After Spain lost its South American colony, it was so angry that it severed diplomatic relations with Mexico, but it could not change the outcome of the loss of the colony.

As a result, they strengthened their control over the other colonies, from Morocco to Western Sahara, as well as a number of Spanish islands in the Atlantic, and declared their dominion over Morocco and the Sahara.

Spain took the lead, followed by France, and French explorers had already completed inland desert expeditions from Algiers to Senegal, financed several expeditions to the interior of North Africa, declared the area from Algiers to Senegal to be French territory, and at the same time drew the first complete map of the Sahara Desert and declared the Sahara Desert to be French territory.

Britain claimed the area from the Senegal and Niger rivers to the sea, from Lagos in the Gulf of Benin to the Senegal, as part of the British Empire.

Although clear borders have not yet been demarcated, there are disputes between countries. China's claim that the Niger River basin is part of African company territory is disputed by the British's claim that China has also established a number of bases in the West Bank of the Niger River. On the edge of the Sahara Desert, deep inland, there are also strongholds of African companies, which are disputed with France. France also had a number of colonial posts in the West Bank of the Senegal River that were disputed with the British, and France had disputes with Spain in Morocco and the Western Sahara Desert. France is at odds with Egypt in Tripoli.

The Great Powers were staking their ground in Africa, and Germany was completely out of control, but they were the first to act in South America. German explorers, starting from Venezuela and Colombia, followed the upper tributaries of the Amazon River, deep into the Amazon jungle, for the first time fully mapped the Amazon rainforest system, and then claimed that the southern border between Venezuela and Colombia was the main stream of the Amazon River. This caused protests in Brazil, which believed that they had explored the Amazon earlier and established cities such as Manaus north of the Amazon.

However, despite the ancient towns of Manaus and Belém that were established in the 16th and 17th centuries, much of the Amazon basin is still in a pristine state, and even in the 21st century, it is still isolated from the rest of the world, let alone at this time. Leopold I claimed terra nullius except for a few Brazilian urban areas, which the Aztec Empire would have the right to exploit, and quickly sent expeditions to establish several colonies along the rivers.

Not to be outdone, France fought with Spain and Portugal for the Amazon as early as the 17th century, and is still in dispute with Brazil in the Amapá region, immediately declaring that the southern border of French Guiana territory is also at the mouth of the Amazon River, but recognizing that the surrounding areas of the Brazilian city of Macapa and other places belong to Brazil. The United Kingdom, for its part, declared the southern border of British Guiana, which is also the Amazon River.

For its part, the Chinese American Company announced that the vast inland area south of the Amazon River and west of the Tocantins River belonged to the African company. Brazil protested that they had explored west of the Tocantins River hundreds of years earlier, but the same problem was that the country's terrain had little control over inland development.

Brazil is panicked, and the hands of the great powers to carve up the world have extended from terra nullius to independent countries like Brazil, and the Brazilian Empire is powerless to fight.

All countries have stepped up their contention, constantly sending immigrants to their claimed areas, establishing settlements, and there are no rules at all in the division of colonies, showing their ugly faces and greedy faces one by one, all in order to expand the living space of their own nation and country, completely ignoring the rights and interests of the weak.

The world seems to have returned to the chaos of the 17th century when Europeans were fighting for colonies, but at that time the Europeans were fighting for nothing more than good ports near the great shipping routes, which had not yet penetrated inland, and now they are fighting for pieces of land that have even been explored by weak countries.

In Africa, they encourage and buy local indigenous tribes to attack the colonial strongholds of hostile countries, and in the Amazon, they also buy local Indian tribes to attack the colonial strongholds of other countries.

Sometimes I go into battle myself, but I only do it when I am absolutely sure that I can extinguish my mouth. In cases where the regular army was not suitable for use, the market for mercenaries was activated.

The largest sources of mercenaries are Africa and Japan, and relatively speaking, it is the deep-pocketed Chinese overseas companies that do less of this, because of the first-mover advantage, which makes the Chinese overseas companies have fewer disputed territories with other countries. It is only disputed with France on the edge of the Sahara Desert, with Britain over the West Bank of the Niger, and with Brazil the most, but Brazil has always been more conservative in this competition and does not dare to offend other powers too much.

The real competition was fiercely contested by Britain, France and Germany.

The French hired Bedouins in the Sahara Desert to attack the British colonial stronghold on the West Bank of the Senegal, and the British hired warlord mercenaries from northern South Africa to attack the French stronghold in the Oasis in the Sahara Desert. The French hired Indian tribes to attack the German colonial strongholds in the Amazon Valley, and the British hired Japanese samurai to attack the German strongholds. Germany, for its part, recruited Indians from Mexico, hired the Amazonian natives, and retaliated against Britain and France.

At the same time, after countries blame each other and compete with each other meaninglessly, everyone feels that a rule should be established.

If it was Zhou Lang in power, he would definitely stand up and call for the establishment of this rule, but the crown prince was not interested in these, anyway, for the time being, no powerful country dared to challenge China's power claims, China has established strongholds on the west bank of the Niger River for decades, and the British only claimed that they did not dare to move these strongholds, and the British strongholds in Africa, mainly concentrated on the coast, did not expand in the Niger River basin. In the Amazon and the Brazilian Altiplano, the dispute with Brazil has been going on for decades, and there is no time for war to break out at this time.

So when everyone found that they dismantled each other, no one could effectively occupy the colonies, let alone develop them, but the big countries did not buy each other, but a small country stood up, King Leopold II of Belgium, found that Belgium no longer had any possibility to occupy a place in the process of the great powers carves up the world, so he hoped that Belgium could get a piece of the pie from the division of the big powers.

