Start 1861: I just inherited the Dutch throne

Chapter 1109 The Glory of the Netherlands

“After experiencing the decline and destruction of the Netherlands in the 18th century, our challenge today is to fulfill our obligation not to let it happen again, while ensuring that our allies do not become weaker while our enemies become stronger.

We must maintain our economic vitality and economic strength.

This will require us to make difficult choices and require us in the Netherlands to demand trade with different economies around the world, albeit with different development routes and governance policies.

We have faced challenges like this in the past and have always been able to balance fiscal responsibility with our mutual responsibilities. "

"As a resurgent economic power in the Netherlands, we need to develop relations with emerging economic powers such as the United States and Germany, but no one is perfect. We can also borrow their development experience, such as the iron law that German citizens are ruled by the Bismarck cabinet. ,high efficiency.

The United States keeps its head down and makes a fortune in silence. The Netherlands must beware of the United States stealing from us and then coming back to bite us and occupy our global market share.

How to solve them is to develop more advanced industrial technologies.

At the same time, we must find a bigger and broader way out among our own successes and failures. "

"Achieve alliance growth without threatening our position, lasting prosperity that will not be overly dependent on other individual allies, and the Dutch economic prosperity cannot be overly dependent on exports. It also needs to increase consumption and output, and we also need to continue to increase Investment in Dutch domestic infrastructure and investment in citizens”

"Just as we must now provide leadership for our citizens to prosper, we must provide them with security at home and a secure environment abroad."

“The United States and Mexico and we in the Netherlands understand what it means to fight against other countries in the world who are constantly fighting against each other, so we even pay the price of war.

That is why we now have a security network sufficient to defend Dutch territory on both sides of the Pacific and Indian Oceans in the Far East.

The Qing Kingdom and the Kingdom of Siam are both part of our security network, which is the west coast of Taiping.

On the east coast of the Pacific, currently Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and the five Central American countries are our allies. Even the Netherlands has troops stationed in disguise in these countries there because of its relationship with the Thirteen Latin American Alliance. "

"In the entire North America, there are currently no Dutch troops on the Pacific side, only the British overseas territory of Canada in the north, the Confederate States of America in the north, the Confederate States of America in the south, and Mexico, where the war is currently taking place."

“Canada was defeated by the Confederation of the United States that year, so it lost the Canadian province of British Columbia, which had the only outlet to the sea.

Therefore, Britain has no power in the Pacific and can only rely on Japan.Although Japan is now allied with the United Kingdom, it is hesitant and has chosen to develop relaxed relations with me. It has not yet dared to challenge our maritime rights in the Western Pacific. "

“So after all the calculations, the Netherlands needs to make up for this shortcoming, which is the coastline between the United States and Mexico. It only needs to form an alliance with the two countries and include the two countries in the Netherlands’ Pacific security network.

Then we can turn the Pacific Ocean into the back garden of a circle of allies under the leadership of the Netherlands.”

The MPs and cabinet officials present listened attentively.

Although William IV's idea was bold, it was precisely because of His Majesty's boldness that the Netherlands now has the world's leading industrial strength and technology. The Netherlands failed to compete with the British navy and became the world's largest alliance circle.

You must know that when His Majesty William IV first came to power in 1861, the population of the Netherlands was only 750 million. Now it has a population of 6200 million.

Its economic strength is worthy of entering the top ten, but now it is the world's number one economic power.

The naval strength is even slightly stronger than that of Belgium and Denmark, and is only about the same as Portugal. They both share the eighth ranking, but now they are tied with the United Kingdom for first place in combat power.

The Netherlands' army used to be only average in Europe, not even comparable to Sweden, let alone compared to powerful countries such as Germany, France, Britain, Russia, and Austria, and even Spain.But now that South Africa with Dutch blood has returned and the Boers have joined, even Germany's powerful land army cannot defeat the Dutch army without raising a voice.Britain suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Boers many times.Therefore, the Dutch Army is now considered to be in the first echelon of land in the world with Germany, France, Britain and Russia.

The industrial strength of the Netherlands in 1861 was only average. Even the Netherlands tried their best to learn from the United Kingdom, France and other countries. Even the economy of the United States was stronger and more prosperous than the Netherlands.

But now in 1882, in just 22 years, the Dutch industrial technology and strength ranked first in the world.

December 1861, 12 was the day when the current King of the Netherlands, William IV, succeeded to the throne. On this day, the Netherlands’ global allies, at that time, only had the quasi-ally level Tsarist Russia, strategic partners Sweden, Denmark and the United States.

Potential opponents are the United Kingdom and Belgium.

But now the Netherlands has eight levels of foreign relations, and its allies are divided into four levels.

The first-class special allies are Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Ecuador, Chile, and Peru.

Second-class close allies are the Kingdom of Siam, Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela.

Third-tier allies include Spain, Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and El Salvador.

The fourth-level quasi-allies are the Russian Empire and the Commonwealth of America.

The fifth-level strategic partner countries include Qing Dynasty, Koryo Kingdom, and Brazil.

The sixth level is the partner countries, such as the French Empire, the Kingdom of Italy, the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire, and Paraguay.

The seventh level is Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Uruguay, which threaten the Netherlands.

The eighth level is the opponents, including the United Kingdom, Belgium, Portugal, and Argentina.

These eight levels are also the source of the current hierarchical approach to development relations in the Netherlands.

At that time, the Dutch overseas colonies were the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Dutch Guiana (later Suriname), Aruba and the Andres Islands in the Caribbean Gulf.

However, the Dutch Pacific region now includes the Australian mainland, the Dutch East Indies (including Papua New Guinea and present-day India and Nepal), New Zealand, the Alaska Peninsula, and the three major archipelagos in the southeast and west of the Pacific (Polynesia in the east and Melania in the south). Western Islands, Western Micronesia), totaling 1158.35 million square kilometers.

Africa has the Madagascar Islands, North and South Congo, Gabon, Zambia, northern Angola, Kenya, Tanzania, northern Mozambique, northern Zimbabwe, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Burundi, and the Mauritius Islands, totaling about 725 million square kilometers, occupying 3022 million square kilometers in Africa. Nearly a quarter of a kilometer.

The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain Islands, and East Oman in the Middle East total 20 square kilometers.

Europe, eastern Greenland, one-third of the original territory of Belgium and the mainland Netherlands, totaling 113.65 million square kilometers.

Aruba, Dutch Guiana, the Andres Islands, and Tierra del Fuego from Chile in the Americas total 21.9 square kilometers.

The total territory of the Netherlands' five major global territories now amounts to 2017 million square kilometers.

(End of this chapter)