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One day in mid-September, 1495.

In a room in the Barcelona court, there was a sudden "clang" sound, and the sound of a piece of Chinese porcelain being broken was heard.

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King Ferdinand II of Spain was stunned when he saw the book The Rise of the Emperor of Europe, how could I be so stupid in this novel? What the hell do you want Jerusalem to do? Ah, the protagonist of this novel is so smart, the author is so powerful, unlike that Cullen, who wrote me alive as a 15th-century Du Niang, and the information is not complete, I have long occupied Newfoundland, and today I saw the novel to know that there is a lead-zinc mine there, I have long occupied Panama, and today I remembered that I forgot to plant pyrethrum! I just made a reel spinning machine, and even Watt appeared! I've failed in life, but luckily, I can live longer...... Damn, let's go to Spain 1492 and squirt the author fiercely! I didn't even remember it today!

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"Bang dang!"

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Ahem, that's not what Ferdinand really had in mind, and Ferdinand isn't in a hurry to order the digging of lead and zinc in Newfoundland or the promotion of pyrethrum in Panama. After all, he was the king of Spain at the end of the 15th century, and he was not a German prince at the beginning of the 16th century, and the basic conditions of the two were different, and his current human resources were used to expand his territory in the Americas as much as possible, and the Spaniards invaded the vast New World like a swarm of locusts, and did not need to waste too much resources on a few islands.

If you learn to operate in a small but refined way, you are wasting Spain's rare and short political, economic, military and volume foundations. In the era of great changes in geographical discoveries, extensive large-scale development carried out on a very large scale, this kind of "big agriculture" type of development, seems wasteful, but the overall economic and national strength bonus is definitely more than a few points and lines of "intensive cultivation". If Ferdinand had used his knowledge reserves, introduced more advanced production techniques, and added refined ingredients, the advantages would have been even more obvious.

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In addition, in addition to the difference in basic conditions such as "chassis", the development of Ferdinand's technology tree also has its own characteristics -

In 1495, Ferdinand mainly advanced to the field of cotton textile and steel smelting in the field of industrial revolution, and the representative production tools and production technologies include shuttle, Isabella spinning machine, hydraulic loom, spindle worsted machine (mule machine), blast furnace ironmaking, open-hearth steelmaking (Siemens regenerator-type open-hearth furnace), coke oven (with blast furnace ironmaking, open-hearth steelmaking to form a steel smelting circulation system), etc.

These technologies were great achievements relative to the light and heavy industries of Europe in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, providing large quantities of steel, wrought iron, and cotton textiles, which became cotton clothing, military uniforms, naval guns, and flintlock pistols. Of course, they are limited by resource conditions. Coal and iron resources, in particular, were lacking throughout southern Europe and had to be imported in large quantities from England and Germany.

But in the field of power, Ferdinand did not make any breakthroughs, and until now he had not worked on the development of a steam engine. In terms of human resources, the Spanish government also did not engage in large-scale triangular trade. In terms of demand, Ferdinand did not particularly need lead-zinc ore at the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century, mainly because of the lack of coal, iron, and saltpeter, which was the main problem.

Moreover, in the case of 1496, it was not cost-effective for Ferdinand to organize a large number of men to exploit it at once, for, if a party of 20,000 men had been organized to go to the Americas, those 20,000 men would in fact have been able to control a vast expanse of land from eastern Canada to the Mississippi River valley, which with the control of the French amounted to almost three-fifths of the available land in North America. It would have been a bit wasteful to throw them all on one island in 1496.

It was better to wait until Ferdinand had achieved the development of the power field, that is, the steam engine, before mining lead-zinc ore on a large scale.

However, when it came to coal and iron, Ferdinand was determined to mine as many mines as he found. Southern Europe is really short of coal and iron, and it is good to be able to get one or two mines.

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This is also the reason why Ferdinand suddenly dropped a piece of Chinese porcelain just now.

Well, the sound of Chinese porcelain being broken can also be heard in this era, because in fact the Venetians, Arabs, and Ottoman Turks have been dealing with the trade between the East and the West, and after transshipment, they are sold to Western Europe at high prices. That's why Western European countries have the desire to open up new shipping routes. The original trade routes were not really cut off, but the prices were too expensive, and the Western European countries felt that they were too bad, and in fact they were no different from the trade routes being cut off.

In fact, even within the entire 16th century (not the 15th century!). The Italians, along with the Arabs and the Turks, could still compete with the Portuguese in trade, flowing into Europe along with goods from the Cape of Good Hope and through the Mediterranean. Although Portugal was a pioneer in seafaring, its system was inherently backward and decadent, and its colonial system in the East was essentially a failure, with a lower rate of profit than the voyages carried out by later Western European countries.

The Portuguese governor accepted the bribe and allowed the Arabs and Turks to sail into the Indian Ocean, where the Portuguese naval and trading fleets did not have a huge advantage. The Portuguese fleet was also defeated by prominent Indian admirals such as Kunjali. The Indian Ocean maintains a dynamic equilibrium of multi-party competition.

It was not until the rise of the Dutch "sea coachmen" that the fleets of Western Europe suppressed the fleets of local countries in the seas of the world, especially the Indian Ocean, and became a dominant power on the seas. It was only then that the trade routes through the Middle East were defeated by the new shipping routes of Western Europe and eventually declined.

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Therefore, Ferdinand always had the idea of mining coal and iron ore resources in the Americas. Moreover, he also had the idea of developing a royal industrial base in the Americas, so as to increase the power in the Americas and obtain more abundant resources. Steel, cotton textiles, shipbuilding, are all optional items.

Of course, first of all, this needs to be properly grounded.

The eastern part of the United States, east of the Mississippi River, was rich in coal and iron, so there was no need for Spain to go too far and not to go westward to obtain resources.

However, in 1496, it was still difficult for Spain to reach the coal and iron deposits of eastern America. The American provinces of Minnesota (because Ferdinand used Spanish administrative divisions to demarcate the Americas) and Michigan are the main iron ore mining areas, that is, on the shores of the Great Lakes, which is the task of the Canadian side, and next year's exploration will also be in this direction.

However, there were Iroquois and Huron in the Great Lakes, so the detachment of the Spanish Reclamation Corps advanced only to Montreal in 1496. From 1497 to 1498, it was possible to exploit various means to obtain resources in the Great Lakes region.

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