I want to be emperor

Contemporary Singapore is very different from the modern Singapore of the original time and space. The topography and even the area are completely different.

Because a considerable part of the land area of ​​Singapore in later generations was formed after a long reclamation project. Its land area increased by at least 25%, which greatly changed the appearance of the port city of Singapore. topography.

However, in the contemporary Singapore of the Chu Empire, Singapore's terrain is still relatively primitive, and no large-scale land reclamation has been carried out.

Because contemporary Singapore and the Malay Peninsula across the river also belong to the Chu Empire.

When the Chu Empire originally planned the Malacca Province, it did not divide Singapore Island separately. Instead, it was divided together with the north shore of the Johor Strait to form Singapore County, which belonged to Donglai Province.

Under this circumstance, there is actually no need for Singapore to spend huge sums of money on land reclamation. If there is not enough space in the urban area, it can just expand to the north. Moreover, because of the existence of the deep-water channel of the Johor Strait, it is more suitable for development on both sides of the strait. Industrial and commercial.

Because the Johor Strait itself is a deep-water port, it is very convenient for ships to dock here.

In terms of development potential, Singapore under the control of the Chu Empire was much better than Singapore in later generations, at least the space was sufficient.

Coupled with Singapore's unique geographical location and many deep-water ports, this gives Singapore great development opportunities.

The earliest Nanyang Governor's Office, Nanyang Garrison Headquarters, and Nanyang Fleet Headquarters of the Great Chu Empire were all established here.

Later, the Chu Empire completely took control of Nanyang, abolished a series of civil and military institutions that originated in Nanyang, such as the Nanyang Governor, and administratively divided various regions in Nanyang into directly-controlled territories, establishing the Malacca Province. This place naturally became the governor's residence of Malacca Province and the garrison of Malacca Province. Headquarters, Malacca Fleet Headquarters.

With the expansion of the Chu Empire even to Europe, the military strategic role of this place has declined, but it is still the most important military base of the army and navy of the Chu Empire.

The Army deploys at least one first-class division here all year round to deter the surrounding Southeast Asian islands.

The local fleet in the navy also uses this place as its main naval base all year round and dispatches its main fleet to station here.

Based on the important military strategic role of this place and its role as a strategic transportation artery, when Luo Zhixue comes here to inspect, the local military facilities will inevitably become the focus of his inspection.

On the day he arrived in Singapore, Luo Zhixue simply summoned several governors and military generals from the Nanyang region, and held a brief civil and military symposium respectively. He didn't say anything important, just a few casual remarks.

That night, Luo Zhixue rested at the Imperial Hotel in Singapore. Before going to bed, he stood on the balcony of the superior suite on the seventh floor and looked at the bay and the coastal city outside.

Singapore's coastal urban area is quite large. After all, there are more than 200,000 people living in this place.

The buildings in these urban areas emit light at night. The gas lamps on the streets are relatively clear. One after another, they outline intersecting straight lines in the night sky, forming square grids.

Just from these straight square grids with no artistic beauty, you can see that Singapore is a typical modern city of the Chu Empire.

Because of the contemporary urban planning of the Chu Empire, in order to accommodate a large number of horse-drawn carriages and to solve the problem of urban population transportation, the entire city was divided into several large square grids using main roads, and then other square grids were constructed in these square grids. Plan to build a large number of feeder roads.

In the end, if the entire city looks down from the sky, you can see many large or small squares and grids.

Although this seems to lack artistic beauty, this is the optimal solution obtained by the Chu Empire after decades of exploration and experimentation in urban planning.

These straight roads throughout the city, the main roads have become the backbone transportation network of the entire city, and the countless branch lines connecting the main roads penetrate the entire city like capillaries.

Through this huge transportation network, a large amount of goods can be imported and exported through various carriages, thereby maintaining the operation of the entire city.

Without these huge investments in transportation networks, the urban construction of the Chu Empire would not have been so fast, nor would there have been a medium-to-large city with a population of more than half a million or even millions.

Behind every medium and large city with a population of hundreds of thousands or more is an extremely complex material transportation network.

Especially in a super city like Songjiang Prefecture, which has an urban population of more than five million people... and this is a typical industrial city, not to mention the huge flow of people and passengers caused by people going to and from their residences, places of work or places of consumption every day.

What's more important is that a huge amount of materials enter and leave the city every day!

Various goods from all over the world, including various industrial raw materials, equipment, agricultural and livestock products, etc... They are transported to the dock in Songjiang City or the freight yard of the railway by ships and trains.

