Master Yuan, start!

Seeing him like this, Lin Sen chased after him and said with a smile, "Don't worry, I've already made arrangements. You won't be sent to the front lines when you get there. You'll only need to do some intelligence gathering."

"Yeah." Chen Jiageng didn't take it to heart.

At this time, he was still young and his family was relatively well-off, so he was not concerned with the trivial matters around him. Instead, like some people in later generations, he cared more about grand narratives.

Chen Jiageng changed the subject directly: "Where is the President?"

"I left London yesterday, and my next stop is Germany. I should be in Belgium right now.

After visiting Germany, he would sail directly to the United States, then take a railway across the east and west coasts of the country, and finally return to China by ship from San Francisco. Lin Sen outlined Yuan Xiangcheng's upcoming itinerary.

Chapter 518 The Boers Are Also Guilty

Chen Jiageng narrowed his eyes and counted carefully with his fingers. Suddenly, his eyebrows raised:

"Stationmaster Lin, this is the first time the President has traveled abroad, right?

"Five thousand years since the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, there has been a Chinese leader who has braved the waves and traveled thousands of miles." After asking this question, Chen Jiageng turned around with a glint in his eyes, and his tone was filled with emotion and admiration: "There is only this one person!"

Qi Linsen stroked the brass pocket watch in his hand and checked the time: "That's right. We, the sons and daughters of the Republic, should share the President's worries. We can't let him worry about the situation in East Asia from thousands of miles away."

He paused, his voice low but firm: "I will get off the ship when it docks in Xiamen. You will have to walk the road south by yourself."

He held Chen Jiageng's shoulder and tapped his betel nut cane on the deck with a dull thud: "Luzon is not like home. We can't deal with those Americans head-on. In everything, we have to let the natives take the first step.

This time, you are going south with 23 retired officers of the National Revolutionary Army.

Remember, you must mingle among the natives and train a Chinese independence army!"

Chen Jiageng's pupils shrank slightly when he heard this. He turned around and looked at Lin Sen who had already walked down the deck. The unfinished words turned into a sigh from his throat, mixed with the salty sea breeze and dissipated into the darkening sky.

...

4While changes were quietly brewing in the Far East, Yuan Shikai also arrived at Brussels, Belgium, the transit point for his visit to Germany.

Before leaving for London, Yuan Xiangcheng actually met Conan Doyle in London.

Conan Doyle lived not in the famous Baker Street in London, but in the southwest suburbs of London, a place on the Thames called Surrey.

He has lived here since he stopped writing.

However, at this time Conan Doyle was not immersed in the creation of Sherlock Holmes' new work. He was compiling a book recording the causes and course of the Boer War, in an attempt to defend the British government, which had been criticized by European public opinion.

: After hearing that Yuan Xiangcheng visited London, supported Britain, and sent Chinese workers to South Africa, he hurried to seek a visit before Yuan Xiangcheng left.

There is nothing much to say about the conversation between Yuan Xiangcheng and him. Yuan Xiangcheng just said that he is a fan of mystery books and hopes to see a new "Sherlock Holmes"

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Conan Doyle expressed his gratitude to Yuan Xiangcheng for his help and said that he would definitely visit China again if he had the chance.

To express his gratitude, he decided to set the background of the next story of Holmes' "resurrection" in China and introduce an extremely important Chinese character.

After the two finished their conversation, Yuan Xiangcheng set off.

It has to be said that the first stop, Britain, was a success. Not only did it take advantage of the crisis of the South African War to borrow a large sum of money for the Republic of China and add to its manufacturing strength, it also took the opportunity to alleviate the pressure of the disaster at home and export population to South Africa.

In addition, it has also won the favor of the British to a certain extent and deepened Sino-British relations.

More importantly, because of the Marquis of Salisbury's Conservative background, the British political situation after the South African War changed.

The British people might have made different choices and taken a different path from the original history.

