Nanyang Storm 1864

Chapter 249 Solomon Islands
More than ten days later
The fleet led by the large sailing ship "Guangming" sailed into the Gulf of the Solomon Islands one after another. This was the final destination of the fleet after King Zheng Guohui of Chu and his entourage inspected the Donggang Prefecture.

The fleet for this voyage consists of a total of four sailing ships, including the flagship "Guangming" sailing ship, two sailing cruisers and a sailing troop transport ship, with a total of more than a thousand officers and soldiers from the army and navy.

Among them, there are about 430 elite officers and soldiers from the Royal Guard, of which more than are Royal Guard Cavalry, and the others are Royal Guard Infantry, responsible for guarding the king's carriage.

Pinch

A year has passed since the Chu army occupied Honiara, and earth-shaking changes have taken place here.

The town was filled with Huaxia-style buildings with flying eaves and brackets. Many of the indigenous thatched houses were demolished, and wide roads and smooth sewage facilities were built. The streets were lined with trees and houses were clustered together. It looked much more beautiful than New Xi'an and Donggang.

King Zheng Guohui of Chu and his entourage arrived at the dock. From afar, the local prefect led a large group of people to greet them happily, beating drums and gongs, and performing dragon and lion dances.

They had already learned in advance from passing merchant ships that government officials were coming to inspect.

But I don't know

It was a great honor to have the King of Chu come in person. When the prefect Zhang Bohan saw the king, he was so excited that he was at a loss what to do and hurriedly led the crowd to pay his respects.

"Please stand up, my dear Zhang, and don't be so polite." King Zheng Guohui of Chu stretched out his hand to help him up, but saw the prefect Zhang Bohan kneeling down on the ground, kowtowed three times, and his expression couldn't help but smile.

Who can not like such a straightforward personality?

It was noon when we arrived, and the sun was shining brightly.
After the brief welcome ceremony, everyone, led by the prefect Zhang Bohan, entered the city headquarters to rest.

Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, has now been renamed "Yingzhou", which is both a legendary overseas fairy mountain and another name for Chongming Island.

"Records of the Ten Continents" says: Yingzhou has jade paste that tastes like wine, and is called Jade Wine. Drinking a few liters will make you drunk and make you immortal.

Zhang Bohan, the prefect of Yingzhou, was originally from Huai'an Prefecture and was a native of northern Jiangsu. He was also a Jinshi who passed the imperial examination twice. He had served as a county magistrate twice. Later, he was forced to flee due to war and returned to his hometown to live in seclusion.

He was 32 years old at the time, at the peak of his youth and vigor. He was also recommended by his fellow villagers to serve as a staff member in Zheng Guohui's mansion. He was a man of both talent and character.

Yingzhou Prefecture is also a city with a population of more than 10,000, but it is obviously much more lively than New Xi'an. The difference is that most of the Chinese here have families, and every family has a woman.

The streets are more lively, there are more restaurants and bars, and the bustling crowds of people are filled with a strong sense of fireworks.

Most of the women are Melanesian. Many of them are pregnant and walk on the street with their Chinese husbands, with satisfied expressions on their faces.

Obviously, compared with their original tribal life, these dark-skinned young women are very satisfied with their current happy life which is more dignified and civilized.

Originally, Melanesians did not wear clothes, but now, under the strong demands of their Chinese husbands, these women all wear loose, light-colored short-sleeved shirts. They walk hand in hand with their husbands on the street, looking quite intimate.

This is the subtle change that Chinese people undergo as a result of being influenced by local customs.

These indigenous women are passionate and unrestrained. They will not hide their feelings. When they get excited, they will hug their husbands and kiss them fiercely without any hesitation.

If you can't change it over time, you can only adapt to the local customs.

Most of the Chinese immigrants who moved to the island were engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry, and a small number were engaged in coastal fishing. After more than half a year, they have basically settled down.

Most of these Chinese immigrants arrived in the Solomon Islands in January or February this year. After the initial land reclamation, they have harvested a crop of rice. Now, the fields outside the city are rolling with golden rice waves, and the harvest can be started next month.

With the harvest approaching, most people's faces are filled with happiness and comfort.

The situation here is better than what King Zheng Guohui of Chu had expected. After discussing with the accompanying government officials, he decided to increase the number of immigrants migrating here.

The main island of the Solomon Islands is Guadalcanal, which covers an area of ​​6475 square kilometers. It has many volcanoes and rivers and has good natural conditions.

This place has a tropical rainforest climate, which is warm all year round with no dry season. The average annual temperature is 28℃ and the average annual precipitation is 3000 mm.

