In China, the luso catholic priests and missionaries, most of them Tanka, converted many Hakka in the southwest of the country and one of the converts Paulo Hong, eventually started the só called Taiping Revolution whit his sister Joana Hong.
Many Hakka changed their names to a mix of portuguese first names and chinese surnames and embraced Luso Catholicism mixed with chinese folk religion and confucianism ethics.
The Hakka provided the main leaders and the bulk of the soldiers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom that was established by Paulo and divided into four provinces, the south under Sebastião Feng , the east under Xavier Yang, the west under Carlos Xiao and the north under Xavier Wei.
Gaining momentum, the uprising conquered Nanking that became the Capital of Heavenly Kingdom and Paulo Hong advised by Fátima Fu , a scholar that became his Chancellor, reached out to Francisco de Portugal e Castro, Governor of Formosa, Macau and Amoy and Lima Lopes the Raja of Sarawak and newly appointed Governor of Philippines, Sarawak and Malacca that was facing resistance by the Moro muslim minority in Mindanao and Sabah, and proposed an alliance between the Heavenly Kingdom and the Crown of Portugal.
José Lima Lopes didn't believe that Paulo Hong rebellion against the Qing could succeed but saw an opportunity to strengthen the Crown in east Asia and as the Crown armies were modernizing after the war with Spain, he convinced Miguel I to let him sell large quantities of older breech loaders and light artillery to the rebels.
Miguel I, pressioned by the Luso Catholic Church, negotiated with Pedro II also under the Church pression, and both decided to send to East Asia the older guns in the states arsenals, and Francisco de Portugal e Castro was ordered to prepare several military units composed by Tankas to accompany the guns and act as military advisors to the rebels.
Paulo Hong personal guard composed only by women and led by Emanuela Qin was the first unit armed exclusively with breech loaders and Tanka priests became common in the Heavenly Kingdom and Tanka soldiers were assigned to Marshall David Shi, the main military leader and organizer of the Taiping Army.
Since the beginning of the uprising in 1850 most of the Hakka population shifted to the new mixed religion and the brutal reprisals imposed by the Qing forced many to join the Heavenly Kingdom and fight or leave China, and from Macau and Amoy many departed first to Formosa and Philippines and then to Ceylon, Mozambique and Natal were cheap labor was needed to work on the new tea and sugarcane plantations, from there some went to Angola and many reached Brazil that after the emancipation of the slaves was in dire need of fresh workers to develop the south and the west of the country and in the Antilles that had a massive population drain after the portuguese conquest, the Hakka were easily integrated into the community based agriculture that was promoted by the Luso Catholic Church.
In Nanking, the Taiping Government composed by Xavier Li, Júlio Chen, Rodrigo Hong, Alexandra Su, and Guilherme Lai, wanted a formal treaty of mutual aid with the Crown of Portugal but the portuguese involvement didn't pass unnoticed to the Qing, Britain and France and was heavly criticized by the European Powers and the Qing threatened with open war if the portuguese persisted in their support to the uprising.
Lourenço de Almada Cyrne Peixoto that after the Iberian War was made Duke of Alcântara and sent to Portuguese India as Governor, were after arriving, establish himself in Trivandrum and changed the name of the town to Nova Lisboa, starting the process of centralization of Portuguese India and recruitment of men to establish a combine Indo-Portuguese army armed by the Pangin Arsenal in Konkan.
Lourenço Peixoto was also responsible by the construction of universities in Nova Lisboa and Colombo and in due time the universities in Portuguese India would fuel the development not just of lusophone India but also of portuguese east Africa.
Luso Catholicism and the power of the Indo-Portuguese upper classes in the Indian Ocean trade network and in Mozambique spared the Crown of Portugal from a mutiny like the one in British India and when José Lima Lopes came to Nova Lisboa in search of military support in case of war with the Qing, the Duke of Alcântara that controlled the only portuguese arsenal in Asia, decided to meet with the Luso Catholic, Nasrani and Jewish elders to understand what kind of support could he expect.
The Luso Catholics were willing to help the rebels in China because they considered them as brethren, the Nasranis opposed because they were focused in East Africa and the jews seeing an opportunity to expand their businesses and economic power decided to finance a Indo-Portuguese Expeditionary Army if the necessity arouse.
The Heavenly Kingdom started to crumble in 1857 whit inner conflicts in the hierarchy that became clear when several assassins tried to kill Marshall Shi that was only saved by the intervention of the Tanka soldiers that he kept as is personal guard , but despite the intervention of the the portuguese military advisors, Shi family was murdered and the Marshall reaction caused a civil war between Shi supporters and the supporters of the regional leaders that envied the Marshall success.