One is that the British Conservative Party would not have suffered a crushing defeat in the election, the British Liberal Party would not have come to power for more than 10 years, and eventually allied with France and Russia and went to war with Germany.

Sending workers to labor-scarce South Africa also laid a good foundation for future expansion into Africa.

Of course, if we want to immediately push a large number of yellow people to migrate to South Africa, we will have to wait, because Britain has not completely lost its strength.

With so many benefits, it is a good thing for the country that will benefit the present and future generations.

However, things can never be perfect.

One resolution cannot satisfy the interests of everyone. If Britain and China are satisfied, there will inevitably be others who are dissatisfied.

For China at that time, the biggest disadvantage of sending workers and soldiers to South Africa is the damage to its international image.

...

Just as Yuan Shikai stepped onto Belgian soil, inside a large theater in the center of Brussels.

The Preparatory Committee for the Sixth Congress of the Second International was engaged in a fierce dispute over how to define the Boer War and how to define China's dispatch of laborers and troops to South Africa.

As a large collective organization of socialist parties, the Second International was considered an illegal organization in Germany and Russia and could only hold meetings in secret. However, in places with more open social atmospheres such as Belgium and the Netherlands, it was a registered legal organization.

Therefore, they can now carry out their activities openly in broad daylight.

"Ms. Luxemburg, please allow me to confirm your view." Edward Bernstein adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, his gaze behind the lenses sharp and calculating. "Do you believe that the British Empire is destroying the foundations of South African civilization?"

"That's the crux of the matter!" Rosa Luxemburg, who had rushed from Berlin late at night, straightened her back, her red bun trembling slightly with her fiery tone:

"Can't you see the Zulu miners in the mines of the Cape Colony, bound by the chains of capital?

Can't you hear the cries of devastation from the burned-out Khoisan villages outside Pretoria?

"Oh my God!"

Bernstein raised his minutes book and pointed it at the air, the parchment pages rustling. "We are dealing with a group of Boer farmers who have rejected modern civilization."

They used the Bible to explain apartheid, used muskets to maintain slavery, and simply defined Britain's actions as the destruction of civilization. Did they ignore the potential for progress brought about by colonial rule?

This debate, which took place at the Grand Theatre in Brussels in 1899, resembled the ideological rift within the Second International over the Boer War.

Faced with the bloody war between the British Empire and the Boer Republics, the leaders of the international workers' movement split into three camps:

The "anti-imperialists" represented by Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht insisted on exposing the nature of the war: an imperialist war between two colonial groups competing for South Africa's gold mines and strategic locations.

They refused to endorse either side, as the Leipziger Volkszeitung editorialized: "We cannot choose the lesser of the so-called evils between malaria and cholera."

The "reformists" led by Bernstein showed an unsettling degree of compromise. These theorists, deeply influenced by Social Darwinism, viewed Britain as the disseminator of capitalist civilization.

They wrote in a socialist monthly: "Even with blood-stained boots, modern industrial civilization will eventually crush the backward theocracy of the Boers and sow the seeds of progress on the African continent."

9. "Absolute pacifists" such as Wilhelm Liebknecht formed the third camp.

They shouted "The capitalists' war has nothing to do with the proletariat" and advocated not supporting anyone.

The roots of this ideological split are deeply rooted in the Boers' contradictory historical identity.

These descendants of European immigrants were both "anti-colonial fighters" who resisted British expansion and "colonial oppressors" who enslaved African natives.

When the black Zulu warriors' bone spears pointed at both the Union Jack in London and the orange, white and blue tricolor flag of the Boers in Pretoria, European socialists were caught in a moral dilemma.

The deeper paradox is that the "anti-colonial" concept advocated by the Second International always bears the stigma of Eurocentrism.

As Dutch Social Democratic Party representative Van Kehl once said: "We oppose the colonial struggle between the great powers, not the colonial system itself."

This cognitive limitation has led most representatives to still view colonies as "wilderness that needs to be developed by capitalism" and a necessary historical stage on the road to socialism.

