Empire Rising: Spain

Since they have already acquired three British colonies, the Spanish Government is certainly going to keep these three colonies in its hands.

The Spanish Colony should definitely also have a considerable number of Spaniards, because for the Spanish Government, Spanish immigrants are the basis for ruling the colony.

Of course, those Portuguese immigrants might also comply with Spain’s rule. Compared to the colonialists of other European Countries, they have no trouble communicating with Spanish colonists, and their culture is relatively similar, making them clearly more akin.

Especially with the British Gold Coast, this land has quite a number of Portuguese people. If Portugal can be incorporated into Spain’s colonial rule, Spain would be able to quickly control the situation in the British Gold Coast.

The three British colonies in West Africa are relatively scattered, but the distance between them is not really far.

If Spain can completely control these three colonies, it has the hope of acquiring millions of square kilometers of land in southern West Africa.

Plus the Congo Territory and Guinea Colony, if they can be connected, Spain’s colonial achievements in Africa would not be less than that of France, and Spain could even hope to become the country occupying the most land in Africa under the United Kingdom.

According to this trend, the future partition of Africa by various powers will turn into a situation where the United Kingdom occupies the east, France dominates North Africa and the northern part of West Africa, while Spain controls the Congo and southern West Africa as well as Morocco.

Most of the land in West Africa will be occupied by England, France, and Spain including a strong country like Germany, which can only pick up the leftover scraps from England, France, and Spain in Africa.

The major reason for such a huge disparity in land division is the distance of the powers from Africa and the time of colonizing Africa.

There are only four major powers capable of crossing the Mediterranean to reach Africa, namely France, Spain, Italy, and Austria-Hungary.

Italy has the weakest overall strength among these four countries, and Austria-Hungary is the furthest away.

Moreover, Italy unified rather late, and Austria-Hungary previously focused primarily on the German Region, causing these two powers to have quite slow colonial progress in Africa, even to the point where it can be said there is no achievement.

The strength of Germany and Russia is completely sufficient, but the unification of Germany also came very late, and combined with the reason that colonizing Africa requires circling a long distance, they have made no great progress in African colonization.

There’s even less need to talk about Russia. Russia is separated from Africa by the Ottoman Empire, which once spanned three continents as a great empire. It is entirely impossible for Russia to penetrate the Ottoman Empire and colonize Africa.

Even now, Russians cannot colonize Africa. The Ottoman Empire wouldn’t agree to it, nor would the British.

Due to these reasons, of the major powers, the ones with both the conditions and strength to colonize Africa are just the United Kingdom, France, and Spain.

Of course, if smaller nations are counted among them, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, and other countries also have their own colonial plans for Africa.

However, because these small nations are too weak, their colonial plans don’t receive respect from the major powers.

For example, Portugal’s Pink Map plan, because they’ve already occupied the coastal areas of the Congo Kingdom and the Mozambique Region, they once planned to connect these two areas to establish Portugal’s own Great African Colony.

There is no problem with the Portuguese proposing such a colonial plan, but their plan happens to clash with the British proposal for a north-south connection.

The Portuguese Pink Map plan prevented the British from connecting the land between Egypt and South Africa, and the British Empire was certainly unwilling.

The conflict between the two nations’ colonial plans not only severely damaged the relationship between Portugal and the United Kingdom, but the British Government even issued an ultimatum to the Portuguese Government.

Faced with the overt threats from the British Government, the Portuguese Government ultimately chose to yield, which severely damaged the prestige of the Portuguese Royal Family.

From this, it’s also clear that major powers don’t care about the colonial plans of small countries at all. If they don’t affect their own colonial plans, that’s fine, but any influence on their own plans gives major powers various ways to make small nations yield.

Just like the Portuguese Pink Map plan and the British Cairo-Cape Town Red Line plan, Spain also has its own colonization plans for Africa.

Originally, the Spanish Government only intended to connect the Guinea Colony and Congo Territory to open up a Spanish Colony of several million square kilometers in Central Africa.

But after receiving the three British colonies, Spain’s colonial map in Africa will directly double, and besides the Congo Territory, there is hope to annex the entire Guinea Gulf Coast.

Logically speaking, the British wouldn’t abandon all West African colonies so easily and create a vast colonial empire in the Guinea Bay.

There must be a reason why the British abandoned the three West African colonies so easily, and it is that the French have a large number of colonial strongholds in the Guinea Bay.

The British established three colonies in the West Africa area, and the French also have a few large colonies on this land.

Next door to the British Gambian Colony is the French Senegal Colony, and next to the British Gold Coast is the French Gold Coast.