Chapter 1630: What? The World Has Really Been Unified?

"Still interfering..." Zhu Yaofei sighed and muttered to himself, "Don't you people know that revolution is contagious!"

After that moment of reflection, he went on reading, for he was now merely a spectator of history.

In his self-compiled Comprehensive History of the Great Ming, Zhu Zhongshu devoted an enormous amount of space to describing the society, economy, people's livelihood, and the development of humanistic thought in the middle and late period of the Great Ming's Common Prosperity, from the end of the eighteenth century to the 1820s and 1830s.

This must have been an era that Zhu Zhongshu witnessed with his own eyes... For the upper strata of the Great Ming Empire, it was undoubtedly the best of times. Everyone was immersed in the splendor of a golden age, and everyone dreamed of dominating the entire world!

But for the vast majority of the working people, the early period of the Common Prosperity may still have held many good things, yet when this golden age entered its middle and late stages, what awaited them seemed to be only endless suffering... For a very long stretch of time, a ship ticket to the New Continent or the Southern Continent was equivalent to hope itself!

The reason the Great Ming Empire was able to make its way along this thorny road of capitalism was, one might say, largely thanks to the various Huaxia settler states that existed on the New Continent and the Southern Continent!

Without those two fine destinations, the working people of the Great Ming Empire would have lost hope and would have awakened even sooner...

And when the revolution broke out in the Roman Empire, the Great Ming Empire in the East was at the very peak of the "Common Prosperity." This nation possessed the greater part of the world's industrial capacity, and its products sold well throughout the world. Its Royal Bank stored enormous quantities of gold and silver, so much so that the paper currency issued by the Royal Bank had credit equal to genuine gold and silver! And the super-rich living within the empire were as numerous as the hairs on an ox; the wealth they possessed could almost buy up half the world, and their investments were spread throughout the countries of the Celestial Alliance. Through these investments, they in fact controlled the economy of the entire Celestial Alliance.

For these people who seemed to possess inexhaustible wealth and power, the revolution in the Roman Empire was, without question, an opportunity for them to advance one step further and become the leading force of the whole world!

Yet in the heart of this glorious and flourishing great empire — in the great cities of the southeastern region of the Great Ming — poverty was still everywhere to be seen, and the broad masses of working people could only sustain their livelihoods on extremely meager wages.

Because wages were so low, they had no ability to buy or rent decent housing. Therefore, around the industrial districts of every major city, vast stretches of slums had appeared. Tens of millions of poor people lived in these slums, where no daylight ever reached, eking out an existence of bare subsistence.

Of course, their standard of bare subsistence, seen through the eyes of the working people of the Qing dynasty in another spacetime, was still rather high... In terms of food, they could attain the "high standard" of three full meals a day, with meat on a regular basis.

In terms of clothing, it could also be guaranteed that everyone had several changes of clothes; even if one strolled through a slum, one would hardly see anyone wearing tattered garments patched over patches.

In addition, compulsory education had also become universal. There was no nine-year system, but six-year primary education could basically be guaranteed.

So the children in the slums could all read and write! They could absolutely understand revolutionary leaflets... According to Zhu Zhongshu's later analysis, these Great Ming working people, who owned almost nothing, saw little hope, and yet had received six years of primary education, were truly an enormous destabilizing factor!

In particular, the populations of the Celestial vassal states on the New Continent and the Southern Continent were also growing larger and larger, and therefore survival there was becoming harder and harder, while their capacity to absorb surplus population from the Old Continent was gradually declining.

Moreover, the population of the Great Ming homeland had kept growing ever since the Hongxing Restoration. By the middle and late Xingdao period, it had surpassed four hundred million, reaching as much as four hundred fifty million.

Although large-scale grain imports from the overseas vassal states could still guarantee everyone's basic subsistence, the supply was not ample. If anything went wrong in the New Continent United States, the Kingdom of Qing, the Kingdom of Siam, or the United Kingdom of the Southern Continent — these important grain-exporting countries — famine could break out in the Great Ming homeland!

Therefore, by the final years of the Xingdao era, the social contradictions in the Great Ming homeland had already become quite acute.

