Nanyang Storm 1864

Chapter 397 A Different Black Flag Army

January 4st

The King of Chu and his entourage left Pontianak on the ironclad ship fleet "Zhendong" and headed for Bandar Seri Begawan.

The formation consisted of two ironclad ships, "Zhendong" and "Zhenxi", and two "Huashan" class ironclad cruisers, a total of four cutting-edge ironclad ships, demonstrating the majesty of the Chu royal family and the muscle of the Royal Navy.

The ship set sail at noon and arrived safely in Bandar Seri Begawan in the evening. After a brief welcome ceremony, the carriage team entered the palace to rest under the escort of the Royal Guards Cavalry.

The King of Chu's trip was to inspect his territory and send a signal of his strong power to neighboring countries, especially the Dutch.

This way of frequently flexing muscles is a common tactic used by European and American powers, and the Chu Navy has also learned it very well. Recently, the "Zhen" type ironclad ship has been visiting various countries continuously.

The ironclad fleet of "Zhennan" and "Zhenbei", carrying two coal ships, is now docked at the Chao Phraya River Port in Bangkok, Siam, for a friendly visit to the Kingdom of Siam.

The "Zhennan" fleet has concluded its visit to Kolkata and stopped in Bangkok on the way back. It will then visit Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong, and finally return to its home port of Manila.

The original itinerary also included a plan to visit Batavia, but it was rejected by the stingy Dutch, who were unwilling to see the Chu people showing off their power.

After the twists and turns of the "Major General Harry Clarke Incident", the bilateral relations between Chu and Britain have returned to normal in recent years, with continuous friendly visits of ships between the two countries.

The new ironclad fleet of the British Royal Third Battle Fleet stationed in Kolkata just visited Manila at the end of last year, and the ironclad fleet of HMS Zhennan returned the visit at the beginning of this year.

It seems that the interactions are quite frequent, but in fact they are just flexing their muscles to each other, which is also a common practice among the navies of powerful countries.

If you can't bring out a big guy to calm the situation, you will be inferior to others in terms of momentum and strength.

Next stage
From June to July, the "Zhennan" naval formation also plans to visit Ryukyu, Fuso, Vladivostok, Shanghai and Guangzhou in the northern continent, continuing its itinerary of demonstrating its strength.

Bandar Seri Begawan

Compared with the British trusteeship period, the size of this ancient city has more than doubled. The widened and rebuilt main roads and streets in various places are wide and straight, with green belts in the center of the roads. The original dirt roads have been replaced by asphalt roads, which are cleaner and tidier.

Asphalt is the by-product of crude oil refining. When mixed with gravel, it becomes the best material for paving roads.

As early as 1850, France was experimenting with asphalt-paved roads, and in 1854 it was used to pave the roads of Paris.

In 1871, the United States took the lead in using a mixture of asphalt, sand and gravel to form a base material for paving roads and obtained a patent.

However, no one takes this kind of patent seriously.

Since 1872, the Chu State has used a mixture of asphalt, sand, gravel, and a small amount of straw fiber to form a base material for paving roads in major cities, and this method has gradually been promoted.

Due to the convenience of crude oil resources, more and more roads are paved with asphalt in cities around Metro Manila, and it is gradually being extended to urban and rural roads.

This not only solves the problem of residual materials and residues in the Batangas refinery, but also fills an important link in urban construction. While achieving road hardening, it saves labor, effort and materials compared to stone paved roads, making it suitable for large-scale promotion.

Even the British imported dozens of ships of asphalt in 1873 to pave the main roads in Kolkata and Singapore, which was the first record of asphalt export.

Inside the palace

King Zheng Guohui of Chu was dressed in casual clothes. He was drinking tea and chatting with his third brother, Major General Zheng Guoguang, Duke of Mindoro, in his study. When they talked about the southern part of Kalimantan Island, he said:

“We have already infiltrated this area, established a foothold, and are in control of the urban and rural situation.

That's like a cooked duck, how can it not fly away?

What we are asking for now is not how many people to emigrate, but when to reclaim the kingdom's territory. That is not something that can be done hastily, it must be done step by step.

Perhaps the territorial sovereignty dispute will last for ten or twenty years, or even longer.

This is not a problem. The key issue lies in regional stability, control of the overall situation, and the re-education of new Chinese immigrants. The core is the education of loyalty to the kingdom.

School education under the Ministry of Commerce and Culture is one aspect. In society, we must widely carry out publicity on the recognition of the Kingdom, and the General Staff Headquarters must arrange for retired soldiers to settle in the southern region in an orderly manner to achieve the effect of leading by example.

From cities to towns, fully infiltrate and control the situation.

We must pay attention to the selection of personnel and elect those who are loyal and fanatical about the kingdom to serve as officials at all levels.

This will be supervised by personnel sent by the Ministry of the Interior, and the Governor's Office will provide strong support. The Colonial Office will arrange a certain number of young clerks and college graduates every year to serve as grassroots clerks in joint autonomous committees at all levels.

