novelraw Chapter 172: The Issue Of Expansion
Chapter 172: The Issue Of Expansion
The achievements of the Spanish Government in 1874 cannot be fully explained in just a few short sentences. Even in terms of colonies, Spain has made considerable breakthroughs.
The railway construction in the East Indies has gone very smoothly. Annexing several indigenous Sultanates was done openly, so the subsequent colonial rule and railway construction can naturally proceed aboveboard as well.
The railway in the Congo River Basin needed to be concealed during the early construction phase, which is also the biggest challenge in railway construction. After all, laying railways requires a large amount of steel rails, and transporting those steel rails is not that easy.
The fastest construction currently is the railway from the Guinea Colony to the upper reaches of the Congo River Basin, with the total length already approaching 100 kilometers.
However, compared to the railways constructed on the Spanish Mainland, such a railway is somewhat rudimentary, merely a single-track railway, which is also much simpler to build.
With the help of this section of railway under construction, the Guinea Colony has already transported a large batch of materials to the land in the Congo River Basin.
Once the colonial outposts on this land have expanded sufficiently, Spain can announce the establishment of its own territory here and carry out its own rule.
By then, even if Portugal and Britain and France react, they will not be able to engage in colonial competition with Spain on this land. Unless they are willing to start a mainland war with Spain over this land, no one can threaten Spain’s rule here.
Although development on the Spanish Mainland and in the colonies has gone very smoothly, this was achieved only under the premise of the government investing a large amount of funds.
In terms of finance, the total fiscal revenue of the Spanish Government in 1874 reached 7 million pesetas（ approximately 12 million pound sterling）, a significant increase compared to The main reason for this is the substantial results brought by the first Five-Year Plan and the economic improvement promoted by the government’s large-scale fund investments.
The first Five-Year Plan supported the emergence of a large number of civilian enterprises. Although most are small and medium-sized enterprises, a few have gradually become medium-to-large leading enterprises.
The tax revenue contributed by these enterprises to the Spanish Government is no small amount. Combined with the tax revenue from royal enterprises, the Spanish Government’s fiscal revenue in 1874 reached a new high.
Although the total fiscal revenue in 1874 is already close to the fiscal expenditure of 1873, Carlo clearly could not be happy seeing such revenue figures.
The reason is precisely the Spanish Government’s fiscal expenditure situation listed in the next line. While revenue has seen a huge increase, fiscal expenditure has done the same.
In 1874, the fiscal expenditure of the Spanish Government on external operations alone reached 270 million pesetas, more than twice the expenditure on external operations last year.
At the beginning of 1874, Prime Minister Primó discussed the fiscal budget for the entire year and quite foresightedly raised the fiscal budget to 2 million pesetas.
But obviously, Prime Minister Primó underestimated the economic burden brought by the Spanish Government’s comprehensive development. The fiscal expenditure level for the entire year of 1874 far exceeded this figure, even breaking into the ten-digit range.
0552 billion pesetas. When Carlo saw such an expenditure level, he could not help but be startled.
This amount of funds is equivalent to 55 million pound sterling. Based on the construction cost of around 500,000 pound sterling per ironclad ship, this year’s total fiscal expenditure could build more than 80 ironclad ships.
Although the actual situation cannot be calculated this way, it also proves how exaggerated this fiscal expenditure is.
No wonder various departments have achieved good results; this is entirely the result of the Spanish Government throwing money at it, simply put, results achieved through massive spending.
Obviously, the Spanish Government is not some big spender. Therefore, in future development, achieving good results through such massive spending is basically impossible.
The main reason Spain was able to bear fiscal expenditure exceeding 1 billion pesetas is that it obtained a large amount of fund loans from Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and France before the economic crisis.
The loans provided by Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were not much, 75 million lira and 120 million krone respectively, （3 million pound sterling and 5 million pound sterling）.
Adding the 200 million in cash available from the 500 million franc low-interest loan provided by the French, it already amounts to more than 400 million pesetas in usable funds.
Combined with the additional currency issued by the Currency Issuance Committee using gold from the Indian Temple, this gave the Spanish Government such great confidence to invest over 1 billion pesetas during the economic crisis to promote national development.
