I want to be emperor

Chapter 1118 Suez Canal Navigation

In the summer and April of the 52nd year of Chengshun, the Suez Canal Zone in Egypt.

This once huge construction site has come to an end. The more than 100,000 or 200,000 free indigenous laborers who worked here in the past have disappeared. Only some Chu engineers and managers, and thousands of administrative staff are left. Ordinary indigenous laborers recruited from the territory are doing the final work.

However, these finishing projects no longer involve the main project of the canal, because the main project of the canal was officially completed at the end of March.

Theoretically, the Suez Canal has been navigable since March... Of course, this is only theoretical.

In fact, if you want to guide ships to navigate the narrow and long Grand Canal, you need a lot of auxiliary facilities and even personnel... Otherwise, large ships can easily run aground or even cause accidents when entering, in which case the entire canal will be blocked.

Therefore, even though the main project of the canal has been completed, the construction work of the canal zone has not stopped. It is just some auxiliary small construction, which no longer requires the huge labor of hundreds of thousands of people.

With the completion and imminent opening of the Suez Canal, the upper echelons of the Chu Empire also attached great importance to it. Luo Zhixue even convened three imperial council meetings to discuss the importance of this shipping line connecting Asia and Europe. The issue of safe use of Lifeblood.

After three discussions at the imperial council meeting, many decisions were finally finalized.

First of all, the canal zone was administratively independent from the peninsula province, and the territory level was upgraded from the previous administrative territory to the directly governed territory of the Chu Empire. However, the scope of this directly governed territory was limited to 20 kilometers on each side of the canal.

Around the core area of ​​the Canal Zone, the Sinai Peninsula in the Peninsula Province, the Egyptian State in the triangle area of ​​the lower reaches of the Nile River in the Egyptian region, and the Suez State region along the Red Sea in the south were allocated to additionally manage many administrative territories in Northeast Africa. The newly established province of North Africa had a governor, and the governor's residence was Cairo.

The reason why the base is in Cairo is because Cairo and even the lower Nile Delta now belong to the Chu Empire.

After the Ottoman Empire split and collapsed due to various methods of the empire a few years ago, its Egyptian region also evolved into the Kingdom of Egypt. However, the territorial scope of this Egyptian Kingdom was not the entire Egypt, not even the crucial Nile Delta region!

Because long before this, for the sake of commerce and ensuring the safety of the canal, the Chu Empire forced the Ottoman Kingdom to give up the canal area through multiple war threats, and also ceded a large area of ​​​​the Nile Delta area.

When the Kingdom of Egypt was subsequently established, this king was also the agent of the Chu Empire... So when the two sides signed a formal treaty and delineated the boundaries, they directly abandoned the entire Nile Delta area with Cairo as the core.

Therefore, the Kingdom of Egypt during the Chu Empire was actually quite different from Egypt in the traditional sense... but its territory was also quite large, including a considerable amount of later North Sudan and Libya... The area was still quite large, It’s just that most of the country is sand!

The Chu people did not have any special ideas when they occupied the Nile Delta region of Egypt. They did not even have the idea of ​​expanding their territory, but purely to protect the safety of the canal...

Because there were a lot of indigenous people in the Nile Delta area before, and after all the wars, there will probably be about a few million... To be honest, millions of indigenous people are just waiting around, and there won't be any threat for a while, but a few What about ten years from now?

In order to solve the safety problem of the canal once and for all, the Chu people simply grabbed all the places suitable for human habitation on both sides of the canal and within hundreds of kilometers, and then told the local indigenous people to get out...

Of course, there is no need for the Chu people to do it themselves. When the Ottomans split up, they moved part of the population back from here, and then the newly established Kingdom of Egypt also took away most of the population, leaving some who were unwilling to leave. The foreign legions under the control of the Chu people were rushed to the canal zone to work as free labor.

In short, for the future security of the canal, the Chu people specially created an uninhabited safe zone with a radius of hundreds of kilometers... This is also a rare policy of the Chu Empire after the 1930s to adopt the policy of not caring about people when it is important. !

And in this way, there are actually no indigenous people in the entire canal area and the adjacent peninsula...only the Chu people are left.