Then the urban train tracks are used, and freight carriages are dispersed and transported to logistics distribution points and various factories or stores in the city to supply people's daily needs and factory needs.

At the same time, many factories produce massive amounts of industrial products every day. These industrial products are loaded by horse-drawn carriages from various factories and transported to docks and railway station freight yards, where they are then loaded onto ships or trains and shipped to all parts of the world.

In order to maintain the normal operation of such a huge city, not to mention other things, hundreds of thousands of draft horses of various kinds are needed!

Of course, there is only one Songjiang City, and the scale of cities in other places is not so large. Even Guangzhou, Tianjin, Hantian, and Hantianfudangtu, which are also industrial centers, do not have such a large urban population.

For example, in Guangzhou, the real urban population is only over one million... Tianjin is similar, with an urban population of over one million.

The reason why the population is several times lower than that of Songjiang Prefecture...on the one hand is due to local area limitations, and on the other hand is due to local development ideas.

In contrast, Songjiang is focused on building a very large city, and is building everything in the city center... and does not hesitate to build skyscrapers for this purpose.

Other places are more inclined to expand to the periphery and develop satellite cities to share the congestion in the central city.

how to say.

Because of the high economic and political status of Songjiang Prefecture, the Songjiang Prefecture is not mentioned as a senior official, and many times the cabinet often directly interferes with the development of Songjiang Prefecture. This is why in the past ten years, some people have said that Songjiang Prefecture should be turned into a cabinet. Cities directly under the central government.

I just want to say that the governor of Jiangnan has limited say in Songjiang Prefecture, and the development of Songjiang Prefecture is highly independent... Under such circumstances, the development of Songjiang Prefecture naturally considers itself more, and all good things are there. If you do it in your own territory, you won't even want to take it out.

But Guangzhou and Tianjin are different. Although the prefects in these two places are of higher grades, they are only from the third grade. Development is mainly led by the governors above.

When the governor of a province takes the lead, he will naturally consider the development of surrounding cities in addition to the development of the provincial capital. Therefore, Guangzhou and Tianjin have invariably embarked on the model of developing satellite cities.

This is also an important reason why Wang Tu wanted to promote the Pearl River Delta railway network... Without a dense and convenient railway network, the satellite city model cannot be achieved.

So regardless of Guangzhou and Tianjin, the population in the central urban area is smaller, but if you count the many surrounding satellite cities, then the urban population in a broad sense should be able to reach two to three million. Although it is worse than Songjiang, it is not there yet. It's hard to match the level.

No matter what, these cities are all super big cities in the Chu Empire!

Its city size, population, and industrial and commercial economy are not what a city in an overseas territory like Singapore can expect.

Singapore has a population of more than 200,000 and has developed heavy industry with the shipbuilding industry as its core and light industry as the textile industry. It is already a leader among cities in overseas territories.

The only overseas territorial city that can stabilize Singapore is Jinshan City in North America.

Jinshan City now has a population of about 400,000, which is already the largest among many overseas cities. In fact, most other overseas cities have an urban population of only tens of thousands or even thousands.

It's not a question of whether the development is good or not, it's purely that overseas territories are basically vast and sparsely populated... Even North America, the most populous region, has a total population of only more than 30 million.

The place where these more than 30 million people live is not only the United States in later generations, but covers the entire American region north of Panama, including Central America, Mexico, the United States, and Canada in later generations.

More than 30 million people may seem like a lot, but spread over such a vast land, the population density is actually very low...

More importantly, many places in the Americas are good places with good climates and good terrain. The combined arable land in the two provinces of North America and East America is greater than that of the empire's traditional homeland, that is, East Asia. need more!

There is so much arable land, which means that the population will be more dispersed... After all, so much land cannot be wasted, right?

This has also resulted in a very dispersed population in North America. Many immigrant settlements in inland areas of North America often have only a few dozen or a hundred households... while the surrounding immigrant settlements are often more than ten kilometers or even further away.

This is also the reason why there are a large number of local militiamen in the Americas and a very high rate of gun ownership among civilians... In the early days, it was to guard against the indigenous people and wild beasts. After the indigenous people disappeared from this land, the threat of wild beasts still existed, even as the Chu people gradually penetrated into the land. In the inland farming life, the threat from wild beasts is even greater!

At the same time, the large area and sparse population will also lead to weak security capabilities... There are only a few patrol officers in a town, but the area that needs to be governed can easily reach hundreds or even hundreds of square kilometers, which is really difficult to manage.

Some bandits naturally saw this, so there were also many bandits.

