Chapter 1627: Tremble, Emperor!

"This must be the first Industrial Revolution, with a hundred million — or even over a hundred million — people taking part, right?"

After reading the description of the first Industrial Revolution within the Great Ming's borders and the mass of statistics in the Comprehensive History of the Great Ming, Zhu Yaofei could not help but voice his admiration.

In another version of history, the first Industrial Revolution that took place in Europe affected only Western Europe, and perhaps parts of Eastern Europe and the New World. Even at the highest estimate, the number of people fortunate enough to take part in it could not have exceeded fifty million.

But the Industrial Revolution that took place in the Great Ming's southeast involved at least a hundred million people! Therefore, the power this Industrial Revolution supplied must have been magnified several times over!

When the rulers of the Great Ming Empire first came into possession of this seemingly omnipotent power, the degree to which their ambitions swelled can well be imagined.

Besides, the Great Ming Empire had taken the capitalist road — how could it possibly avoid economic crises?

Although the productive forces unleashed by the first Industrial Revolution seem utterly insignificant to people of the 21st century — the total steel output of the world's foremost industrial power was only equivalent to the capacity of one moribund small steel mill in the 21st century...

Yet to humanity at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, industrialized productive power was simply staggering! So much so that for the first time in human history, people had to confront the problem of what to do when there were too many goods.

So the pain of economic surplus was something the people of the Great Ming's southeast were bound to experience!

Of course, the surplus crisis of the first Industrial Revolution era was not surplus in the true sense, but surplus under conditions of insufficient demand. And the cause of insufficient demand was, naturally, the low income of the working people...

With so many working people, and the labor movement not yet arisen, could anyone expect the Great Ming's black-hearted capitalists to pay high wages to the laborers beneath them? That would be unscientific...

And what the Great Ming's rulers would do when faced with economic surplus and the suffering of the southeastern working people — anyone could figure that out with their heel!

Zhu Yaofa sighed and continued browsing.

The next chapter did not discuss economic surplus and shifting the crisis outward; instead, it introduced the evolution of the world situation in the 18th century.

The world situation of the 18th century, briefly summarized, was a bipolar standoff with a buffer in between!

The two poles were the Great Ming Empire and the Roman Empire, while the buffer was the half-dead Ottoman Empire and India, which was in complete chaos.

In the 18th century, the Great Ming Empire was busy carrying out the Industrial Revolution and busy dreaming its great dream of uniting all peoples under one civilization. And in Europe, ten thousand li away, an Industrial Revolution was also taking place, and there were also people dreaming... But Europe's Industrial Revolution did not begin in the Roman Empire; it began in the Republic of England and the Republic of the Netherlands — the two countries that had been the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the original history.

In this history altered by Zhu Cilang, their advantages still existed, and were even greater than before!

In this timeline, the English monarchy had not been restored; instead, England had become a bourgeois republic of Puritan faith... And Puritanism is a faith of not being willing to spend on food, not being willing to spend on clothing, rising early and working late at production, earning more money for God and oneself! A sect practically tailor-made for industrialization!

Moreover, England had also obtained the status of "ally of Rome" and "neutral state," allowing it to enter the great Roman market and engage in free trade — such privileges were of course not without cost; England had to pay money to the Roman Empire every year. But compared to that bit of protection money, the Republic of England's gains were still enormous.

So England's industrialization began somewhat earlier than the Great Ming Empire's. Although it could not compare with the latter in scale, the quality of its development was still quite good.

The fate of the Republic of the United Netherlands was also better than in history, because in this timeline there had been no devastating Franco-Dutch War, and large tracts of the Low Countries had not been inundated by the sea. Moreover, because it had thrown in its lot with Louis XIV early on, the goods of the Republic of the United Netherlands could sell unimpeded throughout the Roman Empire, receiving even more favorable treatment than English goods.

Of course, the home territory of the Republic of the United Netherlands could not match England in resources, lacking much coal and iron ore. So from the very beginning, the industrialization of the Republic of the United Netherlands had a strong spillover effect. And the resource-rich Roman provinces of Rhineland and Alsace-Lorraine-Luxembourg, having absorbed large amounts of Dutch capital and technology, crossed the threshold of industrialization in the second half of the 18th century.

