Empire Rising: Spain

At least in the short term, the Congo Territory cannot achieve self-sufficiency and requires substantial transportation of supplies from outside to compensate for the consumption of colonizers at colonial outposts.

Fortunately, there are plenty of indigenous tribes locally, and these natives can also serve as unpaid labor to help Spain better develop the local land.

After the establishment of the Congo Territory, this vast plateau land upstream of the Congo River became, in a true sense, the territory belonging to Carlo.

However, Carlo did not have the same brutal ideas as the historical Belgian King Leopold II. Belgium was fundamentally unable to control the vast lands of the Congo, leading the Belgian Royal Family’s policy to have only one theme, which was to find every possible way to exploit the Congo, to earn profits from this land and bring them back to Belgium.

But from Carlo’s perspective, Spain has the sufficient power to control the Congo. At least before the colonial system completely collapsed, Spain has enough time to control this land and manage some areas worthy of development.

When developing these regions, the local indigenous population is still very useful. They are naturally free labor, and can help Spain more efficiently build railways, cultivate farmland, and extract local mineral resources, among other things.

They can even manage the natives through native management, redirecting the hatred of the local natives towards certain vested interest groups among them, thus reducing the local natives’ hatred toward the Spaniards.

But when it comes down to it, regardless of the policies for developing the Congo, the ultimate beneficiaries are only the Spaniards.

These local natives will forever be excluded from the gates of Spain, as they are never going to become Spanish citizens.

For Carlo, once these natives have exhausted all their exploitable value, it will be the time for Spain to unhesitatingly abandon them.

To avoid Spain being tarnished someday in the future, Carlo can only start with himself, resolutely preventing black populations from entering Spain, and resolutely preventing the Iberian Peninsula from getting stained with ink.

Almost on the same day the Congo Territory was proclaimed, Spain once again stepped up the construction of its navy.

Of course, this time it was not about building large ironclads of several thousand tons or nearly ten thousand tons, but rather auxiliary military ships of various tonnages, used to organize an ocean-going fleet with the ironclads as the main combat strength.

After acquiring privately owned shipyards from the United Kingdom, the Royal Guanizuo Shipyard has enough design drawings and relevant materials in the area of these medium and small-sized warships.

This time the main construction includes auxiliary military ships such as 7 standard displacement 1,250-ton coastal patrol ships, 3 over-3,300-ton displacement cruisers, and 1 4,750-ton displacement main cruiser.

The coastal patrol ships and cruisers are quite conventional, their designs refer to the ideas of the United Kingdom but largely follow the mainstream construction philosophy of European countries.

The only one that stands out is the 4,750-ton displacement main cruiser. Saying it’s a cruiser, actually, there’s not much difference with some smaller ironclads.

However, this cruiser abandoned a certain thickness of armor and, despite being smaller in tonnage, carried the same caliber shipboard main gun as the Rejuvenation-class Ironclads, equating its firepower with that of ironclads.

Such cruisers are fully capable of joining the main fleet for decisive battles and, thanks to their strong firepower equivalent to that of ironclads, can play a crucial role in naval battles.

Besides these three notable types of auxiliary military ships, there are also several hundred-ton coastal artillery ships and river patrol boats that need no further mentioning, as they are almost necessities of the fleet.

The good news is, because the tonnages of these constructed ships are not large, even though there were 11 ships built surpassing thousands of tons, the overall cost only slightly exceeded building one ironclad.

This is one reason the ironclads are so expensive, after all, you can’t organize a fleet with just one ironclad; you also need a large number of ships with other functions to jointly form a mixed fleet.

The news of Spain starting shipbuilding again stirred the domestic craze for a while, but internationally, it drew almost no attention.

After all, these are auxiliary ships supporting the ironclads, and after building ironclads, Spain would certainly build these smaller ships for other purposes.

However, after this, the Spanish Navy firmly secured its position among the world’s top five. Although it couldn’t elevate to fourth, the world’s fifth navy still proved Spain’s previous foundation.

Carlo of course won’t be satisfied with the current achievements of the Spanish Navy. According to the current Spanish colonial scale, the fleet size definitely can’t meet Spain’s actual needs.

The homeland and the South Morocco Colony can share a fleet, but it can only cover these two regions. The fleet from the homeland has difficulty exerting influence on Cuba, which is separated by the Atlantic Ocean, or Guinea, Congo, and other regions that are across a partial expanse of Africa.

Not to mention the Philippines, almost halfway around the globe. Previously, the Philippines was alright; its area wasn’t that large, and the Spanish Government didn’t attach that much importance to it.

But now, the East Indies Colony has already secured a foothold in the island of Kalimantan, and subsequently plans to colonize New Guinea Island.

This necessitates the East Indies urgently needing a small fleet to protect the coastal security of the colony, as well as better assist in colonial development work and defend against the British and Dutch presence in the area.

Given these considerations, Spain needs at least two fleets to meet actual needs. But with Spain’s current financial capacity, sustaining a reasonably strong fleet is already somewhat challenging, and a true naval expansion may still have to wait a few years.