of transport fleets and planned to immigrate to the South American Han Kingdom as soon as possible. Each household had 30 to 50 acres of land, and they lived a happy life with enough food and clothing. The indigenous chiefs of the Malay Peninsula and the Chinese Kapitans planned to use the power of the Han Kingdom in Nanyang to unite and force the Straits Colonial Government to abandon the policy of supporting Indian military police and laborers to replace them.

(End of this chapter)