New Han Dynasty 1834

On the 21st day of the third month of the second year of the Tai'an reign of the Great Han Dynasty, which corresponds to April 29, 1834 in the Gregorian calendar, at 7:00 AM.

Shuntian Prefecture, the former capital of the Ming and Qing dynasties, has now become the newly established Jingzhao County of the Han Dynasty. The Forbidden City and Imperial City, where the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties once resided, have been renovated and renamed Weiyang Palace.

After the Yangxin Hall of Emperor Yongzheng was completely demolished and rebuilt as the West Palace, it became the residence of the newly established emperor of the Han Dynasty.

At this moment, a young man of seventeen or eighteen years old, wearing a dragon robe embroidered with a five-clawed dragon pattern, stood in the middle of the main hall of the West Palace.

He gazed expressionlessly at the palace wall opposite the courtyard, the chaotic information in his mind completely settling down:

"So... it was during the late Qianlong period to the early Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty that the White Lotus Rebellion broke out in Sichuan, Hubei and other places."

"My grandfather in this life... Liu Desheng took advantage of the situation in Shangqiu, Henan to raise the flag and rebel."

"In the 2001st year after Liu Bang ascended the throne, which is 1800 in the Gregorian calendar, he proclaimed himself emperor in Dingtao, Shandong, where he had been enthroned."

"The country was named Han, and the reign title was Xing Han."

"After more than twenty years of fighting, they successfully overthrew the Qing Dynasty, conquered the frontier, and established a brand new Han Dynasty."

"My grandfather naturally became the founding emperor of this new Han dynasty."

"Emperor Taizu passed away in the thirty-third year of Xinghan, and Crown Prince Liu Jin'an, who was my father, succeeded to the throne. However, my father passed away shortly after the second New Year following his ascension to the throne."

"I, Liu Yulong, was appointed Crown Prince by my father just one year ago, and at the age of eighteen, I became the third emperor of the new Han Dynasty."

After Liu Yulong finished handling his father's funeral arrangements, he also took over the main personnel power in the palace, the court, and the imperial guards in an orderly manner. Then he finally had time to look through the will left by his grandfather.

As a result, the contents of the suicide note entered Liu Yulong's mind like a batch of depth charges falling into a pond.

Countless complex and chaotic memories and information exploded from the deepest part of Liu Yulong's mind.

The memories of past and present lives were mixed together, causing a huge mental shock.

Liu Yulong was in a daze for several days, and it wasn't until today that he finally digested all the information.

"My grandfather was probably a time traveler as well, and I solved the mystery of my birth because of his will."

After regaining consciousness, Liu Yulong couldn't help pacing back and forth in the palace, contemplating the present and the future:

"Now that I am the emperor, I should prepare for the Opium War..."

Although the Qing Dynasty has already collapsed, the new Han Dynasty now stands in China, and Liu Yulong is not the Daoguang Emperor of the Qing Dynasty.

However, the relationship between the Han Dynasty and Britain was not determined by who became emperor, but by the realities of the two countries.

It was now the mid-19th century, and the Industrial Revolution had begun in Europe and the United States.

In particular, Britain, which was the first to complete the Industrial Revolution, will be the "world hegemon" for the next few decades and will continue to do evil around the world. The key is that they have now set their sights on the East.

The Han Chinese were the largest potential market the British could find.

British factory owners now believe that if the hems of the robes worn by the 400 million people of the Han Dynasty were all lengthened by one inch, then all textile factories in Britain would have no shortage of orders for the next ten years.

British capitalists wanted to open up the Han Chinese market and dump their cheap industrial goods.

An even more ambitious idea was to gradually turn the Han Dynasty into a British colony, just like India had done.

However, in the early stages of the industrial era, industrial products did not have a significant advantage over handicraft products.

If they were to transport the sparsely populated Britain to the manpower-rich Han Chinese, they would have no advantage whatsoever.

The main civilian product of the First Industrial Revolution was cotton cloth, but British machine-woven cotton cloth could not compete with the handmade cotton cloth of the Han Dynasty.

In other words, British goods could not be sold in the Han market.

Meanwhile, the highly profitable luxury goods produced by the Han Dynasty, such as tea, silk, and porcelain, continued to be sold to Britain.

