Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 403 Development of Lan Fang Songkhla
The Chinese community's desire for land is unquenchable.

The end of the 19th century was the darkest period in the history of the Central Plains. In order to fight for the hope of survival, tens of millions of people left their familiar and poor hometowns and migrated to Kanto, Northwest China, overseas and other regions.

Go to Guandong, go to the west, go to Southeast Asia, and move to South America.

The heavy suffering caused the largest migration in Chinese history and also changed the fate of hundreds of millions of overseas Chinese and their descendants.

When historians of the Han Empire recorded the migration routes of their ancestors with heavy and admiring strokes, they wrote: "The families who went to sea were penniless. They wore only tattered clothes, led barefoot children, and walked step by step with sticks, begging for hundreds or thousands of kilometers to the nearest coastal port, and finally boarded crowded steam transport ships. They were bumpy on the sea for several months before they could reach the South American mainland."

Large-scale overseas migration is the last effort of people struggling on the brink of life and death. Although their efforts and sufferings do not end completely the moment they set foot on foreign lands, they also herald the beginning of a new life.

Between 1868 and 1889, the number of Chinese people going to sea to make a living increased exponentially. The Qing court's ban on going to sea and its control became ineffective due to the connivance of officials in the southeastern coastal areas and various localities.

In order to squeeze the last bit of profit out of the poor people, many local officials even began to actively lure young and strong people to go to sea, and then use their families as collateral, requiring the young and strong people who returned from the sea to pay a portion of silver before they could move overseas with their families.

Young people took the lead in going out to sea, and after finding a way to survive overseas, they paid a certain amount of money to bring their relatives to live overseas.

The Qing officials did their best to extort money, which not only satisfied their own pockets, but also reduced the difficulty for the lower-class people to go to sea. It didn't matter if the family was too poor or penniless. They could leave their families in their hometowns and sign a debt agreement. The government would take the initiative to help them solve the customs document problem. In this specific historical period, the total number of Chinese who went to sea exceeded 1400 million in 700 years, excluding the nearly 1742 million who immigrated to South America (the 200 million population of the Han country included about million whites, Indians, and immigrants and their descendants).
More than 80 percent of the remaining people chose to stay in Southeast Asia.

Songkhla has an area of ​​more than 3 square kilometers. In 200 years, it has received a population of more than 280 million, with a total population of more than 50 million. The Lan Fang Tunku Empire claimed a territory of 30 square kilometers, but its actual territory was 260 square kilometers. It has accepted more than 340 million Chinese, with a total Chinese population of more than million.

Songkhla, Lan Fang, Thailand and the East Indies received a total of nearly 600 million Chinese immigrants. With the continuous influx of young and middle-aged immigrants, the overall strength of Songkhla and Lan Fang continued to increase, and they gradually acquired the strength to resist the invasion of British and Dutch colonists to a certain extent.

In October 1882, Songkhla and Lan Fang simultaneously announced their acceptance of the comprehensive reorganization of the South American Han Kingdom. The two countries carried out thorough reforms in politics, economy and other aspects in accordance with the South American Han Kingdom model.

In September 1884, after two years of adjustment and transformation, a total of 9 national defense troops and more than 1 government officials entered Songkhla and Lan Fang as ordinary Chinese and officially took over the economic, military and political power of the two countries from the old ruling class.

In November 1884, in accordance with the instructions of the local government, Songkhla and Lan Fang successively established a regular army of 11 and 1 respectively based on the 3.4 regular troops of the National Defense Force stationed there.

The troops in the two places totaled more than 7 people. Although they were ostensibly under the banners of Songkhla and Lan Fang, they were actually the same as those in the mainland of South America. The newly migrated people were uniformly managed and arranged by government officials sent from the mainland of South America. Newborns and immigrant children received the same education of loyalty to the emperor and patriotism as in the mainland of South America. In the newly established schools at all levels in Songkhla and Lan Fang, the teachers emphasized every day that Songkhla and Lan Fang were both part of the Han Empire, and all the people living in the two places were subjects of the Han Empire. They only lived in different places from the local people, but their identities were the same.

The subtle infiltration of the South American Han Kingdom into Songkhla and Lan Fang aroused the vigilance of the British and Dutch colonists.

