Chapter 102 On the Great Powers

Although it is a good thing that more and more people are actively participating in free literacy education, if the number of participants is too large, it will also cause considerable pressure on the government.

After all, whether it is the simple schools needed for literacy education or the teachers who impart knowledge, Prime Minister Primo can only try to make more space for literacy education and provide enough teachers for literacy education as much as possible.

Because literacy education only requires simple teaching of some commonly used Spanish words, some historical and cultural common sense, simple scientific knowledge, etc., anyone with a high school degree or above can actually serve as a literacy teacher.

Prime Minister Primo directly targeted college students who studied literature. Their knowledge reserves are absolutely sufficient, and teaching some relatively simple knowledge is naturally easy.

And these college students who have just entered college are also the easiest to deceive. Just under the banner of contributing to the country and providing them with a free dinner, you can attract many college students to voluntarily join the literacy education work.

Of course, the government cannot use these college students for nothing. As long as these college students are willing to be literacy teachers in their spare time, the government can provide them with a salary at the national average annual income level.

Although this amount of money is not too much, it is indeed a good way for many college students to create extra income.

Although many of the students who are admitted to universities are from wealthy families, it is not ruled out that there are talented students from poor families.

Through this method of creating extra income, they can also guarantee their tuition fees and stay in college to continue their studies.

Although Spain's literacy education is vigorous, Carlo knows that the most successful ones are only in the past few years.

In the past few years, there were a large number of illiterate children who would not generate much income if they stayed at home, so the people were naturally willing to send them to simple schools for free literacy education.

But after these younger children and teenagers have received literacy education, those adults who are also illiterate may not necessarily receive free literacy education.

They all have jobs and need to work continuously to earn income to support their families. In their view, although free literacy education does not cost money, it is also a waste of family labor.

For some families with relatively low incomes, the little less money they earn may cause the living standards of the entire family to plummet.

However, Carlo is already satisfied with such an effect.

According to the illiteracy rate of more than 70% in Spain, there are at least 11 million illiterate people in the country. After several years of literacy education, the illiterate population can be reduced to less than 8 million, which is less than half of the total population.

Although there is still a certain gap compared with other European countries, there is no doubt that there is still great progress compared with Spain a few years ago.

On January 25, 1871, Carlo was immersed in the success of literacy education for only a few days, and Kadir brought Carlo a better news, that is, the mission to the United States has been completed.

The current United States is not the powerful world policeman in the future, but just a weak country that has just ended the civil war not long ago.

This is not that Carlo looks down on the United States, but it is really that the foundation of the United States at this time is much worse than that of European countries.

Although the economic and industrial scale of the United States at this time is at the level of great powers, if other factors are not considered, the United States is unlikely to beat Spain in a real fight.

Spain's weakness is relative. Compared with super powers such as Britain, France and Germany, Spain is naturally weaker.

But compared with small and medium-sized European countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal, Spain still has considerable advantages.

In the whole of Europe, except for Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Austria, which can steadily suppress Spain, even Italy cannot do so.

If Spain had not used the wealth plundered from colonies for pleasure for a long time, I am afraid that Spain would still be a powerful colonial empire at this time.

Of course, if we only look at the gains from colonization and the scale of existing colonies, Spain is still the third largest colonial empire in the world, second only to the two superpowers of Britain and France in terms of colonization.

Although Spain's colonies in the Americas have become independent one after another, Spain's influence on these former colonies still exists.

At present, except for Britain, France, and Germany, which have all crushed Spain in terms of population, industry, economy, and military, there are few countries that Carlo can pay attention to.

The Tsarist Russian Empire seems to be powerful, but like the former Kingdom of Spain, it has been rotten to the bone.

Alexander II's reforms seem to have given Russia a shot in the arm, but in fact they only changed the surface and did not change the rotten foundation of Russia.

History has already proven the success of Alexander II's reforms. The Russian Empire actually only had less than 50 years left.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire looked powerful, but in fact, it had numerous internal problems. The transformation of the Austrian Empire into the Austro-Hungarian Empire actually showed the internal problems of the country. The Austrians could no longer stop the rise of Hungary. How long this dual monarchy could exist depended entirely on whether the Hungarians were willing to continue to stay under the rule of the empire.