Paulo Hong and is brother Rodrigo were displeased with Shi popularity and worked in the shadows to remove his influence, fuelling the ambitious regional leaders that saw Shi as a direct threat to their power and ambitions.
David Shi marched whit thousands of loyal soldiers and their families to Amoy and Francisco de Portugal e Castro offered Shi the south of the Philippines and Sabah to populate in exchange for the destruction of the local sultanates and started to ferry large numbers of Hakka to the ports that Portugal controlled in Mindanao(Davao and Zamboanga) and Sabah ( Sandakan) and from there, Shi and his soldiers engaged the Sulu and Maguindanao sultanates, while the other refugees, mainly the women started to develop large scale agricultural settlements and rice for local consumption and copra for export were produced in large quantities.
The Hakka under Shi had a crusader mindset and the muslim population of Mindanao was, after a short but brutal war, reduced to slavery or fled south like the muslims of Sabah, leaving behind a large territory in the south of the Philippines and north of Borneo that became heavily sinicized and christian.
The Hakka built fortified villages in the new areas of settlement, like the ones in Fujian, and cohabitation between the Hakka and the Dayak was achieved by the mediation of the Luso Catholic Church and the portuguese controlled ports became large towns that were soon exporting commodities to Portuguese India and further west to Portugal and Brazil.
In 1856, as the second opium war started between the Anglo-French armies and the Qing, Portugal refused to engage the Qing and negotiate the Amoy Treaty whit the chinese government that stipulated that portuguese soldiers ( mainly Tankas from Formosa) in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would retreat to the portuguese ports ( Amoy and Macau) and in exchange portuguese priests (again, mainly Tankas) would organize the Hakka Luso Catholics and promote their migration from China to predetermined areas of the Crown of Portugal and Brazil, in anticipation of the bloodbath that would surely occur after the collapse of the Heavenly Kingdom.
China respected the effort of the portuguese to protect what they perceived as the chinese branch of Luso Catholicism and the portuguese lack of interest in expanding the chinese territory under their control and accepted a truce for ten years that should allow the portuguese to evacuate the Hakka population willing to leave and after that period the Qing would be free to deal with the Hakka as they saw fit.
Many Hakka changed their names to a mix of portuguese first names and chinese surnames and embraced Luso Catholicism mixed with chinese folk religion and confucianism ethics.
The Hakka provided the main leaders and the bulk of the soldiers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom that was established by Paulo and divided into four provinces, the south under Sebastião Feng , the east under Xavier Yang, the west under Carlos Xiao and the north under Xavier Wei.
Gaining momentum, the uprising conquered Nanking that became the Capital of Heavenly Kingdom and Paulo Hong advised by Fátima Fu , a scholar that became his Chancellor, reached out to Francisco de Portugal e Castro, Governor of Formosa, Macau and Amoy and Lima Lopes the Raja of Sarawak and newly appointed Governor of Philippines, Sarawak and Malacca that was facing resistance by the Moro muslim minority in Mindanao and Sabah, and proposed an alliance between the Heavenly Kingdom and the Crown of Portugal.
José Lima Lopes didn't believe that Paulo Hong rebellion against the Qing could succeed but saw an opportunity to strengthen the Crown in east Asia and as the Crown armies were modernizing after the war with Spain, he convinced Miguel I to let him sell large quantities of older breech loaders and light artillery to the rebels.
Miguel I, pressioned by the Luso Catholic Church, negotiated with Pedro II also under the Church pression, and both decided to send to East Asia the older guns in the states arsenals, and Francisco de Portugal e Castro was ordered to prepare several military units composed by Tankas to accompany the guns and act as military advisors to the rebels.
Paulo Hong personal guard composed only by women and led by Emanuela Qin was the first unit armed exclusively with breech loaders and Tanka priests became common in the Heavenly Kingdom and Tanka soldiers were assigned to Marshall David Shi, the main military leader and organizer of the Taiping Army.
Since the beginning of the uprising in 1850 most of the Hakka population shifted to the new mixed religion and the brutal reprisals imposed by the Qing forced many to join the Heavenly Kingdom and fight or leave China, and from Macau and Amoy many departed first to Formosa and Philippines and then to Ceylon, Mozambique and Natal were cheap labor was needed to work on the new tea and sugarcane plantations, from there some went to Angola and many reached Brazil that after the emancipation of the slaves was in dire need of fresh workers to develop the south and the west of the country and in the Antilles that had a massive population drain after the portuguese conquest, the Hakka were easily integrated into the community based agriculture that was promoted by the Luso Catholic Church.
