Emperor Richard was generally satisfied with the performance of the army in the East Indies War, with occasional flashes.

The shining point was the Imperial Armored Division established by Tang Li Yi, the seventy-first son of the emperor, which played a remarkable performance in the decisive Battle of Upper Indragi.

Emperor Richard of course knew that the Gray Wolf armored vehicle was the prototype of the main tank of the future land war, and it was also the direction of the development of the main battle weapons of the world army in the future, and the prospects were extremely bright.

But he didn't pay too much attention to it, gave special support, and it was always Tang Li Yi's hard work there to make the scale of equipment for an imperial armored division.

After this battle

The Prince of Pingxi, Tang Li Xin, personally submitted a letter to recommend the merits and detailed plans for the development of armored forces in the Royal Janissaries and the Royal Army, and put forward a key commendation for Brigadier General Tang Li Yi.

Prince Pingxi's recital, in the imperial military department and the government all the way to the green light, presented to the imperial front and back, Emperor Richard pen to review a word "may", not a word more.

The Imperial Panzer Division also did not receive the title of glory for this battle, becoming one of the well-known ace divisions, and everything was downplayed.

The reason for this

It was because Emperor Richard did not want to overemphasize the role of armored forces, so he changed the development process of the world's army and even the current world situation, causing unnecessary follow-up changes.

From a macro level

The superiority of armored equipment alone cannot at all offset the huge dividends brought about by the foresight of grasping the future trend of the world.

Emperor Richard stood at the height of a world chess player, based on the long-term strategic planning of the Tang Empire in the next few decades, and did not care at all about one or two technological leads.

Even if you don't have the advantage of advanced weapons, you can sacrifice tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people in the war, so what?

The competition between the world's great powers is not a contest of geopolitics that can be completely changed by one or two advanced weapons, and a long-term competition of comprehensive national strength and influence, involving all aspects of politics, economy, military, and culture, and cannot be achieved overnight.

This requires strategic planning that lasts for decades or even longer, step by step promotion, step by step consolidation of national strength, and finally to climb to the top of the world.

The Tang Empire has always done this, even if its economic strength has become the world's first, but it still maintains a humble and low-key foreign policy, following in the footsteps of Britain.

Many hard-line nationalists in China shouted that the Tang Empire should become the other pole of the world, leading by the expansionist policy that is most in line with national interests, and making their own different voices in the world.

The idea is good, but too radical and idealistic.

At the end of the 19th century, it was still the world stage dominated by white Europeans, and the rise of the Tang Empire in North America could not change this, let alone compete with the general trend of the world.

The way to govern the country lies in moisturizing things silently.

This is not a contest of who has the loudest voice, not a contest of who is a thorn, not a contest of who is tougher and more radical, nor a contest of who is brutal and expanding, this is all going astray.

A gallop contains wisdom.

There are many negative examples in modern history, and Poland, known as the "European footcloth", is a typical thorny country.

The Kingdom of Poland invaded Prussia at its peak, occupied Moscow, and supported the new Tsar, but was divided between Germany and Russia, and is now extinct.

The voice of the Kingdom of Italy was loud, and when it saw the colonization of other European countries, it was red-eyed, and it was shouting here and there.

It was also to compete with France for Tunisia, and at the end of 1894, it invaded Ethiopia on a large scale and pursued a large-scale colonial policy.

As a result, the invading Italian army was beaten by the Ethiopians, with a total of 17,000 Italian troops killed and wounded, 11,000 wounded, and more than 4,000 captured, while the backward African country Ethiopia suffered only four or five thousand casualties.

This is the first time in modern colonial history that a European country has lost so badly, or to the Ethiopian dynasty in East Africa. This is a disgrace to the white man, and Italy has become the laughing stock of Europe.

Among the negative examples is Tsarist Russia, whose previous barbaric expansion to the west has been encircled and suppressed by European countries to varying degrees, and has been hit again and again.

Emperor Richard firmly controlled the Tang Empire and developed according to the medium- and long-term strategic plan, which was the path most in line with the long-term interests of the Tang Empire.

Whether it is the advanced development of army tanks and armored vehicles, or the former dreadnought-class battleships of the Navy, in fact, the Tang Empire has no urgent needs.

