The Chu Empire's large-scale development plan for the Nanyang Peninsula was a large and complex plan, including a series of subsequent urban areas, transportation facilities, water conservancy facilities, medical facilities and other large-scale infrastructure construction.
At the same time, it is also necessary to prepare in advance the division of administrative areas and arrangements by officials.
These all involve the arrangement of a large amount of human and material resources.
After all, the Chu Empire's development of the Nanyang Peninsula did not mean that it would be sufficient to maintain colonial rule after directly occupying it.
The Da Chu Empire plans to develop the entire Nanyang Peninsula as its future homeland, in order to make the Nanyang Peninsula an important economic crop for the Chu Empire in the future, such as rubber, various fruits, and the most important rice. Origin.
Although the Nanyang Peninsula region has problems of one kind or another, the local climate is actually very good, which is very beneficial to the production of some crops.
Especially rice.
Three crops a year is no joke!
Of course, the water conservancy facilities must be solved in the early stage, otherwise the local area will be flooded when it rains, and there will be no way to grow food on a large scale.
To sum up, the investment is not small, but once invested, the future returns will also be very large.
This has been proven by the Chu Empire in Thang Long and Hue provinces in the Annam region. Although the Chu Empire paid a huge price to solve the local floods, especially in the lower reaches of the Red River and the lower reaches of the Mekong River, it built a large number of water conservancy projects. facility.
However, after the construction of these water conservancy facilities, a large amount of local land was instantly transformed into the best fertile farmland, with very high grain output.
At present, these two new provinces in the south, to be precise, the plains along the Red River and the lower plains of the Mekong River have become the new grain-producing and grain-exporting areas of the Chu Empire in the south.
Under such circumstances, if the subsequent Great Chu Empire can capture Siam and Myanmar, it will also be able to develop the central and northern plains of Siam and the Chao Phraya Plain on a large scale. The natural conditions of these two areas are very good, and they are An important grain-producing area in Siam.
If the water conservancy facilities are built again, the grain output can be doubled several times more, becoming the new southern granary of the empire.
The Yinrawaddy River Delta area in southern Myanmar is also one of the most important grain-producing areas in the Nanyang Peninsula, accounting for more than half of the grain production in the entire Myanmar region.
In the original time and space, before World War II, Myanmar was also the largest rice exporter in the world. The rice exported every year accounted for more than 40% of the total global rice exports, making it a veritable major rice exporter.
The rice exported basically comes from the Yinrawaddy Delta area in southern Myanmar.
This shows the importance of this place!
Of course, this is talking about development potential. If we only talk about the present, the food output of the above-mentioned Red River Delta, Mekong River Delta, Chao Phraya River Delta, northern Siam, and the Yinrawaddy River Delta in Myanmar is even if they are all added up. Far inferior to the Great Chu Empire and Liaodong Province!
Even if it is really developed, it is actually not as good as many provinces in the Chu Empire. For example, the Northeast region where the Chu Empire invested heavily in the development of the Northeast. The entire development plan is aimed at producing 50 million tons of grain per year. ...This was an era without chemical fertilizers and hybrid rice!
The annual output of 50 million tons of grain is terrifying!
Based on the standard of 400 kilograms per capita, it is enough to feed a population of 125 million people!
Even if the above-mentioned Nanyang Peninsula area is fully developed, in the absence of chemical fertilizers and hybrid rice, the Imperial Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry estimates that the grain output will only be 40 million tons.
Many people have the illusion that the Nanyang region is the country with the largest output... In fact, this is not the case. Although many countries in the Nanyang region are grain exporters, their total output is actually not very good.
In later generations, the grain output in Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar was basically around 30 to 40 million tons, while in China in later generations, any province randomly selected would have similar numbers, or even more.
For example, Heilongjiang, the largest granary in China in later generations, produced more than 70 million tons of grain annually. This does not refer to the entire Northeast, but only Heilongjiang Province!
Ranking second is Henan in the Central Plains, with more than 60 million tons!
Many people have the impression that Inner Mongolia is just a prairie and desert. Inner Mongolia, which does not produce food, has an annual output of nearly 40 million tons... ranking sixth in the country!
Jiangsu, the traditional land of fish and rice in the south of the Yangtze River, has a low modern grain output. In fact, it is only more than 3,800 tons. Hunan, one of the Hunan provinces, has even less, just about 30 million tons... Of course, this is not because of the poor terrain and climate, but because of the bad terrain and climate. This is due to the lack of modern large-scale planting technology, and the reason why farmers do not grow food but instead plant various economic crops, or even directly abandon the crops.
