Fox of France

Jacques Gauleng and the others do have a large piece of land in Louisiana. In fact, land in Louisiana wasn't worth much at all. What was lacking there was never land, but people.

In 1762, France and Spain joined forces to resist British expansion in North America, and as part of an alliance, the French handed over sovereignty of Louisiana to the Spanish. Since then, the Spaniards have been masters of Louisiana.

But the Spaniards have always had a problem, and that is the limited population. Therefore, it cannot provide too many immigrants. So although Louisiana is a Spanish territory, the immigrants there are still mainly French.

After the French Revolution, Spain once joined the anti-French alliance and fought against France, but quickly rebounded and became an ally of France. As for Louisiana, it continues to be a Spanish colony, but it continues to be full of French speakers.

Recently, the Spaniards have encountered some economic difficulties (it seems that the Spaniards never have a time when they are not economically difficult), and they are under a lot of pressure from the United States in North America. In Florida, the Americans have already begun to make some small moves, and in the capital of Louisiana, the Americans took advantage of the weakness of the Spaniards to force the Spaniards to recognize the "special interests" of the United States in New Orleans.

The increasingly weakened Spaniards were virtually unable to maintain control of the vast lands of Louisiana. Napoleon took the opportunity to propose to the Spaniards that he was willing to exchange some interests in Italy for the sovereignty of Louisiana.

In Napoleon's vision, using Louisiana and Haiti, which is still controlled by France, can maintain considerable influence in the New World. And this idea was also supported by Joseph. Compared with most people at the time, Joseph was much clearer about the significance of the New World for the future.

And to be able to strengthen the control of Louisiana, the population is of course the most important. But the French are living a better life during this time, and there are far fewer people who are sincerely willing to take risks thousands of miles away. So the number of French immigrants is also limited. Although Napoleon's government has been encouraging childbearing, and the Ministry of Truth is even awarding "heroic mothers" medals to mothers who have given birth to many children, this will not change the situation in the short term.

So now the French mainly rely on immigrants from other parts of Europe to Louisiana.

Of course, in theory, ensuring that the majority of immigrants are French should better ensure the cohesion of overseas territories and the mainland. But the North American War of Independence actually shows that blood relationship is not reliable. And unlike Napoleon, Napoleon hoped for a new empire on which the sun never sets, while Joseph's expectations were much lower. His minimum expectation was just a fragmented North American continent.

And Joseph believes that because of the existence of the United States, Louisiana is more likely to be more loyal to France in a sense. Just like Canada has always been loyal to Britain because of the existence of the United States.

With the United States, it seems feasible to control Louisiana, which is thousands of miles away. Of course, to do this, Louisiana would have to be at odds with the United States economically.

This is not difficult, today's US economy is mainly dependent on the export of grain and cotton. These Louisiana can also produce, as long as Louisiana is committed to producing these, they will have conflicts with the United States. At the same time, according to history, the North of the United States will embark on the road of industrial development in the future, so through Louisiana, it will continue to use legal and illegal means to export cheap industrial products to the United States, which is another contradiction. With these, a divided North America is entirely possible.

But to achieve all this, and especially to maintain control over Louisiana for a long time, there was a problem that had to be solved, and that was Haiti, then called Santo Domingo.

Because in later generations, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, and its presence in the world is not high. If there is no major earthquake or something, most people will never know that there is such a country in the world. So at first, Joseph didn't care much about Haiti.

But Joseph soon realized that Haiti in this era is really not an insignificant place, and even in terms of its current significance to the French economy, its importance is even greater than that of the entire Louisiana. accept.

In 1780, 40% of the sugar and 60% of the coffee in the European market were produced in Haiti. Haiti produces more of the aforementioned agricultural products than the entire West Indies put together. By 1791, Haiti was the world's largest sugar producer. Haiti became the richest colony of France, and Haiti was also known as "a pearl" in the Caribbean.

Of course, the wealth of Haiti has nothing to do with most people in Haiti. On the contrary, because of Haiti's wealth, the Haitian slave owners have a stronger desire to drive the black slaves to work intensively. Compared with the slaves in the southern United States, the labor intensity of the Haitian black slaves is almost as good as that of British workers.

