Chapter 153 The economic crisis is coming

What surprised Carlo was that after the promulgation of such a tough law, the impact on Catalonia and the Basque region was not that great.

But it is easy to understand. After all, the troublemakers in these two regions who once firmly demanded regional autonomy and even national independence have long disappeared in the history of Spain along with the Carlos faction.

It is impossible to say that there are no nationalists in these two regions, but it is basically unlikely that these people dare to stand up and firmly oppose the laws promulgated by the government, or even incite marches and rebellions.

Although they support regional autonomy and national independence, it does not mean that they are fools. They can still see the current situation in Spain clearly, and even Prime Minister Primo is waiting for them to take the initiative to jump out so that they can catch them all in one fell swoop.

Although there are no large-scale riots, there are still some small-scale marches.

However, these small-scale chaos are completely painless to the Spanish government, and they can even be solved by using the public security department.

In order to ensure the stability of Catalonia and the Basque region, Prime Minister Primo specifically ordered the public security department to dispatch some police officers from other regions to Catalonia and the Basque region to maintain order, and urged the governments of the two regions to implement the requirements of the newly promulgated bill as soon as possible.

For those who dare not stand up to oppose the laws promulgated by the government and are unwilling to accept the laws promulgated by the government, Prime Minister Primo also gave them a new choice, that is, to immigrate abroad.

Prime Minister Primo hates these people who advocate nationalism and regional autonomy. Because they will have a great impact on the existing stability of Spain, and will also make Catalonia and the Basque region a permanent pain for Spain.

It is precisely because of this understanding that Prime Minister Primo, as a Catalan, still firmly chose to fully unify the nation, religion and language.

If the nationalism problem in the two regions of Spain can be solved in a more peaceful way, it would naturally be better.

For people in Catalonia and the Basque region who are unwilling to accept Spain's new policy, the Spanish government encourages them to immigrate to other places, and can even actively organize immigration teams to provide assistance to some people who want to immigrate but have no travel expenses.

On this basis, if there are still radical democrats in Spain who have different opinions on this law, don't blame Prime Minister Primo for being cold-blooded and ruthless.

Encouraging them to immigrate is to give them the last chance, either to choose to immigrate to escape Spanish laws, or to stay in Spain and obey the laws promulgated by Spain, but there is no other choice for them to choose.

In fact, to put it bluntly, this law does not have much impact on most Spanish civilians. Whether it is Catalans or Basques, they all believe in Christianity, which is also the religion officially allowed by Spain.

The only conflict is the large-scale popularization of Spanish and the concept of the Spanish nation, but these are not unacceptable to civilians.

Although this bill can effectively promote national integration in Spain and more effectively solve the national independence issues of Catalonia and the Basques.

But doing so is not without disadvantages. As long as you immigrate to Spain, you must naturally abide by the laws promulgated by Spain.

This is not so friendly to some immigrants. After all, it is not so easy to make them use Spanish quickly and admit that they are Spanish.

For this reason, Carlo and Prime Minister Primo held many discussions and finally decided to give the task of spreading Spanish to Pedro, who has been promoted to the Spanish Archbishop, and let him be responsible for teaching Spanish to foreign immigrants.

In fact, such a task is not unfamiliar to the Spanish Church, because the Spanish Church previously controlled a large number of church schools and controlled Spanish education.

However, the church’s mission is not just to spread Spanish, but also to spread religion.

In fact, for Carlo and Prime Minister Primo, whether it is Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or Protestantism is not a big deal.

As long as you believe in a religion under the Christian system and recognize God, it’s fine. The mission of preaching is obviously not aimed at European immigrants, but more at the indigenous and mixed-race residents in Spanish colonies.

Considering Spain’s future strategic plan, when Carlo met with Spanish Archbishop Pedro, he specifically asked the Spanish Church to give priority to preaching to Moroccans in the southern Moroccan colony, and said that certain tough measures could be used to speed up the progress of preaching.

Although Christianity is now widely believed in Europe, in fact, hundreds of years ago, there were still large areas of land that believed in various religions derived from the local area.

The reason why Catholicism and Orthodoxy can spread throughout Europe is not due to the gentle preaching of those missionaries, but due to the cruel and high-pressure preaching of the Catholic Church and various governments.

Among them, the most famous is the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, which laid an extremely important role in the widespread spread of Christianity in Europe.

The Inquisition of this period was not a court in the true sense, but it had great power and could unscrupulously impose various punishments on pagans (including but not limited to confiscation of all property, flogging, imprisonment, life imprisonment, etc.).

If the heretics refused to repent, the Inquisition still had the power to sentence them to death, and it was a relatively cruel method, the most important of which was burning at the stake.

