ps: I'm about to conquer the Philippines, ask for genuine support, ask for a monthly pass, and ask for likes

Cuba, known as the "Pearl of the Caribbean", was declared a Spanish colony in 1492 when Christopher Columbus discovered the beautiful island of Cuba on his maiden voyage to the Americas. Although in August 1588, Spain and England fought a world-renowned naval battle in the English Channel, the "Invincible Armada" was heavily damaged by the British Navy, losing more than 100 large warships and more than 14,000 naval dead. The United States twice offered Spain to buy Cuba for $130 million, but Spain resolutely refused.

Song Xiaofei wanted to seize the colony of Cuba from Spain, on the one hand, he wanted to catch the "last train" of the colonial war and obtain much-needed funds for domestic economic development, on the other hand, because there were a large number of suffering Chinese laborers in Cuba, working on plantations and mines, they were all Chinese laborers who were trafficked to the Americas in the mid-nineteenth century, and were insulted by the locals as "piglets", once reaching 120,000 people. In addition, the president of the Senate, Yung Hong, had personally traveled to the Americas to collect evidence of the mistreatment of Chinese laborers, was familiar with the situation in Cuba, and suggested that he send troops to protect the expatriates, and he had long been determined to send troops to the Americas, and in 1898, an armed rebellion broke out in Cuba. The Spanish government suppressed bloodily, and the army slaughtered local residents, many of whom were Chinese!

Rong Hong told Song Xiaofei that like other imperialist colonies, Cuba is a paradise for colonizers and a hell for the ruled. When Columbus came to Cuba in 1492, the island was inhabited by the Guanajada Bey, Sibone, Taiino and Pacific primitive tribes indigenous Indians. They were driven to the fields to do heavy farm work, growing sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco and coffee, and were killed by the abuse of the overseers. In this way, the Spaniards had to bring in blacks from Africa to continue working on the plantations, and slavery was brought to the American continent.

Year 1868. Carlos. Manuel. Céspedes and Maximo. Gomez launched a ten-year war for Cuban independence, which was bloodily suppressed by Spanish troops. But through this war, the blacks abolished slavery. Obtained the most basic right to be a human being: freedom! But for the Spanish colonists, the land they grabbed needed to be cultivated and developed, and they needed a large number of cheap labor, so they set their sights on the "indentured Chinese laborers", who were negligible coolies whose wages were so cheap in the Qing Dynasty at that time!

At that time, most of the Chinese laborers who went abroad were landless peasants, bankrupt small business owners, unemployed workers who toiled all day but had little food and clothing, and had to choose other ways to make a living, and some were kidnapped by unscrupulous businessmen. At that time, the market price of these coolie laborers in Cuba was about 350 to 500 pesos, and one peso was about seven and a half cents of silver, which was very profitable. These coolies were packed into sacks like livestock. This organized kidnapping was a "migration company" organized by the colonial government at special expense, through agents, coolie traffickers and coolie captains. Raid China's coastal cities. From 1847 to 1874, more than 140,000 Chinese laborers were shipped to Cuba.

The coolie trade turned out to be the same as the slave trade. The tragic fate of the Chinese who were kidnapped and turned into "piglets" was to spend five months on a coolie ship known as the "Floating Hell". Most of the ships used to transport coolies were converted from abandoned and useless dilapidated ships, and in the cramped space, Chinese laborers sat shoulder to shoulder on their knees on the day and slept on their shoulders at night. In order to prevent the workers from rioting or committing suicide by jumping into the sea, they installed iron fences in the hatches, cannons on the decks, and sent people to patrol day and night. The captain also often pulled out the Chinese workers for no reason and whipped them, in order to warn the Chinese workers from making trouble. Due to the closed cabins, the lack of air circulation, the serious shortage of fresh water and food, and the extremely poor sanitary conditions, which led to epidemics and the wanton abuse of the shipowners, the mortality rate of Chinese laborers during the voyage was very high: according to the archives of the British Consulate General in Havana cited in Tan Qianchu's "Cuban Miscellaneous", the total number of indentured Chinese laborers transported to Cuba between 1847 and 1874 reached 143,040, and only 126008 actually arrived in Cuba.