The Tang Empire, which has the advantages of two oceans, basically has no realistic land threat, and no European power can threaten the empire itself.

The Royal Navy of the Tang Empire has no real need to compete with the British Royal Navy for hegemony in the ocean, and it has no intention of provoking the sensitive nerves of the British Royal Navy.

Compared with following the original trajectory of the world, compared to grasping the huge strategic dividends of foresight, this sacrifice is not worth mentioning at all, and the Tang Empire can withstand it.

Predicting the historical development trajectory of the next 100 years is the biggest plug-in of Emperor Richard, and it is impossible for him to abandon his martial arts.

For example, any change that can affect the trend of history, such as the armored vehicles that appeared on the battlefield more than ten years in advance, his attitude is not to promote, nor to encourage, let alone suppress, but to let them develop freely.

The successful capture of Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi has achieved the pre-war goal, and the rest is a matter of fighting with the Dutch.

Emperor Richard skipped over the East Indies and searched the map all the way west, finally tapping lightly on the Arabian Peninsula with his hand.

Since declaring Yemen and Kuwait as areas of special interest for the Empire, the Tang Empire has strengthened its control and immigration over the region, especially in the coastal areas north of the Kingdom of Oman to Kuwait, and has established several small towns of Chinese descent.

It was the territory of a series of Gulf oil-producing states, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, and was located on the west coast of the Persian Gulf, and is now largely controlled by imperial immigrants.

The strength of the local nomadic tribes is low, the small tribes have hundreds of thousands, and the large ones have more than 10,000 people.

They live in one of the few oases along the coast of the bay, facing the endless Gobi Desert and the long desert, and they are really poor and have to eat Tukola.

Chinese immigrants settled in the area, mainly to develop coastal fishing and trade, mostly by buying local Arab women to build families.

The Imperial Colonial Department had some supportive policies for the local Chinese, mainly through bank loans, to support Chinese immigrants to develop agriculture in the oases, mainly to buy seeds, fertilizers, cattle and agricultural machinery, to buy local Arab women and build houses, or to buy fishing boats, etc.

As far as Emperor Richard knew

The local North American cowboys, who are mainly Chinese, are wild and aggressive, often forming a variety of armed horse teams and camel teams, going into the depths of the desert to attack the local Arab tribes, robbing cattle, horses, livestock and women, including male prisoners of war.

These were quite valuable trophies, and cattle, sheep, livestock and Arab women could be sold in the local market and the funds were quickly returned.

The male captives needed coolies on the plantations and in the towns, and were in fact slaves in a sense, tacitly.

This is not uncommon in Kuwait, Yemen, Sana'a and other regions, and the Imperial Colonial Department turns a blind eye to these conditions, as if they are blind.

How could the local Arab tribes, whose already small populations, survive such a scourge?

The entire west coast of the Persian Gulf is taken together, excluding the Kingdom of Oman, and there are more than 200,000 Arab tribal people.

In just a few years

Its population has plummeted by more than a third, leaving only a little hundred thousand.

Most of the local Arab tribes became vassals of the Chinese towns, and through large-scale intermarriage, they had begun to be gradually assimilated.

A small number of them have fled deeper into the desert, where they will face harsher natural conditions and climates, and their survival conditions are not optimistic.

The Kingdom of Oman, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, was the traditional British sphere of influence, and the Kingdom of Oman was one of the British protectorates, as was the case with the Kingdom of Iran.

The Tang Empire has now intensified its penetration into the Kingdom of Oman, where there are more than 37,000 Chinese immigrants, who basically control the local commerce and transportation industries, and control the economic lifeline.

The population of the Kingdom of Oman is very small, with only a little more than 176,000 people so far, and more than half of the Chinese make up more than half of the local population, mainly engaged in farming, pasture and commercial transportation.

The next step is to continue to strengthen the penetration of the Omani kingdom and find an opportunity to subvert the local royal power.

The Kingdom of Oman and Iran guard the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, which is the future world oil depot, and its geographical location is extremely important.

In Emperor Richard's mind, the Kingdom of Oman, along with Yemen and the entire east coast of the Arabian Peninsula, would henceforth be part of the empire.

Quantitative change leads to qualitative change, and now subtle penetration is enough.

