Chapter 762: Opportunity of War
Chapter 745: Opportunity for War
The essence of opening colonies is to make money, and to the Austrian government, there are only two kinds of colonies that are valuable: those that make money and those that have strategic value.
There is no doubt that the Autonomous Province of Lanfang was money-making and also possessed a certain strategic value.
Together with the rest of the Austrian South Seas, Lanfang Autonomous Province established Austria’s regional supremacy in the South Seas.
The Vienna government is not without the call for direct administration of Lanfang Autonomous Province, the key is that no one can guarantee that after the administration of direct administration can obtain more lucrative income.
The economic value of Lanfang Autonomous Province to the Vienna government is far more than the annual 3.764 million guilders.
Since joining the Austrian system, without security threats, Lanfang Autonomous Province has quickly entered the fast track of development.
Perhaps it was because the two neighbors, Spain and Holland, did too good a job, as early as a decade ago Lafontaine became the home base of overseas Chinese businessmen.
The influx of capital naturally drove the development of the local economy, and if it were not for the geographical constraints, the development of Lanfang would have been even better.
Nowadays, Lanfang Autonomous Province imports tens of millions of Shendian industrial and commercial products from Austria every year, and at the same time exports raw materials such as rubber, sago, dried coconut, khaki dye, western grain flour, pepper, gold and silver.
If it was singled out and ranked for total trade, Lanfang Autonomous Province would be enough to rank in the top five of all of Austria’s trading partners.
The greater the stakes involved, the more cautious the government in Vienna became.
In case of operational error, triggered the situation turbulence, was pried into the wall, the loss of hegemony in the South China Sea region, then the blood money will not return.
Driven by the interests, the status of Lanfang Autonomous Province was naturally different, and now became a special existence higher than a colony and lower than a state.
If not for the fact that the local ruling class was heavily influenced by tradition and did not like to participate in politics, there would have been an additional seat in the Imperial Council by now.
It’s not that Lafontaine doesn’t have its own people, as early as ten years ago, there were people who proposed to build a railroad, but the traditional power is too strong, and the “ancestral tomb” is really impossible to get around.
In addition, Lafontaine is an island, the sea transportation is developed, the inland area is not much developed, the demand for railroads is not large, so it was shelved.
This is also from the side of the ruling class of Lanfang Autonomous Province garbage, the original time and space these guys are the Dutch buyers, natural integrity is not high there.
Franz has no intention of meddling in the internal affairs of Lanfang, taking people’s money and eliminating disasters, he is a credible emperor.
Even in the face of the annual tribute of goods, Franz is also a supporter of the autonomy of Lanfang.
It was not that Franz was greedy for money, it was mainly because he understood the traditional culture of the East. If he, the emperor, didn’t collect the money, those guys would be so anxious that they would cry.
In this era of more than rotten, as long as it doesn’t make people angry and wolves, then it’s considered qualified.
What will be written in the history books in the future I don’t know, anyway, now we all get what we want and cooperate very happily.
……
Seeing that all parties had reached an agreement, Franz, as the arbiter, made a new request: ”The railroad plan will be like this for now, but this is still not enough.
This economic crisis lasts for a longer period of time, it should be longer, and to get out of the crisis, the government must create more jobs while minimizing expenses.”
It’s not hard to reduce spending and create jobs, it’s not easy to do both.
The Vienna government’s construction program is still essentially for the betterment of the economy, and the projects invested in must also consider profitability.
If the time was postponed to twenty years later, Franz could have upgraded the roads and built highways.
Now can not, the automobile has just been born not long, people’s main means of transportation is still a horse-drawn carriage.
Horse-drawn carriages on concrete?
It’s all very exciting, but the problem is the horses are useless! A horse’s hooves won’t last that long.
Waterworks?
That’s something that’s already been built during the previous economic crises. Anything that hasn’t been started yet is of no economic value.
Not only are these projects done, but even the upgrading of the city is basically done, so there’s no need to think about them for at least thirty years.