In order to guard against bandits and wild beasts, the rate of civilian gun ownership in contemporary America is still very high... The local government even encourages people in rural areas to carry guns for self-protection, and regularly organizes shooting training for young people and even women and children in rural areas!

Of course, you have to apply for legal gun possession after review. Ordinary people can only hold shotguns. Pistols require more stringent review, and the belt must be exposed... If you want to carry a concealed gun, you also need to apply for a special permit. Concealed Carry License.

Of course, relatively speaking, it is relatively easy to apply for a gun license in overseas areas. As long as you have no criminal record, live in a rural area, and have no mental problems, you can basically apply for a shotgun license... ...For ordinary people who have not undergone strict training, it is more useful to use shotguns for self-protection, even better than military rifles.

Vast territory and sparse population are common conditions in many overseas territories... The Chu Empire has a total population of 700 million, most of which live in the mainland, that is, the eighteen provinces in Guan Nei and Liaodong and other places.

Although millions of people travel overseas by boat or train to Central Asia and Eastern Europe every year to pursue their new lives, the overseas territories are still vast and sparsely populated.

Under such circumstances, the scale of cities in overseas territories will naturally not be much larger. In a medium-sized city like Singapore, we probably won’t see much of it during our subsequent overseas inspections.

After a night of silence, Luo Zhixue started a formal inspection the next day.

In the morning, Luo Zhixue went to the Singapore Naval Base for an inspection. The first thing he saw was the fort that looked a bit old...

This port fort was used to protect the naval base port. It played a big role in Singapore's port defense in the early days... Of course, it can actually be said to be useless, because since the Chu Empire took control of Singapore , this place has never been attacked by the enemy.

All the defensive facilities in this place, including this huge fort, were of little use.

However, it does not mean that many things are not important if they are not used. Otherwise, the Chu people would not have built coastal defense forts in several European territories such as Cadiz and Dover.

These things are meant to be used as a precaution.

This port fort in Singapore was built on a large scale in the early days. It had one large, three small and four coastal defense artillery forts. In the early days, smoothbore guns were deployed. Later, front-loaded rifled guns retired from naval warships were deployed. Today it is here More than 60 medium and large-caliber front-loading rifled guns are deployed.

This can be regarded as the remaining heat of the front-loaded rifled guns after they were retired from naval battleships.

The navy has not been equipped with front-loading rifled guns for a long time, but the total number is quite a lot. After the large-scale use of breech-loading rifled guns, these front-loading rifled guns that once cost huge amounts of money to build have also become very popular. Awkward.

Quite a few of them actually still have a lot of barrel life, and many are even brand new stock barrels.

It's definitely not possible to just throw it away, but it's also not possible to continue using it as combat equipment.

In the end, the Navy simply threw all these front-loading rifled guns to the coastal defense forces as cannons for forts in various places.

Anyway, many of the coastal defense forts in the empire are basically just decorations... They can't be used if they have them, but it's not very good if they don't have them.

If the fort uses a front-loading rifled gun, the combat effect will not be too bad. It can just be used as waste, and it also finds a way out for the ammunition of the front-loading rifled gun that was once stored in large quantities.

Therefore, today Luo Zhixue saw that it is rare to see medium and large-caliber front-loading rifled guns in active service in the mainland... There are actually forts in the mainland, such as the Zhenjiang Fort and the Jiujiang Fort. However, these two places are used as point guards. The important area in Gyeonggi Province is a strategic location where the Guards are stationed, and the latest large-caliber artillery has always been deployed.

The Zhenjiang Fort was equipped last year with two advanced coastal defense guns of 300 mm and 40 times the caliber. These are the main guns of contemporary top battleships, and there are not many even on battleships.

No way, the defense targets of these two forts have never been indigenous people...but potential rebels. Especially the Zhenjiang fort, its combat targets have always been very clear, that is, the navy's fleet, and what they are defending against is the navy. The fleet suddenly got mad one day and fought all the way up the Yangtze River to bombard Jinling City.

Therefore, if the Zhenjiang Fort does not get some big guys to put them up, the Guardsmen will not be able to sleep peacefully.

However, overseas forts do not need to be so particular. Their combat targets are indigenous countries and even pirates... The threat is small and pitiful, so these overseas forts have more symbolic meaning.

Just get some front-loading rifled guns and put them on to show off.

So Luo Zhixue saw antique-like front-loading rifled guns in the port fort in Singapore. There were also several artillery pieces with a caliber of 200 mm and a barrel of 22 times.