In fact, this seemingly cold "ladder theory of progress" is in line with Marxist historical materialism.

When British textile machines crushed Indian spinning wheels, Marx both denounced colonial atrocities and acknowledged that they were "the unconscious tool of history." This theoretical tension made the theorists of the Second International always oscillate between moral condemnation and historical inevitability on the issue of the Boer War.

Because the Second International was established based on Marx's theory, and in Marx's theory, he believed that society must go through "primitive tribal society", "feudal society" and "capitalist society" before it can finally transition to "socialist society".

Both during his lifetime and the materials he left behind show that Marx always believed that the country where the socialist revolution would first break out would be the country with the most developed capitalism.

The UK has the highest probability, followed closely by the US and Germany, and even France can be included as an alternative.

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Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire are somewhat unlikely.

The vast majority of colonial countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America have absolutely no hope of being the first to embark on the socialist path.

Therefore, some members believed that if the Boers were to be introduced to socialism in the future, then letting them accept the iron fist of capitalism at this time was the only way forward.

"Just like China, it was only after they experienced colonization by European countries that they were able to break free from the shackles of feudal society and establish a republican country!

What the Boers are experiencing now is nothing more than what the Chinese have experienced in the past!"

It would have been fine if China had not been mentioned, but once this topic was brought up, the debate that had been somewhat subsided broke out again.

"That's exactly the point I want to make. The actions of the self-proclaimed socialist president in the South African War were pure imperialism!"

Chapter 519 Huang Minggui

"I don't think so!"

Suddenly, a powerful voice was heard at the theater door, causing Rosa Luxemburg, Bernstein and others who were arguing inside to turn their heads and look towards the door.

Who is coming?

Everyone looked at Yuan Xiangcheng who slowly walked into the theater with some confusion, but when they saw Ma Jianzhong leading the way, their frowns relaxed.

"It's an acquaintance, Ma Jianzhong." Someone in the theater whispered.

After Yan Fu spoke at the Munich Congress of the Second International, he did not stay in Europe for long. He simply established a "Social Revolutionary European Office" and then returned to China.

The successor is Ma Jianzhong.

This person is Ma Xiangbo's younger brother. In this time and space, he also participated in suppressing the Korean rebellion with Yuan Shikai.

However, he later fell ill and had to return home to recuperate, so he never held any official position in the Red Confucian Society or the Republican government.

After joining the Second International, one needed someone who understood the state of Western social movements and was proficient in European languages.

There were people in the original Red Confucian Society who could speak French, German, and Russian, but most of them learned these in professional schools in China and had no experience studying abroad.

Finally, after several rounds of selection, Ma Xiangbo took the initiative to propose sending his brother Ma Jianzhong to Europe.

Ma Jianzhong was one of the first group of government-sponsored students studying abroad in the Qing Dynasty, and he went not to the United States but to Paris, France. During his stay in France, the European socialist movement was booming.

He also wrote in his essay Shikezhaijiyan (Notes from Shikezhai) about the current situation of the French workers' movement after the Paris Commune.

Therefore, it is logically appropriate to send him as the representative of the Social Revolutionary Party to Europe.

As for the situation, medical treatment in Europe is more developed than in China, and the climate in southern Europe is dry and warm, which is also good for his body that coughs all day long.

After arriving in Europe, Ma Jianzhong lived up to expectations and had a good relationship with European social revolutionaries, especially German socialists.

"Ma, you're here too?!" Bernstein was quite friendly towards this Chinese man from the Far East and approached him to greet him, "Aren't you sunbathing in Marseille?"

“Ahem,” Ma Jianzhong waved his hand and said helplessly, “Edward, you know, because of the color of my skin, I dare not stay in France since the Indochina War.

I have been living in Italy for a while now and just came to Belgium a few days ago.”

"Who is this?" Bernstein pointed at Yuan Xiangcheng next to Ma Jianzhong.