ps: Thank you to student Black Maple Bison for 1000 coins and student Haihua Empire for 100 coins for their support!
During the late Qing Dynasty, there was a huge income gap among various classes.
Workers at the bottom of society, such as carriage drivers and waiters in restaurants, earn no more than two or three taels of silver per month. Ordinary soldiers in the Qing army generally earn four to five taels of silver per month, while middle- and high-level officers such as the Green Camp Commander and Commander earn more than one hundred taels per month.
, as for senior generals such as commanders, generals, deputy generals, etc., their incomes are higher.
According to price estimates in the late Qing Dynasty, one tael of silver can buy 110 kilograms of rice. The income of two to three taels of silver can just meet the living needs of the people at the bottom of society for a month. However, those Manchu officials and businessmen in the ruling class,
They frequently use their power to obtain incomes that are a hundred times, a thousand times, or ten thousand times higher than that of the people at the bottom.
The wine and meat stinks in the rich families, and bones are frozen to death on the road. A large number of Manchu officials have become parasites on the body of the old empire. In order to maintain their rule, they may make minor changes to the government structure under internal and external pressure.
Changes in scope, but will not be willing to give up the right to rule the country and hand over the power in their hands to other classes or forces.
The waves behind the Yangtze River push the waves ahead. After newly rising forces become vested interests, they will also maintain their own interests in various ways and under various excuses. As an important class in the social division of labor, businessmen themselves are born to pursue interests.
In the face of hugely profitable business opportunities, businessmen can easily spend all their wealth to gain ten or dozens of times the profits.
What is different from the impression of ordinary people is that from the failure of the Taiping Rebellion to the period before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1894, the mainland under the rule of the Manchu Qing Dynasty was the largest industrial country in the Far East, and its industrial scale far exceeded that of resource-poor Japan.
Among the several heavy industrial industries that the Manchu government focused on developing, the Jiangnan Shipyard had perfect shipbuilding technology, and the shipwrights responsible for various parts of shipbuilding generally had skilled skills. In the original history, the British businessman Kirby saw the Jiangnan Shipyard suspending operations.
With huge interests, they used various means to poach more than 30 core technical boatmen from Jiangnan Shipyard, and then used the shipbuilding technology mastered by more than 30 boatmen to quickly build two steamships "Taihu Maru" with the largest displacement in Japan.
"No. 12, one of the two steamships used a steam engine made by the British, and the other directly used an engine made by Chinese shipbuilders.
The technology brought by more than 30 Chinese shipbuilders laid a solid foundation for the Kobe Shipyard under Kirby's name. Later, the Japanese government formulated more stringent policies against foreign capital. Kirby's investments in other industries were repeatedly criticized by the Japanese.
Due to the resistance of the businessman chaebol, he eventually owed a large loan and committed suicide in desperation. Shortly after Kirby's death, various industries under his name, including the Kobe Shipyard, were nationalized by the Japanese government.
After the industries under Kirby's name were nationalized, Japan's Nagoya Shipyard, Yokohama Shipyard and other military shipyards sent apprentices to learn, and successively mastered the technology of Kobe Shipyard's steam engine engines, and in just a few years,
It has raised the level of Japan's shipbuilding industry to a new level.
In the original history, Kirby worked hard to build the Kobe Shipyard, but in the end he made wedding clothes for others, improving the level of Japan's military shipyards. But now the fat that is visible to his mouth has fallen into the hands of the National Defense Forces, Kirby
Instigated by the Japanese shareholders of the Kobe Shipyard, they chose to cooperate with the pirates and the Dutch to recapture more than 200 Jiangnan Shipyard shipwrights.
Time passed quickly in the busyness. It had been more than ten days since Kirby arrived in Nanyang, and there were less than three days left before the scheduled launch of the plan.
"Mr. Kirby, Kapitan Yap Ah Lai in Kuala Lumpur sent a message saying that there was an armed Chinese fight in Selangor. He is leading his men to assist the Sultan of Selangor in settling the armed dispute between the two factions of Chinese. He is temporarily unable to participate in the attack on the National Defense Forces transport fleet."