If Luo Zhixue remembers correctly, this thing should be the last generation of front-loading rifled gun battleship, which is the main gun once used on the battleship Jinan. It is also the most powerful front-loading rifled gun ever manufactured by the Dachu Empire.

It's not that the Chu people couldn't come up with bigger and more powerful front-loading rifled cannons later, but it was no longer necessary... because at that time, the Chu army had already begun to fully develop and equip breech-loading rifled cannons.

Jinan actually only used this artillery for a few years, and soon it was replaced with the same 200mm 25x main gun of the new Jinling class.

These artillery pieces were later simply modified on their mounts and transported to Singapore for installation on this fort.

Some other front-loaded rifled guns are even older...

Although these artillery pieces are old and outdated, they were once the most advanced artillery pieces in the empire and contributed greatly to the empire's global expansion.

Especially when India, West Asia and Africa were expanding, front-loading rifled guns were the main artillery of the navy... I don't know how many natives died under this kind of artillery.

Even when it came to expansion in Europe, some warships were still equipped with front-loading rifled artillery and participated in combat.

Although these old cannons are of little use and can only be exposed to wind and rain in these open-air forts, their historical role cannot be denied.

After visiting the fort, Luo Zhixue also watched the ceremonial flag-raising performance of the local garrison in the fort barracks below.

Then he went to the naval port and watched the small-scale training of the Malacca fleet... Of course, this so-called training was still a performance. There were not even a single cannonball on these frigates... let alone live-fire training.

What I mainly watched was the boat maneuvering drill.

In the afternoon, Luo Zhixue met with officers from various places in Nanyang and gave a brief speech. The content of his speech was mainly encouragement. Finally, many outstanding army and navy officers stationed in Nanyang were given promotion and medal ceremonies. .

Among them, there was also a commodore who had accumulated many military exploits and was made a baron.

Luo Zhixue's trip this day basically revolved around the military. He visited the bases and facilities of the Army and Navy, watched drills and performances, and held a meeting.

On the second day, accompanied by local officials, we visited several major factories and more representative places in Singapore.

Among them, the Malacca Shipyard was the highlight of the inspection... It's not that the Malacca Shipyard is technologically advanced or huge... there are a lot of shipyards in the mainland that are better than this.

Instead, the Malacca Shipyard is already the best shipyard in the Nanyang region. In addition to building commercial ships, this shipyard also undertakes the construction of some small warships, and is also an important ship repair yard for the navy.

Some ordinary repair tasks can be solved here at the Malacca Shipyard. There is no need to go all the way back to places like Guangzhou and Songjiang for repairs.

After seeing the Malacca Shipyard, Luo Zhixue went to see several local private factories. Among them were the clichéd textile factories, but there were also rubber processing plants with local characteristics.

The rubber processing industry in Singapore has developed quite well. Relying on the rubber plantations that have been opened up and planted in various parts of Nanyang in the past few decades, Nanyang has now become the most important natural rubber supplier for the Chu Empire, especially Malacca Province.

This province alone supplies more than 30% of the empire's rubber production capacity.

Under such circumstances, their rubber processing industry has naturally developed very well. Several giant companies in the empire have set up rubber processing plants here.

For example, the largest carriage manufacturing company in the Dachu Empire, the Jinling Carriage Company, set up a tire factory here, using local rubber processing to produce tires, and then transporting them back to the carriage factory in Songjiang for assembly.

Well... Jinling Carriage Company, although it is a company in Jinling, their production base is not in Jinling City, but in Songjiang... There is no way, Jinling City does not allow polluting industries.

Shipbuilding, rubber, and textiles, these three major industries are basically the main industries in Singapore and even the entire Malacca Province.

When Luo Zhixue comes to inspect, he will naturally focus on inspecting these industries to see how they are developing.

After walking around and looking at it, he felt that it was okay!

Although Singapore is already a relatively well-developed industrial city overseas, there is still a big gap compared with local cities.

There is a lack of sufficient supporting industrial chains, insufficient technical talents, and a lack of high-tech industries.

Of course, to be honest, this is actually not a big problem...

The contemporary Chu Empire has begun to engage in the second industrial revolution. The classification of industries is becoming more and more detailed, and there are more and more types... It is no longer possible to have all types of industries in any city as it was a few decades ago. Complete.

If you can do well in several or even one field, you can basically establish the status of a large city.

If we can eat a piece of cake in several industrial chains, it will basically be enough to maintain the dignity of a medium-sized city.

In terms of contemporary urban development in Chu State, except for the super city of Songjiang and the two urban agglomerations of Guangzhou and Tianjin, it is impossible and unnecessary for other cities to develop everything. That is unrealistic!