In February 1886, six months earlier than the time when Lan Fang was destroyed in history, the Dutch East Indies colonial government used the excuse that Chinese people illegally crossed the border to reclaim wasteland and sent 2 white soldiers and 4000 indigenous soldiers to launch a surprise attack on the Lan Fang Grand Control State. The war initially proceeded in accordance with the direction of the East Indies colonial government. In mid-March, 1.3 Dutch colonial troops successively occupied more than 3 camps abandoned by Chinese immigrants and arrived at the capital of Lan Fang, Pontianak.

On March 3, the Dutch colonial army, led by indigenous troops, launched an attack on Pontianak. The war lasted for half a month. The Dutch colonial army suffered 17 white soldiers and 600 indigenous soldiers casualties, but still failed to capture Pontianak.

On April 4, just when the Dutch colonial army commander was hesitating and wanted to evacuate, he was suddenly besieged by a Chinese force of nearly 6 people.

On one side were the more than 3 Lan Fang Defense Force soldiers who were defending their homeland and receiving comprehensive local military training, and on the other side were the Dutch colonial army who were exhausted after a long battle and suffered heavy casualties. Under the huge disparity in comprehensive strength, the Dutch colonial army, which had been dominating Borneo for nearly a hundred years and had few rivals, was brutally surrounded and annihilated overnight. Among the more than 1.7 colonial troops, more than 1 were captured, and the actual number of deaths in battle was less than 4000.

The result of the Battle of Pontianak made the British and Dutch colonial forces clearly realize that Songkhla and Lan Fang were no longer the countries composed of Chinese people that they used to exploit and humiliate. After more than ten years of subtle education and comprehensive reforms in the political, economic, and military fields from the South American Han Kingdom, the two places now had a total population of more than 630 million and were supported by modern civilization beliefs. According to the mobilization system of the South American Han Kingdom, they could mobilize 50 to 80 troops under extreme conditions.

Twenty years have passed. In the competition among world powers, the South American Han Kingdom has gradually established its international status. Twenty years later, it is not very realistic to emulate the French way of driving the South American Han Kingdom out of Annan and force the South American Han Kingdom to give up its support and secret control over Songkhla and Lan Fang.

After realizing the power comparison between the two sides in the Southeast Asia region through the Battle of Pontianak, the British Malay colonial government chose the most sensible way to persuade the Dutch East Indies colonial authorities and the Lan Fang Empire to resolve contradictions and conflicts in a peaceful manner.

Faced with the olive branch extended by the British colonial government, the top military and political leadership of the Lan Fang, under the orders of the local government, on the one hand sent personnel to negotiate with the Netherlands, and on the other hand took advantage of the opportunity of the Dutch colonial army suffering heavy losses and launched a large-scale attack on Dutch Borneo in the name of recovering lost territory.

On June 6, Sukatana, Banjarmasin and other areas in West Borneo all fell into the hands of the Lan Fang Defense Army. The Dutch colonial army, frightened by the combat effectiveness of the Chinese army in the Battle of Pontianak and many subsequent battles, could only retreat step by step and continuously send telegrams for help to the Governor-General's Office of the East Indies.

There are more than 190 islands in the Dutch East Indies. The tens of thousands of Dutch colonial troops are scattered across nearly million square kilometers of islands. It is not easy to mobilize them to support the defenders of Borneo. Moreover, affected by the Battle of Pontianak, indigenous forces in other parts of the East Indies are also ready to move. At this critical juncture, the Governor of the East Indies did not dare to mobilize troops rashly. He could only keep asking for help from the British colonial government and asked the British government to coordinate and resolve the Borneo dispute as soon as possible.

On July 7, five months after the outbreak of the Borneo War, the smoke-filled East Indies returned to peace.

Lan Fang and the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies signed an agreement, formally recognizing the Lan Fang State as an independent country. The Kingdom of the Netherlands terminated its affiliation with Lan Fang. The two sides used the line between Banjarmasin and Putusibao as the dividing line. About 30 square kilometers to the west of the dividing line were Lan Fang territory, and about 24 square kilometers to the east were the territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

After the signing of the Pontianak Armistice Agreement, Lan Fang's territory doubled. Although it could not be compared with its heyday, such an achievement was achieved under the siege of Dutch and British colonists, which was enough to satisfy the officials and generals sent to Lan Fang.

Lan Fang and Songkhla were a vital part of the Han Kingdom's century-long strategy in South America and could not afford to lose anything. So at the end of the grand court meeting, Li Mingyuan appointed Mei Dongxing, who had served as governor-general of the two northern provinces of Annan, as the new Lan Fang governor, replacing the local government and taking charge of Lan Fang's political power.

(End of this chapter)