Kirby was receiving more than ten Chinese Kapitans in the room, when a foreigner under his command came in to report.
"All of you, Kapitans, have discussed it more than ten days ago, and now Ye Yalai suddenly goes back on his word. What does he mean?"
Before the foreign devil Kirby could speak, Jakarta Kapitan Huang Fuyuan was the first to express dissatisfaction.
"The person sent by Ye Yalai explained that it was Huang Ping, the leader of the Selangor branch of the Taiping Association, who took the lead in making trouble. The people of the Taiping Association wanted to seize the shares of Seremban Kapitan Chang Chang's tin mine in the Klang Valley and the Klang Valley tin field.
Ye Yalai is also involved, so he will personally lead his men to negotiate with Huang Ping."
"A branch of the Taiping Society only has five or six hundred people. Furong Kapitan's subordinates have thousands of people. How can they deal with the opponent's five or six hundred people?"
Huang Fuyuan questioned.
"Brother Fuyuan, it was only last year that there were 500 or 600 people in one branch of the Taiping Society. Starting from the beginning of this year, the number of official members of the Taiping Society has doubled. The original number of people in one branch has also increased from 500 to 600 to more than 1,000.
It’s normal that Seremban Kapitan can’t beat the Selangor branch of the Taiping Association.”
The Malay Peninsula is rich in tin ore resources, and Chinese gangs and the Taiping Society have considerable influence in the local area. Zheng Jinggui, from Kapitan in Perak, which borders the Kelantan state controlled by the National Defense Forces, knows more about the Taiping Society than others, so he
Kapitan introduced to other Chinese people, "The organizational structure of the Taiping Association is divided into seven levels: peripheral congregation, formal congregation, hundred presidents, thousand presidents, hall masters, and helmsmen. The peripheral congregations and formal congregations are the grassroots members of the Taiping Association.
, and President Bai, Chief Qian, hall master, helmsman, and commander are the backbone and core leadership of the Taiping Association.
Starting from February this year, after the organizational structure of the Taiping Association was changed, a hundred generals generally have jurisdiction over three to forty formal members, a thousand generals have jurisdiction over two to three or two hundred formal members, and the hall leader has jurisdiction over four to six thousand members.
The number of people is about 1,200, and the helmsman oversees the official congregation of seven to eight thousand people, while the leader is the steward of the Taiping Association, responsible for hundreds of thousands of congregations in Southeast Asia."
"I have been hearing from Kapitans in the Malay Peninsula that the Taiping Society is powerful. Does Brother Zheng know who the leader of the Taiping Society is?"
A Chinese Kapitan asked.
"Bukit Kapitan has taken note of this. The Taiping Association is well-organized. Not to mention the leader of the Taiping Association, even the sub-rudders under the leadership are not known to many people."
"The master behind the Taiping Society is the Han Dynasty. They act cautiously and it is difficult for outsiders to find out about them."
Another Kapitan agreed.
The Chinese Kapitans in the Nanyang region have been in contact with the Taiping Society for seven or eight years. Based on their conscious secret investigations and the information provided by the Dutch, the Chinese Kapitans roughly calculated the total number of Chinese people, old and young, under the control of the Taiping Society.
One hundred thousand people, but as for how many hundreds of thousands of people there are, let alone them, within the Taiping Association, except for the leader of the Taiping Association Liang Xing and a few senior officials, even the sub-rudders below do not know.
Figures at the level of sub-rudders are the core leadership class in the Taiping Society. Throughout the Nanyang region, the Taiping Society has established a total of seven sub-rudders, namely the Malay Peninsula sub-rudder, the Borneo sub-rudder, the Sumatra sub-rudder, and the Java sub-rudder.
With the seven branches and the staff directly under the headquarters, the Taiping Association has a total official membership of 60,000 people and more than 200,000 peripheral members.
The total strength of the peripheral congregation plus the formal congregation is more than 300,000. Even though the Taiping Society acted low-key and cautiously, the Dutch colonists and the Chinese Kapitan discovered the clues. After seeing the huge strength of the Taiping Society, they naturally became afraid.