The Governor-General's Office should pay attention to identifying and eliminating people with ulterior motives at all times, and form a dual system that combines a secret screening system and an open screening system.

Although the Chinese immigrants from the north are of the same clan and have the same Chinese blood, their hearts are different and it is difficult to satisfy everyone. We cannot expect all of them to be grateful.

Then we need to ensure that the system
To identify loyal people and give them important tasks, the Governor's Office should work closely with the Colonial Office in this regard, and loyalty should be the primary consideration in selecting all officials, followed by ability.

If there are people whose stance is difficult to judge, it is better to depose them than to let them go..."

Governor Zheng Guoguang listened solemnly to the detailed instructions given by King Zheng Guohui of Chu, and kept them in mind one by one.

Chinese immigration to the southern region is progressing in an orderly manner. Now it is in a state of making up for the lost population, and the population has returned to the million level.

The blood loss was that nearly 400,000 local indigenous people were forced into hard labor and were working hard in various labor camps, and more than 100,000 people were sent to more than a dozen mines in the mainland.

The new Chinese immigrants were mainly there to make up for this loss, establishing villages and towns and building up the area step by step.

The current policy for these new Chinese immigrants is to not use them if possible. Basically, they are resettled in farming, with a small number of them being resettled in employment.

The grassroots officials appointed were basically from the native Chu State.

After several hours of secret conversation and finishing the explanation, King Zheng Guohui of Chu invited his third brother Zheng Guoguang to have a family dinner and then let him go.

After taking a short walk in the garden, King Zheng Guohui of Chu returned to his study, picked up the memorial on the desk and began to read it.

In mid-April 1874
The "Triple Alliance" in Europe was officially signed, which completely restricted France's strategic maneuvering space, like an iron chain locked around its neck, making it dance with shackles.

The blow they suffered during their colonial expansion in Indochina took a while for the French to recover from, and their morale gradually faded.

These few years

The French have no interest in continuing to develop northwards and further expanding the scope of the French Saigon colony. All their energy is focused on mainland Europe, considering how to break the deadlock?

The French are betting on Tsarist Russia to break the deadlock, so recently, in order to improve relations with the Tsarist Russian royal family, the French have begun to invest money and manpower to build long-distance telegraph lines for Tsarist Russia, build shipyards on the Black Sea coast, and use franc loans to help Tsarist Russia establish some industrial enterprises.

This method of using money to pave the way seems to be very effective.

It was the shift in French colonial strategy that gave the Black Flag Army in the northern coastal port a precious opportunity to recuperate and expand.
At least in Qinzhou, Guangxi and surrounding areas, Liu Yongfu, who defeated the foreign army, has a very high prestige. It can be said that he has followers everywhere with just a cheer.

Since occupying Haiphong Port and taking over several large coal fields with rich reserves in Quang Ninh Province, the Black Flag Army has started the "calling friends" mode.

A large number of clan members were brought in by boat from the neighboring Qinzhou area, and in just a few months the number reached 60,000 to 70,000.

Qinzhou is so close to Haiphong that an ordinary sailing cargo ship can get there in half a day, and a round trip can be made in two or three days. How can it not be efficient?
Guangxi has a large population and limited land, so people dare to go overseas in order to survive. Moreover, the clan power is extremely strong, particularly united, and the combat effectiveness is also very strong.

Most of the fellow Guangxi people who came here were settled in coal fields, docks and coastal defenses, and two to three hundred Chinese villages and towns emerged from the line north to Guangning.

Huang Qifan, the chief military advisor of the Black Flag Army, was born into a cloth merchant family in Southeast Asia. He had traveled extensively and gained a wide range of knowledge. He knew that to develop trade, it was necessary to build a dock first.

Therefore, the Black Flag Army is concentrating thousands of laborers to vigorously build the coal terminal in Haiphong Port. For this purpose, they have also imported up to 2.2 barrels of cement from the State of Chu and repaid them with coal money.

Just at the end of last month, the preliminarily built No. 1 pier of the Haifang Port Coal Terminal was put into use. It can berth coal transport ships of up to to tons from the Chu State. A shipload of coal is worth nearly silver dollars.

If we export a few ships of coal every month, we will have everything.

As long as you have silver, money, food, soldiers, and guns, and devote yourself to development for a few years, you can really achieve great success.

The secret fold shows:

The British apparently also noticed the power of the Black Flag Army in North Vietnam. Through the channels of Huang Qifan's family, they also hooked up with the Black Flag Army and began to import coal from North Vietnam.

The main British colonies to which Vietnam's coal was exported were Singapore, Penang and Hong Kong. These three places had no coal resources, but the amount needed for daily cooking, industry and supply of passing ships was quite large, totaling about 700,000 tons for the three places.

This part of the market was originally occupied by the Netherlands and Chu, but now the supply of coal from northern Vietnam has been added, causing the price of coal to be significantly lowered.