Austria’s European mainland is such a big place, and after so many years of infrastructure construction, there’s really nothing left to do.
Africa itself is large enough, but unfortunately the population is limited and there is not enough to go around. The government also has to consider the economic rate of return on its investments, and it cannot build blindly.
This is a country’s development to a certain extent, the inevitable problem to face, just Austria faced a little earlier.
Prime Minister Felix: “The infrastructure in the country is getting better day by day, the days of relying on government investment in infrastructure to boost the economy cannot last forever.
It is likely that our economic growth rate will slow down for a long time to come, and it is expected that the next period of high economic growth should be after the completion of the African localization strategy.
For long-term development reasons, we must now embark on as many projects as possible that have longevity and sustainability.”
This is true, the big projects within Austria at the moment, namely the canal program and the hydroelectric power plant program, have already been launched, so naturally it’s not possible to do it all over again.
After a pause, Prime Minister Felix continued, “The internal combustion engine technology has been developing rapidly in recent years, and has shown remarkable potential in many fields, and may even be able to replace the steam engine.
If this happens, then oil will replace coal as the most important industrial raw material.
The only question is whether oil production will be able to meet demand, and judging from the current situation, crude oil production is scarce all over the world.
Especially on the European continent, almost no large oil fields have been discovered. Despite the fact that we have Ploiesti, a traditional oil-producing region, we imported 110,000 tons of crude oil from the Russian Empire last year.
This number seems very insignificant, at the current international oil prices, it is only a few hundred thousand Shendian.
But only three years ago, we were a crude oil exporter. In just three years, the domestic demand for crude oil has risen by at least 200,000 tons.
According to scientists’ estimates, our demand for oil will double in five years, and double again in ten years, and the gap in the market for crude oil will be as high as millions of tons.
Many scientists in the field of energy have warned the government of an energy crisis. In order to solve this problem, the government organizes oil exploration teams.
Overall the harvest is still good, a lot of oil fields have been discovered in the territory, but unfortunately the production is not high.
The greatest harvest was the discovery of a large oil field in the lower part of the Two Rivers Basin, with reserves exceeding the total of all the oil fields in the mainland.
After geologists analyzed it, they thought that there might be a large amount of oil buried in the Two Rivers Basin, and the government sent an exploration team to verify it.
Oil was discovered not long ago on the border between the Ottoman Empire and Persia, confirming this suspicion. Since the area is not under our control, no further exploration was done for security reasons.”
The latter doesn’t even need to be said, the meaning of that is very obvious, if it’s not under control, find a way to get it under your control.
Oil buried in the ground can not move, then only to let Austria to expand the scope of control over, this is the consistent style of the powers.
Frankly speaking, Franz never thought that Austria would be short of oil, so far he did not care about this problem.
The Emperor also had a lot of things to do, and it was natural that unimportant things should be ignored. At present, Austria’s sphere of influence has already covered half of the world’s half of the oil reserves, lack of oil is not a joke?
However the joke really happened. Africa’s oil has not been found, the Middle East’s oil has only revealed a corner, perceived the importance of oil, the Vienna government to save for a rainy day is inevitable.
Then the Ottoman Empire is going to be a tragedy, there was a blood feud, and now the crime, they do not have bad luck who has bad luck?
Franz wanted to say something, it is sooner or later to take action against the Ottoman Empire. The energy crisis only provides an opportunity to silence the anti-war faction in the government.
Prime Minister Felix did not directly say that he wanted to start a war, but the “sustainability and longevity” of the project, coupled with the repeated emphasis on the importance of oil later, has already given the answer.
Compared to other investments, waging war against the Ottoman Empire is indeed the most economically rewarding.
The most important thing is that the opportunity is rare, the European continent is caught in a wave of revolution, all countries are busy putting out the fire.
Who cares about the Ottoman Empire when they’re all too busy taking care of themselves?
At this point in time, there’s no one left to stop the war. Even without the opportunity of oil, there will be other reasons.
(End of chapter)