This situation actually also existed in the Dachu Empire!
In the current Great Chu Empire, the Pan-Jiangnan region, including Jiangnan Province, is still the most important grain-producing area in the Great Chu Empire.
However, with the development of the industrial and commercial economy, even though the food output in the Pan-Jiangnan region is increasing every year, the increase is not large. Many farmer families are more inclined to plant some economic crops, such as cotton, than growing less profitable food. , Mulberry etc.
In recent years, some people with lofty ideals have even put forward a very scary slogan, that is, "cotton mulberry cannibalism" has appeared in the Jiangnan region!
This means that instead of growing food, farmers grow cotton and mulberry trees.
At the same time, the population of the Great Chu Empire was growing rapidly, and the population of the Pan-Jiangnan region was also growing very fast. It was the most densely populated area in the Great Chu Empire.
Therefore, although the current pan-Jiangnan region still produces the most grain, it is actually no longer a grain exporting place, but has become a grain importing place.
Every year, a large amount of grain is imported from the Huguang region, North China and even the Northeast region.
Today in the Great Chu Empire, the most important grain exporting area is the Huguang region, which includes the two provinces of Chubei, Chunan, and Hantian. The contemporary Huguang region actually has a small population, but its grain output is huge. The Chu Empire continued to focus on development for thirty years, so that Huguang gained a reputation as a well-known city in the world.
Next is the Northeastern region, mainly Liaodong and the newly developed Heishui Province. These two places are also sparsely populated and have rich black soil in the Northeast. At the same time, they use large-scale mechanization or horse farming. , so the per capita grain output is extremely large, and it has become one of the important granaries of the empire.
As for the three provinces of Henan in the Central Plains and Shandong and Hebei in North China, the local grain output is actually quite large. However, the local population is recovering quickly and local consumption is also large. Therefore, although the output is large, the output is relatively small.
Whether a place can become a grain exporter and supply other key areas depends not on the total output, but on per capita output and per capita consumption.
Even if the total output is large, the per capita output is not very good, and the per capita consumption is high. It will happen that you don't have enough to eat, and there is no extra supply to other places. For example, in later generations of China, the food output is exaggerated, but we also have a lot of people. So forget about exporting, we still have to import a large amount of food every year.
(In fact, we are still the third largest grain exporter in the world, exporting a lot of grain every year, but at the same time, we are also the largest grain importer in the world, importing about 160 million tons every year. This import amount far exceeds the export amount)
(The reason for this situation is mainly that we import a large amount of staple grains and supplementary grains, and at the same time export certain grain processing products. You can simply understand that most of the imported grains have been digested by us, but there is still a part of the imported grains that are not It is simply an import, but it belongs to the grain processing trade. The front leg is imported, and the back leg is processed and sold.)
Of course, this is about our special situation. In reality, many countries do not import food even though their per capita food production is low, but they still export a lot of food, such as India!
Their total grain output is much less than that of China, and their population exceeds that of China. Their per capita grain output is only more than 200 kilograms, while the international per capita food security standard is 400 kilograms...
But here’s the point. They are the sixth largest grain exporter in the world, sometimes even ranked fifth in the world. More importantly...you can’t find India among the top ten grain importing countries in the world. name……
More than 200 kilograms per capita, and exported in large quantities... I am afraid only God knows how the Indians survived!
Let’s not talk about future generations, but let’s talk about the Chu Empire itself. Due to the growth of a large local population, there were not many breakthroughs in hybrid rice, chemical fertilizer industry, and even pesticides, and the yield per mu was not high.
This has led to the fact that although local food continues to increase, the per capita food growth rate is not fast, and per capita food consumption has been hovering at a level of more than 300 kilograms.
This forced the Chu Empire to increase food development in its local areas, such as the Northeast, Huguang, Central Plains, North China, and even Mongolia.
On the other hand, it is to increase the acquisition of food from overseas regions.
North America is on one side, and Southeast Asia is on the other.
Although the total grain output in the Nanyang region may not be very good now, and it is estimated to be far less than that in the Northeast region when it is fully developed in the future, those places are all new places. Once it is done, there will be no problem in feeding tens of millions of people.
How to put it, this is equivalent to the world falling again. The annual production of tens of millions of tons of grain can greatly alleviate the food demand in the empire.
This is the background of the large-scale development of the Nanyang Peninsula. It is for no other reason than to feed more people and keep them full.
Against this background, the Chu Empire adopted a large-scale development plan for the Nanyang Peninsula and prepared a series of measures.
But before these development measures can be implemented, there is something else that needs to be done first!
That means the local indigenous people must be dealt with first.
