The Tang Empire tried to expand through non-war means very early. In the early days, it purchased some coastal colonies on the west coast of Africa from the Portuguese, purchased embassy areas from various European countries, etc.
But at that time it was all a small matter.
It was not until the Empire purchased all the American colonies from the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal, and completely controlled the entire Americas, that this was an important gain in non-war expansion.
Subsequently, a resource exchange territorial agreement was reached with the Tatar Kingdom of Tang Dynasty, in order to support the Tatar people with weapons and ammunition, start trade with the Tatar people, and promise to give the Tatar people a place to live in the future as a condition for allowing the Tatar people to take the initiative.
They exchanged large areas of territory, moved all the people away, and directly handed over uninhabited land to Datang.
This is the pinnacle of the Tang Empire's non-war expansion policy!
Just relying on the absolutely powerful national power of the Tang Dynasty, they obtained such huge benefits from the Tatars, and the Tatars felt that they were not at a loss!
This made the upper echelons of the empire more interested in non-war expansion.
After all, in recent years, the empire has acquired large areas of South America, Mexico, Eastern Europe and other regions. At most, it only spent some money. And even with this money, most of it actually returned to the hands of the empire. What the empire paid was only some low-end
muskets and other military supplies.
This amount of expenditure is much less than the cost of war, and is not even worth mentioning.
The Army has been calling for the Third Western Expedition for many years. However, both the other upper echelons of the empire and Li Xuan, the Holy Emperor, have been coaxing and deceiving the Army.
Why? Because it costs too much, often hundreds of millions of dollars in military spending.
Even the Tang Empire, which had a great business, could not spend so much military expenditure just for overseas expansion.
How about hundreds of millions of Tang Yuan in real money, just to defeat aboriginals and seize some land?
The Tang people were not happy!
The Tang Dynasty is now more willing to use indirect, low-cost methods to expand, such as providing the Tatars with guns and weapons, and conducting business cooperation with the Tatars to support the Tatars in fighting the Ottomans, and wait for the Tatars to conquer the Ottomans.
After the war, the Tatars turned these lands into no-man's land and handed them over to the empire.
After such an operation, it doesn't cost a lot of money, and it is also convenient and trouble-free.
To put it bluntly, it is to raise a thug to help you expand!
And I have to say that the Tatars have been excellent fighters of the Tang Empire in the past few decades. However, in the previous decades, the Tang Empire did not give them a cent, and only used military pressure to suppress the Tatars to help them fight.
territory.
As for now, the Tang Dynasty people are too lazy to engage in military oppression and just give it to guns...
From these changes, we can also see the huge growth in national power of the empire in recent decades!
The current Tang Empire did not even use military oppression. It only relied on some smoothbore guns, military supplies, trade contracts, and the promise of a future settlement to make the Tatars willingly pioneer the Tang Dynasty.
But if it were thirty years ago or even ten years ago, the Tang Empire would not have expected the Tatars to agree so obediently.
In the early years, although the Tatars were forced by the Tang Dynasty to flee westward and launched a Western Expedition, the Tatars never surrendered. In the northwest, Central Asia and even Eastern Europe, the Tatars and the empire continued to fight.
More than ten years.
The huge Tatar cavalry force could still pose a considerable threat to the Tang Dynasty.
Therefore, although the Tatars of that period could not defeat the Tang Empire as a whole, they still mainly engaged in armed confrontation on the Eastern Front.
But starting more than ten years ago, the empire and the Tatars basically stopped fighting because the empire was unwilling to spend money to continue the Western Expedition, and the Tatars also felt that there was no hope of counterattack.
As for forty years after Xuanping, the Tatars had completely given up on treatment.
From that time on, although the Tatars still stationed a lot of troops on the Eastern Front, the Tatar troops on the Eastern Front were all new recruits.
Even the Imperial Army has noticed that the Tatars regard the Eastern Front as a training camp for new recruits. What they usually do is training and sealing the borders. As for fighting the Tang Dynasty, that is not their mission at all.
After these recruits have been trained for a period of time, they will be transferred to the Western Front or Southern Front to fight.
To a certain extent, since the 40th year of Xuanping, the Eastern Front of the Tang Dynasty and the Jin Kingdom has been undefended!
Why is this happening?
Because the Tang people and the Tatars have good friendships and are not on guard against each other? This is definitely not the case.
There is only one reason, and that is that the Tang Dynasty became more and more powerful, and eventually became so powerful that the Tatars did not have the courage to resist!
This is the only reason why the Tatars completely gave up on the Eastern Front and regarded the Eastern Front as a new military camp.
This was also the only reason why the Tatars cooperated with the Tang Dynasty and were willing to serve as a pioneer for the Tang Dynasty to fight against the Ottomans.
The Tang Dynasty was already so powerful that the Tatars did not even have the courage to look up to them!
Looking at the expansion of the empire in the early, middle and last three periods, we will find a very obvious feature, that is, as the national power of the empire increases, external expansion becomes easier and easier, and the resistance of the indigenous people becomes weaker and weaker.
Even now there is no resistance at all.
Nowadays, the only things that limit the empire's external expansion are climate, environment and localization.
As for the expansion in Europe, there are no problems with climate and environment. In fact, the climate and environment in most parts of Europe are still very good. Although the Nordic region is a bit colder, the central and southern regions are also southern Europe close to the Mediterranean.
, but it is a very good place.
People from the Tang Dynasty who have been to Europe, especially the Mediterranean region, prefer the coastal areas of the Mediterranean. The climate is quite pleasant, and some areas are also very fertile.
Generally speaking, purely from the perspective of climate and environment, the attitude of the Tang Dynasty people towards Europe is somewhat similar to their attitude towards North America. They both think it is a good place.
Expansion into Europe has become a definite destination. Eastern Europe is just the beginning, and the next step will be Poland, Lithuania and parts of Romania.
This is the territory transferred in the second part of the agreement between the Tang Empire and the Tang Dynasty. In order to obtain these territories, the Tang Empire has promised to provide the Tatars with large quantities of military supplies and other ordinary items for free.
supplies, and signed some new commercial and trade agreements.
Based on the calculation of export prices of materials and ordinary trade contracts, these free supplies and subsequent trade contracts are worth at least 30 million Tang Yuan.
Of course, this is just the export value. In terms of actual cost price, these things will only cost a few million yuan!
Of course, these words alone are not enough to make the Tatars give up such a large area of rich territory.
In fact, the main content of the transaction between the two parties was never these, but a promise made by the Tang Dynasty people: to give the Tatars a place to live!
A place of survival, this is what the Tatars are looking for!
For this reason, they would rather exchange large tracts of seemingly extremely rich European territory, because they knew very well that if they did not exchange, they would definitely not be able to hold on to these lands in the end.
Moreover, the entire Tang Jin Kingdom would be destroyed, and millions of Tatars would eventually disappear without a trace, just like many indigenous countries that had already been destroyed.