I want to be emperor

The expeditionary fleet of the Great Chu Empire swept across the west coast of Africa and all the way to southern Morocco, occupying Tarfaya forcefully. After the news gradually spread to European countries, it brought extremely strong panic to European countries.

Yes, panic!
Although a long time ago, even 20 years ago, people in many European countries already knew that a super powerful empire had appeared in the eastern world: the Great Chu Empire.

The Dutch and the Portuguese continued to fail in the east, and the relationship between the Great Chu Empire and the Spaniards was not bad, and large-scale trade was carried out with the Philippines as a transit.

Therefore, through these three countries, information about the Great Chu Empire was continuously transmitted back to Europe.

Some people worry and panic about it, some dismiss it, thinking that it is the Dutch, Portuguese and Spaniards who are bragging...

But more people are actually indifferent: because the Great Chu Empire is too far away from Europe, if you go all the way by sea, starting from the Guangzhou Port of the Great Chu Empire, you need to go through the Strait of Malacca, cross the Indian Ocean, and then bypass the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, so that you can enter Atlantic Ocean, and all the way north along the west coast of Africa, before finally reaching Europe.

In this route, if sailing ships are used, in order to ensure that they can only take the coastal route along the way, from Guangzhou to Cadiz Port in the south of the Spaniards, the total mileage is about [-] kilometers.

Even if you don't accept it all the way, sail at full speed, and sail in the right season, then use the high-speed sailing clipper ship built by the Great Chu Empire, and the whole process will take three months!

Three months, this is the limit speed in the sail age.

For normal sailing, this time will be extended to four or even five months.

If instead of using a high-speed sailing ship such as a clipper ship, but an old-style sailing ship such as a galleon, the voyage will be extended to half a year or even more than a year.

In the eyes of many Europeans, it takes half a year or even a year to travel from Europe to the Great Chu Empire... This distance is enough for them to ignore the threat of the Great Chu Empire.

However, as time passed, the Great Chu Empire gradually expanded outwards, first controlling Southeast Asia, then India, and finally occupying the east coast of Africa.

During this process, the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa was strongly blocked. Except for a few ships engaged in special industries and licensed, all non-Great Chu Empire ships were prohibited from passing.

Especially ships carrying a large amount of cargo are not allowed to pass.

And a trading port was set up in Cape Town facing the whole of Europe, and by the way, also facing the east coast of America.

In this way, the European region's understanding of the Great Chu Empire will be further improved, and the situation of many Great Chu Empires will be passed on to the vast European region along with the crew members who traveled between Cape Town and the European region.

And the more you know, the greater the fear!
It can move forward with only smoke without sails, and it is also a super ship made of steel.

A large-caliber naval gun capable of delivering fatal blows to the enemy thousands of meters away.

More advanced, the firing rate is close to [-]% of the flash cap percussion gun.

After this information was gradually learned by Europeans, um, mainly by the upper echelons of Europe and the nautical circles with more foreign exchanges, it caused a huge shock to the European region.

This period was also the peak period for the establishment of monopoly trading companies in European countries. Almost every country would have a company that monopolizes trade with Cape Town.

The names of these trading companies are also highly similar, either continuing to use the word East India, or using the new African company, and some using the Eastern company.

According to the statistics of the Great Chu Empire itself, over the past 35 years of Chengshun, more than 130 trading companies from the European region have come to trade. An independent principality, a lord such as a marquis.

As for ordinary merchants... To be honest, there are not many. In these years, if you want to cross the west coast of Africa and trade with the Great Chu Empire, it is impossible to do it without the support of the country.

Even if you ship the goods back, you can’t sell them... because almost all European countries monopolize the trade of Chu’s goods, those kings, dukes, marquises and other lords, as well as those big nobles want to monopolize the Chu in their respective jurisdictions. China's commodity trade, and then occupy high profits.

And this kind of monopoly is also the root cause of the strong dissatisfaction of the Great Chu Empire and the eventual promotion of the European free trade plan.

Although the Great Chu Empire made a lot of money from wholesale wholesale in Cape Town...but if they could ship the goods directly to European countries and then sell them to those agents, they would definitely make more money.

Moreover, the shipment volume of goods will be larger, and the role in stimulating domestic employment will be greater.

Of course, this is just an introduction. In fact, the Great Chu Empire, to be precise, the business people in the Great Chu Empire, wanted to turn Europe into a second India: a place for dumping industrial products with a huge population!
But the current monopoly trade does not meet the interests of the Great Chu Empire.

After understanding the domestic interests of the Great Chu Empire, it is also possible to understand the strategic goal of the Great Chu Empire's European Expeditionary Force: to open up the European market!

In simpler terms, the Chu people came here just to do better business, not for territorial expansion or revenge.

It's just that people in Europe don't know the idea of ​​the Great Chu Empire yet!
So after the Europeans saw the Great Chu Empire attacking with great fanfare, the top leaders of many countries fell into a kind of panic.

Especially the Portuguese and Spanish who know the Chu people better and are also relatively close to the Chu European Expeditionary Force.

