Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 266: Naval Construction Planning
Compared to the handover between colonies, the 500 million pounds used as compensation was obviously the easiest to pay.

This is indeed the case. In order to express its sincerity, the British government paid 500 million pounds to the Spanish government on the day the treaty was signed. Because the pound is currently the most valuable currency in the world, Spain did not reject the British government's proposal to pay in pounds.

500 million pounds may not seem like much, but it is actually worth 1.3 million pesetas, which is not a small amount of money for any country.

There was also a fierce debate within the Spanish government over the use of the 500 million pounds. In the end, it was Carlo who made the final decision and decided to use the 500 million pounds for the development of the Spanish navy.

Of course, the so-called naval development is not simply building warships, but developing a more advanced and powerful warship system to ensure that the combat effectiveness of Spain's naval warships always remains at the forefront of the world.

If it is only used to build warships, 500 million pounds is enough for Spain to build 10 Renaissance-class ironclad ships. Combined with the current size of Spain's navy, it can be said that it can almost compete for the title of the world's third most powerful naval power after the navies of Britain and France.

But this is obviously only a temporary solution. More importantly, the era of battleships, that is, the era of pre-dreadnoughts, is about to arrive.

Carlo hoped that Spain would be able to gain enough advantages in the pre-dreadnought era and take the opportunity to build the Spanish Navy into one of the top three powerful forces in the world.

After the pre-dreadnought era came the era of the dreadnought. If Spain could seize these two eras of warship innovation, it would not be impossible for it to become a naval power second only to the British Empire.

For Spain, a relatively closed country, the strength of the navy is more important than the strength of the army. The Pyrenees Mountains are already a natural barrier. As long as a few fortresses are built to stabilize the defense lines on both sides of the Pyrenees, European countries will not be able to launch an attack on Spain from the mainland.

In this way, Portugal would become the only country that could threaten Spain on land. Considering the huge gap in power between Portugal and Spain, it would be difficult for Portugal to defeat Spain in a land war, or even hopeless.

This also means that if Spain can build a strong navy, it will have hope of competing for more interests and will no longer be afraid of superpowers like Britain, France and Germany.

For example, although the United Kingdom is the world's number one country, the threat it poses to Spain is not that strong.

As long as Spain can seize the opportunity of the two warship changes to significantly enhance its naval strength, Spain will have the hope of regaining Gibraltar and even fully occupying Morocco during the period when Britain is too busy to take care of other things.

If Spain had greater ambitions, it could have withstood the pressure and directly annexed Portugal. After annexing Portugal and Morocco, Spain would have officially become a superpower on the level of Britain, France and Germany, and would no longer have to fear threats from the British.

The 500 million pounds will be divided into two parts. 200 million pounds will be used to build three ironclad ships and dozens of small and medium-sized warships to strengthen the strength of Spain's existing army and secure its position as the world's fifth most powerful naval country.

The remaining 300 million pounds will be invested in several existing major shipyards in Spain. Through the joint research and development of several major shipyards, more advanced ironclad ships and even strategic ships will be designed.

After the battleships were designed, it was time for Spain to expand its navy on a large scale. At that time, Spain had already greatly promoted the development of industry and economy through electricity. Even if a naval arms race was launched, Spain would be qualified to have the last laugh.

After reaching an agreement with the British, Spain was also making full preparations to abandon its Cuban colony.

The Cuban colonial government was also already carrying out the relocation work, and population transfer had already begun.

Except for blacks, all the population of the Cuban colony can apply to the colonial government to go to mainland Spain or other colonies. The Spanish government will treat these people equally. They will skip the assessment period in the Spanish immigration policy and directly obtain Spanish citizenship.

After all, Cuba has a population of over one million. Although a considerable number of white and black people are dissatisfied with Spanish rule, there are also some people who are more supportive of the Spanish colonial government.

After all, to put it bluntly, no matter how cruel Spain's colonial rule was, it would never turn its butcher knife against its own people.

Under Spanish colonial rule, the only people whose lives were truly in danger were black people, while the white people's income was at most exploited.

