Empire Rise: Spain

Chapter 214: Covert Colonial Expansion

In May 1877, Carlo’s gaze had just shifted away from the heated bullfighting competition when he soon turned his attention to Spain’s railway construction.

Since Carlo’s coronation as King of Spain, Spain had seen a wave of railway construction, with railway mileage continuously increasing.

According to current statistics from the Transportation Department, the existing railway mileage on the Spanish Mainland has officially exceeded 9,100 kilometers, and there is hope of reaching the target of 9,500 kilometers within this year.

Compared to the over 5,000 kilometers when Carlo was just crowned, the total railway mileage has nearly doubled.

Carlo achieved this goal in less than ten years, which is an absolute huge change compared to the reign of Queen Isabella.

The changes brought by railway construction to Spain are not limited to the increase in railway mileage, but also include development in the industrial aspect and economic growth.

As of now, Spain’s industrial scale has grown by more than 60% compared to when Carlo was just crowned. In these less than ten years, thousands of enterprises have sprung up, among which over a hundred have developed into Spain’s famous factories and construction companies—a rather exaggerated figure.

The number of workers in Spain has also grown from a small portion at the time of Carlo’s coronation to nearly a million currently. Workers have become an extremely important group in Spain and are also a target that Carlo wants to win over.

For the king to court workers seems somewhat inconceivable, but it is a goal that Carlo is already implementing.

Under the premise that royal enterprises guarantee workers’ interests and income, the newspapers controlled by Carlo vigorously promote the welfare provided by royal enterprises to workers and Carlo’s protection of workers’ interests, successfully making Spain’s worker groups maintain an attitude of affection and recognition toward the royal family. Workers resent capitalists—more precisely, those evil capitalists who exploit workers’ interests and deduct workers’ salaries.

Official capital like Carlo’s is not among them, after all, Spain’s official capital does provide certain protection to workers—at least the workers’ income and various benefits in official capital factories are much better than in capitalists’ factories.

Returning to Spain’s current railway construction, the results are still quite good.

Picking up the full map of Spain’s railway routes, it looks more like a tilted letter Y. The intersection of the three lines is Spain’s capital Madrid, which has one of Spain’s busiest train stations.

The three edges of the letter Y are, respectively, the capital city of the Galicia region, Santiago de Compostela; the capital city of the Catalonia region, Barcelona; and the capital city of the Andalusian region, Seville.

These three main railway lines forming the letter Y, besides the above three regions, also pass through the capital city of the Leon region, Valladolid; the capital city of the Aragon region, Zaragoza; and the capital city of the La Mancha region, Toledo.

The branch lines extending from these three main railway lines pass through even more regions and more cities.

These railways connect together to form Spain’s railway network, but the busiest among them remains the three main lines forming the letter Y.

If speaking of the busiest railway, it is undoubtedly the one between Madrid and Barcelona. Madrid and Barcelona are Spain’s two largest cities, and Zaragoza, which it passes through midway, is also one of Spain’s major cities.

Madrid and Barcelona are also Spain’s two major industrial cities with few peers, and their industrial output accounts for more than half of Spain’s total industrial output.

The reason Carlo is paying attention to Spain’s railway construction is naturally a piece of good news from the Transportation Department: the railway from Madrid to the Extremadura region has successfully opened.

The Extremadura region is Spain’s border region; further west is Portuguese territory.

The reason Carlo is focused on the completion of this railway is mainly because west of the Extremadura region is Portugal’s Portalegre district, and further west is Santarém and Lisbon—Lisbon being Portugal’s capital.

Spain had previously reached cooperation with the Portuguese Government on railway connections. The main purpose of this railway from Madrid to the capital city of the Extremadura region, Mérida, is precisely to connect with Portugal’s railways and directly link through to Portugal’s capital, Lisbon.

The connection of Spain’s and Portugal’s railways is a major event for both countries.

Excluding Andorra, this sovereign-less small country, there are only two countries on the Iberian Peninsula: Spain and Portugal.

France, the only country bordering Iberia, has a significant gap in railway track width with Iberian countries, which makes economic exchange between the Iberian Peninsula and the European Continent extremely difficult, often solvable only through sea transport.

Within the Iberian Peninsula, Portugal and Spain also have a gap in railway track width. If not for the rich foundation of both Iberian powers in shipbuilding, the mere lack of economic connectivity would hinder the development of both.

After the railway connection between Spain and Portugal, both countries’ economic development can accelerate. For Spain, with its larger population, the benefits will certainly be greater.

