Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 102 On the Great Powers

Although it is a good thing that more and more people are actively participating in free literacy education, if the number of participants is too large, it will also put considerable pressure on the government.

After all, both the simple schools needed for literacy education and the teachers who can impart knowledge are limited. Prime Minister Primo can only try to free up more space for literacy education and provide enough teachers for literacy education as much as possible.

Because literacy education only requires the simple teaching of some commonly used Spanish words, some historical and cultural common sense, simple scientific knowledge, etc., anyone with a high school education or above can actually serve as a literacy education teacher.

Prime Minister Primo directly targeted college students who were studying literature. Their knowledge reserves were absolutely sufficient, and teaching them some relatively simple knowledge was naturally easy.

And these college students who have just entered college are the easiest to deceive. All you need to do is to use the banner of contributing to the country and provide them with a free dinner, and you can attract many college students to voluntarily join the literacy education work.

Of course, the government cannot use these college students for nothing. As long as these college students are willing to be literacy teachers in their spare time, the government can provide them with a salary at the national average annual income level.

Although this amount of money is not too much, it is indeed a good way to create extra income for many college students.

Although many of the students admitted to the university are from wealthy families, it does not exclude talented students from poor backgrounds.

By creating extra income in this way, they can also secure their tuition fees and continue their studies in college.

Although Spain's literacy education was carried out vigorously, Carlo knew that the most successful period was only in the past few years.

In the past few years, because there were a large number of illiterate children who would not generate much income if they stayed at home, people were naturally willing to send them to simple schools for free literacy education.

But once these younger children and teenagers have received literacy education, those adults who are also illiterate may not necessarily receive free literacy education.

They all have jobs and need to work continuously to earn income to support their families. In their view, free literacy education is a waste of family labor, even though it does not cost money.

For some families with lower incomes, earning a little less money may cause the entire family's living standards to plummet.

However, Carlo was already satisfied with the effect.

According to the illiteracy rate of more than 1100% in Spain, there are at least 800 million illiterate people in the country. After a few years of literacy education, the illiterate population can be reduced to less than million, which is less than half of the total population.

Although there is still a certain gap compared with other European countries, there is undoubtedly great progress compared with Spain a few years ago.

On January 1871, 1, just a few days after Carlo was immersed in the success of popularizing literacy education, Kadier brought Carlo better news, that is, the mission to the United States had been completed.

The current United States is not yet the powerful world policeman that it will become in the future. It is just a weak country that has just ended its civil war not long ago.

It’s not that Carlo looks down on the United States, but the United States’ foundation is far inferior to that of European countries at that time.

Even though the U.S. economy and industrial scale were at the level of great powers at that time, if other factors were not taken into consideration and a real fight broke out, the U.S. would most likely not be able to defeat Spain.

Spain's weakness is relative. Compared with superpowers such as Britain, France and Germany, Spain is naturally relatively weak.

But compared with small and medium-sized European countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal, Spain still has considerable advantages.

In the whole of Europe, apart from Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Austria, which can firmly suppress Spain, even Italy cannot do so.

If Spain had not long used the wealth plundered from its colonies for pleasure, it would probably still be a powerful colonial empire at this time.

Of course, if we only look at the colonial gains and the size of its existing colonies, Spain is still the third largest colonial empire in the world, second only to the two superpowers, Britain and France.

Although Spain's colonies in the Americas became independent one after another, Spain's influence on these former colonies still exists.

At present, apart from Britain, France and Germany, which have crushed Spain in terms of population, industry, economy and military, there are few remaining countries that Carlo can pay attention to.

The Russian Empire seemed powerful, but like the former Spanish Kingdom, it was rotten to the core.

Alexander II's reforms seemed to have given Russia a shot in the arm, but in fact they only changed the surface and did not change Russia's internal corrupt foundation.

History has already proven the success of Alexander II's reforms. The Russian Empire actually only had less than 50 years left. The Austro-Hungarian Empire looked strong, but in fact, it had numerous internal problems. The transformation of the Austrian Empire into the Austro-Hungarian Empire actually showed the internal problems of the country. The Austrians could no longer stop the rise of Hungary. How long this dual monarchy could exist depended entirely on whether the Hungarians were willing to continue to stay under the rule of the empire.