It is worth mentioning that the Portuguese had officially separated from Spanish control a few years ago and regained their independent status in legal name.

So now there is no United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal, the two are re-divided into independent countries.

And these two countries are also colonial powers in the past 200 years, and their overseas territories are all over the world, and the Dutch have only come from behind.

However, most of the overseas colonies of the Spaniards are concentrated in the Americas. Although they also obtained the Philippine colony in Asia before, they did not have any conflicts with the Great Chu Empire during the early overseas expansion stage of the Great Chu Empire. The scale of trade is even quite large.

The Spanish global trade fleet was also established during this period.

After negotiations between the two parties, the Spaniards sold the Philippines to the Great Chu Empire in exchange for a license to trade at Jinshan Port in North America.

Although the subsequent Great Chu Empire also had a series of colonial conflicts in North America and Spain, the Great Chu Empire even occupied the Baja California Peninsula, and occupied a considerable part of the surrounding area, but these things did not affect the two countries too much. country relations.

In other words, the expansion speed of the Great Chu Empire in North America is still not fast enough. It is currently concentrating on expanding and digesting the western and central regions of North America. It has not yet had time to enter the southern part of North America, which is Mexico. There are too many fundamental contradictions.

Therefore, the current relationship between the two countries is actually good... The relationship is good, which means that the Chu people have no time to fight the Spaniards.

As for the trade between the two sides, the Great Chu Empire has always welcomed doing business with anyone, including the Russians, the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the British.Regardless of the war ahead, as long as you come to do business, the Chu people are very welcome.

War is war, and business is business, and the people of Chu have always made it very clear... Anyway, continuing to do business will not affect the war, and after the fight is over, you must continue to do business.

The Spaniards have a good relationship with the Great Chu Empire, and no formal war broke out between the two sides. As for some colonial conflicts in North America, this is nothing...

Therefore, the Spaniards quickly sent envoys to Tarfaya in southern Morocco, mainly to test the purpose of this large-scale operation of the Great Chu Empire.

Want to retaliate?
Or do you want to expand your territory?
Such a large-scale war must have a purpose...

When the Spanish envoys came over, they didn't send someone who didn't understand the language as stupidly as the Moroccans, but sent a translator who knew Chu language to accompany him!

Otherwise, the Spaniard's envoy would probably follow in the footsteps of the Moroccan envoy: he directly used the Chu people as targets to practice marksmanship.

Because of the presence of an interpreter, the commander of the Chu European Expeditionary Force in Tarfaya knew the purpose of the Spaniards' trip, and then gave them an answer: "We are here this time just for business!"

And considering that the relationship between the two countries is barely passable, the commander of the Chu State, facing the doubts of the Spaniards, rarely explained why he wanted to massacre on the west coast of Africa, pushing all the way indiscriminately, and killing all the people on the west coast of Africa. The colonies of all European countries have been cleaned up in one go.

"It's not for any reason, and it's not an act of war. We just want a few available ports to build supply bases, and at the same time ensure the safety of the northbound route..."

"There are too many pirates on the west coast of Africa. In order to ensure the safety of the West African route, we need to eliminate the pirates here!"

The conscience of heaven and earth, what the commander of the Chu State is telling is the truth... Chu's European expeditionary fleet sweeps all the way north, it is really for the purpose of obtaining a supply port and clearing the route by the way.

It's just that the Spanish envoy was silent for a while after hearing this...he felt why the colonial officials in Mexico always said that the Chu people were overbearing and unreasonable.

This is not overbearing and can be described, but defiant... In other words, they don't treat Europeans as human beings.

You said that you want the people of Chu to sweep across Europe for reasons of retaliation, expansion of territory, etc. The Spaniards can actually accept it... After all, it is a normal reason anyway.

But you Chu people just occupied the colonies of several European countries in Africa simply for the sake of a few supply ports and clearing the shipping routes... To be honest, it's a bit nonsense.

If you want a port, just ask. The Europeans are not unreasonable people. If you ask for it from Chu, the Dutch will give it to you in minutes...you don’t need to grab it at all.

After the silence, the Spanish messenger withdrew the topic to business again, saying that the Spaniards now maintain a good trade relationship with the Chu people.

Their Spanish Oriental Company sends a large number of ships to Cape Town for trade every year.

However, the commander of the Chu State said that it was not enough... far from enough. They hoped that Spain would fully open the market, allow goods from the Great Chu Empire to enter freely, and cancel the trade monopoly, allowing other agents to deal in Chu State goods.

The most important thing is that the tariff must be reduced to a reasonable range. What is a reasonable range? In principle, the import tariff for all commodities should not exceed 5.00%, and the tax rate for some categories should not exceed [-]% or even be exempted.

No matter how stupid the Spanish envoy was, he knew why the people of Chu sent an expeditionary army to kill them with great fanfare when they heard about the full opening of the market and the restriction of tariffs.

The full opening of the market means that the products of Chu people can unscrupulously impact related industries in Spain.

For example, the most basic textile industry...whether it is cotton spinning or wool spinning, as long as the market is opened up to allow Chu textiles to come in, and there is no restriction on tariffs.

