African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1414: The Austro-Hungarian Crisis
In Schönbrunn Palace, old Emperor Franz could no longer sit still after hearing about the unification of the three Italian kingdoms. He hurriedly called Crown Prince Rudolf over.

Since World War I, Franz has basically entered a retired state. Although he still holds the title of emperor, state affairs are basically left to Rudolf. He usually spends his remaining years in Schönbrunn Palace, reminiscing about the past.

An ascetic like Franz will not mess around even after retirement, which is one of Franz's greatest advantages.

Soon, Rudolf was summoned by Franz.

After meeting Crown Prince Rudolf, Emperor Franz immediately asked, "Rudolf, how could you have watched Italy reunify?"

Franz spoke in a stern voice, and as the muscles in his right hand bulged, he knocked the gold-inlaid staff in his hand against the ground, causing a noise to ripple across the marble floor, and the beard at the corners of his mouth trembled due to the stimulation of his muscles.

It is no wonder that Franz was so angry. No one knew better than him the threat that Italian unification posed to the empire. After all, Italy was almost unified, which caused great trouble to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Facing his angry father, Rudolph also felt wronged. He said, "Father, please don't get angry. We also have our own difficulties."

Franz's chest rose and fell slightly as he spoke, "Difficulties? The unification of Italy is now the biggest difficulty for the empire. In order to disintegrate Italy, we put in so much effort and energy, and even paid a great price to win over Hungary. Finally, through war, we forced the Kingdom of Italy to retreat to the northwest corner of the Apennine Peninsula."

"Back then, unified Italy was able to be aggressive to the Empire militarily and block our access to the Adriatic Sea. Now, as long as Benito can reunite the navies of the three countries, he may be able to create a powerful naval fleet like Italy did in the past, thereby suppressing the Empire's development in the Adriatic Sea."

The Italian Navy at that time was indeed much stronger than the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Although Italy's national strength was far inferior to that of Austria-Hungary, Italy was indeed a country that was naturally suited to maritime development.

The Apennine Peninsula is like a boot, extending deep into the Mediterranean Sea and dividing the entire Mediterranean into two halves, east and west. It can be said that its strategic position is very prominent.

Moreover, Italy's winding coastline is nearly 7,000 kilometers long, almost the same as that of India, so Italy has been a shipping power in the Mediterranean since ancient times.

Therefore, as long as Benito could integrate the shipbuilding industries of the three countries, it would not be difficult to establish a powerful Mediterranean navy.

After all, Italy has a strong shipbuilding industry, and based on this, building warships is not difficult for Italy.

Compared with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy simply lacks the technology and experience in building large warships. After all, since the disintegration, the three Italian countries have been unable to develop a strong navy on their own.

However, this is not a big problem. After all, Italy's shipbuilding industry is still there, and the technical personnel are still there. In particular, the Kingdom of Italy has never interrupted the construction of its navy in order to colonize the Red Sea coast and control Sardinia and Sicily. It's just that the naval construction plan is more pragmatic and tends to be defensive.

Moreover, Italy's lack of large warship construction technology can be completely solved by imitating or introducing ready-made foreign technology.

The navies of many countries started in this way, such as the East African Navy, the German Navy, and the US Navy, so it is no problem for Italy, which has a strong shipbuilding industry.

In fact, in recent years, some Italian shipyards have also received orders for the manufacture of large ships, thanks to Italy's cheap labor resources.

Italy has a very dense population. Before unification, the Kingdom of Italy had a population of nearly 20 million, which is almost half the population of France. Moreover, the Italian region has been the low point of the European economy for many years, with low wages.

Therefore, even France is eyeing Italy's population. Some French companies are keen to invest and build factories in Italy, especially in low-end industries with high labor demand, including the textile and shipbuilding industries.

In recent years, in addition to investing in industries in Italy, France has been keen on granting its nationality to Italian immigrants to alleviate the severe labor shortage in the country caused by World War I.

