Chapter 831: 831 The borders of the empire
Chapter 831 831 The Boundaries of the Empire
After coming out of the office, Tang Mo took Alice to another room. This is a study room, with one wall filled with all kinds of hardcover books.
These books are all kinds of books collected by Tang Mo from all over the world. These books represent the history of this world, a history that is very different from the history Tang Mo is familiar with.
The wonderful world gave birth to different lives. In Tang Mo's world, only humans are the group favored by the gods.
But here, humans, elves, dwarves, orcs...many races have their own civilizations and even have their own glorious pasts.
A long time ago, there was a huge, super-rich dwarf empire on the Western Continent. This empire had strong metallurgical capabilities. The emperor of the dwarf empire could arm millions of troops with full armor and sharp weapons.
That glorious dwarf civilization even established the international monetary system. Even today, the banknotes issued by the Tang Empire are anchored with reference to the gold coin system of the dwarf empire.
The elves were the first to come out of the forest in an earlier period. They established tribal groups and later joined forces with humans and orcs to defeat the rising dwarf empire.
In short, the books here record many stories and knowledge, and each one is extremely precious. Tang Mo placed them in this room, and from time to time would take out one and read it carefully.
Learning makes people happy and knowledgeable. Relying on this knowledge, Tang Mo gradually understood the world, allowing him to better control his empire.
It is not easy to build a huge empire. There are many reasons that limit the expansion and development of an empire.
It does not mean that a general with extraordinary force and a group of soldiers who are good at conquering and fighting can sweep away the enemy and then take over everything as far as the eye can see.
A vast territory would bring endless troubles to the emperor: he had to maintain actual control over a vast territory, but this control was very complicated and troublesome.
Backward transportation capabilities are the first natural enemy of a huge territory. What happened in the Tang Dynasty's Anxi Protectorate took more than ten days to be transmitted back to Chang'an. Such efficiency would make the entire Tang Dynasty like a giant with peripheral nerve necrosis, and its response to border issues would be very lagging.
As a last resort, the rulers of the Tang Dynasty could only set up institutions in charge of these territories, set up various protective offices, or simply appoint Jiedushi to manage the civil affairs and military in these areas.
Distance made the central government of the Tang State in Chang'an very loose in its management of Jiedushi. After the centralization of the Tang State declined, such frontier fortresses immediately became a huge burden and seriously threatened the security of the Central Plains region.
This is not an isolated case. Even at the peak of the Empire, the British rule over parts of the United States and Canada was loose and unrealistic. In the end, facts also proved that North America would indeed break away from the United Kingdom and move towards completely uncontrollable independence.
At the other extreme are the Persian and Arab empires. In a sense, they did establish a vast empire, but in the end they fell apart due to their inability to manage and became several countries that share the same origin but do not recognize each other. .
Therefore, China has so many empires, but it has never been able to expand its influence to far enough areas: excluding the limitations of vision, technical constraints are actually more fatal. As an emperor, it must be very painful for him to wake up every day and worry about the men he sends out to break the earth and seal the king.
In ancient times, there was no advanced system to restrict the officials dispatched, and there were no long-distance communication methods to control intelligence information in real time.
Then, let the feudal officials who are far away use the huge sums of money allocated by the central government to support private armies. One day, they openly rebel because of unfair taxes, differences in treatment, or simply because of personal greed. Bringing a serious threat to the empire, this is obviously not a good choice for an emperor.
After experiencing the collapse of the Jieduzhi system in the Tang Empire, China began to reflect in the Song Dynasty. In order to prevent the border from becoming an unstable factor that could be divided and rebelled at any time, the emperor began to overcorrect and implement the policy of strong branches and weak branches.
The fundamental of this policy is to gather around the emperor the finances and military that are most likely to get out of control in order to control them.
The prerequisite for realizing this policy is that the Song Dynasty lost almost all the peripheral defense lines it could lose, so the emperor and ministers could naturally concentrate their troops. But obviously, such a policy is indeed not a good choice.
The limitations of ancient communication methods and the loopholes in the system made the emperor conflicted between controlling the army and expanding his territory. This problem only changed after the emergence of technologies such as trains and telegraphs.
Railways allowed continental countries to enjoy the territorial dividends brought by their vast territory, and telegraphs made long distances no longer a gap in information transmission.
The popularization of these technologies is the pillar for the birth of a giant empire. Without these technologies, even if there are BUG units like the Mongolian cavalry and ambitions like Genghis Khan, a huge empire can only be established within a few decades. Falling apart.
In fact, during the time of Kublai Khan, the huge and arrogant Mongolian generals had already begun to make their own plans. The four great khanates were established one after another, which was a historical necessity from the technical point of view at the time.
In the summer, a force was sent from Dadu in the Yuan Dynasty to support the friendly forces conquering Europe. It will probably be next spring before they reach Moscow... How can we talk about effective control?
The good news is that Tang has the technology to effectively rule an empire, the bad news is that it may take him some time to expand his sphere of influence.
Anyone who has played the game knows that if you want to expand, it is easier to first select a target within the scope of your own radiation.
For example, if China is ready to expand and targets the Korean Peninsula, the Southeast Peninsula, and the Japanese Island, it will obviously be easier to succeed than targeting Siberia and Russia.
Tang Mo’s advantage is that he has advanced communication technology that can support him in controlling a huge empire, even a cross-sea empire, in terms of information transmission.
Similarly, he also has trains and planes to mobilize his troops effectively, firmly control every inch of the empire, and maintain his rule over the empire.
But what he lacks is the population that agrees with his rule, and what he lacks is the time to be recognized by the surrounding people—this is his disadvantage and the problem he is trying to solve.
(End of this chapter)