The threat to Spain from the two great powers that could rise in the future, the United States and the island countries, is actually limited. The reason why the United States is so powerful is not because it has huge industrial and economic strength, but because it sucked the blood of Europe crazily in the two world wars and absorbed a large number of European technical talents.

Without these advanced technologies and talents from Europe, no matter how large its industry and economy are, the United States will only be a rising upstart in the eyes of Europeans.

Now that Carlo has come to an era when the United States has not yet risen, it is naturally impossible for him to allow the rise of the United States as he did in history.

Moreover, the United States is not as strong as it appears. Whether it is the racial conflict between blacks and whites, the contradictions between a large number of immigrants, or the differences between the North and South of the United States, it is too fatal for the United States, a country whose history can be written in a book.

The American Civil War is actually a microcosm of the domestic conflicts in the United States during this era. The Civil War did not resolve this conflict, but only suppressed it through force.

Unless the United States can quickly rise to become a world hegemonic country, so that all immigrants' identification with the United States is far stronger than their opposition to the US government, perhaps the contradictions and conflicts between certain groups in the country can be suppressed.

But if the United States cannot quickly become one of the top three superpowers in the world, these domestic conflicts will continue to exist until they are resolved or erupt.

This problem not only occurs in the United States, but also in countries that have become independent nations from colonies and continue to absorb immigrant populations.

If the immigrants only came from one country, there wouldn't be so many conflicts. It would just be a conflict between the colonies and the mother country.

But for the United States to continuously absorb immigrants from all over Europe, even including a large number of immigrants from Asia and Africans who came to the United States because of the slave trade, it was truly a spectacular show.

Kader's mission to the United States naturally could not be to make friends with the US government, and Carlo had no intention of making friends with the US government.

Apart from anything else, the issue of independence in the Cuban colony last year was definitely interfered by American forces.

If Spain had not quickly stabilized and Carlo had not sent Marshal Serrano, who had served as the Governor-General of Cuba, to lead the army to Cuba to quell the rebellion, the war of independence would probably have lasted for several years as it did in history and dealt a heavy blow to the Spanish economy.

You should know that Spain's annual fiscal revenue is only 3 million pesetas, but it spent 7 million pesetas to suppress the rebellion in Cuba.

This means that the Spanish government needs to invest most of its fiscal revenue into military spending every year in order to successfully suppress the Cuban independence uprising.

And what did the Spanish government gain? A Cuban colony that was even more eager for independence and whose economy was largely destroyed.

In other words, Spain now needs to keep a low profile and focus on development, otherwise Carlo would have taken the opportunity to find something for the US government to do.

The current Cuban colony still belongs to Spain, but Americans will certainly not give up their covetousness for the Cuban colony.

Fortunately, the United States did not have such strong industrial and economic strength at that time, and the Spanish government was not weak, so the US government did not have the courage to start a war against Spain.

Historically, the United States endured until 1898, and even expressed its request to the Spanish government in advance to spend $1 million to purchase the Cuban colony.

Although it was nearly 30 years later, the US dollar at that time was not cheap at all, and was almost equivalent to 2000 million pounds.

You have to know that 1898 was the pre-dreadnought era, that is, the era of battleships. It only cost a little over a million pounds to build the most powerful battleship at the time.

The 2000 million pounds that the Americans were willing to pay was enough for Spain at that time to build a navy that was among the top eight in the world. This is enough to show that the Americans were still somewhat unconfident in their own strength at that time and still attached some importance to Spain.

However, the performance of the Spanish government after the war shocked the then-lack of confidence in the United States, and caused the U.S. government to not only seize the Cuban colony, but also seize the Philippines, one of the few large colonies of Spain, making the Spanish colonial empire completely a thing of the past.

After the Spanish-American War, Spain's colonies were reduced to a few small areas in Africa, which forced Spain to focus on Morocco and face pressure from Britain and France.

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(End of this chapter)