Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 471 Tropical Fertile Soil ([-])

In the early morning after the rain, the air looked extraordinarily fresh.On the slightly cramped wharf of Tacheng Port, people are coming and going at this time, and they are very busy.Several large ships were making their final supplies and looked as if they were leaving port for a long voyage.

This fleet consists of a steam engine sailing ship, a fast cruiser, and a flute transport ship.The ship was loaded with a dozen military horses, some weapons and ammunition, some mechanical parts, some commodities, and about two to three hundred exiled prisoners.These prisoners are all poor people who have been convicted of crimes in their own country. About half of them are Guaranís, and the rest are mainly Latino immigrants with high religious enthusiasm and some English Protestants.According to the Spaniards, these people are all believers of the Lord who have suffered religious persecution from the East Coast people. They were arrested by the May agency for violating domestic religious laws and regulations, and then sentenced to exile in Australia.

Especially those Protestants in England, who refused to go to the priests appointed by the East Coast Religious Affairs Office to conduct religious ceremonies, but set up underground churches by themselves. As a result, the organizers were shot without trial, and they also ended up in exile.It is worth mentioning that among these people is a priest who was arrested by the May agency for publicly mocking the East Coast Republic as a super-large "ethnic and religious prison".

People on the east bank strictly control the gods, and they also attach great importance to the management of various believers. They first promote Taoism in the country, followed by Buddhism and Catholicism, and all of these churches are controlled by the East Coast Religious Affairs Office. In hand and registered in the record.As for those Protestants and a very small number of prostitutes, they have to be "wronged" because they have no place to carry out their religious ceremonies.You either converted, or declared yourself an atheist, or accepted the reality, and those who refused to accept the reality have disappeared in some secret prison, or were exiled to an overseas colony.For example, among the prisoners exiled this time, there are several Maghreb prostitutes who were reported and then arrested for inciting the underground church organized by their fellow villagers who immigrated with them.

Wei Boqiu, section chief of the Mei Bureau, who also served as the chairman of the Naturalization Committee, insisted that the successful assimilation must be cut off from the root of their connection with the Old World and supplemented by other measures, and the first step is religion and language.With the increasing number of immigrants from the Ming Dynasty in China, the government has become more and more tough on this aspect. Many "cruel" methods that were not dared to be used before began to be vigorously implemented with the gradual closure of the Xuebingtuan and other basic disks.Anyone who resisted was mercilessly arrested or secretly executed. Fortunately, there were not many Protestants or Christian immigrants in the country, so it did not cause large-scale turmoil.But even so, excluding some senior technicians who were amnesty by the executive committee, there are still quite a few immigrants who were exiled to Australia together with those Guarani people.

At this time, the prisoners were allowed to relax on the deck. They looked blankly at the busy crowd on the land and the carriages transporting supplies, not knowing where they were.Anda Fifteen stood on the turret by the pier, looked at these exiled prisoners, and said bitterly: "There are only [-] men in Tacheng Port, and the number continues to decrease every month, but the local exiled prisoners It is really frustrating that the only destinations are still the two ports in Australia. Now this big mine (Tacheng Port) full of mosquitoes, poisonous snakes and insects is extremely short of male labor. The mainland has released us twice The pigeons are dead, and they owe us a total of five hundred pennies. This is really bad! If this continues, when the people here are almost sick, if the French or Dutch come over, we estimate that even the gunners on the pier fort It’s all out of place.”

In today's Xinhua Island, if the aboriginal forces are removed, there are four and a half groups of outsiders.They are the people from the east coast of Xinhua Port and Tacheng Port in the northeast, the Dutch in the Thulele area in the west, the French in Fort Doufan in the southeast, the European pirates and their mixed descendants entrenched in St. Mary’s Island, and There are Arabs in the northern Mahajanga region and their Comorian allies. Because of their small number of people and the fact that they have been here for hundreds of thousands of years, many of them have been localized, let alone half a group.

Among them, the Dutch only had one trading post in Tulare, where they traded cattle, sheep, and timber with the local natives.Of course, they would sometimes collect some slaves nearby to enrich the population of Good Hope Castle.Facing the powerful threat of the colonies on the river on the east bank, the Dutch East India Company has been trying to expand the population of the Cape Colony for these years.While transporting a large number of Boers from the country, they recruited a large number of immigrants from North Germany, Ireland and Norway, thus forming the backbone of Cape Town with these whites as the core.In addition, their High Court in Batavia ruled that a large number of Southeast Asian Chinese were exiled to Cape Town, all because they thought that the Chinese were good at farming, so they found an excuse to send them to Cape Town to farm and graze for the whites .In addition to whites and Chinese, there are also a large number of Malays in the East Indies, and their close relatives-the Malagasy people in Madagascar, and of course the Khoisan reds and Xhosa blacks.These people are the third class of people except whites and Chinese, and they usually do the most dangerous and cheapest jobs.