In 1791, taking advantage of the opportunity of the French revolution, the black slaves in Haiti launched a major uprising. At the beginning, the rebels joined forces with Britain and Spain, the anti-French alliance, to deal with the French, and then joined forces with the French to deal with the Spaniards and the British. In order to allow Haiti to remain in France, the revolutionary government even made a move that surprised the whole of Europe: freeing slaves, giving blacks citizenship and voting rights, and appointing the leader of the black rebel army, Toussaint Louverture, as Saint Douglas. Governor of Ming Dynasty.

But this does not solve the most fundamental problem - the problem of land. Therefore, under the jurisdiction of the French revolutionary government, the black people in Haiti suddenly evolved from "private slaves" to "free slaves", ah, it should be said that they became "free agricultural workers". Throughout Haiti, all the developed land belongs to white people, and the situation of black people after they get the so-called "citizenship" is even worse than before the revolution.

So in the original history, in 1801, the black leader Toussaint declared the independence of Haiti, completely abolished slavery, and "nationalized" the land of the white colonists. So Napoleon sent an expeditionary force of 30,000 with Leclerc as commander-in-chief in 1802 to try to recapture Haiti. But the battle of the expeditionary force in Haiti was not smooth, coupled with the epidemic of yellow fever, coupled with the various supports of the Americans for the Haitian rebel army, (from material support to dispatching the navy to bombard the French army) the French army was in a precarious situation . Even though Leclerc tricked Toussaint into negotiating and arrested him by deception, the Haitian rebels still gained the upper hand and forced the remaining French troops to surrender in 1803, thus establishing the first independent black republic.

However, after the establishment of the independent black republic, Haiti's former prosperity seemed to have disappeared with the departure of the colonists. Haiti soon became the poorest and backward country in the world, and it remains so today. Although he has almost the same system and laws as the United States.

This ending naturally led many spiritual white people in Yehe tribe to draw such a conclusion: "White people are superior people, black people are inferior people, if there is no excellent white leadership, black people can only make a mess of themselves. Similar "evidence" also includes nonsense such as "Mandela turned South Africa from a developed country into a developing country". (When these Yehes counted white South Africa as a developed country, they probably only counted whites and expelled blacks. According to their calculations, India is actually a developed country.)

Haiti's "sinking" - let me call it "sinking", despite the fact that even in Haiti's most "rich" days, a Negro could not have been better off than when he was "sinking" - In fact, it is very simple, that is, it was originally only a highly substitutable link in the economic chain. When it became independent, it was not only independent politically, but also economically independent.

Or to put it more clearly, it was isolated from the colonial economic chain. And its position in this chain was quickly replaced by other colonies. And the production cost of other colonies must be far less than that of Haiti—unless Haiti after independence can gather land and use those blacks as "free slaves". But if so, what's the point of revolution?

But for France, and for Napoleon's dream of a new sun never sets, Haiti's defeat was decisive. The loss of Haiti not only made him suffer huge economic losses (in fact, this point has been recovered by asking for ransom money from the Republic of Haiti), but also caused him to lose an important fulcrum in the Americas. This is also one of the reasons why Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States very happily.

Now, in this time and space, the problem of Haiti is also in front of Napoleon.

"Santo Domingo will have problems sooner or later." Napoleon knew this very well. "That Toussaint Louverture is already the emperor of Haiti. Well, Joseph, what did you say?"

"The mountains are high and the emperor is far away." Joseph replied.

"Yeah, 'The emperor is far away'. It's too far from France. I just got a report that Toussaint started some kind of 'nationalization of the land', buying off white people's land, hell, five centimes an acre, that's It was just confiscated. Many French people have been forced to flee, or even killed. What do you think we should do?" Napoleon said.

According to the education Joseph received in his previous life, of course we should applaud Haiti's just actions against colonialism. But it is the interests of the French, or, to put it more clearly, the interests of the Bonaparte! Therefore, if it is possible to directly suppress the uprising, then Joseph will definitely raise his hands in favor of directly suppressing the uprising in Haiti.

But can the crackdown succeed? Joseph couldn't help asking himself this question.

The steamships were not yet within range of Haiti, where the British and Americans had an advantage at sea. Joseph asked himself, if he was a Brit or a Yankee, what would they do if they found out that the French were fighting the local black rebels in Haiti?

"What we did in Ireland, they will do in Haiti." Joseph immediately came to the conclusion: "With the intervention of these guys, this battle is a bottomless pit, a quagmire, and we must not fall into it." go in."