Chapter 456

After the formation of the United Kingdom, Gao Da could be considered to have completely breathed a sigh of relief. Up to now, Gao Da had basically completed the imperial plan he had formulated at the beginning, completely building Spain into a super great power enough to rival Britain, France, and Germany.

Counting only the territory of the Iberian Peninsula, the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal possessed 598,200 square kilometers of land, which had already surpassed the land area of Germany and France, second only to the vast Russia.

If one counted Morocco, which was across the sea and already undergoing localization, Spain's future national land area would reach an exaggerated 1,057,200 square kilometers; the scale of the homeland would far exceed Germany and France, and the disadvantage of barren land would also be completely wiped out.

This 1,057,200 square kilometers of land could accommodate a population of hundreds of millions, which was also the population foundation for becoming a true super great power after World War II.

Even to be exaggerated, just the 598,200 square kilometers of land on the Iberian Peninsula could accommodate a population of hundreds of millions.

After all, a certain country in later generations with an area of only 100,000 square kilometers also had an exaggerated population of 50 million. Portugal's area had already reached 92,200 square kilometers, and plus the reason that a large piece of land was plains, carrying a population of 30 to 40 million in the extreme degree was not a problem.

And Spain, although most of the land was mountainous, the scale of the land was extremely vast. 506,000 square kilometers of land, carrying a population of 60 to 70 million, was naturally not a problem.

If calculated this way, plus the land of Morocco, the upper limit of the population that Spain could carry in the future could reach at least 150 million.

Such a territorial scale could ensure that Portugal had the qualifications to stabilize its status as a super great power for decades or even hundreds of years.

Gao Da could only do so much. In this era, wanting to carry out large-scale territorial expansion in Europe was not an easy thing to begin with; being able to annex Morocco and Portugal was already an unexpected surprise for Spain.

After the formation of the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal, the first order Gao Da gave to the new United Kingdom was to instruct Spain and Portugal to carry out population statistics respectively, and calculate the total population of the United Kingdom.

For the population data of this new country, Gao Da was still very interested. According to the current estimate of Spain and Portugal's population, the United Kingdom's population would officially exceed Britain and France, which also meant that from then on, Spain had no gap with the super great powers in terms of population.

Of course, Russia was absolutely the exception among them. Russia's population could be considered "cheating" among European countries; whether it was Spain or Britain, Germany, and France, none could be mentioned in the same breath as Russia in this aspect of population.

Spain's annual population growth of hundreds of thousands looked already quite good, but the data of population growth was only a fraction of Russia's.

Because Russia's population base was too huge, Russia's net population growth every year was as high as millions, and when it was more, it would even be as high as two or three million.

Spain's population growth of more than 23 million in thirty-five years looked already like a quite good achievement, but for Russia, perhaps it could be done in only fifteen years.

Portugal attached great importance to the first order Gao Da gave. They organized a large number of manpower to carry out a quite detailed investigation of the population of Portugal's four administrative regions, corrected some population errors recorded by the original Portuguese government, and finally obtained relatively accurate population data: 5.307 million people.

It was not that the Portuguese government did not want to be precise to the single digit after the decimal point; the main reason was that the statistics in this era all relied on paper data, and no matter how detailed the statistics were, there would ultimately be errors.

Being able to be precise to the thousand for the error was already quite not easy for the Portuguese government. Such population statistics could also be considered relatively accurate; the Spanish government, up to now, could only do the same, which was to be precise to the thousand range for the population quantity.

The Spanish government spent longer time counting the population than Portugal, but also reported the data to Gao Da within a month.

As of May 1906, Spain possessed a total population of 40.687 million. The total population of the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal was 45.994 million, ranking third in the entire Europe, only behind Russia and Germany, and slightly leading the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

When Gao Da got this population data, he was quite satisfied with the United Kingdom's population. More importantly, Spain's population proportion in the entire United Kingdom reached an exaggerated 88.46%, which could actually also prove Spain's control and influence over the United Kingdom.

After the formation of the United Kingdom was completed, the one with the biggest change was not Spain, but the more backward Portugal.

The Portuguese Parliament held multiple meetings during this period, and Gao Da also encouraged Portugal to imitate Spain to carry out multiple reforms, saving Portugal's fragile industry and economy.

Under Gao Da's pushing, the Portuguese Parliament officially started the discussion about reform, and finally determined to completely imitate Spain to carry out reform.

Speaking of which, the Portuguese public was still quite looking forward to this reform. As Spain's neighbor, the Portuguese public also knew how Spain became powerful step by step.

The original Spain was not much better compared to Portugal; it was precisely because of thorough reform that Spain curbed the trend of decline and allowed industry and economy to obtain a golden development period.

The first reform carried out by the Portuguese government was related to land.

Portugal, like the original Spain, had its domestic land held in the hands of nobles and the church. The good news was that after Portugal had a revolution to overthrow the monarchical system, the noble class was also overthrown along with the monarchical system.

Although the current Spain restored the monarchical system, Gao Da did not have much good feeling for the original Portuguese nobles.

Although these Portuguese nobles also contacted Gao Da multiple times, hoping to obtain Gao Da's support and reappear in the high-level of the Portuguese government.

But Gao Da clearly expressed refusal, stating that Portugal would experience long-term reform in the future, and would not interfere too much with the Portuguese government for the time being.

These Portuguese nobles originally thought that Gao Da just did not want to interfere in Portugal's internal affairs immediately, but they did not expect Gao Da to swing the butcher knife directly at them.

On May 7, 1906, the Portuguese government promulgated the "Land Reform Act," announcing the confiscation of all land of the church, and selling this land to all Portuguese at market price.

As long as one possessed Portuguese nationality, one could purchase this land. Of course, there was an upper limit for the land share each person could purchase; doing so was also to prevent those who truly needed land from being unable to purchase land.

Although the land of the old nobles was not mentioned in this land reform act, the Portuguese government uniformly defaulted that the land of the old nobles was also confiscated.

And the one that confiscated the land of the old nobles was not the current Portuguese government, but the Portuguese Republican government that had a revolution to overthrow the monarchical system at the beginning.

What? The Portuguese nobles said that this land originally belonged to them?

Sorry, the current Portuguese government does not know. The Portuguese government only understands that this land was seized from the Portuguese Republic; I took land that belonged to the Portuguese Republic, what does it have to do with you nobles of the monarchical system?

When the Portuguese nobles learned of such a reply from the Portuguese government, they immediately understood that something big was wrong.

Although Portugal restored the monarchical system now, Portugal did not intend to acknowledge their privileges. Even if it were not for Gao Da's unwillingness to offend the European noble class, Gao Da would not even want to acknowledge the Portuguese noble group.

After all, the Portuguese nobles had nothing to do with Gao Da; these nobles, after a long historical evolution, had already become a tumor of Portugal.

Just like the noble group in Spain, if it were not for multiple reforms making them bleed heavily, Gao Da would not even want to let them go.

Fortunately, these nobles were still quite sensible; after being cleaned up by Gao Da, they also wisely began to support Gao Da's various policies.

For these nobles who honestly pledged loyalty to him, Gao Da was still willing to accept them. After all, a king still had to have some nobles with ability and status under his hand; new-style nobles were good, but just by the point that they had no land in their hands, it was decided that new-style nobles did not have much influence among the European noble group.

Whether it was the Portuguese nobles or the church, they had no power to resist the land reform that was about to be carried out.

With the United Kingdom integrating the military forces of Spain and Portugal, the Spanish military also moved into Portugal in large numbers, constructing a complete Iberian defense system.