The trade deficit between the two countries was enormous, which was unacceptable to Britain, a nation built on industry and commerce.

Britain has always been inclined to use force to break this status quo and compel the Han to accept British goods.

Meanwhile, the Han Dynasty still used silver as its currency, while neither the British mainland nor its colonies had large silver mines.

The British needed to earn silver from Europe and India first, and then use that silver to buy luxury goods from the Han Dynasty.

This further amplified British dissatisfaction with the current state of trade with China.

Britain was eager to find a way to reverse this irreversible trade relationship and recoup the silver it had spent in the Han Dynasty.

The British eventually found opium, and selling it to the Han Chinese became the only profitable business for them.

However, the emperor of the Great Han Dynasty would not allow the British to freely sell opium in the Great Han Dynasty, nor would he allow British goods to freely flood the Chinese market.

The conflict between the Han Dynasty and Britain will only deepen, and it is only a matter of time before it breaks out into conflict.

Against this backdrop, in the foreseeable future decades, namely the second half of the nineteenth century, Western European countries and the United States will successively complete their industrial revolutions.

They will use the power of industry to unleash a colonial wave that will carve up the world, and no country will be spared.

Before the Industrial Revolution, colonists during the Age of Exploration, while able to control some overseas lands, found it difficult to conquer more civilized traditional countries and to effectively control more remote areas.

Colonizers could only obtain authorization by cooperating with local rulers or by engaging in trade to gain profits.

Hawaii, an island nation in the ocean, has been able to maintain relative independence for a long time.

Some local chiefs even introduced Western systems and weapons, completing the unification of the entire archipelago and establishing their own kingdoms.

African tribal chiefs were also able to maintain their autonomy and profit from trading with European slave traders.

Europeans still maintain a basic level of respect for people from other parts of the world, especially those from major traditional civilizations, and have not regarded them as lower species closer to animals.

This state of affairs lasted for two hundred years.

However, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the fruits of the Industrial Revolution gradually became apparent.

Whether it was Arab merchants active in the desert, Asian nomads and African tribes in the deep interior, or ethnic groups on the most remote islands in the Pacific, most traditional countries in the world have gradually lost their independent status.

Even a highly unified traditional feudal country like the Qing Dynasty fell into a semi-colonial state.

Europeans have finally extended their reach to every corner of the world.

No country can remain unaffected.

Other races were eventually relegated to a level akin to animals in the eyes of Europeans.

The newly established Han Dynasty, in order to stand firm in this era, resist the harassment of Britain and other European and American countries, catch the last train of the colonial era and get a share of the spoils, transforming itself from a colonized object into a member of the colonizers, had to begin full-scale industrialization as soon as possible to obtain the productivity and fighting power provided by industry.

It is now 1834, which is not early; the major achievements of the First Industrial Revolution have already matured.

In Britain, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, the first railway had been built and in operation for nine years; in France, the first railway had been in operation for eight years; and in the United States, the first railway had officially opened four years ago.

Steam-powered sailing ships have been around for over twenty years.

However, this point in time was not too late. The converter steelmaking method, which enabled the modern steel industry, had not yet been invented, and the traditional steel smelting industry could not provide enough wrought iron and steel, so railways on land could not be built on a large scale.

Some traditional wooden sailing warships on the ocean were equipped with steam engines to drive paddle wheels as an auxiliary power source for navigation, but steam-powered sailing ships were not yet the main force in the fleet, and ironclad warships had not yet been invented.

Picric acid has been used as a dye for over sixty years, but no one has yet discovered that it is actually an excellent explosive.

The base-expanding bullet, which could be used with rifled guns and was historically known as the Minié bullet, had not yet been invented, so rifled guns were not yet widely used in the military.

If the Han Dynasty could produce its own steam engines and "create" the converter steelmaking method ahead of time, it could quickly catch up with Europe and the United States in terms of industrialization.

If we can quickly adopt picric acid, a modern chemical explosive, and combine it with base-expanding bullets to popularize rifled guns, we can be ahead of all other countries in terms of military equipment.

In addition to the Han Dynasty's population advantage, the next few decades are unlikely to be the "Victorian era".