For the Lanfang Republic to survive, there had to be at least 2 assumptions to make it possible :
- The Lanfang Republic was powerful enough to oppose the Dutch (and the Pontianak Sultanate)
- The Dutch was very weak and left them alone
Keep in mind that at the time of the Lanfang Republic, there were also other sovereign kingdoms in the archipelago, arguably stronger than Lanfang. The Dutch didn’t successfully pacify them all until early 20th century. If the Dutch couldn’t conquer a relatively weaker Lanfang, that means those other kingdoms would also remain independent. Arguably if the Dutch become that weak, the British would probably expand to West/South Borneo.
Back in the 1700, in what is now Western Kalimantan/Borneo, existed 3 competing Sultanates; Pontianak, Mempawah, and Singkawang. The three of them vied for regional power, however their powers are mostly confined to the coastal regions. Whereas they maintain transactional diplomatic contacts with the Dayak of the inner island to get resources from the inner heartland.The demographics of the coastal areas were mostly Javanese, Bugis, and Malay settlers who intermarried with local Dayak population. Inside the urban areas were enclaves of Chinese traders.
In this early 18th century also, these 3 sultanates tries to vie for power not just through military means, but economical one - mining of tin and gold in the area, which would then be sold to the Dutch and British, had always been a local resource to trade. But it was Sultan Omar of Singkawang who first recognized the potential of mass mining. And to this end, he recruited more Chinese to explore new mines - as the Chinese were known for their pioneering spirit, having being traders in the archipelago for so long.
In practice, Singkawang gave some land lease to the Chinese settlers, with it also entitling them with some autonomous rights to govern their mine corporations named Kongsi, in exchange for some good old taxation on the results. The trend soon followed suit in Pontianak and Mempawah - and by mid 1700s, the population of ethnic Chinese in the area had burst into more than 70,000 . As this trend exponentially grows, so does the profit the 3 Sultanates made - at one point, finally, the old competition burst into military conflict. And amidst this mess, Luo Fangbo/Low Fan Pak, the Hakka leader of Southern Lanfang kongsi, saw the opportunity to put his mark on history. He joined forces with the Pontianak Sultan against Mempawah who allied with the Dayaks - and since the war proved to be succesful, his reputation skyrocketed. All other Kongsi started to want to ally themself with Lanfang, and by 1777 he was then elected as the first president of the Kongsi Federation.
The Kongsi Federation grew under Lanfang's banner, with Mandor as its capital, slowly overshadowing the sultanates in the area. They also maintained contact with mainland China by declaring themselves tributary of the Qing dynasty. However, by late 1800, as the Dutch tightened their grip throughout the archipelago, they moved in to seize Lanfang's mines for good. And after about 2 decades of fighting, in 1884 the Dutch put down the last Lanfang resistance. However, as the Lanfang Republic was a tribute nation of the Qing Dynasty, the Dutch established a puppet government to run the Lanfang Republic and not declared it as a Dutch colony, out of respect for the Qing’s emperor.
After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the Lanfang Republic officially became a Dutch colony and put under direct rules from Batavia (now known as Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia) in 1912.
At one point the Sultan of Pontianak officially declared itself a protectorate of Lanfang, but at the same time they welcomed foreign trade and investment by the Dutch and the British. As the Dutch tried to wrestle control of the area from Lanfang, Pontianak started to reassess their stance. They started to ally with the Dutch, and thus after the demise of Lanfang, Pontianak was given a lot of concession and become the de facto proxy of the Dutch in the area. Pontianak became the most significant power in the area under Dutch occupation.
Everything written above was OTL, we already got a nice discussion
AHC : Make the Lanfang Republic survive in which I wrote
a potential scenario. I was basically considering the fact that Lanfang couldn’t resist without a massive influx of new Chinese citizens and a protector. As a result my Lanfang Republic would turn into a British Protectorate in 1888. I got lazy and then summarized the local history post 1920 using bad book titles.
The POD I chose was Sir James Brooke of Sarawak signing a treaty with Qing China in order to establish some basic principles that aimed to ease immigration restrictions (POD). I admit it was one of my first AHC here and I was quite inexperienced. This immigration policy is later followed by the British in order to balance the populations of the area (countering the Dayaks and their Dutch support) with consequences on the OTL partition of the island which was based on ethnicities,
If you need more ideas, don’t hesitate to read the full discussion or to ask questions I will try to answer them, despite not being a local and not very knowledgeable on the subject. If you are an academic, please write a book on the currently rarely-studied historical Sino-South East Asian relationships.