If the Portuguese Government does not control it, there will definitely be more Portuguese population inflowing to Spain.

After all, there is not much difference between the two in language and culture, and Spain, in the midst of rapid development, offers many job opportunities that Portuguese cannot refuse.

After the railway connection, it becomes much more convenient for Portuguese to go to Spain. The straight-line distance from Lisbon to Madrid is just over 500 kilometers; even taking the currently relatively fast train and adding time for border procedures, it absolutely won’t take 24 hours.

This will become very difficult for the Portuguese Government. If it does not control this outflow of population, Portugal’s population will also become increasingly smaller.

But if it does control it, what reason should it use to stop this population outflow? If it causes dissatisfaction among these people, it is very likely to make Portuguese even more hostile to the government, which would instead cause bigger problems.

Of course Carlo knows that doing this will bring many problems to the Portuguese Government, but who cares?

Spain has so few neighboring countries on the road; it can’t possibly set its sights on Britain and France.

Besides Britain and France, the only neighboring country Spain can target is Portugal. When it comes to national interests, this cannot be stopped by mere kinship.

Moreover, Carlo currently has no intention of annexing Portugal; he merely wants to introduce some Portuguese population through railway connections while using Portugal to promote Spain’s development.

As time entered May 1877, another important message also changed the situation on the Balkan Peninsula: the stance of Germany, another participant in the Three Emperors Alliance.

For Germany, the choice in this Balkan War was very difficult. Germany’s ally Russia is one of the war’s participants, and the other ally is Russia’s opponent.

If Germany easily makes a choice, it will obviously offend the other ally.

Both allies Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire are great powers, and both are important executors of Prime Minister Bismarck’s policy to isolate France.

For Germany, choosing either ally would disrupt Germany’s own diplomatic plans. Therefore, the best choice is to remain neutral, not state its attitude, and avoid losing either ally.

But with the development of the situation on the Balkan Peninsula, Germany will ultimately have to choose one of the two allies.

Alliance relations are not just words; help must be provided at critical moments. If allies cannot provide help, then why conclude this alliance?

Before declaring war on the Ottoman Empire, Tsar Alexander II personally sent a telegram to German Emperor Wilhelm I to seek German support.

For Russia, German support is extremely important. First, German support can ensure that the Austro-Hungarian Empire stays put; the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s reliance on defeating the Russians is German support.

Second, with German support, Russia can ensure it has no worries during the entire war.

Russia’s vast territory will continuously transport materials to the frontline; Russia has full confidence to win this war against the Ottoman Empire.

In the end, the Germans still chose Russia between Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Regarding relations within the Three Emperors Alliance, the relationship between Germany and Russia is a pure alliance, while the Austro-Hungarian Empire is more like a lapdog.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire actively approached Germany, and before the Austro-Hungarian Empire showed weakness, relations between Germany and Austria were still hostile.

Compared to Austria, with which it fought a war just a few years ago, the Germans clearly trust Russia more, which poses no interest threat.

At least in Prime Minister Bismarck’s strategy to isolate France, Russia’s role is more important than that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

What the Germans are most worried about currently is the hatred with France; there is not much conflict of interest with Russia, which is also why Germany ultimately chose Russia.

With German support, the next steps became easier.

Without Russian support, the Austro-Hungarian Empire has no courage to wage war with Russia, which also means Russia can, through diplomacy alone, hope to keep the Austro-Hungarian Empire completely neutral in this war.

Russia did indeed achieve this. The Austro-Hungarian Empire indeed lacked the courage to go to war alone with Russia, even if the British might support the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Under Russia’s promise to let the Austro-Hungarian Empire annex Bosnia and Serbia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire ultimately chose to remain neutral in this war and abandoned the idea of intervening.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire’s voluntary abandonment also made the British see a greater crisis.

Without the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s interference, Russia only needs to focus on dealing with the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire is no longer Russia’s opponent; if Russia is allowed to attack the Ottoman Empire wantonly, perhaps Constantinople will become Russia’s next year.

To help the Ottoman Empire resist Russia’s offensive, the British Hobart, who is said to have converted to Islam, led the Turkish fleet to blockade the Black Sea, preventing Russians from transporting materials to the frontline via sea transport.

Speaking of Hobart, he served early in the Royal Navy and retired over ten years ago with the rank of British Navy colonel.

After retiring, Hobart went to the Ottoman Empire and converted to Islam, being granted the title of Pasha by the Ottoman Empire.

Pasha was previously called Bey, generally referring to high officials in the Ottoman Empire’s administrative system, such as governors, generals, or high officials, etc.