The average life expectancy of Chinese workers who make it to Cuba alive is only 5 years, and the mortality rate is 75%. In the sugarcane plantations, pig houses, sugar factories, and "government offices" where Chinese laborers were imprisoned in Havana and other provinces of Cuba, the Chinese laborers in Cuba lived a hellish life of "rising before dawn, sleeping in the middle of the night, eating coarse corn and plantains, and wearing short brown clothes." By 1880, only about 40,000 of the more than 120,000 Chinese laborers in Cuba remained.

In April 1895, the leader of the Cuban Revolution, José Brown, who was in exile in the United States. Martí led the rebels to land in eastern Cuba and established a revolutionary government in September of the same year. By the beginning of 1898, the rebels occupied two-thirds of Cuba's territory, and the Spanish Prime Minister sent Weller as the governor of Cuba to brutally suppress it, and Weller pioneered the terrifying "concentration camp" system that everyone knows for the next century: hundreds of thousands of Cubans were driven out of their homes, many of whom were overseas Chinese, and they were concentrated in designated camps where they were imprisoned.

After hearing Rong Hong's report, Song Xiaofei was saddened by the tragic fate of those Chinese workers, and this unforgettable history of blood and tears of Chinese workers in the Americas was deliberately ignored by China for some abnormal reasons, and few people know about it a hundred years later! Song Xiaofei knew that in 1898, if China did not make a move earlier, the United States and Spain would also break out into war, and it would be too late! So at the beginning of 1898, he sent the chief of the navy Liu Buyun to personally lead the team, and the deputy commander of the Beiyang Fleet, Ma Jifen, the chief soldier of the left wing, Li Yuanhong, and other admirals took the "Suzhou", "Dongting", "Jiyuan", "Zhiyuan" and other fifteen ironclad cruisers to the island of Cuba. Song Xiaofei hopes that the war against Spain will be fought in Cuba and the Philippines at the same time, and it will be resolved quickly!

At this time, the United States Navy delayed its operations against Spain because the "New York" and other capital ships participated in the war against Japan, and Congress was discussing whether to grant the president the right to use force against Spain.

Song Xiaofei said to Duan Qirui, Xu Shichang, Wang Shizhen, Feng Guozhang, Cao Kun and other army generals present, "According to the available information, the Kingdom of Spain is already at the end of its power, the political situation is chaotic, although Cuba claims to have 200,000 troops, in fact only 12,000 can fight, and the rest are mostly old, weak, sick and disabled. The Navy also has only a few old wooden-hulled warships. In the Philippines, too, there are only 42,000 troops. I estimate that there will be no problem with the complete destruction of the Spanish Navy by the Northern Fleet. Now my main concern is the army, whether it can destroy the Spanish army, after all, the fighting strength of the Spanish army is not weak in Europe! ”

Duan Qirui said: "According to the president's request, half of the old-style army has been transferred to the police system, and now China's new-style army has a total of 12 towns and a total strength of 250,000 troops, excluding the new army stationed in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Northeast China, and other places, and there are about 150,000 new troops that can be dispatched abroad. ”

Song Xiaofei nodded with satisfaction and said, "I have already sent people to secretly contact the revolutionaries in Cuba, and now as long as I send another 50,000 troops to Spain, I can occupy Cuba." Another 100,000 troops, I hope that the army will immediately send troops to the Philippines, and with the cooperation of the Chinese ** ship, within a month, take Manila, the capital of the Philippines! The entire Philippine archipelago will be China's, and no island can be missing! ”

Cao Kun immediately stood up, patted his chest and said: "Give me 10,000 new troops, Lao Cao will definitely beat Manila into a hornet's nest within ten days!" (To be continued......)