No matter how the external changes are, what threats there are or what interests to compete for, the most important one is that the iron still needs to be hard, and if the empire is not strong enough, it will not be able to compete with Russia and Britain for any interests.

Therefore, the development of the empire itself is always the first priority of the empire at all times.

This can be seen from the allocation of the empire's financial budget, although the empire has fought many wars in the past two years, but the military expenditure has not been able to achieve a substantial increase, and even the overall proportion has shown a continuous decline pattern.

In the past two years, the empire's military expenditure has been maintained at about 27 percent, and even if the navy proposes to build a 10,000-ton giant ship, it will be able to make the proportion of military spending cross the 30 percent threshold.

In this way, it also shows that the empire has always invested its main resources in the construction of internal affairs.

Don't look at the frequent foreign actions of the empire in recent years, but in fact, the empire has not invested most of its forces in foreign wars, and this is not a special case of the empire, the United States, France and Prussia are all like this.

After the end of the Civil War, the United States fought the Empire on the Hawaiian side, but the United States soon put all its efforts into internal construction and accelerated the construction of the Pacific Railroad.

In the fifties and sixties, France also had a very frequent foreign war, from the Crimean War, to the Franco-Italian-Austrian War, the Vietnam War, and now the French are still fighting in the Americas and Mexicans.

However, in this context, the main focus of the French was still on the Industrial Revolution, and in the twenties and sixties, France's total industrial output tripled. Its representative coal production, increased tenfold. Iron production has more than tripled, and raw steel production has increased by as much as nine times. The railway mileage has increased from more than 1,000 kilometers to more than 15,000 kilometers.

It can also be seen that in the past two or three decades, the industrial revolution has been the main theme, and although the wars between countries are frequent, they have not affected the industrial development of various countries.

The overall situation of the empire was very similar to that of France and Prussia, although the reform was carried out later, but under the full promotion of Lin Zhe, the whole country carried out comprehensive reforms, including education, industry, and commerce. As for political reform, this is not at all, because the political system of the empire was originally newly established, which directly broke the model of the former Qing Dynasty, so there is no reform.

In the end, all of these reforms have the same goal, that is, to achieve the industrial revolution!

Whether the industrial revolution has been achieved or not is actually a statement without specific criteria, but the main industrial data in all aspects must at least be able to catch up with the current mainstream industrial countries.

Don't compare with the UK. Britain in this era is too perverted, and it belongs to the search for abuse, if compared with other countries, Spain and Portugal in Europe. Countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium have either declined or are too small to complete industrialization. To build a complete industrial system, they can no longer be regarded as first-class powers in modern times. Even the second-rate can't squeeze in, so it can only be reduced to the third-rate.

Italy, Austria, and Russia all have their own shortcomings. Although some of the data are good, they all have obvious shortcomings, but they are still the stronger second-echelon powers of the contemporary era.

The United States developed too late, it was still a slave country before the Civil War, and now although the United States is immersed in development after the Civil War, it will take at least more than ten years of precipitation, so it is not easy to compare.

In this era, apart from Britain, there were actually only two typical industrial countries, that is, France and Prussia.

Both countries completed the industrial revolution before 1870, and their development in all aspects was relatively balanced, with relatively high population and industrial level, and there were no obvious shortcomings.

So what were the main industrial figures for these two countries after 1870?

In terms of railway mileage, the French have more than 15,000 kilometers, and the Germans have more than 18,000 kilometers.

In terms of pig iron output, France has 1.17 million tons, Germany has 1.26 million tons, and the output of raw steel is 80,000 tons in France and more than 140,000 tons in Prussia. In terms of coal, the French produced about 10 million tons, while Prussia produced about 26 million tons.

These industrial figures made these two countries the leading powers of the late 19th century, second only to Great Britain.

And France and the united Germany have successively challenged Britain!

I won't talk about it later, let's just talk about it now, who is the biggest enemy of the British Royal Navy now? Was it the Chinese Navy that sank one of their ironclad ships in the Far East?

No!

In the sixties, the British Royal Navy's greatest enemy was the French navy, followed by the navies of Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia.

The Imperial Navy can only be regarded as one of the many opponents of the British Royal Navy, that is, it is a greater threat to the British in the western Pacific waters, and if you look at the world, the Imperial Navy is not enough to threaten the sea power of the British.

The reason why the British made concessions on the Hong Kong issue before was not that the Imperial Navy could compete with the British Navy, but because if the British brought a large number of ironclad ships to the Far East to fight the Imperial Navy, the gains outweighed the losses, and they would be killed by the ambitious French into London if they were not careful.

So in the middle of the nineteenth century, the British were not a good point of reference.

If you really want to compare, it is better to compare with France and Prussia.

If you want to achieve the level of the French and Prussia, not to say completely equal or surpass, but you can't lag too far behind!

For example, in terms of raw steel and pig iron production, the empire in 1866 had an output of 60,000 tons of raw steel and 900,000 tons of pig iron, and by 1870, it was very likely that it would exceed the output of Franco-Prussian and Franco-Prussian countries.