In Nanking, the Taiping Government composed by Xavier Li, Júlio Chen, Rodrigo Hong, Alexandra Su, and Guilherme Lai, wanted a formal treaty of mutual aid with the Crown of Portugal but the portuguese involvement didn't pass unnoticed to the Qing, Britain and France and was heavly criticized by the European Powers and the Qing threatened with open war if the portuguese persisted in their support to the uprising.
Lourenço de Almada Cyrne Peixoto that after the Iberian War was made Duke of Alcântara and sent to Portuguese India as Governor, were after arriving, establish himself in Trivandrum and changed the name of the town to Nova Lisboa, starting the process of centralization of Portuguese India and recruitment of men to establish a combine Indo-Portuguese army armed by the Pangin Arsenal in Konkan.
Lourenço Peixoto was also responsible by the construction of universities in Nova Lisboa and Colombo and in due time the universities in Portuguese India would fuel the development not just of lusophone India but also of portuguese east Africa.
Luso Catholicism and the power of the Indo-Portuguese upper classes in the Indian Ocean trade network and in Mozambique spared the Crown of Portugal from a mutiny like the one in British India and when José Lima Lopes came to Nova Lisboa in search of military support in case of war with the Qing, the Duke of Alcântara that controlled the only portuguese arsenal in Asia, decided to meet with the Luso Catholic, Nasrani and Jewish elders to understand what kind of support could he expect.
The Luso Catholics were willing to help the rebels in China because they considered them as brethren, the Nasranis opposed because they were focused in East Africa and the jews seeing an opportunity to expand their businesses and economic power decided to finance a Indo-Portuguese Expeditionary Army if the necessity arouse.
The Heavenly Kingdom started to crumble in 1857 whit inner conflicts in the hierarchy that became clear when several assassins tried to kill Marshall Shi that was only saved by the intervention of the Tanka soldiers that he kept as is personal guard , but despite the intervention of the the portuguese military advisors, Shi family was murdered and the Marshall reaction caused a civil war between Shi supporters and the supporters of the regional leaders that envied the Marshall success.
Paulo Hong and is brother Rodrigo were displeased with Shi popularity and worked in the shadows to remove his influence, fuelling the ambitious regional leaders that saw Shi as a direct threat to their power and ambitions.
David Shi marched whit thousands of loyal soldiers and their families to Amoy and Francisco de Portugal e Castro offered Shi the south of the Philippines and Sabah to populate in exchange for the destruction of the local sultanates and started to ferry large numbers of Hakka to the ports that Portugal controlled in Mindanao(Davao and Zamboanga) and Sabah ( Sandakan) and from there, Shi and his soldiers engaged the Sulu and Maguindanao sultanates, while the other refugees, mainly the women started to develop large scale agricultural settlements and rice for local consumption and copra for export were produced in large quantities.
The Hakka under Shi had a crusader mindset and the muslim population of Mindanao was, after a short but brutal war, reduced to slavery or fled south like the muslims of Sabah, leaving behind a large territory in the south of the Philippines and north of Borneo that became heavily sinicized and christian.
The Hakka built fortified villages in the new areas of settlement, like the ones in Fujian, and cohabitation between the Hakka and the Dayak was achieved by the mediation of the Luso Catholic Church and the portuguese controlled ports became large towns that were soon exporting commodities to Portuguese India and further west to Portugal and Brazil.
In 1856, as the second opium war started between the Anglo-French armies and the Qing, Portugal refused to engage the Qing and negotiate the Amoy Treaty whit the chinese government that stipulated that portuguese soldiers ( mainly Tankas from Formosa) in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would retreat to the portuguese ports ( Amoy and Macau) and in exchange portuguese priests (again, mainly Tankas) would organize the Hakka Luso Catholics and promote their migration from China to predetermined areas of the Crown of Portugal and Brazil, in anticipation of the bloodbath that would surely occur after the collapse of the Heavenly Kingdom.
China respected the effort of the portuguese to protect what they perceived as the chinese branch of Luso Catholicism and the portuguese lack of interest in expanding the chinese territory under their control and accepted a truce for ten years that should allow the portuguese to evacuate the Hakka population willing to leave and after that period the Qing would be free to deal with the Hakka as they saw fit.
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