In today's Nanyang region, not all places belong to the Chu Empire. Annan, Cambodia, and the Malacca Peninsula are all directly under the Chu Empire and have been established as provinces.
But there is still a Kingdom of Siam and a Kingdom of Burma.
Before embarking on the large-scale development of the Nanyang Peninsula, these two indigenous countries must be wiped out first.
The so-called large-scale development of the Nanyang Peninsula... actually refers to the development of the territories of these two indigenous countries.
If you want to develop it, you must first seize the land!
In November of the thirty-third year of Chengshun, the Chu Empire Army began its early military preparations. The army claimed that it would invest 200,000 troops in this military operation, which would definitely make the cabinet spend 8 million Chu yuan. Value for money.
As for the navy... Myanmar and Siam have no navies at all. When the time comes, they can just send some offshore and inland gunboats there.
And the Army's so-called 200,000 troops are actually nonsense... These two indigenous countries have no need for the Army to use 200,000 troops, and only 40,000 to 50,000 people can survive.
This army of 200,000 people includes all the garrisons in surrounding provinces!
If we really want to use an army of 200,000, these 8 million Chu Yuan are not enough. Not to mention adding a zero at the end, but it must be doubled at least four or five times...
It is obviously impossible for the Army to fight the war at a loss at its own expense. After all, this time the Nanyang Peninsula is a large-scale development plan, but the plan that the cabinet has tossed out, the Army actually doesn’t want to fight... After all, the Army really doesn’t want to go to that poor place in the Nanyang Peninsula. .
The reason why it was said to be 200,000 was just to coax the cabinet and make them feel that their 8 million was well spent.
Those who actually participated in the battle were only over 50,000 people, including two first-class divisions, one second-class division, plus some third-class garrison troops from the local colonies.
Specifically, there are the 8th Division, a first-class combat readiness division, stationed in Yunnan Province, the 14th division, a first-class combat readiness division, stationed in Malacca Province, and the 37th Division, a first-class combat readiness division, stationed in Hue Province.
In addition, there are C-class garrison regiments in the two colonies, Bangkok County Garrison Camp and Dagon Garrison Camp.
Of course, in addition to the army, there are also naval forces. The navy also plans to send a marine regiment to participate in the war to gain some military exploits.
As for the Guards, it is impossible to be absent. Wherever there is a war, there will be Guards. Therefore, the Guards will also send a mixed brigade of 4,000 people to participate in the battle.
Together with some headquarters and independent artillery units, the total strength is about 60,000.
Most of these troops are combat-ready troops stationed in the local area. They can directly perform tasks with just one order. The Guards are a bit special and have to be transferred from the native Gyeonggi Province. However, if steamers are used for transportation, it actually doesn’t take much. A long time, a few months is enough.
It is worth mentioning that some of the troops participating in this series of battles are equipped with the latest Type 18 rifles and the 32-year-old 75mm field gun.
The Eighth Division in Yunnan and the Fourteenth Division in Malacca each have a battalion equipped with eighteen rifles, and are also equipped with a sentry 75mm breech-loaded rifled field gun... These two units belong to A typical first-class combat readiness force is stationed in border areas and faces war at any time, so it is natural that it gives priority to equipping with new weapons.
It's just that the Army received relatively few breech-loading rifled weapons... Therefore, only one battalion of these two armies was equipped with new rifles, mainly for adaptive training and to serve as the seeds of the entire army!
The Army is currently purchasing few new rifles, simply because they think new rifles are too expensive. A new rifle costs more than 40 yuan, and they really can't equip them all at once.
The Army also wants to wait for the Guards and the Navy to make purchases, then spread the cost and then take advantage...
However, the Guards are very proud. They have already equipped more than 40,000 guns, and there are more than 50,000 orders for them in the future. Not only can they equip the entire Guards, but they can also leave some for daily and combat use. Replenish losses and serve as inventory for emergencies!
As for the Guards... some of the Guards generals looked at the army and navy generals the same way they looked at the rebels... Every day they felt that the army and navy would rebel.
Therefore, regardless of price, it is their old tradition to be the first to equip new weapons and stockpile a large number of new weapons and equipment.
The Guards sent out this time were temporarily organized into the third mixed brigade, all equipped with rear-mounted rifled weapons, and the regiment had practiced new era tactics for more than a year. It not only included new skirmishers newly proposed within the Guards tactics, as well as infantry-artillery coordination tactics in the breech-loading rifled era.
This time the Guards also wanted to practice with Siam and the Kingdom of Burma, and try out the new weapons and tactics they had figured out in the past few years.