After a long period of development, the title Pasha has now evolved into an honorary title, similar to knight in British nobility titles.

Hobart, having obtained the Pasha title, holds a lofty status in the Ottoman Empire’s navy and will even be granted the rank of navy marshal in the future.

Of course, Hobart’s current identity and status are also not low. As the actual commander of the Ottoman Navy, under his command are 22 armored ships, 82 non-armored ships, and 763 naval guns, with a total of over 15,000 naval officers and men.

In terms of naval scale, the Ottoman Empire’s Black Sea Fleet has an advantage over the Black Sea Fleet established by Russia.

Why does the Ottoman Empire have such a massive navy? Besides a small portion being the empire’s foundation, most comes from British help.

The British, to prevent Russia from occupying the Constantinople Straits, have gone to extremes. The Ottoman Empire’s Black Sea Fleet has also successfully blockaded the Black Sea, forcing Russia to transport materials to the frontline only via land routes.

Although this hinders the frontline offensive, the problem is not too big. Although at a disadvantage in the navy, Russia’s army has a similarly great advantage compared to the Ottoman Empire’s army.

Since the Black Sea has been blockaded, the Russians have completely abandoned maritime transport routes on the Black Sea and pinned all hopes for the offensive on the army.

Russia’s army did not disappoint; in combat with the Ottoman Empire’s army, it quickly advanced the frontline with more victories than defeats.

So-called advance was actually just barely recapturing the territory in Romania occupied by the Ottoman Empire.

Due to the Danube River flooding, plus the Black Sea blockade, it was difficult for the Russian Army to cross the Danube River to fight the Ottoman Empire’s army.

For most of May, the way the Russian Army and Ottoman Empire’s army exchanged fire was bombarding each other across the river, occasionally firing a few shots to prove the war was still ongoing.

Besides consuming bullets and cannonballs, casualties on both sides had been reduced to the minimum.

Originally, the Russian Army had a leading advantage in cannon numbers, but after April’s consumption, frontline cannonball supplies were insufficient.

This also led to Russia’s firepower and the Ottoman Empire’s firepower dropping to almost the same level, with the army blocked by the Danube River on Romanian land, unable to advance an inch.

The temporary halt of the offensive made the Russian Government start to become somewhat anxious.

The frontline was wasting large amounts of bullets and cannonballs every day, and the Russian Government’s fiscal expenditure was continuously growing.

If this stalemate continued, whether the government’s finances could sustain it was uncertain, but frontline bullets and cannonball supplies definitely could not hold out.

The frontline has a full 3,000 cannons; one cannon firing ten cannonballs a day adds up to 30,000 cannonballs consumed.

In a month, the consumed cannonballs would approach a million, which Russia’s current military industry production capacity cannot make up for no matter what.

Not to mention during intense war periods, frontline cannons would fire massively. Just the cannonball consumption and logistics supply issues were enough to give the Russian Government a headache.

Not to mention that frontline bullet consumption is the major part. The daily bullet consumption by hundreds of thousands of troops is innumerable; if not replenished in time, frontline troops would suffer low morale due to lack of logistics supplies, not only unable to continue the offensive but even defense would be difficult.

It can’t be that these soldiers are sent up to bayonet fight the enemy without bullets. Never mind whether Russian soldiers have the courage to bayonet fight the enemy—even if they do, the enemy won’t foolishly abandon rifles to bayonet fight.

Bayonet fighting happens either when the enemy has breached the trenches or when entering the enemy’s trenches, or in desperation with ammunition exhausted.

In other situations, especially when the Ottoman Empire’s weapons and equipment maintain the lead, it’s definitely better to use firepower suppression if possible.

Seeing that blockading the Black Sea was very effective, the British finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Although such a strategy may not help the Ottoman Empire win the war, it can at least hold Russia back for longer.

Britain also has more time to prepare, whether joining the war to help the Ottoman Empire or ensuring post-war that the Ottoman Empire does not lose more interests—particularly ensuring Russia does not expand its sphere of influence near the Constantinople Straits—are viable directions for Britain.

Although the Austro-Hungarian Empire remained neutral due to various pressures, the British do not believe it will stay neutral when Russia annexes the Balkan Peninsula into its sphere of influence.

To put it bluntly, Russia has not yet won the war; the Austro-Hungarian Empire is forced to back down under pressure.

When Russia truly threatens the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s layout on the Balkan Peninsula, the Austro-Hungarian Empire will definitely not sit idly by even under threat.

