1876, the Year of the Rat (Year of the Rat).

It was destined to be a wonderful year: on June 24, 1876, Situ Leiden was born in a missionary residence next to the Tianshui Lane of Jesus Church on the banks of Tianshui Bridge in the northern part of Hangzhou.

On February 12, the founder of Adidas founded a sporting goods store, but in the face of the now popular Li Ning sporting goods, its road is destined to be difficult and bumpy.

On March 10, Alexander Graham Bell, an academician of the Imperial Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor of electricity at Imperial University, invented the telephone. This great invention was sought after at the beginning, and the era of the telephone was coming.

The 100th anniversary of the United States and the Philadelphia World's Fair. France presented the Statue of Liberty (English: libertyenlighteningtheworld, French: liberteeclairantlemonde) to the United States as a gift for the 100th anniversary of the United States**, located near the Hudson River Estuary in New York City, USA. Together with the statue of the Empress at the mouth of the Yangtze River, the Statue of Liberty is considered a symbol of beauty, majesty, freedom, hope, and strength.

However, the biggest move this year was the coronation of Queen Victoria as Queen of India. In the economic crisis of three years ago, Britain and France relied on their large colonies to complete economic recovery and development. However, this economic crisis directly brought down the British East India Company, which had managed most of India after the national uprising in India in 1857, and the British property and protection rights in the Indian subcontinent were formally incorporated into the British Empire.

In this Indian national uprising, the queen took a relatively balanced attitude towards both sides of the conflict, and punished the rioters on both sides. She once wrote: "I deeply regret this bloody civil war. And, at the urging of Prince Albert, she insisted that the official transfer of power from the East India Company to the state be formally announced, arguing that the state "should breathe the air of generosity, mercy and religious freedom." At her suggestion, a document with a tendency to "undermine indigenous religion and customs" was repealed and replaced with a document guaranteeing freedom of religion or belief.

After the 1874 general election, Disraeli returned to power. He passed the Public Belief Regulation Act of 1874, which eliminated Catholic ceremonies from state ceremonies, which Queen Victoria strongly supported. The Queen liked simple and unpretentious ceremonies, and she personally thought she would prefer to go to the Scottish Presbyterian church rather than the Anglican church in England. At the same time, Disraeli pushed the House of Representatives to pass the Royal Titles Act of 1875, so that Victoria added the title of "Empress of India" from 1 May 1875. On January 1, 1876, the "Empress of India" was officially crowned in New Delhi.

Of course, the Chinese people scoff at this, you must know that the title of Emperor of the Chinese Empire is not something that you can not be a king without, and the title of an emperor in the past is not comparable to your Britain. European monarchs are generally kings or grand dukes, and before 1870 the title of emperor was only Holy Roman Emperor, and the Russian Tsar was not recognized by the Catholic Christian countries of Western Europe at all.

Titles are not added randomly, such as the newly established German Empire, its emperor is the German emperor, but note that in the German region and the pan-German region, the title of the German emperor is supreme, before the First World War, many Austro-Hungarian marshals have been to Germany and accepted the rank of marshal of the German Ministry of Defense, and the Germanic generals of the Austro-Hungarian Empire all consider themselves in this way: I am first a German marshal (or general), and then a marshal (or general) of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The title of ruler is a concrete embodiment of the comprehensive strength of the country and the nation, just like Lin Hong's current title of Emperor of the Chinese Empire, Asian Hegemon (formerly the Hegemon of the Far East, but now its international influence is rising, and it is recognized as the Hegemon by the West), the owner of the Pacific Ocean (more than ninety percent of the Pacific shipping lanes are Chinese merchant ships), and the great pioneer of Africa (China was the first country to develop and penetrate into Black Africa on a large scale).

Among them, the hint of the title system of Asian overlord is that all the settled population in Asia will subconsciously think that Lin Hong is the master of Asia, even if it is the master in name. This also led to the propaganda of some domestic newspapers and the opposition* that the British had taken away the glory of the Asian hegemony from the emperor.

Of course, the Cabinet has no time to take care of these miscellaneous matters, and the Cabinet is now focusing on the economic issues that have been focusing on the current coronation of Queen Victoria of England as the Empress of India. Don't look at it as a title, but for India, it means that British politics is beginning to enter India in full force. In the past, India was ruled by corporations, and the Cabinet wanted to know whether India would fully implement the British administrative system or maintain the corporate model. The former means that the British government will greatly strengthen its colonial rule over India, India's population and resources will provide a huge impetus to British industry and agriculture to a certain extent, and even India will become a huge industrial production factory, after all, the East India Company is not a government, and India under their rule is only for commercial trade profits. The latter meant that India would remain a colonial economy and would not pose a threat to the empire's commercial development.

======================================================= war in the South Pacific continued, with Peru and Chile constantly fighting each other at sea and on land. The war lasted for three years, and I believe that there will be a result soon, after all, the current Chilean navy is not Peru's opponent at all, and Chile, which has no shipping, only buys war materials from Argentina, and the transportation is a big problem, in addition, both countries are inclined to a truce, so Peru's victory is not far off, and the next thing is to see how much benefit Peru can gain from negotiations.

The Balkans, the powder keg of Europe, were not calm either, and the Bulgarian nationalists launched a great national ** uprising, but the majesty of the Ottomans is something that you can be angered by a small Bulgaria. The Ottoman Turkish Empire, which had just made a constitutional attempt, once again proved itself in the Balkans. The Balkans are still the Balkans under the iron heel of the Ottomans.

In 1876, the first ships of the Imperial Navy renewal program were launched and outfitted and commissioning began. This includes 8 Qin-class battleships (between ironclads and former dreadnoughts), 11 Hangzhou-class large cruisers, 10 Shaoxing-class medium cruisers, and 17 Shangyu-class small cruisers, which will replace the main warships of the Wuyang Navy's six fleets over the next five months. Once the entire plan is completed, the Imperial Chinese Navy will be a fleet that looks a little modern in Lin Hong's eyes, and the high gunwales and flying scissors look more beautiful than the current warships, which will definitely satisfy the emperor of the empire who is bent on pursuing the beauty of the hull. The second batch of warships will be fully launched after the first batch of warships are debugged and some design adjustments are made.

In 1876, the last section of the Trans-Siberian Railway of the empire was completed from Kurgan to Omsk, which started from the city of Novoxijiang (Chelyabinsk), passed through Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Chita, Boli, and reached the port city of Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, with a total length of 7,400 kilometers, which was called "the project of the century" by newspapers and magazines in the empire. From 1857 to 1876, it took 19 years and nearly 20 years to build, which was the longest and most difficult railway line in human history. In the past 20 years, the railway spent a full 13.365 billion Chinese yuan on the railway from the emperor's treasury to private fund-raising and then to the government's fund-raising and selling of treasury bonds, which was more than twice the annual fiscal revenue in 1875 without considering the appreciation and depreciation of the currency (in 1875, the domestic economy was sluggish, and the fiscal revenue was 6.134 billion Chinese yuan, which was more than 12 Chinese yuan per capita that year, and it was enough for a family of five to use only one month).

In fact, this investment is only in the early stages, and now it is only the main trunk line of the Trans-Siberian Railway project that has been completed, and there are dozens of branch lines to be built, and once the entire Siberian Railway project is completed, such a railway network across the northern part of the empire will be like a fish's skeleton and firmly control Siberia. Of course, there is still a long way to go, and the report of the Railway Bureau of the Ministry of Communications shows that the whole project will be completed at least until about 1882