I hope to find the advantages and disadvantages in actual combat, amplify the advantages and improve the shortcomings.
In fact, the Army has a similar idea and wants to use this war to test new weapons and new tactics. However, the Army's new weapons and equipment are not as many as those of the Guards, and the experiment also reveals a petty atmosphere.
Therefore, this war has a strong experimental nature, and it is also to prevent our own small number of troops, but advanced equipment and tactics that are different from those of the ordinary army, from being used indiscriminately by those bastards in the army.
After discussion, the senior officials of the Guards sent a heavyweight general to serve as the commander of the mixed brigade: Guards Major General Xu Jiaqing.
According to the tradition of the Chu army, the commander of a mixed brigade is usually a brigadier general, and this mixed brigade is generally a mixed brigade of six to seven thousand people.
The temporary third mixed brigade of the Guards only has a size of more than 4,000 people... According to past rules, it is just a mixed regiment. The commander is usually a colonel, and in a few cases, a brigadier general.
But in order to avoid trouble, the Guards directly assigned a mixed brigade designation and sent a major general over.
Tell the army clearly: Don't even think about commanding me...
The Army chuckled at this, and several elders discussed it. Since you, the Guards, want to gain credit, but don't want to interfere with us, you might as well be in charge of a battlefield by yourself.
So, after some discussion, the Guards has temporarily formed the Third Mixed Brigade, which will land directly from Bangkok and be responsible for the war in the area. The local army garrison in Bangkok will help you and be responsible for logistics affairs.
The Army's 37th Class B Standing Division will launch an attack westward from the Mekong River Delta in Hue; the 14th Class A Combat Readiness Division in the Malacca area will launch an attack from Malacca to the north. Well, it will attack Myanmar and Myanmar at the same time. Siam!
The Eighth Division of Yunnan's Class A Combat Readiness Division fought southward from Yunnan.
A marine regiment of the Navy landed in Dagon, Myanmar, and with the local garrison, they launched an attack northward while ensuring the safety of Dagon.
In this war, attacks will be launched in five directions at the same time, striving to directly penetrate the two indigenous countries in the shortest time, without giving the two indigenous countries sufficient reaction time, and quickly eliminate their main forces and political power to prevent the war from becoming protracted and falling into a quagmire...
If this fight drags on, it will easily change... But don't think that the Chu army will win because it is well-equipped and has high combat effectiveness. There are too many variables in war.
In the original time and space, the British suffered heavy losses when they fought against Afghanistan and the Boers in South Africa. The Americans were no exception. They were stuck in the quagmire in Vietnam. They had no advanced equipment and even a military advantage, but they still suffered a difficult battle.
The senior generals of the Da Chu Empire would not look down on any opponent just because their own equipment was well equipped and their troops had strong combat capabilities.
An army of 60,000 people was sent out at once, which proved that the Chu army attached great importance to these indigenous people.
If that's not enough, there are a large number of strategic reserves in the rear.
The Army's talk of an army of 200,000 was actually not entirely deceiving the cabinet... They have really prepared a lot of strategic reserves. If the war situation changes, these strategic reserves can be lined up at any time.
It’s just that there’s a high probability that it won’t be used.
After the basic policy of large-scale development of the Nanyang Peninsula, military strategic deployments were also made, and even general tactical plans were also made.
The next step is to implement it!
On November 13, the winter of the 33rd year of Chengshun, the Guards temporarily formed the Third Mixed Brigade. Under the leadership of Guards Major General Xu Jiaqi, they boarded numerous ships at Wusong Military Base and were escorted by the Guards' own troops. Eight warships escort south!
Well, you read that right, it was the Guards' own warships that were escorting them.
The Guards also has a fleet, and it is quite large!
Not only did they have a fleet, but the Guards also had an air force. They were equipped with the first hot-air balloon unit in the Dachu Empire, which was used for high-altitude visual warning and artillery shooting for the defense of important areas.
The Guards of the Great Chu Empire were a mixed force with complete arms of land, sea and air, and had complete independent combat capabilities.
And this is also the confidence of the Guards to prevent the army and navy from rebelling!
Of course, the generals of the army and navy laughed at this... They still don't know who is the potential villain in the empire.
In order to prepare for unrest in the Guards, the small number of breech-loading rifled weapons currently equipped in the Army are all deployed in Jiangnan Province.
Several large-tonnage offshore battleships built by the navy in recent years are basically lying around at Songjiang Naval Base.
Many people in the army and navy are thinking that if there is a problem with the Guards in the future and they rebel, they will go directly back to Gyeonggi to protect them!