Although it is impossible for the Spanish government to openly set up an institution like the Inquisition to eliminate heretics in the colonies, it is still possible to use similar methods.

Anyway, the rule of the colonies by various countries during this period was not very glorious. Waiting until there are certain results in the future to make more civilized packaging will not have much impact on Spain.

Facts have proved that it is a better way to unify the nation, religion and language of Spain by strong legal means at present.

Only two and a half months after the promulgation of the bill, the language chaos in Catalonia and the Basque region was effectively rectified.

As time came to May 1873, on the streets of Barcelona and Bilbao, only signs and words written in Spanish could be seen, and the local language and words had disappeared.

For such changes, there must be some radical nationalists who expressed their dissatisfaction.

But these few people are obviously not worth mentioning in the face of Spain's national interests, and they were easily suppressed by the police.

Even the two infantry divisions that had been prepared in advance were useless. Most people did not have too radical opposition to this bill. The more radical ones also fell under the guns of the police under the strong suppression of the government.

Time was frozen on May 9, 1873, and the world crisis finally broke out.

The perspective came to Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is one of the most prosperous cities in Europe and was once a world-famous international metropolis.

But since the arrival of May 9, the situation in Vienna has fallen into extreme chaos. The chaos first broke out from the Vienna Stock Exchange, and then directly affected the entire city.

How terrible is the economic crisis? In just 24 hours, the total value of all companies on the Vienna Stock Exchange depreciated by hundreds of millions of guilders (Austro-Hungarian Rhine guilders, also called forints, 1 pound ≈ 11.7 Rhine guilders), causing many companies that were already worth more than one million to return to the pre-liberation period overnight.

According to the current more official exchange rate, the value of one million Rhine guilders is equivalent to 85,470 pounds, 2.223 million pesetas.

No matter which country, companies with a value of more than 80,000 pounds are large companies. In this rapidly approaching economic crisis, a large number of companies in Vienna with a value of more than or close to 80,000 pounds are on the verge of bankruptcy, which is enough to prove the severity of the economic crisis.

Slightly larger companies are fine, and the situation is only on the verge of bankruptcy. Those small and medium-sized companies with low value quickly went bankrupt in the economic crisis.

The day before, these companies were even thriving, but the next day they faced a serious bankruptcy crisis and had to announce the bankruptcy of factories and companies.

Such a different situation after one day also caused a large number of people in Vienna to panic. People rushed to exchange their money from the bank, fearing that their money would also go away with the airport economic crisis.

But this serious bank run crisis has increased the pressure faced by banks. What's more terrible is that banks during this period are often not regulated by the government, and there are more private small and medium-sized banks.

It is simply unbearable for a bank of this size to face a run crisis, so on the second day of the economic crisis, the residents of Vienna were horrified to find that a situation worse than corporate bankruptcy was that a large number of banks also began to declare bankruptcy.

Corporate bankruptcy means that a large number of Viennese people have lost their jobs, while bank bankruptcy means that Viennese people have lost even their few savings.     Unfortunately, due to the suddenness of the economic crisis and the huge impact it caused, most Viennese people have both.

In other words, more than half of the citizens of Vienna lost their jobs and their savings in two days and became penniless.

Although they still have houses, houses in this era are not worth much. Large cities were slowly formed during this period of time. The population of Vienna was only close to one million, and housing prices naturally did not reach a higher level.

What's more, now that the economic crisis has arrived, no one can use their own money to buy a house, no matter how high the housing prices are.

This also leads to a fatal problem for a large number of Viennese people. They will have no source of income, and even the food, clothing and daily necessities of normal life have become a huge problem.

Although the economic crisis first started in the Vienna Stock Exchange, it was impossible for other European countries to escape the crisis.

In less than a week, the economic crisis quickly swept the stock exchanges of other countries, led by London and Paris, and even the two small and medium-sized stock exchanges in Spain were affected to a certain extent.

"Carlo, is this the impact of the economic crisis?" Queen Sophie of Spain sat on the stool uncomfortably, holding a newspaper recently published by a local newspaper in Vienna.

Although she married far away in Spain, Queen Sophie was still very concerned about the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In order to let his queen know about the big and small things happening in the Austro-Hungarian Empire every day, Carlo asked people to collect various news and newspapers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire every day and transport them to Spain at the fastest speed.

For Carlo, whose assets have already exceeded 100 million, this little expense is nothing, not as important as making his queen Sophie smile.

It is precisely because Sophie pays attention to the major events in the Austro-Hungarian Empire almost every day that the economic crisis that broke out in Vienna not long ago naturally cannot be hidden from her ears.

"This is the law of capital development, and it is inevitable, Sophie." Carlo could only nod and explain to Sophie: "However, considering the economic size of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, although this economic crisis is serious, the impact will not be too bad.