On this main island, there will be no pressure at all to relocate and resettle another 15 Chinese immigrants in the next three years.

If applied to the entire Solomon Islands, the immigration scale can be expanded to 20.

Zheng Guohui has a long-term vision. What he is interested in is not the more than 2 square kilometers of island land in the Solomon Islands, but the 160 million kilometers of territorial waters and the strategic situation of being connected to the Shangri-La Islands.

With the vast archipelago that Chu currently owns, if it were to take Kalimantan Island into its arms, it would form an absolute blockade of the Australian continent.

If history had not changed

When the concept of territorial waters was proposed, the vast seafront area owned by the Chu State would cover the vast sea area extending westward to the Strait of Malacca and the Pacific routes extending eastward to Hawaii.

If Australia has a bad relationship with the State of Chu, the State of Chu has a hundred ways to destroy it.

in this world
The British were the first to discover the strategic importance of the strait to controlling the world, and they took action to occupy the Strait of Gibraltar, which controls the Mediterranean.

The British established the Cape Town Colonial Government, controlled the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost tip of Africa, and extended their influence to Johannesburg, South Africa.
The British established the Straits Governorate, controlled Malacca and Penang, and had a strong influence in key strait routes around the world.

It can be said that the British have made a lot of use of the article on geopolitical strategic influence.

Zheng Guohui is now an unknown little transparent person, quietly weaving his own silk screen in an unnoticeable place, and slowly expanding it...

Thought of here
He also laughed triumphantly. On his desk was a thick package of confidential mail.

After carefully checking the wax seal, Chief of Staff He Xian used a silver knife to open the canvas package and took out one letter after another that was tightly sealed in brown paper bags.

Among them was a thick cowhide bag with the words "four-star confidential" marked on it, and "Presented to His Majesty the King of Chu for his personal reading" written in bright red. It was obvious at a glance that it was written by Prime Minister Li Hezhang himself.

Chief of Staff He Xian sorted out the other cowhide bags one by one and handed them to deputies including Zheng Shouxu, Guan Qiren, and Dong Baoshan. These important letters had to be processed one by one, and finally the attached opinions would be submitted.

Confidential letters presented directly to His Majesty the King of Chu will be handled personally by the King of Chu, and no one else can even look at them without authorization.

Lieutenant Colonel Zheng Shan waited until they had finished packing, then watched them leave after saluting.

Then he turned around, saluted the King of Chu who was standing beside the desk, and then quietly retreated, standing outside the study like a door god watching.

King Zheng Guohui of Chu ignored him and took out the brown paper bag, which was stamped with the bright red seal of the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister's personal wax seal.

After checking that everything was correct, he began to open it with a silver knife and poured out more than a dozen letters.

These are all important letters accumulated by the Cabinet's Zongli Yamen during the twenty days or so since the King of Chu was on tour. Now there is no submarine cable connection, so they can only be delivered by this cruise ship speedboat.

Zheng Guohui sat down at his desk and picked up the mail to read. The first one was a letter from Prime Minister Li Hezhang forwarded to the Ministry of the Interior, instructing them to secretly arrest dissidents.

After receiving the order, the Ministry of the Interior took immediate action and, through various covert means, apprehended a total of 71 dissidents and launched secret interrogations.

The results of the interrogation were as expected; these people came from different forces and were quite diverse.

Some of them were conservative forces in the imperial court, some were members of the Hunan Army, some were followers of Prince Gong, some even had secret dealings with Fuso, and some worked for foreigners.

The Ministry of the Interior followed the clues and arrested another 286 people, involving various military, political, police and business departments, and from various sources, even a hidden agent of the Chen family of the Kingdom of Vietnam.

The Chen family was a typical wealthy family with nobles in the Kingdom of Vietnam for generations. It is unexpected that they also pay attention to the situation of the Chu State in the Hainan Islands. It is really a hidden current.

This situation is expected
After all, the rise of such a large Chinese force in Southeast Asia overthrew the 300-year colonial rule of the Spanish and caused such a big fuss.

Who can not pay attention to this matter?
Zheng Guohui shook his head with a wry smile, put the secret letter aside, looked through the other letters, and found another secret letter related to the situation in Indochina.

This secret letter was also issued by the Fifth Department of the Ministry of the Interior, which came from secret intelligence obtained from the Governor-General's Palace in French Saigon. The Fifth Department is the Southeast Asia Investigation Office.

Zheng Guohui opened the secret letter and quickly began to read it attentively.

This secret letter contains confidential information about the full expansion of the French Saigon Governor's Office. After gaining a foothold in Saigon, the white colonial army of France in Indochina suddenly launched an invasion war against Cambodia in the north.

