Singapore

[ragingrondo12]

You stole my avatar!

Aye. Burn him at the stake I say, how dear he stealth from our liege lord The-King.

 

[PouetVL]

How come Singapore is so important? Looking at the EU4 map, you can easily go around it by Jakarta, but in WW2 it was called the Gibraltar of the East. There was no way to bypass Gibraltar before the Suez Canal, but there are lots of ways to bypass Singapore. What's its deal?

Obvious thing you need to know
#1 They used sailboat until the steamboat which is not in the EU4 timeline
#2 Sailboat use wind and water currents/streams to move.
#3 Going against a currents/streams or against the wind is simlpy not efficient just like the expression.

So to understand trade route, you need to understand the ocean surface current.
check this pics from wikipedia to understand a little more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_current#/media/File:Ocean_surface_currents.jpg
same goes for wind but I will not list it because there's a saying
You can't change the direction of the wind but you can adjust the sails to reach your destination

now take the exemple of Portugal, netherlands, french, british, basically all nations except spain used to go to the Far east by going south in africa, going back up the coast near Oman, then heading to india, singapore strait then guangzhou / canton / macau / hong kong. For coming back they used the same route pertty much, less efficient but still safe.
Standard route back in the days when ship were slower, water still not charted completely. Also a lots of fort along the coastline for safety against pirates.

MONSOON!!!
indian ocean The northeast monsoon blows from October to March and the southwest monsoon from April to September.

eventually ship started heading south to jakarta then south west in the middle of the indian ocean until they reach madagascar island, head south then directly to cape town.
They had the south equatorial current and ALSO the monsoon wind which made the travel from jakkarta to cape town extremely fast. This route is only valid if you are going back to americas OR europe or east africa coast.
So singapore was, is, will still be an important place for trading.

but in WW2 it was called the Gibraltar of the East.

https://abagond.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/map_of_the_british_empire_in_the_1920s.png

this should explain why the british empire use the singapore strait and not jakarta route.

They needed to go back to India/bengal.
why?
OPIUM / silver / tea

Traingle trade / aka TEA route

english merchant buy opium in india/bengal, sell them to "third party" in china for silver, then silver is used to buy tea from the chineese officials ( china would only accept silver as payments from the british )
then with their ship full of tea, they headed back to england. slower ships used to go back to england trought the north or selling their tea cargo in india , then eventually clippers came alive, fastest sailboat ever created, they used of course the jakarta route.
Around 100 days from hong kong to london...