From this point of view, Italy should be the first country in Europe to enjoy the demographic dividend in this century, and this demographic dividend is based on the decline of France. France lacks people, but not capital and technology. At the same time, Italy is close to France, which facilitates France's industrial transfer.

The reason why we emphasize the demographic dividend is that, compared with its neighboring countries, Italy has the richest human resources, so rich that a large number of Italians flow to all parts of the world every year.

Today, France and Argentina in South America are the main destinations for Italian immigrants. In addition, economically developed European regions such as the United Kingdom and Germany have also absorbed a large number of Italians. However, the United Kingdom and Germany are not short of population, so it is difficult to obtain citizenship of both countries, of course, with the exception of high-quality talents.

However, for Italian immigrants now, France is the first choice. It is close to home, has many job opportunities, and is even easy to start a family. After all, there are a large number of widows in France waiting to take over.

In the past, France was arrogant, so even though its population growth rate was the lowest in Europe, it was difficult for immigrants from other countries to become French. However, after being hit hard by World War I, France's acceptance of immigrants, especially Italian immigrants, increased significantly.

After all, compared to importing "blacks" from the colonies, the French people are more psychologically accepting of Italians, not to mention that Napoleon, one of the greatest figures in France, was also Italian to a certain extent.

All in all, the relationship between Italy and France has been quite good in recent years, and the two are highly complementary. This is different from the previous life, when France's population was also hit hard by World War I.

However, France in the previous life was sitting on the seat of winners, and the glory still belonged to France. But this is not the case with France in this time and space. In the eyes of most French people, World War I was just another "Franco-Prussian War". After all, France paid too much in World War I but got nothing in return, which was a complete loss.

This is also one of the issues that Franz is worried about. He said to Rudolf: "Since the European economic recovery, Italy has been getting closer and closer to France. Now that Italy is unified, I am afraid that France will still increase its cooperation with Italy, which is extremely disadvantageous for us."

"Italy itself is our potential enemy. If it is supported by Britain and France and quickly rearms, it will have a huge impact on the empire's geopolitical situation in the entire Eastern Mediterranean."

"Not only that, the unification of Italy means that we have lost two very important markets, the Papal States and Naples. The population of the Papal States and Naples is close to 20 million, but now they have become the property of the Kingdom of Italy."

"It can be said that the unification of Italy this time has extremely adverse effects on the empire's military defense and economy." Apart from anything else, the loss of a market with a population of nearly 20 million is enough to make Emperor Franz distressed. For the current Austro-Hungarian Empire, the loss of this market is very likely to have a very adverse impact on the Austro-Hungarian economy.

Once the economy has problems, it is possible to trigger a new round of political crisis in the country, especially the separatist forces in the non-ruling ethnic regions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are likely to make a comeback.

Crown Prince Rudolf was also well aware of these situations.

Since the unification of Italy has already happened, and it happened right under his nose, it is useless to shirk responsibility at this time.

Therefore, Rudolf also admitted his mistake completely and honestly: "Father, the unification of Italy this time was indeed my mistake."

Faced with this son who was unruly in his youth but now takes the initiative to assume responsibilities in front of him, the old Emperor Franz feels that there is someone to succeed him.

So, he rarely helped Rudolf to excuse himself, saying: "This is not entirely your fault. After all, no one would have thought that Italy could be reunited in this way."

"Even I might not be able to react to a person like Benito. I have also reviewed what happened in Italy these days."

"The process by which Benito unified Italy was truly astonishing. He took a path that no one in Europe had ever taken before."

"By inciting the Italian people and stirring up their emotions, we are paralyzing the forces we support in Italy. This approach is very similar to the Russian Labor Party."

"However, Benito's methods were even better than his predecessor's. The Russian Labor Party's seizure of power was accompanied by war and conflict, but Benito was able to win over all the forces that could be won over, thus avoiding large-scale bloodshed and war."

