C411 The Unlucky Second Place (1/2)

Why did this damn meeting fall into silence again? Why does this damned eastern barbarian always attack me from weird angles? He actually said that he had seen through the direction of the development of technology in the future? Oh God, why would I allow a braggart to strut around in front of me?

Many years after the conclusion of this meeting, the Count de Beer had not understood why Xiao Letian would snatch the initiative to negotiate in front of him.

After a very long time, Count de Beer finally understood that perhaps the only reason he had failed in this intense battle was because he had never intended to win from the very beginning.

This was a very tragic answer, and what was even more tragic was that Xiao Letian might have already guessed the British person's trump card before this meeting.

Yes, Xiao Letian obviously knew the hidden trump card of the British people. With his two lives, he knew how proud the English people of the nineteenth century were. In the eyes of the British in this era, China was a completely outdated barbarian.

There was only one answer, the British were probing Xiao Letian, and this probing must be with a subconscious intent to cooperate.

The Count de Beer came to the hamburger with a secret order from the Queen. Currently, in the circle of top politicians in Britain, people were already beginning to pay attention to Xiao Letian.

The source of everything, was actually going back to the French. For Xiao Letian to be able to gain the attention of the British, he had to thank his enemy, Napoleon III.

Ever since Napoleon had failed at Waterloo in 1815, France's position as a powerful nation in the continental Europe had plummeted. In the following years, due to the fact that the economy of France had been growing steadily, the benefits of such economic growth had not fallen on the shoulders of the The French people, resulting in the accumulation of serious social contradictions within the country.

In the thirty-seven years before Napoleon's nephew ascended to the throne, the thirst of the French capitalists for the overseas colonies had reached its peak.

Many politicians and capitalists had already agreed that if France did not work hard to expand its colonization, if France did not have a vast source of raw materials and a vast commodity dumping market, there was no hope for the destiny of the France.

To put it in a thousand words, France could no longer exploit its citizens, and France had to exploit the weaker ones. Only by doing so could the social conflicts within the country be resolved.

On the surface, Napoleon III's match seemed like a comeback, but the truth was, there was a big story behind it.

Napoleon III, who lived up to everyone's expectations, declared war on the Russian in March 1854 and joined forces with Britain, the Austria and Turkey to fight with the Russia.

This was the Crimean War, the first great overseas war that Napoleon had fought after he ascended the throne.

In a year, the French soldiers had finally won, with the price of a hundred thousand lives, and this victory was only the prelude. Under the leadership of Napoleon III, the French started their counterattack, with a very clear goal: to become the second strongest person in the world, after Britain.

Then came the Italian War of 1859. Under Napoleon III's meticulous plan of killing two birds with one stone, France succeeded in weakening the Austria's national power, and at the same time, managed to restrain the Italian unification process, gaining both diplomatic and military benefits.

In 1857, the British and French combined forces provoked the Second Opium War, and in 1858, they signed the Treaty of Tianjin between China and France, the Treaty of Beijing between China and France, and then in 1860, they captured the Beijing and burned it down.

In 1859, the French army captured the Vietnamese Saigon and signed the Treaty of the Saigon. From that moment on, Vietnam became a colony of France.

There was also Africa, of course, in which the French had a strong interest, with the establishment of the Bank of Senegal in 1854, the formal annexation of Senegal, the conquest of Algeria in 1857, and the acquisition of the right of exploitation by the Suez Canal in 1854. By the time the canal was completed in 1869, France had already controlled half of the shares of the canal, and not even the British could match him.

If Xiao Letian's memories were not messed up, later on, Madagascar, Somalia, Mauritania, Sudan and other African countries would all become colonies of France.

By 1870, France had established a colony with an area of more than 900,000 square kilometers and a population of more than 6.5 million people, making it the second-largest colony in the world.

In fact, there were no eternal friends in the rivalry between countries, only eternal interests, although for the time being it seemed that Britain was in a state of honeymoon, and even now the two countries were working together against Mexico, and everything looked so good.