In the late Qing Dynasty, the world was in chaos, and many people went to other places in order to make a living, so there were three major waves of immigrants who broke into the Guandong, xikou and nanyang, and a large number of residents along the southeast coast went to Southeast Asia to make a living, which had a far-reaching impact.
Unexpectedly, the Chinese in Nanyang at that time even established a republic in Nanyang.
Located in the western part of the present-day Indonesian island of Kalimantan, there was once a country founded by the Chinese, that is, the Republic of Lanfang, but the country only lasted for a hundred years and disappeared, so many people do not know.
The Chinese emigrated to Nanyang in large numbers and valued Borneo
Today's Southeast Asia is the most concentrated place in the world, such as in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore and other countries, Chinese are everywhere, they are numerous in the local area, and have considerable influence and status.
The history of Chinese migration to Southeast Asia can be traced back to the Song and Yuan dynasties, but it was not large at that time, and there was no migration boom until the late Ming Dynasty and the late Qing Dynasty, especially in modern times, when the number of Chinese in Nanyang became more and more numerous.
Compared with Thailand and other well-developed places, the Malay Archipelago at that time was very backward and relatively wild, although the conditions were poor but the resources were very rich, so it became a favored place for many Chinese.
Kalimantan, the largest island in Southeast Asia, also known as Borneo, is located at the southern tip of the South China Sea, with an area of more than 700,000 square kilometers, and its northern development is relatively prosperous, while the southern part is almost all tropical rainforest, and the western part is more likely.
The Delta Plain of the Kapuas River in the west of Borneo is huge and flat and fertile, not only has many resources, arable land, but also has good port conditions, so it has long been the Emergence of Chinese reclamation in the local area, and gradually formed a settlement town.
By the time of the Qing Dynasty, the Chinese here had grown in size, but nominally belonged to the Sultan of Borneo, and seeing the wealth of the Chinese, the surrounding tribes often plundered the Chinese.
The group took care of the heating in order to protect itself and gave birth to the country
At the beginning, the Chinese just wanted to make a living, but the rich Chinese were always bullied, and they could not stand it for a long time, and the so-called trees wanted to be quiet and the wind was not stopping, so that the local Chinese had to unite.
At that time, the Hakka, Chaoshan and Minnan people in western Borneo built their own associations with clans as a link, organized private armed groups, and slowly emerged Chinese autonomous groups, becoming more and more powerful.
At that time, the Europeans were colonizing on a large scale, the local Sultan was weak, and in order to let the Chinese help, they also turned a blind eye to The Chinese autonomy, making the Chinese continue to grow in the local area and become a force to be reckoned with.
After the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, because there was not enough land for people to reproduce, a large number of coastal residents continued to go to Nanyang to make a living, and in the thirty-seventh year of Qianlong, Luo Fangbo, a Hakka family member in Guangdong, took hundreds of ethnic people to Nanyang and settled in Borneo.
Luo Fangbo was born in Xiangmendi, he quickly gained a firm foothold in the local area, gained great prestige, became the leader of the Chinese, five years later, in 1777, Luo Fangbo established the Lanfang Company, and appointed himself as the general director, also known as the Great Unification, and the Lanfang Republic was born.
In fact, this country was built after the Dutch East India Company at that time, nominally a company, but in fact it owned all the functions of the state, and later generations called this Chinese zhengquan the Republic of Lanfang.
The strange Lan Fang is not a complete country
Although many people regard the Republic of Lanfang as a country, the country is very strange, on the surface the unification is elected by the hometown association and other Chinese organizations, can not be hereditary, looks like the president, but in fact there is a difference.
The local Chinese all use the banner of Lanfang to the outside world, but the local indigenous people are still under the jurisdiction of the sultans, and there is no historical record of the name "Lanfang Republic", which is a customary name for it in later generations.
Lan Fang's original intention was to protect himself, but his strength was weak, and he still couldn't fight against foreign enemies, so Luo Fangbo directly sent people to the Qing Dynasty, hoping to become a vassal, of course, using the name of Lan Fang Company rather than the state.
However, the Qianlong Emperor did not comment on the existence of Lanfang Company and refused to have any contact with it, because at that time, there were many members of the Heaven and Earth Society in the Nanyang Lands, engaged in anti-Qing activities, and the Qianlong Emperor naturally could not sit idly by.
Despite this, the Dutch at that time still mistakenly believed that Lan Fang was protected by the Qing Dynasty, and the Dutch who were defeated by the Ming Dynasty were also a little afraid of the Qing Dynasty, allowing Lan Fang to get rid of the control of the Dutch and maintain a state of self-independence.
After that, Lanfang carefully built and developed, and at its peak, the area was about 140,000 square kilometers, roughly equivalent to Anhui, and the population was about 4 million, which was a relatively powerful existence in Southeast Asia at that time.
When Luo Fangbo was fifty-eight years old, that is, the year of the Abdication of the Qianlong Emperor, he died in Pontianak, and then Jiang Pengbo took his place and continued to take charge of Lanfang, and for a long time thereafter, Lanfang was relatively stable.
But Lan Fang did not have a strong military strength, after the Qing Dynasty, Lan Fang fell into danger, especially after the Sino-French War, the Qing Dynasty's cowardice made the overseas Chinese even more helpless, at this time the British stood firm in Borneo, and fought with the Netherlands for this big island.
In 1884, under the attack of the Dutch, the weak Lanfang was defeated, and the eighteenth commander Liu Asheng raised a white flag to the Dutch, ending the 107-year Lanfang Republic.
Speaking of which, the Republic of Lanfang is not the same as the state in the modern sense, and the so-called "Republic of Lanfang" was also made up by later people in order to facilitate the study of the title, and such a name did not exist at that time.
The Republic of Lanfang, at best, was equivalent to an autonomous region at that time, but it incorporated a lot of Western elements, as well as its own arms, laws and the like, somewhat similar to the state.
Speaking of the Lanfang Republic was born earlier than the United States, and this is a microcosm of the Chinese migration to Nanyang, the Lanfang area where the Chinese gathered at that time is still one of the most economically developed places in Indonesia, and the proportion of Chinese is relatively high.
Specifically, the Lanfang Republic is actually an autonomous group that the Chinese immigrated overseas and then established, which is somewhat similar to the ancient local division of royal power, but because its "unification" is elected, it is somewhat similar to the modern state.