For the entire year of 1874, the Spanish Government’s fiscal loss reached 5 million pesetas. And the fiscal loss in 1873 was also around 200 million pesetas.
Although these funds have brought rapid development to all sectors in Spain, it is clear that Spain can no longer sustain such fund expenditures.
Since the gold from the Indian Temple was transported to Spain, the Currency Issuance Committee has already issued more than 250 million pesetas in additional currency.
Combined with the loans from the three countries, this allowed Spain to have sufficient funds to sustain this period of vigorous development.
However, the available funds in the Spanish Treasury are now less than 100 million pesetas. For development in 1875, it is still necessary to consider balancing fiscal expenditure and revenue.
Although the Currency Issuance Committee can still create sufficient usable funds for the Spanish Government by issuing more currency, if it does not consider the Spanish market and frequently injects paper currency into the market, it is very likely to affect the actual value of the peseta.
Moreover, Spain’s development has gradually gotten on track. The most important thing next is to seek stability, allowing Spain’s economy and industry to advance steadily, which is what the government should focus on most.
Thinking of this, Carlo could not help but feel fortunate for the corruption during Queen Isabella’s rule. It was precisely because the Spanish Government disregarded development and pursued pleasure at that time that it did not bear too much debt.
Currently, the total debt of the Spanish Government adds up to only about 700 million pesetas, which is still within a bearable range for the Spanish Government.
Moreover, the shortest debt repayment period is still over ten years, and longer ones even over twenty years.
With not much pressure from debt, the future development of the Spanish Government is indeed bright. Even without relying on fund injections, the growth rate of industry and economy in the coming years will still advance steadily.
Not to mention, due to the economic crisis, Spain’s agriculture in 1874 also saw considerable improvement.
After obtaining large tracts of land from the nobles and the Church, these lands were provided to farmers for planting in various ways.
Combined with the newly reclaimed land, the total arable land area in Spain reached a new high, and grain yield has also been rising steadily.
Although there are no detailed statistics, it can currently be confirmed that Spain’s arable land area has exceeded 10 million hectares, and most of the 18 million Spaniards are engaged in agricultural work on this land.
Yes, Spain’s population has broken through 18 million. Although this figure is a simple estimate by various regions of population births and deaths, the actual situation should not be far off.
After the average annual income per person in Spain increased, the birth rate has also been growing continuously. After all, only when the public has spare money in hand will they consider more things.
If they cannot even fill their stomachs, not many people will consider issues of carrying on the family line.
What is more regrettable is that among the large number of infants born in Spain each year, some will inevitably die prematurely.
This is unavoidable, and also something Carlo is powerless to change.
After all, it is because the medical technology of this era is too backward, leading to a very high risk factor in the production process.
Even if production is safely completed, the care of infants and young children is also a big problem. Various diseases invisible to the naked eye will threaten the lives of infants and young children, which has kept Spain’s infant survival rate low.
This problem exists in other European countries as well, not even excepting the European Royal Family.
To improve the survival rate of infants and young children, one can only hope for progress in subsequent medical environments and related medical equipment and technology.
“Your Majesty, this year’s total fiscal budget of the government is approximately 722 million pesetas. This is the fiscal budget report from various departments; please review it.” After finishing the work report of the Spanish Government for 1874, Prime Minister Primó handed over a brand new fiscal budget report and introduced it to Carlo.
“722 million pesetas?” Carlo was somewhat curious upon hearing this and looked at Prime Minister Primó, asking: “Reducing the fiscal budget by more than 300 million pesetas at once, will it affect the construction plans of various departments this year?”
“Based on the current situation, reducing the budget will have an impact, but it should not be significant,” Prime Minister Primó explained: “The reason our total fiscal expenditure exceeded 1 billion pesetas last year was mainly because external operations expenditure approached 270 million pesetas.
Precisely because of this, even if our fiscal budget this year is reduced by 300 million pesetas, the impact on various departments will not be too great.
Moreover, our military expansion has ended, and military expenses can also be appropriately reduced. It is precisely because of these reasons that this year’s fiscal budget will be 300 million pesetas lower than last year.”
