Greece’s Roman Road

As long as you open the geographic map, you will find that although the territory of the Ottoman Empire is vast, there are not many areas suitable for growing food.

For example, the core territory of the Ottoman Empire, Asia Minor, also has a nickname of "Anatolian Plateau".

When you see the word plateau, you will understand that this is an area with continuous hills. It is okay to engage in farming and animal husbandry, and shepherding sheep and horses, but farming and animal husbandry cannot support a large number of people.

In the whole of Asia Minor, only a small piece of land in the western coastal plain, that is, the Smyrna region, is suitable for agricultural production.

As for the Arabian Peninsula, the vast khaki desert is the main tone of the Arabian Peninsula, so don't expect to engage in agriculture here.

Therefore, after the Ottoman Empire lost the essence of Europe, the material basis for maintaining a world empire no longer exists.

As for the importance of agricultural production to an empire, it has been counted among the world's great powers. Except for the United Kingdom, which is a little special, the other France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia are all big grain-producing countries.

Everyone was silent for a while, thinking about Constantine's analysis.

"Okay, let's talk about other things. This time I invite everyone to come here because I want to discuss with you and promote the application of alternating current in Greece." Constantine changed the topic.

Even if the Ottoman Empire is in decline, the camels are bigger than horses, and it is not something that Greece can make up for now.

"Your Excellency the Duke, let's talk about your views on the alternating current system. After all, we don't know much about such cutting-edge technology," Cantoriotis said.

This businessman from Alexandria, Egypt, was introduced by Prime Minister Trikupis.

Cantoriotis naturally understood why he was invited.

Constantine did not shirk, stood up and said to the crowd; "As you all know, due to the lack of high-quality coal in Greece, the introduction of steam engines in Greece was severely restricted."

In the first wave of the Industrial Revolution led by the United Kingdom, to measure the level of industrial capacity of a country, count the number of coal production and steam engines, and there is a rough estimate.

However, Greece lacks high-quality hard coal. Even if a steam engine is introduced, it has to face the embarrassing situation of no coal available.

"And the alternating current technology developed by Mr. Tesla can help Greece get rid of this fatal shortcoming"

"As we all know, although there is no hard coal in Greece, the reserves of lignite are quite abundant. After combustion to generate electricity, there will be no difference in the quality of electricity due to the use of different coals to generate electricity, unlike coal, which is divided into different grades according to quality." Constantine said cheerfully.

Greece's coal production is about 5 billion tons, which is enough.

"In other words, Greece's shortcoming of lack of energy has disappeared?" Cantoriotis asked hurriedly.

"That's understandable," Constantine responded.

"So, my idea is to build a large-scale alternating current power station in Greece, based on this, to develop the Greek industry"

"For example, in the cotton textile industry, Greece itself has a certain amount of cotton production. Although the number is not large, Greece is close to Asia Minor and Egypt, both of which are important raw cotton producing areas, and Greece's own cotton cloth market also needs to be imported at present" Jun Shi Tantin talked eloquently.

"We can completely import substitution"

"Greece has advantages in developing cotton textile industry"

Hearing Constantine's imagination, Alexandros was not interested in the cotton textile industry, but thought of olives.

In addition to exporting a large number of raisins, Greece itself also has olives, which are also a specialty of Greece.

It’s just that due to the limited industrial capacity of Greece itself, although the Greek family workshops can use manual or animal power to press olive oil, it is inefficient and expensive, and a large number of olives are exported.

Since electricity can be used to spin cotton, it can also be used to extract olive oil.

Thinking of the large olive groves in the relatively barren mountainous areas of the family, if these olives can be processed and exported abroad, the annual income will be considerable, and I can't help but be excited.

Unlike his idea, it was Cantoriotis, a Greek from Alexandria, who dominated the local raw cotton trade. After the annual cotton harvest, most of the cotton was bought by the Greeks and sold to the British and French merchants who came to trade. .

Said to be the leader, but in fact it is a second-order dealer, which saves the purchaser and cotton growers personally dealing with such a process and earns hard money.

As the compradors of European businessmen, they hand over raw cotton to the buyers, and then these buyers transport the cotton back to Europe, weave it into cloth, and after printing and dyeing, they turn around and hand over the finished cotton cloth to these second-tier dealers for sale. to the Egyptians.

The handicraft workshops of the Egyptians are not the opponents of European factories at all. Due to the dumping of cheap European cotton cloth, they have gone bankrupt one after another. The Egyptians can only buy European cotton cloth.

There is a big difference between the price of raw cotton and the price of finished cotton.

The two sides have dealt more with each other, and Cantoriotis imagined more than once that if there was a textile factory, why would these Europeans make this money.

The price of cotton, which was originally cheap, has doubled after being spun into cloth. For the compradors who handled it in person~www.novelmt.com~ is too exciting.

After they buy raw cotton, they directly process it into cotton cloth. Even if they need to buy dyes, the profit they earn is much stronger than just selling raw cotton.

To develop upstream of the cotton industry is naturally attractive to those who dominate the import and export of raw cotton in Egypt.

If it can be successful, the proper Cotton Trust.

Therefore, this time Trikupis revealed to him a little that Constantine invited technicians to develop alternating current. After obtaining the breakthrough information, Cantoriotis immediately went to hire a professional scholar and consulted him about electricity. After learning the use of electricity, he couldn't wait to come to the banquet.

"Therefore, we all make concerted efforts. As long as the cotton mill is established, I personally think it is very promising."

In order to stimulate everyone, Constantine struck while the iron was hot and continued to paint a beautiful blueprint for everyone.

"Besides, everyone also knows that the Congo River Basin is under my control now. There are about 20 million people in the Congo region. If every Congolese buys a piece of clothing, how much cotton does it need?"

"Up to now, this huge market has been completely divided up by several major industrial countries in Europe. If Greek cotton can grab one-tenth of the market, it will be quite impressive."

"Did you know? Congolese people will snap up the old and used goods that were accumulated in warehouses in Europe before."

In fact, what Constantine said was half-truth.

The 20 million Congolese people do have a huge consumer market, but the Congo is located near the equator, and the temperature hovers between 25 and 40 degrees all year round, even if you are naked.

The clothes they made of leaves, to block the vital parts, were enough to deal with it.

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