Unfortunately, in the eyes of the Great Ming's middle and upper classes, the working people had food to eat, clothes to wear, books to read, and the New Continent and Southern Continent to go to... What more could they possibly be dissatisfied with? How could they possibly make revolution like the mobs of Paris?

Therefore, the revolution in Paris did not arouse the vigilance of the Great Ming Empire's upper echelons; on the contrary, it made them believe they had been given a heaven-sent opportunity to realize the grand goal of "unifying the barbarians and the civilized."

Actively intervening in the European revolution thus became the state policy of the middle and late Xingdao period.

And the combination of clipper ships and steam engines, along with the blood ties between the Zhu Ming dynasty and the Romanov and Mancini dynasties, made it possible for the Great Ming to intervene in the European revolution and expand the territory of the Celestial Alliance.

The clipper ship had been "invented" by Zhu Cilang back in the seventeenth century, and over the following hundred-plus years, clipper ship technology had been continuously improved. After the age of the steam engine arrived, clipper ships were quickly combined with steam engines — not by using steam engines to drive paddle wheels and turn sailing ships into steam-sail ships, but by using small steam engines to haul the sails. This greatly enhanced the clipper ship's economy and maneuverability!

By the end of the eighteenth century, there even appeared "super clipper ships" with a carrying capacity of over four thousand tons, bearing dozens of sails, yet requiring only thirty or forty crew members to operate.

Using such "super clipper ships," one could set out from the Great Ming homeland and reach Europe, or any place in the world, in just three months!

Moreover, an ambitious "Continental Railway" plan to connect the Great Ming capital of Yingtian Prefecture with the Russian Empire's capital of Petersburg was also proposed at the end of the eighteenth century!

In the eyes of the Great Ming Empire's rulers at the end of the eighteenth century, vast distances and rough, wind-tossed seas could no longer obstruct their authority and edicts.

Even if they could not establish a "global government," they could at least expand the Celestial Alliance system to the whole world.

The Great Ming would naturally become the leader of the entire world!

And the events in which the Great Ming dynasty exported its bloodline to the Mancini and Romanov dynasties further fueled the ambitions of the Great Ming's rulers.

These two dynasties, which wielded enormous influence on the European continent, both had paternal bloodlines directly descended from the Great Ming Emperor!

The founder of the Mancini dynasty, Henri de Mancini, was an illegitimate son of Zhu Cilang. And Constantine I of the Romanov dynasty was, quite simply, a legitimate-born prince of the Great Ming Emperor Zhu Bolian... Moreover, beginning with Elizabeth I, the monarchs of the Romanov dynasty also believed that they ought to rule the world together with the Great Ming dynasty!

Therefore, ruling the world by means of the "Celestial Alliance" and the "lower-body fortress" seemed very feasible at the end of the eighteenth century.

In fact, by the end of the eighteenth century, apart from a few "great dynasties" such as the Bourbon dynasty of the Western Roman Empire, the Ottoman dynasty, the Timurid dynasty, the Indian Li dynasty, the Brandenburg dynasty, and the Steel dynasty of the Great Soviet Union, every other dynasty in the world that amounted to anything already carried the bloodline of the Great Ming imperial house... Among them, the paternal lines of the Romanov dynasty, the Mancini dynasty, and the Braganza dynasty also came from the Great Ming dynasty!

And so, after Louis III's son Louis-Charles and Louis III's younger brother the Count of Provence fled to Vienna and begged the Great Ming dynasty for aid,

the Great Ming dynasty began intervening in the European revolution in 1794!

Of course, the purpose of the Great Ming dynasty's intervention in the European revolution was not to restore the Western Roman Empire, but to expand the Celestial Alliance into Europe, thereby turning the Great Ming Empire into the suzerain of the world.

Therefore, at the same time that the Great Ming dynasty put up real gold and silver and dispatched an expeditionary force, the Xingdao Emperor also sent "invitations to join the alliance" to the Romanov dynasty, the Mancini dynasty, the Bourbon dynasty, the Braganza dynasty, the Ottoman dynasty, the Timurid dynasty, the Indian Li dynasty, and other feudal dynasties... The Celestial Alliance was now open for membership; everyone was welcome to join. This opportunity was rare — don't miss it!