Taking advantage of the Balkan Peninsula war attracting the attention of Europe’s major great powers, Spain accelerated its expansion of African colonies and Southeast Asian colonies.

On the Africa front, Spain’s main directions of expansion are two.

One is the expansion of the South Morocco Colony toward the Western Sahara Desert. Although Western Sahara is a barren land with little population, it still has high economic value.

After all, it is a coastal area; the Western Sahara coast has extremely rich fishery resources, and the sparse population there mainly relies on fishery and animal husbandry.

Besides these common fishery resources, Western Sahara also has extremely rich phosphate ore deposits; just Bukhara has reserves of up to 7 billion tons.

Phosphate ore has many uses and can be widely applied in agriculture, chemical industry, medical treatment, and crafts.

Its most important role is making phosphate fertilizer, which provides crucial phosphorus elements to crops; phosphate fertilizer is also one of the very important fertilizers.

For Spain, with insufficient land fertility, the massive phosphate ore can provide Spain with a large amount of phosphate fertilizer.

These phosphate fertilizers can improve Spain’s land fertility, help crop production, increase Spain’s crop yields, and make Spain’s agricultural development even stronger.

For Spain, occupying the Western Sahara region is effortless.

It is even no exaggeration to say that after Spain established the South Morocco Colony, various countries have tacitly accepted Spain’s occupation of the Western Sahara region.

Why say this? This land was originally controlled by Morocco but not actually managed, merely within Morocco’s sphere of influence.

European colonists have also come to this land but have no interest in this sparsely populated desert region.

Within a few hundred kilometers around Western Sahara, besides Spain’s South Morocco Colony, there are no other colonists’ colonies.

Even if Spain does not establish a colony in Western Sahara, basically no other great powers will come to establish one.

Unless the great powers have completely partitioned Africa, but completely partitioning Africa within the next ten years is very difficult.

After all, the reason the great powers have not entered Africa is not that they don’t want to, but the cost of entering Africa is too high; currently, no country has the strength to develop the African inland, so naturally there is no need to enter the African inland to establish colonies.

Like the Congo Territory established by Spain, although it would arouse some envy from great power countries, most countries would treat it as good luck.

After all, the process of Spain exploring the Congo Territory was full of too many coincidences; without good luck, Spain probably could not have discovered such a vast Congo Territory.

In the view of other European great powers, Spain’s process of establishing the Congo Territory is irreproducible. If they also conduct African inland exploration like Spain, besides spending massive funds to form expedition teams, there would probably be no other effect.

It is not as good as focusing on expansion along the African coast; the African coast has also not been completely partitioned by great powers—that is where the great powers focus.

Besides expansion in the Sahara Desert, Spain has another direction of expansion in Africa: the Congo Territory expanding downstream along the Congo River.

According to Carlo’s plan, the Congo River territory is to connect by railway with the Guinea Colony and the Congo River downstream port.

Currently, the Congo Territory has completed the railway connection with the Guinea Colony, but the plan to build railways along the Congo River has not yet officially started.

The main reason is that there is a long-existing indigenous nation downstream on the Congo River: the Kingdom of Congo.

Most of the Kingdom of Congo’s land is currently controlled by Portugal, and Portugal has established its own African colony on the Kingdom of Congo’s land.

If Spain wants to continue expanding the Congo Territory downstream on the Congo River, it will definitely spark a new round of conflict with Portugal.

Portugal did tolerate Spain establishing the Congo Territory upstream on the Congo River, but if Spain also reaches downstream on the Congo River, the Portuguese probably won’t shrink back so easily.

After all, Portugal’s expansion in the Kingdom of Congo has lasted over ten years—how could it abandon these established colonies just because of Spain’s colonial competition?

Fortunately, the main competitor in the Congo River Basin currently is only Portugal; Spain does not fear the threat from Portugal.

Taking advantage of Portugal’s backer, the British, having their attention on the Balkan Peninsula war, Carlo decides to accelerate expansion into the downstream lands of the Congo River and grasp the Kingdom of Congo in Spain’s hands as much as possible before the Portuguese.

The Kingdom of Congo has a large indigenous population, which can be perfectly used to develop the Congo Territory.

Completing expansion downstream on the Congo River can also form a triangular area between Guinea and the Congo River Basin, with the land within the triangle possibly all controlled by Spain.

Before this land has other foreign competitors, taking control first is very beneficial. Even if it cannot be developed in the future, it can be exchanged through colony swaps for colonies that Spain wants more from other great power countries.

Even if colony swaps cannot be done, this connected block of colonies is easier to control—just dispatch an army of certain scale to ensure the colony’s stability.

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