In terms of coal production, it was easier to surpass the French, but it was still more difficult to reach Prussian standards.

The output of pig iron, raw steel, and coal is the three main industrial products. The empire has actually entered the category of a second-rate power, and is now moving towards the standard of a first-class power.

But the empire is not without its shortcomings. The shortcoming was that the Empire's railroad mileage was too small, as of 1866. The length of the railway that has been completed and opened to traffic is less than 1,000 kilometers, which is really embarrassing.

You must know that in these years, the major industrial countries have thousands of kilometers of railways, even Russia, a serfdom country, has thousands of kilometers of railways, Italy, Austria-Hungary and other countries also have four or five thousand kilometers of miles, not to mention France and Prussia, all of which are tens of thousands of kilometers, and Britain is even more than 20,000 kilometers.

On the construction of railways. Compared with other major countries in the world, the empire can be said to be completely backward!

There is only one reason for this, and that is that the development of the Imperial Railway was too late, and large-scale construction began after 1860, and it has only been six or seven years so far, and the previous years were all experiments, and even after deciding to build a large-scale railway, it would take several years to carry out preliminary surveys.

According to the plan of the Imperial Ministry of Communications, the construction of railways in the Empire would gradually increase during these two years, reaching a new peak around 1870. Because at that time, not only the Jinpu Line and the Northeast Railway will be constructed, but also many railway lines such as the Nanjing-Guangzhou Railway will be constructed one after another.

In the past few years, at least more than 5,000 kilometers of trunk railways will be under construction, and this does not include some railway branch lines built in the more economically developed plains in the east.

The Ministry of Transportation is expected. After 1870, the length of the railways in the empire will reach 3,000 kilometers, and after 1875. At least 8,000 kilometers of railways will be built and put into operation.

At present, it is difficult to say that it is difficult to build a railway, and it is easy to say that it is simple. As long as money and enough labor are available, and the construction is carried out on flat terrain. In fact, the railway was built very quickly, and there are many examples of it being completed and opened to traffic in two or three years.

The backwardness of railway construction can reflect the development of inland river and coastal transportation in the empire, after all, without railways, the transportation of bulk goods needs to rely on inland river and offshore transportation.

The largest inland waterway in China, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, that is, the section from Shanghai to Wuchang, is sailed by many ships every day.

In the early years, the people would be surprised to see these smoking steamers, but now you can see these steamers sailing in the heart of the river almost all the time.

Due to the rapid development of inland waterway shipping, the shipbuilding industry of the empire has become a fast-growing industry in the past two years.

In the early years, there were not many modern shipyards in the empire, and only a few shipyards with royal or military backgrounds could manufacture large-tonnage steam ships, such as Shanghai Shipyard, Tianjin Shipyard, Guangzhou Shipyard, and Qingdao Naval Shipyard.

And some privately-funded shipyards are generally small in scale and weak in technical capabilities!

However, because of the prosperity of the shipping industry in the empire, those shipping companies were dusting the cashier's checks of the Royal Bank to order ships everywhere, and in previous years, a large number of ships could not be purchased in the country, and many shipping companies ordered ships in Southeast Asia and even India.

During this period, domestic shipyards have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, only in Shanghai and the surrounding areas, there are 12 large and small shipyards, in addition to the Shanghai shipyard, which is a special enterprise, the remaining 11 private shipyards, of course, the larger ones are also indispensable to the support of the Navy or the Ministry of Communications.

For example, the Songhu Shipyard next door to the Shanghai Shipyard is one of the top three private shipyards in China, with a relatively large scale and acceptable technology, which can manufacture ocean-going steam merchant ships with a displacement of more than 2,000 tons, and can also manufacture offshore ironclad gunboats of 4 to 500 tons for the military.

Of course, unlike the Shanghai shipyard, which has strong technology and focuses on the construction of warships and large ocean-going ships, Songhu Shipyard mainly builds inland river and offshore ships with small tonnage.

The profit of building an inland river vessel may be less than one-third of the profit you build a large sea vessel, but if you build a sea vessel, he can build three or even five inland river vessels.

This lucrative Songhu shipyard is naturally unwilling to be in the field of inland river and offshore ships, and it is also a shipyard, and it is also a profit from several other large shipyards in China to build large ocean-going ships.

However, although it has also invested heavily in the construction of a 6,000-ton dock and introduced a lot of machinery and equipment, it has not grabbed an order for so long, the reason is very simple, because those customers would rather go to the Shanghai shipyard with a higher cost to order ships than come to it, because the name of the Shanghai shipyard is big, and everyone knows that the Shanghai shipyard is a warship, and the skills and abilities are quite strong.

In order to attract orders from civilian ships, this time the Songhu Shipyard is preparing to build an ocean-going warship with real knives and guns, even if it is a loss, in order to let outsiders know that the technical ability of their Songhu Shipyard is no worse than that of several other large shipyards in China.

Therefore, when the Navy conducted a tender for a new type of ironclad ship, several executives of Songhu Shipyard and core engineers went to Nanjing to participate in the bidding! (To be continued.) )