The threat to Spain posed by the United States and the island countries, two major powers that will rise in the future, is actually limited. The reason why the United States is strong is not that it has huge industrial and economic strength, but that the United States sucked the blood of Europe crazily in the two world wars and absorbed a large number of European technical talents.

Without these advanced technologies and talents from Europe, even if the United States has a huge industry and economy, it is just a rising upstart in the eyes of Europeans.

Now that Carlo has come to an era when the United States has not yet risen, it is naturally impossible to let the United States rise as it did in history.

What's more, the United States is not as strong as it appears. Whether it is the racial conflict between blacks and whites, the contradictions between a large number of immigrants, or the differences between the South and the North of the United States, it is too fatal for the United States, a country whose history can be written in a book.

The American Civil War is actually a microcosm of the domestic contradictions in the United States at this time. The Civil War did not solve this contradiction, but only suppressed it by force.

Unless the United States can quickly rise to a world hegemonic country, so that all immigrants have a much stronger sense of identity with the United States than their opposition to the US government, it may be able to suppress the contradictions and conflicts between certain groups in the country.

But if the United States cannot quickly become one of the top three superpowers in the world, these domestic contradictions will continue to exist until they are resolved or erupt.

Such problems not only occur in the United States, but also in those countries that have become independent countries from colonies and continue to absorb immigrants.

If it is just immigrants from one country, it is okay. There are not so many contradictions. It is nothing more than the contradiction between the colony and the mother country.

But like the United States, which continuously absorbs immigrants from all over Europe, even including a large number of immigrants from Asia and Africans who come to the United States because of the slave trade, it is really a grand drama.

The mission of Kadir to go to the United States is naturally not to make friends with the US government, and Carlo has no intention of making friends with the US government.

Apart from anything else, the independence of the Cuban colony last year was definitely intervened by American forces.

If Spain had not quickly stabilized, and Carlo had sent Marshal Serrano, who had served as the Governor of Cuba, to lead the army to Cuba to quell the rebellion, I am afraid that this war of independence would have lasted for several years as in history, and would have dealt a heavy blow to the Spanish economy.

You know, Spain's annual fiscal revenue is only 300 million pesetas, and it cost 700 million pesetas to suppress the rebellion in Cuba in history.

This means that the Spanish government needs to invest most of its fiscal revenue into military expenditures every year in order to successfully suppress the Cuban independence uprising.

And what did the Spanish government get? A Cuban colony that is more eager for independence and whose economy has been destroyed by half.

That is, Spain now needs to keep a low profile and focus on development, otherwise Carlo would have taken the opportunity to find something for the US government to do.

The current Cuban colony still belongs to Spain, and Americans will definitely not give up their covetousness for the Cuban colony.

Fortunately, the United States did not have such strong industrial and economic strength at this time, and the Spanish government was not weak, so the US government did not have the courage to start a war against Spain.

In history, the United States also endured until 1898, and even expressed its request to the Spanish government in advance to spend $100 million to buy the Cuban colony.

Although it was nearly 30 years later, the US dollar at that time was not cheap at all, almost equivalent to 20 million pounds.

You know, 1898 was the era of pre-dreadnoughts, that is, the era of battleships. It only cost a little over a million pounds to build the most powerful battleship at that time.

The 20 million pounds that the Americans were willing to pay was enough for Spain to build a navy that was among the top eight in the world at that time. It was enough to show that the Americans were still somewhat unconfident in their own strength at that time, and they still attached some importance to Spain.

However, the performance of the Spanish government after the war shocked the United States, which was lacking confidence at that time, and also made the US government snatch away the Philippines, one of the few large colonies of Spain, while snatching the Cuban colony, making the Spanish colonial empire completely a thing of the past.

Since the Spanish-American War, Spain's colonies have only been left with a few relatively small areas in Africa. This also forced Spain to finally focus on Morocco and face the pressure from Britain and France head-on.

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