Munitions Empire-Chapter 908 - Boundaries of the Empire 831

Chapter 908: Boundaries of the Empire 831 Chapter 908: Boundaries of the Empire 831 After stepping out of the office, Tang Mo led Alice to another room. It was a study, one wall of which was filled with various finely bound books.

These books were a collection from all over the world, gathered by Tang Mo’s command. They represented the history of this world, a history starkly different from the one Tang Mo was familiar with.

This wonderful world had bred different lifeforms. In Tang Mo’s world, only humans were the favored race of the gods.

Yet here, humans, elves, dwarves, orcs… many races possessed their own civilizations, and even had their own glorious pasts.

Long, long ago, there was a vast and supremely wealthy Dwarf Empire on the Western Continent. This empire had powerful metallurgical capabilities, and the emperor of the Dwarf Empire could arm millions of soldiers in full armor with sharp weapons.

That splendid dwarven civilization even laid the foundation for the international monetary system, and to this day, the paper currency issued by the Great Tang Empire was pegged to the value system of the Dwarf Empire’s Gold Coins.

The Elf Race was the first to step out of the forests in an even earlier period. They established tribal communities and later joined forces with humans and orcs to defeat the then-dominant Dwarf Empire.

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In short, the books here recorded many stories and pieces of knowledge, each one invaluable. Tang Mo placed them in this room and would take time now and then to painstakingly read each one.

Learning brought joy and profound knowledge. Relying on this knowledge, Tang Mo gradually understood this world, which enabled him to better control his own empire.

Establishing a vast empire was not an easy task. The expansion and development of an empire were hindered by multifaceted reasons.

It wasn’t as simple as having a military general with extraordinary martial prowess leading a group of combat-ready soldiers to sweep the enemies aside and then claiming all the land within sight as the empire’s territory.

The vast territory brought endless troubles for an emperor: He had to maintain actual control over the expansive lands, but such control was extremely complex and troublesome.

Poor transportation capabilities were the first natural enemy of large territories. Events that happened in the Anxi Protectorate during the Tang Dynasty would take more than ten days to ensure a message was delivered back to Chang’an. Such efficiency rendered the entire Tang Dynasty like a giant with deadened peripheral nerves, very sluggish in reacting to border issues.

In a situation with no alternative, the rulers of the Tang Dynasty were forced to establish institutions to manage these territories, setting up various protectorates or simply appointing Military Governors to administer civilian and military affairs in these regions.

Distance made the central government of Tang Country in Chang’an lax in its control over the Military Governors. After the centralization power weakened in Tang Country, these border territories immediately became an unwieldy burden, severely threatening the security of the Central Plains.

This was not an isolated case. Even at the height of the British Empire’s power, the United Kingdom’s governance over parts of the United States and Canada was loose and impractical. In the end, as history has shown, North America did indeed break away from Britain, moving towards complete uncontrollable independence.

Another extreme were the Persian and Arabian Empires. They did, in a sense, establish empires with vast territories, but eventually they too disintegrated due to mismanagement, turning into several nations of the same origin that did not recognize each other.

Therefore, Huaxia had so many empires, yet none could extend their influence far enough: technology was an even more fatal constraint than limited vision.

For an emperor, waking up every day and worrying about his subordinates declaring themselves kings was a constant agony.

In ancient times, there was no advanced system to restrain the dispatched officials, nor was there a means of long-distance communication to keep real-time control of intelligence.

Then, those regional governors, entrusted with the central government’s large funds to raise private armies, would one day openly rebel because of unfair taxation, differential treatment, or simply their own greed, posing a serious threat to the empire—a clearly bad choice for an emperor.

After the collapse of the Tang Empire’s Military Governor system, Huaxia began to reflect during the Song Dynasty. The emperors, in order not to let the borderlands become an unstable factor that could split and rebel at any time, started to overcorrect by implementing a policy of strengthening the central government and weakening the branches.

The essence of this policy was to centralize control over the most easily loseable finance and military near the emperor.

The precondition for achieving this policy was that the Song Dynasty had almost completely given up the peripheral defensive lines, so the emperor and ministers could naturally concentrate the troops. Clearly, though, such a policy was also not a good choice.

The limitations of ancient communication methods and the loopholes in the system were contradictory for the emperor in balancing control over the military and territorial expansion. The problem only began to turn around with the advent of technologies like the railway and the telegraph.

Railroads allowed continental nations to enjoy the territorial dividends of vast expanses, and the telegraph closed the gap in information transfer across great distances.

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The popularization of these technologies was the pillar of the birth of a giant empire; without them, even an OP (overpowered) military unit like the Mongol calvary and ambitious leaders like Genghis Khan could only see their vast empire disintegrate within a few decades.

In fact, during the time of Kublai Khan, the arrogant Mongol border generals had already begun to scheme for themselves. The establishment of the Four Great Khanates was a historical inevitability given the technological constraints of the time.

In summer, dispatching troops from the Great Capital of Yuan to support the ally’s campaign in Europe would most likely not reach Moscow until the following spring… What effective control could there be in such a situation?

The good news was, Tang Country possessed the technology to effectively rule an empire; the bad news was he might need some time to expand his sphere of influence.

Those who have played strategic games know that when it comes to expansion, choosing targets within one’s own influence is a more relaxed approach.

For example, if Huaxia were prepared to start expanding, choosing the Korean Peninsula, Southeast Asia, or Japan as targets would clearly be more successful than aiming for Siberian Russia.

Tang Mo’s advantage was: he had advanced communication technology to control large swaths of an empire or even a transoceanic empire.

Similarly, he had trains and planes to effectively deploy troops and firmly grasp every inch of the empire’s territory, maintaining his rule over it.

What he lacked, though, was a population that recognized his rule, and the time for the neighboring people to accept it—this was his disadvantage and the problem he was striving to solve.