They have already predicted what will happen: Spain's local hand-woven textile industry will go bankrupt overnight, and countless handicraft workers will lose their jobs.

Although there are also a large number of Chu country textiles in the Spanish market, due to the monopoly trade and targeted high tariffs, these Chu country textiles are positioned as high-end commodities in Spain.

Although it also impacted part of the Spanish hand-textile industry, it still left a medium and low-end living space for the Spanish hand-textile industry.

If this is completely liberalized...especially if there is no restriction on tariffs, with the high cost performance of the textiles of the Great Chu Empire, all the handmade textile industries in Spain can be crushed in minutes.

Just like the Southeast Asian countries in the past and India now!
And what is the situation in Nanyang now?All the countries in Southeast Asia no longer exist...not to mention the political power, there are not even a few people left.

Now only in the Bengal area in northeastern India, there are still a total of 200 million Southeast Asian survivors.

And what about India?

It’s not much better. All kinds of handicraft industries in India that compete with Chu’s goods are almost completely bankrupt. The famous handmade cotton spinning industry in India has long since disappeared, but the cotton production is increasing year by year. .

The Great Chu Empire controlled many colonies in the Indian region, and at the same time controlled many puppet princes, and promoted economic crops with higher returns on a large scale in these colonies and puppet areas.

Among them, the proportion of cotton is the largest.

Today's India has become the cotton field of the Great Chu Empire!
No matter how you think about it, you can know that once the market is fully liberalized and tariffs are restricted, Spain will suffer great losses.

Of course, some people may not think so, for example, people who are engaged in the commodity business of Chu State... They must be very happy, the more they buy, the more they earn.

The Spanish envoy went back worried, and soon the Portuguese and the Dutch also ran over... The Chu people didn't hide it, and they didn't bother to deceive them... Anyway, Chu's request is like this, you have to agree , If you don't agree, you have to agree.

Otherwise, don't blame Chu's guns for not having eyes!

Chu people have always been so confident and domineering when they act overseas.

The panic and worries of the Europeans did not affect the actions of the European Expeditionary Force of Chu State... No matter what the Europeans think or do... the people of Chu State are actually too lazy to respond, and they just carry out various actions on their own.

Bear the brunt of Morocco!

Chu's vanguard troops took Tarfaya first, but they were not satisfied with this small southern port... The climate here is not good, and it is too far from the center of Europe, so it is not suitable for a real large-scale port. The base can only be used as an ordinary supply port.

Therefore, the European Expeditionary Force quickly started to operate again. A new fleet crossed Tarfaya and went directly north. Finally, it came to the Strait of Gibraltar and wandered around. It was found that Tangier, a small city on the south side of Gibraltar, was not bad. not bad.

The main reason is that the climate is very good, even in summer it is not too hot, it is only around [-] degrees, and the place is not too cold in winter, which belongs to the kind of climate that is relatively mild all year round.

The geographical location is also quite good, just guarding the Strait of Gibraltar, and a small fleet stationed here can directly block the entire strait completely, without having to use large ocean-going warships to carry out strategic blockade missions as in Cape Town.

Here, just a few hundred tons of offshore ships can completely block the Strait of Gibraltar, and this sea traffic artery is completely controlled by Chu State.

At the same time, if it is used as a trade transfer station, goods can be smoothly transported to all parts of Europe through this place. If you go north, you can reach Spain, Portugal, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the northern European regions such as Denmark, Germany, and Sweden... It is even possible. Enter the Baltic Sea and do business with the Russians.

To the east, you can enter the Mediterranean Sea and Spain, France, the Italian Peninsula, the Balkan Peninsula and a bunch of messy countries to do business. If you continue to the east, you can also contact the Ottoman Empire to do business.

The climate is very suitable for living, and the geographical location is also very good.

Immediately, the commander of this squadron of the European Expeditionary Force decided not to make a fuss, but to set up a stronghold here first.

As for whether it is really determined to build a large-scale base here in the future, or to choose another place, that is a matter for the future.

So... Colonel Yucheng, the official commander of this squadron, made the decision to send troops to land simply, even arbitrarily.

As for what the locals think?
Sorry, Colonel Fang Yucheng didn't think about it at all!
Even when he sent his troops to land, he didn't even know that this place was currently controlled by the Spaniards... About ten years ago, the Spaniards snatched this city from the Portuguese.

Colonel Fang Yucheng just thought that this place belonged to the same place as the Kingdom of Morocco, and thought that this place belonged to Morocco.

From sending troops to land to taking the city, Fang Yucheng didn't even send anyone to the city to ask who this place belongs to...

It's not that Fang Yucheng is stupid, nor is it arrogant... It's just that there is no difference between asking and not asking, and the actions of Chu people will not fight just because this place belongs to Moroccans, but not to fight if it belongs to Spaniards.

In the eyes of Chu people, there is no difference between Spaniards and Moroccans.

The most important thing is the place that the Great Chu Empire is interested in... No matter who it was before, it must belong to the Great Chu Empire in the end!

Tangier will be no exception!