AHC make the Lanfang Republic survive
Well, looks like I must now maintain my resident cred.
Sarawak particularly saw them more negatively than most as time wore on, and this was because of the "Hue" rebellion of 1857, when around 600 Chinese miners belonging to a secret society staged an uprising with aims to capture Kuching and kill the White Rajah. Why they rebelled is still unknown and sources are murky, but the most astounding was that they very nearly succeeded. James Brooke had to swim across the river to safely as his bungalow burned, and the few surviving Europeans in the town were quickly rounded up - well, those whom the Chinese didn't manage to kill in the initial attack. I dimly remember reading somewhere that James was even considering to pawn Sarawak off as he fled on a boat!
But news of the attack traveled fast and in just 48 hours, James' nephew Charles Brooke arrived to Kuching from the Sakarran river basin on the head of a nearly 10,000 strong expeditionary force of armed Malays and Dayaks. One source noted how only 60 of the 600 Chinese miners managed to escape to Dutch Sambas once the fighting is over - presumably to the more established kongsi societies and Lanfang. After this, Sarawak had a really negative view of secret societies and tried to uproot them throughout the 19th century.Though again, that didn't stop them from taxing opium imports that flowed to the mining regions, which indicated some sort of social organization was still afoot.
Was there any chance of this rebellion succeeding? Like, could they take Sarawak and create something like a Kuching "branch" of the San-Tia'o-Kou hueh Kongsi or would the British just come in and beat the $h!t out of them (the latter seems likely to me, but IDK how much the British cared about Sarawak since it was not a protectorate yet as far as I know)? Of course, if something like that happened, having one clan control 2 large territories might be a problem for Lanfang's dominance in the Kongsi alliance, though either way it would be interesting.
Thanks for the resources. I`ll try to figure some of the Chinese wiki stuff out with google translate, but it`ll probably ruin every word.
I'm guessing that, even if the uprising succeeded, James Brooke would pawn off Sarawak to either the British or Dutch whom would likely beat the crap out of them. The Royal Navy in particular were already active in the region to combat piracy from China to India, and they even launched an attack with James Brooke on Bandar Brunei nearly a decade earlier because they assumed the Bruneian court was conducting piracy and pulling shady shenanigans behind their backs. It wasn't that the greater British Empire didn't care for Sarawak, but that they thought the region was the Brooke family problem first and foremost.
A successful Kongsi uprising would make them change that assumption pretty quickly. Controlling the seas would entail controlling at least the coasts, and that would put the British and Dutch into contact with the Kongsi of Sarawak. Then again, there wasn't anything specifically that would put them both in loggerheads (save the opium), and the Kongsi themselves could act as a bulwark against anti-piracy and act as the Brit's own middlemen in Borneo. I'm not familiar with the Twelve Kongsi (thank you so much @Meordal for the info!) so don't accept me thoroughly on this.
I'd say the uprising would net the ringleaders around a year or two of peace before Singapore or Batavia comes knocking.