After the Saint-class battle cruiser was born, the British Royal Navy, which still did not want to give up its former glory, was suddenly greatly stimulated, and soon the British Parliament once again passed a proposal to significantly increase naval spending, and the ambitious Fisher could finally implement his own naval development plan, and he wanted to eliminate all the warships in service of the British Royal Navy in two capital ship construction cycles!

As far as capital ships are concerned, the first batch of construction plans of the British Admiralty is to start building 12 ships at the same time in 1899, including 6 battleships and 6 battle cruisers, and the second batch is ready to build "8+8", that is, 16 capital ships!

And it must be noted that the two groups of capital ships built by the British Navy have a standard displacement of more than 20,000 tons, and the same is true for both battleships and battle cruisers, which surpasses the Sage-class battlecruisers by a large margin. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

This fully reflects the profound heritage of the British shipbuilding industry, but it is also thanks to the painful experience of the British government after the disastrous defeat in the Indian Ocean naval battle, and allocated funds to build and expand a large number of large-scale dockyards of unprecedented scale, otherwise it would have been able to build a 16,000-ton standard row of warships if it was still dead.

Rao is so, the simultaneous construction of 12/16 20,000-ton capital ships has almost reached the limit of Britain's shipbuilding capacity, even if the world war is imminent, the British have no ability to further increase the number of ships, dockyards can be built more, but after all, Britain's industry is no longer the grand situation of the past, and because the right to issue money is not in the hands of the government, financial resources are also a big problem.

Britain's unimaginable shipbuilding plan made the French navy, which was already trapped in dwindling funds, completely abandon the idea of catching up, and Tsarist Russia did not dare to further increase naval spending because of the huge land pressure brought about by the rise of China, although the Tsarist government had unprecedented financial resources during this period. As for Italy and Austria-Hungary, which lacked shipbuilding capabilities, even if they could design a classic ship type that was not inferior to the Saint-class battle cruiser, they would not be able to have a large production capacity due to their lack of industrial strength.

on the European continent. The only navy that has the courage and determination to catch up with the Chinese and British navies is only Germany, but due to the late start of the navy and the need to further widen and dig the Kiel Canal, the German Navy can only build two 10,000-ton mini versions of battleships and battle cruisers in the first capital ship construction cycle......

However, if we look beyond Europe, then there is still one country that can join the shipbuilding race, and that is the United States on the other side of the ocean.

Although the industrial strength of the United States is much weaker than that of the same period in history, and the level of design and construction of warships, especially capital ships, is still slightly backward, and what is even worse is that they still need to maintain a huge standing army with a number of more than one million, but the US Congress still passed a proposal to increase naval funding, and starting in 1899, it will build six 12,000-ton battlecruisers and four battleships of the same tonnage, which is almost the limit of what the United States can do now.

The reason why Americans are so resolute is largely stimulated by the "Panama crisis" that occurred not long ago......

Due to the unique geographical location of the Isthmus of Panama, as early as the thirties of the 19th century, the United States wanted to dig a canal here to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean, thereby greatly shortening the shipping distance between its east and west coasts.

However, due to the desolate western United States at that time, the current demand was not very strong, coupled with the limitations of national strength and scientific and technological level, the canal has remained on paper and has not been put into actual operation. During this period, the domineering style of the Americans, who regarded Latin America as their backyard, aroused the general resentment of the people of New Granada (the predecessor of the Republic of Colombia), and the direct dispatch of naval pressure by the United States after the civil conflict forced New Granada to submit, but also further aroused the hatred of Colombians against the United States.

Against this backdrop, the Colombian government, which had changed its name, decided to turn to Europe for help and bring European capital into the construction of the Panama Canal in order to use the power of the European powers to counterbalance the United States.

Because the United States was not strong enough at that time, and it had not yet fully recovered from the trauma of the Civil War (more troublesome than economic losses, the estrangement and hatred between the North and the South in the war. In addition, the British were also pulled in by the French to help, and the United States, which had not yet been favored by the international financial capital group at that time, had to cede the right to build the Panama Canal.

However, after all, the United States is closer, and has been operating in Latin America for many years, it is too easy to make a stumbling block, and the French engineers did not carefully investigate the local situation and rigidly copied the experience of the Suez Canal, and as a result, they were busy for several years and spent countless francs, but there was no hope of completion.

Originally, if the trajectory of history had followed, the United States would have finally regained the right to build the Panama Canal, and then built and controlled this important hub of the world's maritime transportation for a long time, and the Republic of Colombia would have lost the Panama region forever.

However, the sudden rise of the Chinese Republic and its apparent hostility to the United States gave hope to the anti-American people in Colombia, and Colombians began to arrive in China as early as 1897, and just a year later, the Colombian Pax Party was proclaimed......

However, even with such a shallow foundation, the belief in doctrine is only selling dog meat on the head of a sheep, and the strict organization imitating Zimomen still makes it far more effective than the ruling Conservative Party, which represents the interests of large landowners and compradors, and coupled with the new weapons and supporting tactics supported by the Chinese government that surpass the opponent for at least an era (in fact, it is still at the level of the Sino-British War, but it is enough to fight against the Colombian government army, which has neither heavy machine guns nor rapid-fire guns, but it is enough to play dozens of times the exchange ratio). ), almost like child's play, overthrew the old government......

It is not important how the weakly established Colombian Fellows stabilize their domestic power, but what matters is that they entrusted the Panama Canal project to China immediately after they established power, which immediately made the US government feel like a great enemy. What are you kidding, if the Panama Canal is built in the hands of the Chinese, won't China's Pacific Fleet be able to drive directly to the East Coast, where the economy and industry are most concentrated in the United States, through the canal? It's, it's like a gun on your head! (To be continued.) )