These British guys are really cunning. They used the supply of Vietnamese coal to lower the coal price, win over the Black Flag Army, and contain the French in disguise. They really killed three birds with one stone.

Putting down the memorial in his hand, King Zheng Guohui of Chu looked up towards the northwest. His deep gaze seemed to have traveled across thousands of miles of sea and saw the British Straits Governor's House in Singapore.

These British guys are really experts in playing strategies.

Although the British and the French were close allies, after the Franco-Prussian War, the relationship between the two sides became closer, and there seemed to be no unpleasantness from supporting the Kingdom of Prussia.

This is the brilliance of British diplomacy. They had just stabbed the French hard, then turned around and played innocent, carefully comforting him, "My dear brother, where are you hurt?" "I have some tonic here, stop the bleeding quickly, and take care of your health first." "We are good brothers for life, I will help you with everything." "Are you short of money, food, or medicine at home?"

That's roughly what it means. The French suffered a great loss and had to grit their teeth and swallow their anger. What else could they do?
Now that we have become mortal enemies with the Germans, it would be unwise to turn against the British.

Although Britain and France were close allies, their colonial interests in Southeast Asia were not consistent. Instead, they were diametrically opposed and refused to give in to each other.

When Tsarist Russia wanted to move south through Central Asia, Britain hastily sent troops to Afghanistan to build an insurmountable barrier.

When France expanded its colonies into Indochina, Britain hastily launched the Second Anglo-Burmese War to occupy Burma first in order to protect the flank security of its Indian colonies.

The current status of the Kingdom of Siam is not so much neutral as it is a buffer zone between the British and French colonies in Indochina, limiting the westward expansion of the French.

When the French wanted to occupy Taiwan Island, the British immediately stepped in to stop them and emphasized that French influence must not cross the Yangtze River and could only develop in the coastal areas south of the Yangtze River.

The role of the British was more like that of a bandit leader. On the one hand, they did not allow French forces to cross the north of the Yangtze River, and on the other hand, they strictly prevented the Tsarist Russian forces from invading the three northeastern provinces. Their purpose was to maintain Britain's huge interests in China.

To this end, Britain did not hesitate to train Fuso as a watchdog, and when the Tsarist Russian forces could no longer control their southward advance, they let the dog bite people.

With the British's sharp strategic vision, they knew that Tsarist Russia would eventually move south.

In order to prevent problems before they occur, we are now slowly cultivating Fuso, this vicious dog, by providing loans to develop industry, provide loans to build railways, and provide loans to support ship purchases. There is a clear pattern for all of this.

As for the current northern court, the British see it very clearly. It is a shaky and broken structure that can be knocked down with a kick.

It is more reliable to pray to God than to rely on the northern court to resist the southward invasion of Tsarist Russia.

As for the powerful local power like Chu that rose in Southeast Asia, the British were even more afraid of Chu's close contacts with the northern court, or even its power moving northward, so they were highly vigilant.

In summary

When the British discovered that the Black Flag Army was gaining power in northern Vietnam, they were undoubtedly delighted and relieved.

The Black Flag Army has a long-standing grudge against the French for killing a general. The two sides cannot possibly get along with each other, but their fighting power is truly impressive.

Only downside

That is, the power is too weak, the troops are too few, the equipment is too poor, and there is no solid foundation.

Now that the Black Flag Army has occupied the coastal defense, the British, with their shrewdness, can certainly see the mystery, which is why the British are willing to make an investment and show goodwill.

Importing coal from northern Vietnam is an olive branch extended by the British.

Otherwise, not even a ton of coal from northern Vietnam can enter the Singapore and Hong Kong markets, let alone the doors, there are no windows.

The British saw the value of the Black Flag Army, the most important of which was to block the possibility of France expanding its colonies northward and prevent it from harming the Chinese mainland.

The British have a deep-seated desire not to allow others to interfere with the ancient Chinese continent.

It could be said to be the bandits' desire for monopoly, or it could be said to be helping to maintain the northern court's shaky rule, or it could be said to be some sinister plot.

From the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, British power was one of the important factors in maintaining the territorial integrity of the Northern Court.

According to the judgment of King Zheng Guohui of Chu

The British are probably still waiting and watching, and will not provide any substantial help for at least the next two or three years. At most, they will import some North Vietnamese coal.

A small local force like the Black Flag Army would hardly catch the attention of the arrogant British.

Perhaps, it was just that a high-ranking British official in the Straits Governor's Office became interested in this Chinese force. The details still need to be observed and corroborated.

The British intentions coincided with those of the Chu State, and a wonderful tacit understanding was formed.

Every time I think of this

The corners of Chu King Zheng Guohui's lips couldn't help but curl up. He was also observing and needed time to see how far the Black Flag Army could go.
If they start to amass wealth, divide into factions and engage in internal fighting, or join a certain force as soon as they have some money, then it is not worth paying attention to.

They are just a bunch of useless people, without any ambition or aspirations, their spirits are wasted.

(End of this chapter)