Hearing Prime Minister Primó say this, Carlo nodded, naturally having no further questions.
Indeed, last year’s fiscal budget exploded largely because the industry department used a large amount of funds to purchase those companies and industrial equipment from abroad.
Currently, European countries have gradually emerged from the impact of the economic crisis, and the procurement plan of the industry department has also been completed, so there is naturally no need for additional funds.
Excluding last year’s 270 million pesetas in external operations funds, the Spanish Government’s fiscal budget for the entire year would be only around 800 million pesetas.
This year’s fiscal budget is indeed lower than last year’s, but not by much—fully calculated, only a few tens of millions of pesetas.
“Were there no problems during the military expansion process?” Carlo expressed concern about the Spanish Army’s expansion.
This expansion was no small action; it expanded the scale of Spain’s original army by several times.
After the expansion is completed, the scale of the Spanish Army has risen to the top eight in Europe, accurately speaking, only behind Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Austria, more than Italy’s standing army.
More importantly, the Spanish Army also possesses relatively strong combat effectiveness. As early as the period of the Spanish Empire, Spain was a world hegemon strong in both army and navy.
Although the army and navy have weakened, the Spanish Army has no major flaws. After focusing on training, it can still become an elite force.
Combined with the new rifles and cannons equipped after the army reform, the combat effectiveness of the Spanish Army, even if not matching great powers like Germany and France famous for their armies, is at least on the level of Britain and Austria, still stronger than Russia and Italy.
Italy goes without saying; its performance in World War I and World War II was very poor. Although there are various reasons, the poor overall performance of the Italian Army is an ironclad fact.
The Russian Army also has too many complex reasons, but the biggest one is still the corruption of Russia as a country.
After all, it is an autocratic empire established for hundreds of years; corruption in the empire is very normal. Corruption and embezzlement in Russia are ubiquitous, and the army’s combat effectiveness is a mess.
Whether in World War I or World War II, the Russian Army relied on numerical superiority rather than combat effectiveness.
This also made Russia one of the countries with the highest casualties in the world war, with soldier casualties alone reaching tens of millions.
Having stronger army combat effectiveness than Italy and Russia is not much. Italy is the tail-end among great powers, while Russia has extremely vast territory and dense population.
Spain, fully calculated, has only 18 million population. In the extreme case, it could indeed recruit over a million troops, but that would cause irreversible damage to the country.
Look at Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria—these great powers can each recruit over a million troops, even up to several million.
Compared to these countries, Spain still has far too many shortcomings, the biggest gap being in population.
Only by raising the population to over 30 million does Spain have the qualification to confront these countries. Otherwise, just the casualties in terms of population would be enough to make Spain ache, which is also the biggest gap between small countries and great power countries.
“The army’s expansion went very smoothly, with basically no troubles encountered,” Prime Minister Primó first stated a piece of good news, then mentioned the actual problems encountered in the expansion: “
If there is a problem, it should be that there is a certain discrepancy between the number of cannons planned for the army and the actual number of cannons that can be equipped.
In our plan, each infantry division would have more than 248 cannons. But after actually equipping 248 cannons, we simply could not meet the cannonball demand for these cannons.
This would create enormous pressure on frontline supplies and also slow down the advance speed of the infantry divisions.
After deliberation, the Ministry of Defense reduced the number of cannons equipped per infantry division to 112, barely meeting the cannonball demand for these cannons firing simultaneously.”
Cannons are indeed a good thing, but that does not mean more cannons mean stronger army combat effectiveness.
Cannons need cannonballs to demonstrate their power, and once war breaks out, cannonball consumption is an astronomical figure.
Although the current cannons do not have a very high rate of fire, if each infantry division is equipped with over 200 cannons, just Spain’s six infantry divisions would have over 1,000 cannons, almost catching up to the number of cannons used by Prussia and the French in the Franco-Prussian War.
Yet Spain’s six infantry divisions have fewer than 100,000 men. What does this mean? The number of cannons equipped per Spanish division is several times that of the Prussian and French armies, and the logistics pressure can be imagined.
After discovering this problem, the defense department promptly made adjustments, changing the original 248 cannons per infantry division to 112 cannons, barely resolving the issue.