Chapter 269 The strategic cooperation between the Golden Kingdom of Tatar and the Tang Empire
In the spring of the forty-third year of Xuanping, in Malacca on the Nanyang Peninsula, a group of officials, gentry and even military generals gathered in a huge cement building in the city of Malacca.
In front of them was a railway, and a locomotive covered in red flowers was slowly entering the platform. When the train stopped, everyone applauded.
This is the first opening ceremony of the Malacca section of the Nanyang Railway. Ever since the Tang Empire began planning the construction of the Nanyang Railway many years ago, it has been under construction over the years.
In order to speed up the construction progress, a multi-direction approach was adopted to construct multiple sections of railway at the same time.
Construction started in neighboring Guangning County, Guangdong, and then went all the way south through Jiaozhou, Guangxi, and into Annan Province. Construction also started in Siam Province, Malacca State, and Myanmar Province at the same time.
Among them, the railway from Guangning to Jiaozhou was the first to be completed, and later the Kunming-Song Railway from Jiaozhou to Kunming in Yunnan was completed.
The progress of the railway connecting Kunming to Myanmar is not too fast, but this Kunming-Yangtze Railway is a standard combat-ready railway. It is designed as an ordinary single-track railway, and the design speed is not too fast. At the same time, the army also dispatched a large number of engineers
The troops helped with the construction, so the construction progress of this Kunming-Yangang Railway was relatively fast.
On the other hand, the progress of the coastal railway connecting Annan Province to Siam and Malacca State is slightly slower.
This is not to say that the railways in this area are more difficult to build. In fact, in terms of construction difficulty, this coastal railway is easier, at least much easier than the Kunming-Yangzhou Railway.
Even more difficult to build is the railway from Siam to Myanmar!
The key is that the railway from Annan to Malacca is a coastal railway, and Datang's maritime transportation is developed. In fact, the demand for railways in the above-mentioned coastal areas is not too urgent in a short period of time, so it is built slowly.
But now it can be considered repaired.
The completion and opening of this railway meant that the Tang Empire connected various provinces and capitals in Southeast Asia with other provincial roads in the mainland through railways.
People can take a train from Jinling City and go all the way south to Malacca Port.
At the same time, you can also take a train to Kunming via the Southwest Railway and then take a train to Yangon.
If we wait another year or so, the railway from Siam to Myanmar will be opened, and the Nanyang Peninsula railway network will be completely formed.
This will greatly assist the Tang Empire in developing the Nanyang region, making the Nanyang region a large granary for the empire and a supplier of various resources, while also being able to accommodate a large number of immigrants.
The development of Nanyang has been the most important thing that the Tang Empire has attached great importance to in recent years, much more than the development of overseas territories.
This is not because Nanyang is so good. In fact, the environment in Nanyang is not very good. It seems to have a lot of rain, but the floods are very serious. Without the construction of huge water conservancy facilities, it is actually difficult to develop agriculture on a large scale.
In later generations, the Nanyang region became the main export region for grain. This was because science and technology developed and water conservancy facilities were improved.
But in the early Tang Dynasty, when science and technology were not developed enough, the mortality rate for large-scale immigration in such a poor place would be too high.
That is to say, Datang's medical level has improved significantly in recent years, especially after it has a deeper understanding of bacteriology, and has successively developed a variety of drugs to initially suppress a variety of tropical diseases. Only then can it be carried out in Nanyang.
Massive immigration.
The first thing Datang did to immigrate to the Nanyang region was to build railways, build various dams and ditches, and at the same time keep up with the medical conditions, so that a large number of immigrants could be imported into the Nanyang region.
After years of continuous efforts, the development of the Nanyang region has now reached a certain scale. As long as we continue step by step, the success of the development of the Nanyang region will be a matter of time.
Compared with the Nanyang region, which the Tang Empire tried its best to support but still developed relatively slowly, the development of overseas territories with better conditions such as America does not need to be worried about by the Tang Empire officials at all. As long as the policies are relaxed a little, they can develop on their own.
very good.
This is the case with railway construction in North America. When Datang Railway Corporation first announced that it would invest in the construction of this railway and issue related bonds to raise funds, it didn't take long for it to collect enough or even surplus funds.
Therefore, in addition to the main line railway across the American continent, investment and construction of multiple railway lines have been announced.
In addition, because the terrain in many places is flat, it is easy to build this railway. It will not take long for the first main line railway in America to be completed and opened to traffic.
This is a single-line railway connecting Xinnan Port to Wuhu City. It took just over a year from start to finish.
The single-track railway has just been opened to traffic, and we are preparing to continue construction to expand the single-track railway into a double-track railway.
As for some shorter branch railways, there are even more.
Nowadays, North America has become the region where the Tang Empire has built the most railways besides the mainland.
The construction of other overseas territories is not bad. In the south, outside the gold mining area railway, a railway is being built to connect the gold mining area and the South African port. It will be transported to the inland through railway transportation. It is also to support the army in establishing the northern defense line.
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The northern defense line of South Africa is to draw a line from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, and then build simple walls and isolation zones to prevent the influx of indigenous people from the northern region, so as to ensure the strategic security of South Africa.
The Tang Dynasty people liked to set up various simple walls and isolation zones in overseas territories, or in the border areas between native and indigenous controlled areas.
South Africa is still a trivial matter. The western part of Myanmar Province is an isolation zone, with an uninhabited land hundreds of kilometers wide in the middle.
What’s even more funny is that the west of Myanmar Province is not actually an indigenous-controlled area, but an overseas state of the Tang Dynasty, Bangladesh. This Bengal also implements strict localization measures. Except for a few temporary residents, it is Datang people, but there are no indigenous people.
The real indigenous people are in the Indian region west of Bengal.
The same is true in Central Asia. A simple city wall was built along the border between the Tang Dynasty and the Safi Dynasty and the Mughal Dynasty, and troops were deployed for patrolling. Behind the border, there was an endless border with a width of hundreds of kilometers.
Human area.
There are also comprehensive and strict patrols along the coast of the West Sea. This patrol is not even in the coastal areas of the Tang Dynasty, but directly close to the coastal areas controlled by the Safi Dynasty and the Ottoman Empire.
Well, the West Sea Fleet of the Tang Navy conducted intensive patrols in this sea area. Except for the ships of the Tang Dynasty, other ships saw one intercepting another. Anyway, a sampan was not allowed to approach the inner sea of the Tang Dynasty.
On the contrary, there are no such isolation zones in Eastern Europe, because the Tatars themselves established isolation zones in the first place to prevent their own people from escaping to the Tang Empire.
Nowadays, every population under the command of the Tatar Jin Kingdom is a precious strategic resource, and the Tatar Jin Kingdom will not allow everyone to flee to the Tang Dynasty.
It is said that the Tang Army on the front line saw that it was difficult for the Tatars to block the border, and they often gave some supplies to the Tatar army for free.
Did the Tatar Kingdom and the Tang Empire agree on how to deal with illegal immigrants and launched strategic cooperation?
The senior officials of the Tang Empire were very pleased with this. They felt that although the natives of the Tatar Kingdom were still very ignorant, they finally did not cause trouble to our Datang.
Unlike the Safavid dynasty and the Mughal dynasty, the Ottoman dynasty was not effective at sealing the border, and the Tang Empire had to wipe their ass every day.
So much so that the top brass of the Army had a voice, and they might as well help them train a border patrol team!