After the French invaded Cambodia, which was under the control of the Kingdom of Siam, the Siamese army quickly retreated after a brief encounter and handed over the Cambodia region.

after a long time
King Zheng Guohui of Chu closed the secret letter with a solemn expression, lit a cigar, and sat there quietly thinking.

France's expansion in Indochina, like the original history, is not surprising and is not out of scope.

The Kingdom of Siam wisely gave in and handed over the Khmer region.

This approach avoided war with France and a war with an unpredictable outcome.

I have to say, it has the survival wisdom of a small country.

A big country has the dignity of a big country, and a small country has its own way of survival. The choice of the Kingdom of Siam fully proves this point.

Today, the Kingdom of Siam is the overlord of the entire Indochina Peninsula. Laos, Cambodia, and Khmer are all its vassal states, relying on it for survival.

Because it had lived in Southeast Asia for a long time, the Kingdom of Siam was well aware of the power of France and that it was not something it could contend with, so it chose to retreat without fighting.

From the perspective of the royal family of the Kingdom of Siam, this choice was painful but also wise. The only concern was the appetite of the robbers, whose greed was insatiable.

What happened in the following decades was as expected.

The small Khmer Empire could not satisfy the French appetite, so they tried to establish a colonial empire comparable to the Indian subcontinent, and successively took over Annan and Cambodia.

Finally, in 1893, there was still a conflict with the Kingdom of Siam.

If the British had not been unable to bear it and intervened, a large piece of the territory of the Kingdom of Siam would have been taken away.

Because of this, the Kingdom of Siam was forced to give up Laos and cede it to French colonists.

Of course, the British didn't mean well.

The French's crazy expansion in Indochina caused concern among the British, so they took the lead in sending troops to occupy Myanmar and intervened in the French invasion of the Kingdom of Siam.

Its purpose was to ensure the security of the flank of the British Indian colony and leave a buffer zone between the British and French colonies. This buffer zone was the Kingdom of Siam.

He took a deep puff of the cigar and then slowly exhaled, and the strong smell of tobacco filled the room.

Zheng Guohui was considering the competition situation in Indochina. He believed that the struggle between the French colonists and the Kingdom of Siam made the situation more confusing and chaotic, which was actually beneficial rather than harmful to the State of Chu.

The French call Indochina the "Golden Peninsula". From this name, we can see how attractive Indochina is to the French.
The colonial expansion in Indochina, which would continue for decades, was a core part of France's Asian colonial policy and attracted most of the French attention.

When two strong forces meet, one of them is bound to be injured.

The French invasion of Indochina directly interrupted the historical process of the Kingdom of Siam dominating Indochina and exacerbated the fragmentation and complexity of the situation on the peninsula.

Such a situation is welcomed by the State of Chu and is also beneficial to the State of Chu.

Every powerful country outside the region does not want to see the emergence of a unified hegemon in Indochina.

This was the case with the Kingdom of Siam, with the French, and will be the case with Vietnam in the future.

History has proven countless times
The aggressive expansion of hegemony in the Indochina Peninsula can only come to an abrupt halt if it suffers a head-on blow from a more powerful enemy.

For example, the unprecedentedly powerful Burmese dynasty in the 16th century inevitably suffered heavy losses after two Qing-Myanmar wars, and its national power declined.

The current Kingdom of Siam has declined after encountering restrictions from the French.

The French, who later dominated Indochina, suffered a head-on blow from the Japanese during World War II and lost their dominant position in Indochina.

The Vietnamese monkeys who dominated the Indochina Peninsula later also lost their voice in controlling the peninsula after encountering a head-on blow from a major power outside the region.

As the situation in Indochina changes, the State of Chu can sit on the sidelines, watch the struggle between dragons and tigers, and offer a push at the right time to make the regional competition more intense and exciting.

Considering the situation in the Indochina Peninsula, Zheng Guohui thought of the Chen family of the Vietnamese dynasty and couldn't help but sneer.

The Kingdom of Vietnam was still struggling to survive, yet it dared to extend its reach to the Hainan Islands?

In the later territory of the Kingdom of Vietnam, the south was occupied by the French Governor-General of Saigon, and the north was occupied by the Qing Dynasty's overseas garrison. The Kingdom of Vietnam was only huddled in the royal court of Hue, ruling over the long and narrow central region.

The country only has one third of the world, and its power is so weak.

The Chen family actually dared to get involved in the emerging Chu State. They are truly evil people with evil intentions.

Zheng Guohui was not a magnanimous person. He made a note of the Chen family in his notebook and would settle the score with them later.

(End of this chapter)