So he proposed to Britain, France, Germany, China, and other major powers to convene an international conference to discuss African and South American issues.

France, which wanted to confirm its presence in the African occupation zone as soon as possible, was the first to respond, followed by Britain, which had close ties with Belgium, and Germany agreed to establish a meeting to discuss it, with only the Chinese crown prince, under the persuasion of the Imperial Court, not much concerned about sending a representative to participate.

So a conference to divide the world was held in Brussels, Belgium.

The King of Belgium hoped that the countries would stop competing with each other and that the territories would be divided through negotiations, and that a set of rules would be established in the interests of all countries in these terra nullius lands, guaranteeing that all countries would have the right to enjoy the benefits of these terra nullius. While bringing civilization to these backward regions, it also allows the countries and individuals who brought civilization to them to enjoy the fruits of development.

Therefore, the King of Belgium proposed that the great rivers of the Amazon, Congo and Niger would be open to all countries and become international public waterways, and that all countries should have the right to use these waterways to enter the interior of Africa and South America for peaceful trade and economic activities.

But this was met with strong opposition from China and Brazil.

China has been developing the Niger and Congo rivers for a long time, establishing hundreds of colonies, large and small, and more than 20 cities with a population of more than 10,000 on the two rivers, three cities on the Congo River with a population of more than 100,000, and one city on the Niger River with a population of more than 100,000. It is nothing short of a robbery to have the Chinese African company open up the two great rivers to all countries, when it was first developed and has always controlled the shipping of the two rivers.

Brazil, on the other hand, believes that the Amazon River basin has always been Brazilian territory, and that there is no dispute about it, and that Brazil has established more than a dozen towns along the river and operated them for hundreds of years.

But weak countries are unable to protect their interests, and in the end China successfully defended its undisputed power over the Niger and Congo rivers. It also settled the dispute with the British, stipulating that the west bank of the Niger River, which extends to the watershed of all tributaries, belongs to the territory of the African company, because the tributaries of the Niger River mainly flow from the west bank, and the inland areas on the east bank and the north bank are mostly desert areas, with few tributaries. So it was basically a territorial dispute with Britain that was resolved. In this way, in the west coast of Africa, all river basins that flow into the sea to the west of the watershed belong to the United Kingdom, and all the territories that flow into the Niger River basin to the east and north of the watershed belong to the China Africa Company.

France succeeded in retaining the territory of the Senegal River basin and dividing the territory with Britain along the Gambia River. France and the whole of the Sahara Desert were given control, but in order to get the support of the Great Powers, France promised to open the Sahara Desert for international trade.

Brazil has narrowly retained their sovereignty over much of the Amazon River under the great power game. The boundary with Guyana was defined as the watershed of the Tumkumak Mountains on the Guiana plateau, and the basin that flows into the Amazon River belongs to Brazil and the basin that flows into the Atlantic Ocean belongs to France, which allowed France to successfully acquire some narrow plains along the north bank of the Amazon River and advance its territory to the Amazon estuary.

Brazil's long-standing territorial dispute with China has also been resolved. On the Brazilian plateau, the colonial strongholds of the American Company have long been deep into the heart of Brazil, forming a situation with Brazil in the upper reaches of the Paraná River and the upper Uruguay River.

After several rounds of negotiations, China and Brazil reached an agreement that the two sides would have territories on the Brazilian plateau, bounded by the Paraná River, and that the American Company would give up all the colonial positions established east of the Paraná River and on its tributaries, and even some towns with thousands of people. Brazil, for its part, relinquished its claims to the area west of the Paraná River and ceded centuries-old towns such as Goiás to the American Company.

The dispute between the two sides in the Amazon River basin is still based on the watershed principle, and all the territory on the watershed side of the Brazilian plateau that flows into the Amazon River belongs to Brazil, and the territory on the watershed side of the Paraná River and the Paraguay River belongs to the American Company. In the Uruguay River Basin, China has also made concessions. Although the Americas Company established a large number of bases along the Uruguay River, it ceded all the east of the watershed of the Guyana Plateau to Brazil.

The main reason why China has made such huge concessions to Brazil is that it has abandoned a large number of settlements due to the large number of Chinese immigrants living in Brazil and the close economic ties with Brazil.

In order to let the great powers give up the partition of Brazilian territory, Brazil also made a lot of sacrifices, first promised that the Amazon River is an international river, the Amazon River basin is a free trade zone and a demilitarized zone, and all countries have the right to use this river equally for trade and navigation, and countries have the right to send scientific expedition teams here and establish scientific research sites, but it is clear that sovereignty belongs to Brazil, and countries need to file with the Brazilian government to carry out activities here, and the Brazilian government must not refuse countries to enter on the grounds of sovereignty.

This is similar to what happened when Norway occupied Svalbard and gained sovereignty over it at the cost of being open to all countries.

In addition, at this meeting, the attitude of the European countries towards Germany was very obvious, but the Germans still succeeded in gaining a large amount of territory. The vast territory between the tributaries of the Amazon, the Negro and Putumayo rivers, was incorporated into Colombia. To the west of the Putumayo River, the provinces of Peru and Ecuador of the Inca Kingdom were located.

At this point, the world has been divided among the great powers, and China is of course the biggest winner, because China and its vassal states occupy more than half of the world's land area, and Chinese newspapers have used the adjective "China half the world" for many years.

Before the words were written to divide the world, a new round of competition between the great powers began. This time it was a military competition, and it was a naval competition, because the great powers all had overseas territories, and even a land power like Germany, because of the huge overseas territories occupied by the same royal family, had huge interests overseas, and under the impetus of the rising maritime interests, it joined the first naval competition between China and Britain.

The vigorous naval race is now in full swing!