Empire Rising: Spain

One cannot help but admire the British for their attention to the situation in the Balkan Peninsula. Despite being so busy at home, the British can still closely monitor the situation in the Balkans and even provide timely aid to the Ottoman Empire, helping it stabilize the situation in the Balkans.

Seeing that conflict in the Balkan Peninsula is unlikely, Carlo turned his attention back to Spain. While amending Spain’s problematic laws, he also accelerated Spain’s development progress, moving towards the goal of making Spain great again.

For Spain, the past few years of development have brought many pieces of good news.

First, regarding railway mileage.

More than two years have passed since the end of the last five-year plan. Spain’s achievements in railway construction are quite heartening.

Since entering the second five-year plan, the average annual construction of railway mileage has exceeded 550 kilometers, which has brought Spain’s existing railway mileage to an astonishing 8,875 kilometers. There is hope to increase the total railway mileage to over 9,000 kilometers this year.

At the current pace of railway construction, Spain’s total railway mileage will undoubtedly exceed 10,000 kilometers within the second five-year plan, and there is even hope to exceed the target of 11,000 kilometers set for the second five-year plan.

In terms of railway mileage, Spain has surpassed Italy, with which it was once on par, and is chasing after the traditional five great powers of Europe.

The construction of railway mileage not only brings convenience in transportation but also enhances a series of affiliated industries related to railways.

By radiating these affiliated industries, it stimulates the overall growth of the Spanish economy, which is the unseen benefit of building railways.

As for visible benefits, there are actually many, including facilitating communication and cargo transportation between various regions of Spain, enabling the Spanish government to control major areas more quickly and effectively, and stimulating population movement, among others.

The total mileage of Spain’s railways does not count the simple railways built in the colonies. Otherwise, the total railway mileage within the current Spanish sphere of influence would have already exceeded 10,000 kilometers.

Spain’s current colonies can be divided into the Cuban Colony, South Morocco Colony, Guinea and Congo Colonies, and the Philippine Colony.

Spain has built an extensive network of railways and roads in these four major colonies, with Cuba and the Philippines having the longest railway mileage.

However, as Cuba’s importance diminishes and after newly occupying the South Morocco Colony and Congo Territory, Spain’s focus on railway construction in its colonies has shifted to Africa.

Although railways in Cuba and the Philippines are also being constructed, the intensity of their construction and the proportion of funds invested are noticeably less compared to the two African colonies.

It is worth mentioning that after the arrival of the military advisory group in the Lanfang Republic, a railway construction plan was also devised concerning the connection between the Lanfang Republic and the Spanish Occupation Zone.

The Lanfang Republic and the Spanish Occupation Zone are located in the southwest and northeast of Kalimantan respectively, making it relatively difficult to build a railway connecting the two areas.

Running the railway through Dutch colonies in the southernmost part is fundamentally impossible, which means there are only two options for railway construction between the two regions: either go north through the Sarawak Kingdom and Brunei, or head through central Kalimantan, passing through the rainforest and then north along the Brunei Sultanate to connect with Spanish-controlled land.

Going north would pass through areas under British influence, and going through the center would have to cross the Ilan Mountain Range in central Borneo, making the plan to connect the Lanfang Republic and the Spanish-controlled Philippine Colony by railway quite challenging.

The good news is that, with the help of the military advisory group, the new army of the Lanfang Republic has been training quite successfully. After a year of training, this army of about 20,000 has officially become the main force of the Lanfang Republic.

During the army’s training period, the local indigenous people and the Dutch did attempt to cause trouble. But due to their small numbers, they were quickly defeated by the newly formed army.

After all, it is an army of 20,000, all equipped with muskets and cannons. Although their weapons are not on par with the main armies of European countries, they are more than sufficient compared to the indigenous people in Kalimantan.

Most of the indigenous troops are armed with melee weapons, and very few have firearms. Even when they are equipped with firearms, the indigenous soldiers find it hard to understand how to use them properly.

The muskets and cannons the indigenous people possess are mostly sold to them by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, meaning they are extremely dependent on ammunition supplies from these countries.

Even if they learn how to use firearms and artillery, they would have no recourse once they run out of bullets and shells.

Given that the British mainland and the Dutch mainland are tens of thousands of kilometers away from Borneo, the indigenous people’s access to weapons and ammunition supplies is limited.

In such a situation, they are hard-pressed to pose a threat to the newly trained 20,000 troops of the Lanfang Republic, unless the Dutch are willing to directly intervene and preemptively transport a batch of weapons and ammunition to the colony before war breaks out.

As for the Philippine Colony, after unifying the entire Philippine region, Spain carried out a series of reforms and investments in the Philippine Colony.

Not only was railway construction strengthened to ensure colonial government control over the colony, but investments were also made in plantations and mines to generate sufficient profits from the Philippine Colony.

In managing the Philippine Colony, the Spanish Government adopted a strategy of division and suppression.

They separated the newly dominated indigenous people from those originally belonging to the Philippine Colony and allowed the latter to enjoy certain privileges.

In this way, the indigenous people of the Philippines would no longer be a unified front, making it easier for Spain to rule.

Those privileged indigenous people would have to support Spanish rule in the Philippines to maintain their privileges while opposing the non-privileged indigenous people.

And the non-privileged indigenous people, facing oppression from the privileged ones, would redirect their animosity toward those privileged.

By using division and suppression, the Filipinos, who would originally be hostile to Spanish colonizers, are split into two factions, ensuring they do not unite against Spanish colonial rule.

In Carlo’s vision, the Lanfang Republic is also a crucial component.

Although the current strategy of dividing the Philippine indigenous people is effectively controlling the Philippines, it is ultimately temporary.

The Filipino indigenous people have few intrinsic conflicts with each other, and their animosity will eventually return to the Spanish colonizers.

But if the Lanfang Republic joins in, it would evolve into a conflict between the Lanfang people and Filipinos.

Due to differences in ethnicity and culture, these two ethnic groups would find it difficult to unite against Spanish colonial rule. Spain could also stabilize its rule in the Philippines by controlling these two ethnic groups and turn them into its enforcers.

The future World Wars will still require a massive manpower engagement. Spain’s population itself is not very large; if it can obtain a sizeable auxiliary force from the Filipinos and the Lanfang people, it would minimize the loss of Spain’s native population.

To Spain, the loss of these auxiliary troops is acceptable. Even if the casualty rates are relatively high, as long as they contribute, forming the army will be worth the cost.

The extent of manpower loss is also tied to post-war benefit distribution. France’s losses in World War I were staggering, nearly wiping out an entire generation.

The economic and agricultural damage was even more severe, and it took France more than a decade after the war to gradually recover from its shadow.

But merely emerging from the shadow does not heal the effects of losing young and capable labor, which cannot be replenished in just a few decades.

In later eras, France transitioned from a traditional European white nation to a country where the majority were of African descent, which is partially related to the high losses in the World Wars.

World War I cost France so much in manpower that it had to rely on colonized labor to meet domestic demands.

The consequence of this was a significant demographic shift, eventually turning France into a nation where the newcomers displaced the original settlers.

For Carlo, he certainly does not wish to see the day when Spain undergoes such a demographic change. This is precisely why minimizing Spain’s manpower losses in war is a problem Carlo must carefully consider.