In the end, we chose to form a group to resist the pressure from the Taiping Association.
Power is a man's aphrodisiac. The Chinese Kapitans in Nanyang are all lower-class Chinese who went to Nanyang. They got the Kapitan position through competition with fellow Chinese forces, conflicts, etc. If they were allowed to voluntarily give up their power and join forces,
The Taiping Society is probably more difficult than killing them.
Kirby, the Chinese Kapitans and the Dutch colonists who supported them came together because of their own interests. After more than ten days of connection and preparation, Kirby had gathered more than 6,000 armed forces, more than 70 in size.
only ships, and five Dutch obsolete gunboats.
The armed personnel and weapons ships to attack the transport fleet have been prepared, and according to the agreement, the arrival or failure of the four hundred armed forces provided by Ye Yalai will have little impact on the success or failure of the operation. Out of consideration for uniting other Chinese Kapitans, Kirby
The final word was agreed that Ye Ah Lai would withdraw from the operation midway, and then the share of the harvest due to Ye Ah Lai after the operation was successful would be distributed to other Chinese Kapitans.
Through some arrangements, Kirby promptly solved the adverse impact of Ye Yalai's withdrawal from the operation. At the same time, Ye Yalai led seven or eight hundred of his men to a place 60 kilometers away from the Klang Valley mine.
Stopped.
"Father, why did the team stop?"
Ye Shengping, Ye Yalai's eldest son, walked from the front of the team to his father and asked.
"Nothing happened at the Klang Valley tin mine. My father led seven to eight hundred people out because he did not want to participate in the attack on the Han transport fleet."
Ye Yalai sat under a big tree far away from the team and explained, "If the plan goes well, the attack on the Han transport fleet has a 70% to 80% chance of success. After the operation is successful, we can gain a lot of benefits, but a few days ago I
I received news from Selangor that the British took over the administrative power of Kuala Lumpur and would move the capital of the Straits Settlements to Kuala Lumpur in two or three years.
Sheng Ping, do you know what it means for the British to do this?"
"Father, Kuala Lumpur is your life-long effort. Where were the British when you worked hard to develop Kuala Lumpur twenty years ago? Why did they take away our Ye family's territory? Father, Kuala Lumpur is the root of the Ye family. Without Kuala Lumpur, Ye
Home is nothing, you must not agree to the British request!"
The development of Kuala Lumpur from a desolate tin mine to a prosperous city was indispensable without the hard work and dedication of the early Chinese citizens. Yap Ah Lai has been in charge of Kapitan in Kuala Lumpur for more than ten years and is the real power in the Kuala Lumpur area. Yap Shengping, as the successor of the other party, has already
He regarded Kuala Lumpur as his own private property. Therefore, he was very angry when he heard that the British wanted to take back Yap Ah Lai's power to govern Kuala Lumpur.
"The strength of the British is all over the world. In their eyes, our Ye family is not even as good as an ant. We are not qualified to resist them."
Ye Yalai also had a surge of anger in his heart, and suppressed it forcefully: "Kuala Lumpur was developed by me, and I cannot let it fall into the hands of the British in vain.
Sheng Ping, in the Nanyang region, apart from the British and the Dutch, the Han State is the most powerful, so before the British officially intervene in Kuala Lumpur affairs, we cannot offend the Han State to death, otherwise in a few years, the Ye family will be a little bit
There is no possibility of turning over.
Sheng Ping, you may understand what I said!"
Ye Yalai stared closely into his son's eyes and said.
"My son understands that Kuala Lumpur is the foundation of the Ye family. Compared with Kuala Lumpur, nothing else is important."
"Sheng Ping, remember what you said today, we must not let Kuala Lumpur be lost from the hands of our father and son!"
"My son will never forget it for the rest of his life!"
"Okay, order the team to rest where they are and return to Kuala Lumpur in five days."
"Yes, father!"
Ye Shengping replied firmly and walked towards the team without hesitation.
