It is impossible for Zhou Chenggong to be without ambition, but he is a patient person.

He knew that the only direction of expansion in Greece could only be in the direction of the Ottoman Empire, in which the Greek-speaking peoples and the Orthodox peoples, that is, those who could accept Greek rule, in this direction.

Unlike those populous countries, Greece's biggest dilemma is the lack of people, as has always been the case historically, the barren land cannot support too many people, the Greeks have been colonizing since three or four thousand years ago, in addition to the pursuit of wealth driven by a commercial culture, mainly due to the pressure of overpopulation.

As a result, the Greeks expanded to the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, and in Roman mythology, the city of Rome was founded by Greek colonists who moved overseas, and the Greeks expanded earlier than ancient Rome and were contemporaries of the Phoenicians.

In the context of this expansion, Greece was first unified by Alexander and his son from the lesser-recognized Macedonian region during Alexander's era, and then the Greek coalition expanded overseas, destroying the Persian Empire, Egypt, and finally India, opening a great Hellenistic era. In the Pamir Plateau around China, there were even small slave states established by the Greeks, and it also spread to northwestern India, and at that time, China had been unified under the banner of the Qin and Han empires, getting rid of the era of hegemony among the nations and entering the era of great unification and centralization.

The Hellenistic era was the peak of Greek expansion. But before the Hellenistic era, the Greeks had spread to the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Black Seas, and along the edge of the peninsula of Asia Minor, they had established a large number of slave city-states, such as the famous Troy city-state, and strong enough to compete with the Greek alliance for trade rights. By the time of the Persian Empire's invasion of Greece, these city-states on the peninsula of Asia Minor and the Black Sea coast, because of their geographical proximity, were the first to submit to the banner of the Persian Empire, which led to a large number of Greeks in the army of the Persian Empire's invasion of Greece. Like the native Greeks, they were in heavy infantry formation, the best of the Persian Empire. There were even more of these Greeks in the service of the Persian Empire than the native Greeks. Obviously, far back in that era, there were already more Greeks abroad than at home.

Thousands of years later, the Greek population has remained so characteristic, with far more Greeks abroad than Greeks at home, and more Greeks under the Ottoman Empire than under the Greek kings. Whether it is a modern demand for national unity or a post-modern demand for national liberation, Greece can only expand into the Ottoman Empire.

However, the difference in strength between the two sides was too great, and Greece could only expand in other ways, on the one hand, by forming an alliance system, and Greece's main ally was the Manchu Empire. Under Daoguang's rule, the country was still relatively closed and in contact with the outside world, but it did not take the initiative to learn and strive to maintain the stability of Chinese-style rule, which already made Daoguang very difficult, and the desire for reform did not appear at all.

However, through contact with the outside world, the Manchu Empire actually found many problems of its own, Daoguang will not think that the Chinese-style centralization is not good enough, nor will it praise the European parliamentary system and electoral system, from the principle, it can easily find out the disadvantages of these systems, Daoguang can not ignore the military gap. The Manchu army has fought with the Ottoman army, the Russian army and the British army, relying on the strong Afghan nomadic tribesmen soldiers, Central Asian tribal soldiers, plus advanced weapons and organizational forms, the Manchu army has always been able to fight with the Ottoman Empire, but when it met the Russian army and the British army, the gap was highlighted, the last time it entered the North Caucasus, it was repelled by the Russian army and the British army.

This phenomenon is not once or twice, but every time, after each occurrence, the Manchus have to carry out rectification, introduce some new technologies, new ideas, new models, and the biggest channel is through Greece. Some of the advanced cultures and technologies of Western Europe were introduced through Greece.

In terms of weaponry, the Manchu army can even keep up with the times, after the last war, quickly like the surrounding countries, began to be equipped with rifled guns, military management, the same professional military academy, logistics support system and medical system, the only problem is that it cannot eliminate corruption, in fact, the Manchu Qing and the Ottoman Empire, the most difficult to solve is the problem of privilege corruption.

In both countries, there are a large number of privileged strata, and the rulers rely on these privileged strata to rule the country, which makes the rulers themselves very closely integrated with the privileged stratum, and the privileged strata are difficult to shake. For example, the Ottoman Empire's former Yenisseri feudal military group, the Manchu Qing Eight Banners group, the Ottoman Empire purged the Yenisseri forces, but there are still religious forces, and there are some big aristocratic forces, and the Young Turks still can't get rid of the phenomenon of the elite in power after the coup d'état in the 20th century.