If the black people in the Cuban colony were truly dissatisfied with Spanish colonial rule, then most white people were only dissatisfied with the harsh exploitation of themselves by the colonial government; they were not truly opposed to Spain.

Of course, all this did not matter to Spain. After the colonial handover was completed, Cuba had nothing to do with Spain.

Officials of the Cuban colonial government will be assigned to mainland Spain or other colonies. In theory, the number of Spanish colonies will increase, so officials will not have to worry about having nowhere to go.

As for the population willing to go to mainland Spain and other colonies, some of them will be arranged to three British colonies in West Africa.

Now that it had acquired three British colonies, the Spanish government was sure to take these three colonies into its own hands.

Spain’s colonies must have a considerable number of Spaniards. For the Spanish government, Spanish immigrants are the foundation for ruling the colonies.

Of course, those Portuguese immigrants might also submit to Spanish rule. Compared with colonists from other European countries, they had no communication difficulties with Spanish colonists, and even their cultures were closer, which was obviously closer.

Especially the British Gold Coast, which has a large number of Portuguese. If the Portuguese can be absorbed into the Spanish colonial rule, Spain will be able to quickly control the situation in the British Gold Coast.

Britain's three colonies in West Africa are relatively scattered, but not far from each other.

If Spain could gain full control of these three colonies, it would have the potential to acquire millions of square kilometers of land in southern West Africa.

Together with the Congo territory and Guinea colony, if they could be connected together, Spain's colonial achievements in Africa would not be less than those of France, and it even has the hope of becoming the country with the most occupied land in Africa after Britain.

According to this trend, the division of Africa among the major powers in the future will become a situation where Britain occupies the east, France occupies North Africa and northern West Africa, and Spain occupies Congo, southern West Africa and Morocco.

Most of the land in West Africa will be occupied by Britain, France and Spain. Even a powerful country like Germany can only pick up the shabby land in Africa that Britain, France and Spain don't want.

The most important reason for such a huge gap in land division is the distance between the great powers and Africa and the time they colonized Africa.

There were only four powers that could cross the Mediterranean to reach Africa: France, Spain, Italy and Austria-Hungary.

Italy's overall strength is the weakest among the four countries, while the Austro-Hungarian Empire is the farthest away.

In addition, because Italy was unified relatively late and the Austro-Hungarian Empire had previously focused its attention on the German region, the two great powers' progress in colonizing Africa was quite slow, and it could even be said that there was no result.

The strength of Germany and Russia was sufficient, but Germany was unified very late. In addition, colonizing Africa required a long detour, so there was no major progress in colonization in Africa.

Russia is even more of a problem. Russia and Africa are separated by the Ottoman Empire, which was once a huge empire spanning three continents. It is impossible for Russia to colonize Africa through the Ottoman Empire. Even now, it is impossible for the Russians to colonize Africa. The Ottoman Empire would not agree, and the British would not agree either.

It is precisely because of these reasons that among the great powers, only Britain, France and Spain were able to colonize Africa.

Of course, if small countries are included, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium and other countries also have their own colonial plans for Africa.

It’s just that because these small countries are too weak, their colonization plans will not be respected by the great powers.

For example, Portugal's Pink Map Plan. Because they had occupied the coastal areas of the Kingdom of Kongo and the Mozambique region, they had planned to connect these two areas to establish Portugal's own large African colony.

There was nothing wrong with the Portuguese colonization plan, but their colonization plan happened to conflict with the north-south line proposed by the British.

The Portuguese Pink Plan blocked Britain from connecting the land between Egypt and South Africa, something the British Empire certainly did not want.

The conflict over the two countries' colonial plans not only seriously damaged the relationship between Portugal and Britain, but the British government even issued an ultimatum to the Portuguese government.

Faced with the blatant threats from the British government, the Portuguese government finally chose to back down, which also seriously damaged the reputation of the Portuguese royal family.

From this point, we can also see that the great powers do not care about the colonization plans of small countries. If it does not affect their own colonization plans, it is fine. However, if it does affect their own colonization plans, the great powers have various ways to make small countries give in.

Just like the Portuguese Pink Map Plan and the British Cairo and Cape Town Red Line Plan, Spain also had its own plans for colonizing Africa.

