For thousands of years, the Chinese dynasty has actually been trying to expand continuously, until it was limited by various factors such as ancient transportation, communication, and medical care, and could no longer expand, and then it stopped.
But now, with railways, ships, and wired telegraphs, distance and geographical environment are no longer obstacles, and the Chinese people cannot stop their external expansion.
And this kind of thing is not driven by the special situation of the Tang Empire, or by Li Xuan's ideas. In fact, if it were replaced by another dynasty or another indigenous emperor, as long as the technology was in place, it would have been doomed.
It needs to expand externally.
Datang just caught up with the good times!
Therefore, Datang's pace of expansion will not stop and will continue to expand until it can no longer expand.
The Mughal dynasty, the Safavid dynasty and even the Ottoman dynasty were all future expansion targets of the Tang Empire, and no one was an exception.
People in the Tang Empire knew it, and people in these three dynasties also knew it.
However, the reason why there are no large-scale wars in these three directions is because in recent years the main focus of the Tang Empire has been on the Tatars, and some of its energy has been on Southeast Asia and America.
, Africa, India and other regions expanded.
For example, the Third Battle of India in India represented the continued expansion of the empire in the Indian Peninsula. The area on the Indian Peninsula now controlled by the empire is actually quite large, and the sum of several overseas territories such as Gohe State is almost the same.
It covers an area of 300,000 square kilometers, and there are several large colonies that have only established colonial offices but have not been directly incorporated into overseas territories. The total area is nearly 7.8 million square kilometers.
After the Third Indian War is over, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of colonies will be added. If we fight a few more times, it is estimated that the entire Indian Peninsula will almost be brought under colonial rule.
However, it is limited to colonial rule. It would still be too difficult to rule directly through overseas territories, so you have to take your time.
India's expansion policy is a combination of overseas territories and colonies, and it is expected to follow the same approach in Africa.
Because both places have the same characteristic, that is, a large population!
The Tang Empire has never liked places with large populations. Instead, they prefer places with few people, preferably a deserted place, such as America.
The people of the Tang Dynasty liked it very much. The total population of these places was not large. Because the population of the American colonies was not large enough, the Spaniards began to introduce African natives, Indian natives and Southeast Asian natives on a large scale.
In short, they all want the labor force!
Under this policy, the empire's expansion into Africa was mainly concentrated in South Africa, because although the area is large, estimated to be almost more than one million square kilometers, the area is still controllable, and various resources can be used in the future.
In this way, the local indigenous people can be relocated. For example, recently the Spaniards like to go to South Africa to transport a large number of indigenous people.
Because Datang promised to cover the shipping costs!
The localization of South Africa is already an established policy, but in other places, it is mainly to occupy some of the best coastal areas and then carry out colonial rule.
This is also the reason why the empire purchased colonies on the west coast of Africa from the Portuguese.
The empire is now negotiating with Spain and Portugal about the purchase of colonies on the west coast of Africa. The two parties have been talking for some time. In principle, one is willing to buy and the other is willing to sell.
But there has been no agreement on the price. The Spaniards or the Portuguese wanted to sell it for a big price, so they asked for tens of millions of Tang yuan.
The Empire would not be a bastard, so the people from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs only offered a price of one million Tang Yuan, and this million Tang Yuan also included other areas, such as the Azov Islands, or islands in the Caribbean such as Cuba.
In recent years, the empire has been very interested in many islands in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, it came too late because these places were occupied by the Spanish.
But the Spaniards or Portuguese would not give up easily in these places.
So it was a stalemate.
But this stalemate did not last long. The Tatars put increasing pressure on the Spaniards and the French. Without the support of the empire, how long the Spaniards could sustain it was a question.
So in October of the thirty-sixth year of Xuanping, Spain finally surrendered. Even though the Portuguese within them still strongly opposed it, the Hasburg dynasty, which had annexed the Portuguese, still agreed to the final conditions put forward by the Tang Empire.
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All the colonies on the west coast of Africa controlled by the Portuguese and their Spanish, whether coastal or islands, were sold to the Tang Dynasty.
And this land deal is not limited to Africa, but also includes several colonial sites on the Paraná River in southeastern South America and colonial sites around the mouth of the San Francisco River in Brazil.
Also includes several colonial ports on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico
This land deal does not just refer to several colonial ports in the above-mentioned areas. In fact, it also comes with a large area of colonial rights and agreements on dividing spheres of influence.
According to this land purchase agreement, Datang will gain expansion rights across the entire African continent.
The Spanish and Portuguese are no longer allowed to interfere in African affairs.
In South America, Datang will obtain the right to expand in the southeastern region of South America, which is basically Argentina and Uruguay in the future.
In addition to the above-mentioned colonial transactions, Spain also unified the Tang Dynasty to build a canal in Panama, and the Tang Dynasty will own the land ownership of 20 kilometers on both sides of the canal.
How much did the Spanish and Portuguese sell the above-mentioned areas and the accompanying colonial rights?
A total of 3.6 million Tang Yuan!
This amount of money was a huge amount of money for the Spaniards. At least the Spaniards were quite satisfied with this figure and thought they had sold these colonies at a good price.
Many Spaniards even felt that this time they finally cheated the Tang Dynasty and sold these worthless colonies for a sky-high price.
But for Datang, this amount of money is actually the cost of one and a half battleships.
Even the annual profits of many large companies exceed this number!
Before Royal Petroleum was split, its profits per quarter were tens of millions. Even after the split, its annual profits could reach seven to eight million.
From this number, we can actually see the huge gap between today's Datang and other countries.
More importantly, Datang did not actually have to pay the money at all.