At the same time that the provinces of Rhineland and Alsace-Lorraine-Luxembourg crossed the threshold of industrialization, the Kingdom of Bohemia in Central Europe, driven by Austrian and Venetian capital, also began its own steps toward industrialization.

But in the most central parts of the Roman Empire — the provinces of France, Italy, and Spain — there was still little sign of industrialization even at the end of the 18th century.

In fact, the manufacturing industries of France and Italy were in continuous decline throughout the entire 18th century! By the end of the 18th century, the industrial goods markets of France, Italy, and Spain — the three great provinces of the Western Roman Empire — had been almost entirely occupied by products from the Netherlands, England, Rhineland, and Alsace-Lorraine-Luxembourg.

The reason for this situation was chiefly the policy of trading market access for unification adopted by the Western Roman Empire, as well as the fact that France, Italy, and Spain had been in relatively backward positions even before the Industrial Revolution era.

Furthermore, the Western Roman Empire had spent too much money and energy on war... In the 18th century, the Western Roman Empire launched six wars against the Ottoman Empire and the Sultanate of Morocco. Although it succeeded in seizing all of North Africa, it also paid an enormous price.

And while seizing North Africa, Louis II, after assuming personal rule, was extremely dissatisfied that the Eastern Roman Empire was not under his rule. So between 1756 and 1768, he launched a war against the Eastern Roman Empire, headed by Philip I — known to history as the "Twelve Years' War."

This Twelve Years' War was nominally a Roman civil war, but in reality it was a European war through and through!

Nearly all European states — including the two neutral states of the Archduchy of Austria and the Republic of England, as well as the Russian Empire, which wavered between the Christian world and the Celestial civilization, and the long-beaten, half-dead Ottoman Empire — were drawn into the war one after another.

The Western Roman Empire suffered a fate of first victory and then defeat in this war. At the very start of the war, relying on its enormous standing army, the Western Roman Empire swiftly invaded the Archduchy of Austria and besieged Vienna, the archduchy's capital. Then it swept into Bohemia, the industrial center of the Eastern Roman Empire, and completely occupied it.

Stunned by the Western Empire's offensive, King Philip II of Serbia had no choice but to sue for peace, expressing willingness to renounce the title of regent.

If Louis II had been willing to quit while he was ahead, this war would not have lasted twelve years. But Louis II, his head turned by victory, rejected Philip II's terms and even announced the annexation of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Archduchy of Austria, turning both into Roman provinces.

That really stirred up a hornet's nest!

The patriotic fervor of the Austrian and Bohemian peoples, who had originally regarded this war as a domestic affair of the Bourbon dynasty, was suddenly aroused, and they began to rise up in resistance!

And the nobles of Hungary, Serbia, and Croatia suddenly all felt that if one fell, the others would follow — they all rallied around Philip II. All at once, this "bare-stick king" found himself with an army of two hundred thousand!

At the same time, the North German princely states, which had originally stood by with folded arms, also felt that Louis II was going too far in bullying others, and all united to support Philip II and oppose Louis II.

Louis II, for his part, drew in Poland, the Netherlands, Bavaria, and Sweden to send troops to his aid!

Philip II, meanwhile, appealed to Russia and England for help — Russia, in order to annex the Ukrainian territories held by Poland and the Baltic coastal territories controlled by Sweden, joined Philip II's side.

England at first chose to remain neutral, but before long, Louis II announced a naval blockade of the Eastern Roman Empire... This stepped on the bottom line of the Republic of England, a nation founded on trade. Moreover, because of religious issues, the Republic of England had always looked at the Western Roman Empire with disfavor, and England likewise did not wish to see the Western Roman Empire unify Europe.

So in 1758, the Republic of England finally broke its "hundred-year neutrality" and formally sent troops to the European continent!

Thus, this internal struggle of the Bourbon family finally escalated into a European war of astonishing destructive power — and it also gave birth to the earth-shaking Great Roman Revolution!