Originally, the Spanish government only planned to connect the Guinea colony and the Congo territory to open up a Spanish colony with an area of ​​several million square kilometers in Central Africa.

But now, after taking over the three colonies of Britain, Spain's colonial territory in Africa will double directly. In addition to the Congo territory, there is hope to annex the entire coast of the Gulf of Guinea.

Logically speaking, the British would not give up all their colonies in West Africa so easily and create a huge colonial empire in the Gulf of Guinea.

There must have been a reason why the British easily gave up their three colonies in West Africa, and one of the reasons was that the French also had a large number of colonial outposts in the Gulf of Guinea.

Britain established three colonies in West Africa, and France also had several large colonies in this area.

Next to the British Gambia colony was the French Senegal colony, and next to the British Gold Coast was the French Gold Coast.

Even west of Spain's Congo territory, there were French colonies.

Coupled with the colonial conflict between Spain and France over Morocco, it is foreseeable that various conflicts and disputes will break out between Spain and France over their colonization in Africa in the coming decades.

This is also the reason why the British were willing to give up their West African colonies, because after the British withdrew, colonial competition in West Africa would become even more intense.

This is in contrast to whether France and Spain would unite to carve up West Africa, which is almost impossible.

There is an important premise for the union of the two countries, that is, there is another more powerful country spying. With Britain having completely abandoned its West African colonies, the union of France and Spain has lost its initiative.

This is an era of the survival of the fittest. It is better to expect France and Germany to shake hands and jointly dominate Europe than to expect France and Spain, which have no external enemies, to unite to colonize West Africa.

In the absence of a larger competitor, Spain and France are competitors to each other in West Africa.

The British government also believes in its own diplomatic means. Under the interference of the British government, France and Spain will never reach a compromise in West Africa.

France and Spain were constantly in colonial conflicts and influenced each other's colonial plans, which was exactly what the British wanted.

If such a plan could influence the second and third colonial powers at one stroke, wouldn't this be the best plan for Britain, the first colonial power?
Carlo naturally saw through the British intentions, but there was no good solution to such an open conspiracy.

The reason why Britain believed that a colonial conflict would break out between Spain and France was because they believed that Spain and France would not give up their colonization of Africa.

Unless Spain or France was willing to give up their existing colonies, disputes would inevitably break out over the neighboring colonies between the two countries.

It just so happens that all three French colonies in West Africa are connected to Spain's existing colonies. Under such circumstances, if there is no colonial conflict between France and Spain, it can only be said that God interfered with the diplomatic decisions of the two countries.

The only Spanish colony in West Africa that was not connected to a French colony was Sierra Leone. However, there was a French colony to the south and north of Sierra Leone, which was surrounded by French colonies.

This actually means that neither Spain nor France has a way out. If they want to colonize West Africa, they must force the other side to make concessions.

There was another trouble for Spain, that was the dispute between the British Gold Coast and the Ashanti Empire, an indigenous country in the north, which was completely inherited by Spain.

This was not a conflict between the British government and the local indigenous people, but a conflict between the Gold Coast colony and the local indigenous people. Since Spain had acquired the Gold Coast colony, it naturally had to fight the Ashanti Empire to protect the safety of the Gold Coast.

The good news is that although the Ashanti Empire sounds like a huge empire, it is actually just a small country with an area of ​​tens of thousands of square kilometers.

The indigenous countries did not pose much of a threat to Spain, and sending one or two colonial garrisons was enough to protect the safety of the Gold Coast.

Spain deployed a total of six colonial garrison regiments in the colony of Cuba, which was just enough to send two colonial garrison regiments to each of the three newly acquired colonies to maintain local order and security.

The two colonial garrison regiments have a strength of 2 people. This may be insufficient for fighting other European countries, but if it is only used to maintain local order and security in the colonies, it is absolutely sufficient.

Not to mention that each colonial garrison regiment is equipped with three artillery pieces. With sufficient ammunition supply, six artillery pieces plus 3 troops can easily defend against attacks from an indigenous army of less than 6 people.

(End of this chapter)