If the government can respond in time, the impact on the Austrians should be limited to an acceptable range."

"Spain should not be affected, right? Do we need to prepare in advance?" Hearing that the economic crisis would not have too serious an impact on the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Queen Sophie was relieved and then began to care about Spain's response to this economic crisis.

"Don't worry, the impact of this economic crisis on Spain is minimal. Spain's economy and industry are not large, and they will not cause an economic crisis.

Even if they are affected by the economic crisis, it is within an acceptable range and there is no need to worry at all." Carlo said with a smile.

The economic crisis did not have much impact on Spain, not to mention that the Spanish government and the royal family had been preparing for this economic crisis for a long time.

The dozens of tons of gold reserves contributed by the Padmanabhaswamy Temple alone can ensure that Spain will not be greatly affected by this economic crisis.

What's more, Spain's economic and industrial development is still quite healthy. A considerable part of the reason why Vienna has suffered such a serious impact is due to the lack of management of the stock exchange and control of the banking industry.

Those banks and construction companies that were opened purely for speculation are the most vulnerable in this economic crisis.

It is precisely because these castles in the air companies went bankrupt quickly that the impact of the economic crisis quickly swept across Vienna.

If there were fewer of these shell companies, the impact on Vienna would not be so serious. It was precisely because of the bankruptcy of a large number of companies that the panic in the hearts of the people of Vienna was aggravated, and uncontrollable bank runs occurred, which eventually led to the bankruptcy of banks that could have maintained order.

This problem not only appeared in this era, but also in later generations.

The financial industry is quite profitable, but it is also quite fragile. Bankruptcy or not can even be affected by a rumor. As long as there are enough people who believe in the bank's bankruptcy and cause a bank run crisis, the bank is really likely to go bankrupt.

On the other hand, even if the bank faces capital chain problems, as long as there is no bank run crisis, it will not face bankruptcy.

There are only two ways to prevent this kind of bank run crisis that is hard to prevent. One is that the government plays a certain regulatory role on the bank to ensure that the bank's funds are not overused and always retain a part of the funds for accidents.

It is precisely because of the previous economic prosperity that a large number of banks use most of their funds for speculation to make profits.

When the economic crisis broke out, they simply could not get funds from other places for turnover. What else can a bank without money do except bankruptcy?

In fact, just as Carlo said, as long as the Austro-Hungarian government responded in time, the impact of this so-called economic crisis was not that serious.

At least it was not a devastating blow to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Those countries with the fastest industrial expansion were the most affected.

Although the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a good industry and economy, its development speed in the past decade was not even among the top five in the world.

In recent years, the fastest-growing countries were the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany. The development speed of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was even behind the French, which was why the Austro-Hungarian Empire was not affected too seriously.

Sure enough, as Carlo expected. The impact of the economic crisis was indeed serious for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but it was only a week before the outbreak of the economic crisis.

After those banks and construction companies that only speculated to make profits went bankrupt, most of the remaining ones were factories and enterprises that focused on industry.

Although these factories and enterprises also faced a more serious bankruptcy crisis, they at least had some foundation and could persist longer.

They also waited for the assistance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On the second day of the economic crisis, the Austro-Hungarian government announced that it would use 300 million Rhine guilders to rescue the market, and give priority to helping some important and large factories and enterprises.

As long as these large factories and enterprises can survive, all walks of life that have suffered losses due to the economic crisis will always have a chance to revive.

But if these large factories and enterprises go bankrupt in the economic crisis, it will not be so easy to rebuild in the future.

After the economic crisis in Vienna was temporarily stabilized, Germany and France became the next to suffer.

Among them, Germany is more serious, after all, Germany's development speed in recent years has been one of the fastest in Europe.

After receiving 5 billion francs of friendly assistance from France, Germany's industrial expansion speed and railway construction speed are so fast.

5 billion francs is 200 million pounds, which is an extremely large amount of money for the British Empire. It is precisely with this money that the Germans quickly led the German Empire to industrialization.

In addition, due to the integration of the resources and industry of the entire German region, the German Empire has become an industrial power and economic power in Europe.

However, such an identity will not bring any bonus in the economic crisis. Instead, it will cause Germany to suffer a more serious economic crisis due to the recent rapid expansion of the economy and industry.

About ten days after the outbreak of the economic crisis in Vienna, the impact of the economic crisis has spread to the Berlin Stock Exchange.

On the day of the impact, many companies faced serious bankruptcy crises. Fortunately, the German government had been prepared for more than ten days and announced a plan to save the stock exchange market on the day Germany was affected.

In addition, Germany's large-scale construction has only been started for a few years, and it has not yet reached the situation where production far exceeds demand like the United States.

Under the effective control of the German government, the impact of the economic crisis on Germany is not too serious.

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