"If a civil war breaks out in Italy, it won't be a bad thing for us. After all, if a war breaks out, we will have an excuse to intervene in Italy and even send troops to suppress it openly."

"But this is where Benito's cunning lies. He did not give us any excuse to interfere and completed the peaceful evolution of the Papal States and Naples in a very short time."

"This also serves as a warning to us, that is, Benito was able to unify Italy through this method, and the Labor Party was able to overthrow the rule of the Tsar through similar means. We in the Austro-Hungarian Empire must also beware of those with ulterior motives who take advantage of public sentiment to carry out riots and national separatist activities."

"From this perspective, our situation is even more difficult than that of Russia and Italy before us. We have to deal not only with the sabotage activities of the Labour Party elements who are trying to subvert the country, but also with the sabotage activities of extreme nationalists and separatists."

Benito was an extreme nationalist in Italy. He could achieve the reunification of Italy through extreme nationalism. Naturally, the extreme nationalists in the Austro-Hungarian Empire could also use this to incite some regions that were dissatisfied with Vienna to split from the empire and become independent.

It can be said that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was now sandwiched between two mindsets: to the east was Russia, led by the Labor Party, and to the west was Italy, led by extreme nationalists. Both of their ideologies were extremely destructive to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

After all, the situation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was too complicated. The Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Romanians, Croatians, Slovenes... in the country were a mess, and various contradictions were very prominent.

Therefore, Franz said with great concern: "Now we must not only consider the negative impact of the unification of Italy on the empire, but also prepare in advance for some possible changes in the country."

"To be pessimistic, there is almost no way to solve the problems of the empire. It's also my fault for not handling these problems properly, thus leaving you with a mess."

"If I had been tougher back then, perhaps the situation in the empire wouldn't have deteriorated to the extent it is today."

The reason why Franz said this was mainly because the separatism in the Austro-Hungarian Empire had not been alleviated in recent years due to his series of compromise policies, but had become more and more serious.

The reason why Franz focused on this issue is that there are ways to deal with separatists, unlike the Labor Party members, for whom the world has no good solution.

There are many ways to suppress separatists, such as massacre, arrest, or forced assimilation. For example, in East Africa, even people of different skin colors can be integrated into one ethnic group through a series of policy measures.

Therefore, Franz somewhat regretted not implementing a more radical integration policy within the empire. Of course, when he was young, Franz was just a paperhanger, and he himself was not willing to integrate the empire's culture and identity in such a radical way.

However, as time went on, he became more and more regretful, especially as separatism became increasingly prevalent in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This seemingly powerful country could be dismembered at any time.

Franz was very worried that Rudolf would not be able to control those people after his death. After all, Franz ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire for decades, and he was even the founder of this country, so Franz had many supporters and collaborators, but Franz's supporters and collaborators were not equal to Rudolf's supporters and collaborators.

So, after pondering for a moment, Franz seemed to have made a great decision and said to Crown Prince Rudolf: "For us Habsburgs, the most important thing now is to ensure the survival of the family, but the situation of the empire is so bad that there is no hope."

"So, Rudolf, we must consider the most dangerous possible situation and use it as a basis to preserve the family's rule as much as possible."

"We can even believe that after the disintegration of the empire in the future, the Habsburgs can only serve as the king of one of the disintegrated countries. Our roots are Austria and Hungary, so we must strengthen the family's control over these two regions as much as possible, support the power of the family and the nobility, and make use of trustworthy people, especially those who share the same interests with us. Even if they have ulterior motives, as long as they support the Habsburgs, they are a force that can unite."

The interests of the nobility and the royal family are unified. After all, if the royal family is gone, they will most likely find it difficult to maintain their past interests, just like the Russian aristocracy that perished along with the Russian Tsar. After the collapse of Tsarist Russia, these nobles were actually nothing.

(End of this chapter)