Chapter 401: Competing for Africa

Strictly speaking, the direct confrontation between France and Spain lasted from the Battle of Biqueka in 1521 to the end of the Napoleonic era in the 19th century.

It can be said that two land powers border, and this fate is already doomed.

The Spanish Empire was held back by France and was unable to draw troops to expand its African colonies, resulting in Spain's colonies in Africa only having some small coastal colonies in North Africa, which could not be connected into large colonies. These include the north of the Canary Islands, Sidi Ifni, Melilla, Ciudad Sizneros, Mazaquel, La Gomera, Oran, Algiers, Bejaia, Tripoli, Spanish Tunisia and Ceuta. Most of these places are based on castles and belong to point colonies. This was mainly due to the fact that Spain was at war with Turkey in North Africa for many years and relied on fortresses to maintain its rule.

Spain was held back by France and had no time to deal with the colonial wars in Africa. But France did not stop colonizing Africa. As early as 1624, France established its first trading post on the Senegalese coast in West Africa, and although the First World War affected the course of France's colonial wars, it was generally uninterrupted, but only progressed slowly.

After the outbreak of the Franco-Spanish War in the summer of the 13th year of Shenwu, the French navy took advantage of the destruction of the Spanish Armada and the new fleet could not compete with the French navy for a short time.

The French Army formed a huge army group to fight the Spanish Army during World War I, and after the war, there were more than 300,000 soldiers waiting for demobilization and redeployment, but the French government was obviously unable to arrange so many troops. Keeping them became a strict financial burden for France, and the French government decided to send these French troops to Africa for colonial wars.

The Spanish Navy was surrounded by the French Navy and was unable to reinforce overseas, resulting in the Spanish colonial army being inferior to the French army in both quantity and quality, and the battlefield situation deteriorated sharply, which was extremely unfavorable to the Spanish colonial army.

In September of the thirteenth year of Shenwu, French Rear Admiral Sam led a French army of 3,000 men to land on the coast of French East Morocco. The Spanish army of about 1,000 men stopped the French in the area of Fez, but the Spanish army was defeated and retreated to Tangier. The French army pressed forward step by step, the navy shelled Tangier, and half a month later, the Spanish defenders were forced to abandon Morocco and surrender to the French army because of the lack of reinforcements.

The French occupation of Morocco once again showed that the Spanish Army was no longer a myth and was no longer invincible. The French army did not advance eastward, not wanting to provoke Turkey, so they advanced south, bypassing the Sahara and occupying Algeria, Niger, Mali and other places. The black chieftaincy tribes in these places were very disunited, and the civil war continued, and the strong invasion of the French army was twice the effect with half the effort.

The strength of the French army in Africa and this interest immediately stimulated the upsurge of European countries to further carve up Africa.

After France, Portugal regained control of the Kingdom of Kongo. Portugal, which had just gained independence, could not wait to drive the Spaniards out of the country and dominate the Kingdom of Congo.

The Kingdom of Congo is rich in gold and has been one of the sources of luxury in Portugal and Spain. The wealth of Spain and Portugal naturally made the other European powers salivate, and they spent their days thinking about how to get a piece of the pie.

After the decline of Spain in World War I, the countries suddenly became emboldened. With the independence of Portugal and the recapture of colonies that had once belonged to Portugal, many Spanish-controlled colonies were in turmoil, which gave other powers the opportunity to turn around.

Britain was one of them, taking advantage of the infighting between Portugal and Spain in the Congo, and sent troops to invade Guinea and Nigeria. As a result, Spain and Portugal fought each other, but on the contrary, they cheapened Britain and allowed Britain to take the opportunity to occupy large areas of land.

Not to be outdone, the Netherlands supported the rebels in the Turkish Empire to seize territory in North Africa, and on the other hand, under the escort of the fleet, sent troops to land in West Africa and seize the colonies.

Africa is different from the Americas, and the Indian tribes of the Americas are too easy to trust foreigners, and as a result, the vast American Indian kingdom is destroyed by a few thousand Spaniards. In addition to the advanced firearms of the Spaniards, there is also an unknown secret, that is, when Spain, Portugal and other countries invaded the Americas, about 120,000 aborigines provided help, so that Spain, Portugal and other countries easily occupied the American continent.

The Indians were stupid, but the black kingdoms of Africa were not. They didn't trust whites, so the black states of Africa were fierce when it came to releasing white invasions. Despite the strength of the European powers, it was very costly to occupy an inch of Africa. At first, the attention of European countries was focused on the coastal areas, and the countries mainly established trading posts, mainly for trade. They flex their minds and pay for black kings or tribal chiefs to legitimize their aggression. However, with the emergence of a large number of gold mines in the inland Congo, Spain and Portugal obtained a large amount of gold and silver hard currency, and the Europeans were not satisfied with commercial trade, so in order to compete for mining rights, European countries began to develop inland. It is mainly concentrated in the area around the Congo in Central Africa, and is fiercely contested.

While European countries invaded Africa and competed for colonies, there was another country that had been eyeing Africa all the time, and that country was the superpower of the East, the Chinese Empire.

At the end of World War I, the Chinese Empire reaped the greatest benefits, and seized Mexico and Peru, two of the Spanish Empire's richest lands in the Americas, by force and force. Due to the vastness of these newly seized colonies, the Chinese Empire, although in its hands, was unable to digest them in a short time. As a result, the Chinese Empire had no choice but to suspend the expansion of its colonies by force, and instead consolidate its colonies and digest the existing ones.

Mexico and Peru needed a lot of people to develop and govern, and for this reason the Chinese Empire had been migrating to Mexico and Peru on a large scale for several years, so the pace of colonial expansion slowed down, and the consolidation of existing colonial interests was the primary task. This led to a slowdown in the previous pace of colonial expansion of the Chinese Empire into Africa.

However, with the post-war reshuffle in Europe and the decline of Spain, other newly rising powers urgently needed to expand their colonies, and they accelerated the process of colonial war against Africa.

In August of the 13th year of Shenwu, the situation in Africa was in full swing and received great attention from the central government of the Chinese Empire, and the African colonization plan was put on the agenda for discussion by the cabinet and sent to the emperor for ruling. A