The privileged stratum of the Manchu Qing was mainly the elite of the Eight Banners, and the emperor relied on these nobles to rule the people, so he was naturally closely integrated with them, and it was difficult to carry out reforms, even if the reforms were tinkering, and it was difficult to completely eliminate this stratum. The stubbornness of the Eight Banners even surpassed that of the Ottoman Janisseri military groups. Because the emperor himself considered himself a member of this class. It is like the bureaucracy of the civil rule formed by the orthodox dynasty of China, and sometimes the emperor is considered a member of the bureaucracy, the head of the bureaucracy.

But in fact, there is still a difference between the emperor and the bureaucracy, they both belong to a kind of balancing force in the political system, and the imperial power and the bureaucratic power always have some different interests. The greatest interest of the imperial power is to perpetuate the country, but the interests of the bureaucracy are more diverse, a corrupt bureaucracy is bound to pursue personal self-interest, and try to use power to obtain wealth for itself, once the bureaucracy is corrupt to this extent, it often begins to conflict with the imperial power, because the bureaucracy is already threatening the stability of the emperor's country.

The same is true in the West, before the French Revolution, it was ruled by the elite, and it had already threatened the basis of the king's rule. Britain, the most advanced, is precisely the most powerful country of the European aristocracy. Unlike the continental countries, the British aristocracy has always maintained a relatively small number and a large power. While the Russian aristocratic family had reached 30,000, the English aristocracy had only 213 in 1714. At this time, the proportion of nobility in the countries of the European continent basically exceeded one percent of the total population, and it was considered that the nobility was not expensive, and it was already too widespread.

There are special reasons for the small number of British nobles, one is that Britain adheres to the primogeniture system, which ensures the succession of nobility, and property and titles are only passed on to the same person, making it easier for noble families to maintain a higher status and power; The second is that Britain's geographical structure on the island allows Britain to participate less in the wars on the European continent, and war has long been the main way of aristocracy, and if they do not participate in wars, there will not be so many meritorious officers. Although there have always been naval battles, the scale is relatively small, and in a large-scale naval battle, there are only a few captains who can be rewarded.

As a result, while the Russian aristocracy had reached hundreds of thousands, the British aristocracy only slowly increased to 225 people.

Each of these nobles held huge fiefdoms, and in the age of knights, they could organize armies. So in English history, the king has never been able to suppress the aristocracy, so the king fought a war with the nobility, and lost, and was forced to sign the Magna Carta, and then England entered the era of aristocratic parliamentarism. Even in the 21st century, Britain is still a very aristocratic country, and the House of Lords (House of Lords) has the power to veto bills of the House of Commons, and it can be said that the House of Lords is still the largest ruling body in Britain.

Unlike the House of Commons, the House of Commons elects members, so there are many representatives of the nobility in the House of Commons. However, the House of Lords can only be nobles, and due to the small number of nobles, some local nobles are even directly re-elected and serve for life.

Because of the later success of Britain, the British system is known as a model of human system.

The success of the British parliamentary system is mainly reflected in his ability to maintain social stability, mainly because the number of British aristocracy is relatively small, the number of nobles is smaller, if they are supported by society, there is less pressure, and at the same time, the number of nobles who control most of the assets is relatively strong, and they have reached a balance with the royal power. Whether a society is stable or not depends not on whether it has contradictions and conflicts, but on whether the ruling forces are balanced.

Just as the stability of traditional Chinese dynasties is mainly due to the balance of the three ruling forces of the imperial power, the bureaucracy and the rural landlords, who cooperate with each other to control all aspects of society, but also check each other without causing an imbalance of power. For example, the rural landlords squeezed the imperial power out of the rural society, forming the so-called imperial power not going to the countryside, and the bureaucracy balanced between the landlords and the imperial power, on the one hand, it managed the landlord class, and relied on the landlord class to manage the bottom, and at the same time, it mainly came from the landlord class; The bureaucracy provided professional services to the emperor so that the emperor could not rule without the bureaucracy, and at the same time, the power came from the emperor's giving, and the bureaucracy was dependent on the imperial power to a certain extent. As a result, the emperor had to give the bureaucracy some power and at the same time monitor their abuse of that power. The bureaucracy supported the landlords in managing the people, but at the same time needed to restrain the landlords from stirring up civil unrest.

The principle of balance in British society is also the same. It's just different from China, China is a much larger country, and there must be more social levels, because people's management ability is limited, one person manages ten people, layer by layer, China's level is bound to be dozens of times more than that of the United Kingdom, so China has a more hierarchical bureaucratic system, at least nine official grades. The British aristocracy, although there are also princes and princes, but after the Middle Ages, there is basically no domination between each other, and the title of high ground often represents only the amount of property.