In general, the Dutch have little influence here.Their Tulare trading post is just a small fortress with a mixed civil-engineering structure. There are fifty or sixty German mercenaries stationed there. In addition, there are a few Dutch merchants and their Malay servants. The total number is no more than 100, which is reassuring. very.

But the French in the Dofanburg region are different.Since their expedition of hundreds of people successfully landed in the Fort Doufan area in 1642 and gained a foothold, perhaps stimulated by the colonization of Madagascar by the people on the east coast, they have continuously transported people from China in the past two years. Two batches totaling nearly 2000 men and women have been transported here.Although plagued by diseases, their Dofanburg colony still has a population of more than [-] white settlers at present, and the development speed is quite fast, which makes Shi Qingjie, who has always been trapped by the population, his eyes turn red with envy.

There are now 2000 million people in mainland France, and the density is quite large. Many young people who have grown up have no land to divide at all, and have become miserable proletarians.They either went to join the army to fight, or went to be sailors, or went to Quebec or the West Indies to try their luck. Of course, they now have a new choice-going to the colony of Fort Doufan.With such a dense population in France, just recruiting thousands of landless farmers who are willing to go to sea in a certain area is not a problem at all. Therefore, the development speed of the Doufan Castle colony is quite fast, much faster than in history times.

The French built a large-scale fortress with a mixed structure of brick and wood here. At the same time, they built forts, residential areas, lighthouses, and docks outside the fortress near the sea. At the same time, they also opened up farmland and lumberyards. The appearance of a big fight made the people on the neighboring east coast extremely worried, and even the Portuguese in nearby Mozambique were suspicious, worried that these French would be greedy and covet East Africa.

There is no doubt that the people on the east coast of the New China region and the French in Fort Doufan are unfriendly. The conflict between the two sides can even be traced back to the event that the French went to Xinhua Port to discuss the opening of bilateral trade in the second half of 42. Shi Qinjie, the captain of the New China Pioneering Team, rejected the Frenchman bluntly, which made the superficial friendship between the two sides suddenly unsustainable.Since then, the French have concentrated on development, and at the same time started trade with the nearby Dutch and Portuguese, and there was no problem with the people on the east coast for a while.

Unexpectedly, at the beginning of this year (January), a French-born technician suddenly disappeared in Xinhua Port with stolen structural drawings of hydraulic sawing machines, planers and other machine tools.It is believed that he boarded a foreign ship docked in Xinhua Harbor for trading, and then he was rumored to have appeared in the French colony of Fort-Dauphin.This incident quickly brought the relationship between the two parties to a freezing point. Although the people on the east coast lack direct evidence to prove that this person escaped to Fort Dofan and that it was the French who planned this despicable defection, Xinhua Port will continue This account was settled on the heads of the French, and they strongly advised merchant ships from various countries not to transport goods from the east coast to Fort Dofan for trading, otherwise they might be sanctioned by the people on the east coast.

Later (in March) under the suggestion of the people on the east coast, the pirates of St. Mary's Island, who had a very good relationship with them, sent three ships to the south and went around the vicinity of Fort Dofan, but they were attacked by the French fleet and coastal fire artillery The attack, almost never came back.After learning that the French had a small fleet stationed in Fort Dofan and had a complete armed force, as the town on the east coast closest to Fort Dofan, Tacheng Port immediately fell into a tense situation.

From mid-to-late March to the beginning of this month, Anda Fifteen filled up the 3-person staff of the No. 1 Squadron of the Standing Squad, which had been lacking due to illness, fighting, etc. The training frequency of shore fire artillery gunners.It was not enough to finish all this. He also sent people to Xinhua Port to ask for help, asking them to send some manpower and materials to repair the last section of the unfinished city wall of Tacheng Port as soon as possible in the coming dry season, so as to be able to cope with various emergencies. event.

Kyle, who is temporarily acting as the government affairs agent for Xinhua Port, can't make the decision alone. After discussing with several other government assistants, he finally decided to send [-] South African laborers here to repair the city wall.At the same time, they also sent [-] soldiers of the Eight Banners of the Islands to help guard here. These so-called Eight Banners of the Islands are all conquered neighboring native tribes. Their combat effectiveness is basically equal to five, and their morale is also very suspicious. weapon.These people had arrived in Tacheng Harbor on these three passing ships at this moment. Although Anda Fifteen felt that most of them could not be of much help, he did not refuse the arrival of these people.

After resupplying supplies and fresh water, the three ships left the pier one by one, followed the warm Mozambique current and the northwest wind, and headed for Gushan Port, Australia.After they arrive there, they will wait until the second fleet arrives in early August in the second half of the year, and then form a group together to transport immigrants to Heishui Port.

(End of this chapter)