The Tang Empire did not seek control of the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula, including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Beirut, and Jerusalem, the holy site of the three major religions, which were too sensitive on the Mediterranean coast and were also the focus of contention among European powers.

But this future world oil depot must be in control, and if the Strait of Hormuz is to be in control, then it must be in control of the Kingdom of Oman and the Yemen region.

Because the Kingdom of Oman guards the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, and the Yemen region guards the entrance to the Red Sea of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the Eurasian route, the geographical location is extremely important and geostrategically significant.

In the battle for the world hegemony in the future, these are extremely heavy bargaining chips.

After his gaze swept over the Arabian Peninsula, Emperor Richard looked down and lingered in thought around Portuguese Mozambique and Madagascar, the world's fourth-largest island......

Now that the Tang Empire has entered a new stage of expansion and colonization, his eyes are on improving the layout of the world's colonies, so these two places in Africa have attracted his attention.

After the Berlin Conference, European countries set off a frenzy to carve up Africa, and in just a dozen years, the colonized African region has soared from more than 10 percent to more than 80 percent.

Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium were the biggest beneficiaries of this colonial frenzy of carving up Africa.

Among them

The French colonial area occupied was the largest, from North Africa to Central Africa and even Southern Africa, with a total area of millions of square kilometers, accounting for more than half of the French colonies.

Britain realized the idea of a colony from South Africa to Egypt, and Germany took over more than 1.1 million square kilometers of colonial areas in German East Africa and German West Africa.

Belgium became the biggest winner, with strong support from Britain in the competition with France, and obtained the resource-rich Congo River basin, with a total area of 2.34 million square kilometers, which is the green lung of the whole of Africa.

The Congo River Basin is one of the most valuable colonial areas with the largest tropical rainforest area in Africa, rich in gold and tropical crops, and rich in flora and fauna.

King Leopold II of Belgium is the cousin of Queen Victoria of England, and his father is the Queen's uncle.

Otherwise

With Belgium's small body, what can you compete with France?

By the end of the 19th century, the only country in Africa that remained independent was the Ethiopian Empire, and most of the rest of Africa was colonized, leaving only some inland barren areas untouched.

Of course, the Tang Empire would not fight for those inland arid desert areas, and it was not interested in colonizing Africa.

If you want to fight, you should fight for those good places.

The first thing Emperor Richard of the Tang Dynasty took a fancy to was Mozambique, which is located in the north of South Africa, the south of German East Africa, across the Mozambique Channel and the island of Madagascar.

Mozambique has the second largest rainforest region in all of Africa, after the Congo River Basin.

The 2,660-kilometre-long middle and lower reaches of the Zambezi River are all located in Mozambique, with hundreds of large and small rivers and extremely rich water resources.

More than 60% of the area is covered by vast forests, has huge reserves of various mineral resources, has a mild climate, has 1,500 kilometers of inland waterways, and has world-class geographical conditions Maputo seaport.

Mozambique is not a vast expanse of the Gobi and desert, but is full of lush greenery, and the Zambezi River basin is famous for its abundance of gold and ivory.

The Portuguese colonized the area for more than 390 years, but it was still in a backward and primitive state, with only a small part of the coastal area and inland river area developed, which is similar to the situation in the Dutch colony.

The Portuguese have largely invested in infrastructure in the region, mainly by pressing gold and ivory, taking into account the tropical plantation economy.

For hundreds of years, the roads were still rugged and muddy, the harbor was still a backward wooden trestle, and heavy ox carts creaked as they passed.

As a small third-rate country in the decline of Europe, Portugal simply cannot afford to develop the million-square-kilometer area of Mozambique, and for nearly 400 years it has only been endlessly demanding, and has not invested in construction at all.

So, Emperor Richard took a fancy to this place.

Compared to Mozambique, the Kingdom of Madagascar, known as a treasure trove of resources, is much less impressive.

Britain and France joined forces to invade the kingdom, only to be repelled by the queen of the Kingdom of Madagascar, which was also a rare victory in the history of anti-colonization in Africa.

Unfortunately, this powerful autocratic queen has long since passed away, and the current kingdom of Madagascar has long been mired in warlord strife, infighting, and the local indigenous people are living in misery.

But from another perspective, this seems to be what Africa should look like normally, right?

(End of chapter)