The peninsula province and parts of the Red Sea Province, this area centered on the peninsula, is also the fourth large-scale area of ​​​​the Chu Empire, after the Americas, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. …

Luo Zhixue estimated that there is a high probability that there will be no turban and bearded riots in this place in the future... because there are no bearded and turbaned people in this place...

This land, filled with nothing but sand and oil, is now inhabited exclusively by Chu people!

The reason for doing this is simply because Luo Zhixue felt that the oil in this place was too important... so he came up with a once-and-for-all solution: he wanted the land but not the people!

Since there are no people left, there is naturally no resistance left.

Not to mention, the Chu people often encountered all kinds of chaotic resistance in Europe, Africa and other regions, but in the peninsula... they were safe and sound.

The reason is very simple, there are no indigenous people in the peninsula...

Nowadays, in this place where there are no indigenous people, we have to add the Cairo area.

Therefore, most of the core territories of the newly established North Africa Province are directly administered territories. At the same time, this newly established province can also be directly connected to the mainland of East Asia through railways.

Because the West Asian railway network has long been built in the canal zone, and from Baku in Eastern Europe to Iraq in the Peninsula Province... the areas along the way are also directly under the direct jurisdiction of the Chu Empire.

In order to directly connect the peninsula geographically, the empire had reached many relevant agreements with the Ottoman Kingdom and the Persian Kingdom in the south, and ceded the Caucasus region, and then ceded a narrow strip of several hundred kilometers wide from the Caucasus to Iraq. zone.

In this way, the Eastern European region of the empire and the overseas territory Peninsula Province were connected on land.

A railroad was then built along this narrow passage of land.

Therefore, you can take a train from Cairo, the seat of the governor of North Africa Province, all the way to Jinling City... and you don't need to pass through vassal territories such as the Ottoman region or Persian region along the way, or even other administrative territories. You can go along the Go directly to the territory.

And this narrow strip of land with the West Asian Railway as its core has also geographically completely separated the traditional enemies, namely Persia and the Ottomans... It is estimated that they will not be able to fight for hundreds of years in the future.

The two families are now separated by hundreds of kilometers!

With the railway connection, it will be more convenient to reach North Africa from Central Asia and Eastern Europe in the empire... Of course, if you don't go by land, you can also get there by water.

Because you can reach North Africa via the Black Sea-Mediterranean Sea.

At the same time, because the Chu people also built a small canal between the Volga River and the Don River, even from the Caspian Sea, you can directly take the waterway to Port Said in the canal zone, but it is more troublesome.

But for the transportation of bulk goods, the value of this waterway is still very huge... because currently, the cost of water transportation is still far lower than that of rail transportation.

And this is even more obvious in interstate long-distance transportation... If the same goods are transported from Paris, Europe, by train, all the way east to Songjiang... then the transportation cost is not even the slightest difference compared to sea transportation. , but a gap of seven to eight times or even more than ten times.

This is why the railway system of the contemporary Chu Empire can obviously reach Europe directly from the coastal areas of East Asia, but the transportation of goods still chooses sea transportation.

Not only the transportation of goods, but also people tend to choose to take passenger ships... For ordinary people, taking a passenger ship to travel such a long distance across continents is cheaper than taking a train, and for wealthy travelers In terms of comfort, traveling by ship is also better than by train.

Rich people travel in the first-class cabin of a luxury liner, and they live in large luxury suites. They can enjoy restaurants, food, opera, swimming and other entertainment facilities on the way... But if you take a train, even the first-class carriage is only It's just a small carriage.

So contemporary cross-continental travel...well, mainly refers to travel between coastal areas between the Asian and European continents. People are more likely to choose ships instead of railways!

Of course, in inland areas where there are no ships, there is no choice but to choose rail transportation. Shipping costs are cheaper than other modes of transportation. This is an important factor for the Chu Empire to vigorously develop shipping. The Suez Canal can significantly shorten the shipping distance between Asia and Europe, further reduce shipping costs, and avoid the dangerous waters of the Cape of Good Hope. It allows small and medium-sized ships to safely and smoothly travel between Europe and Asia.

This is the huge strategic value of the Suez Canal!

For this strategic value, the Chu Empire spent more than ten years and invested tens of millions of Chu yuan to dig this canal.

A similar canal is the Panama Canal.

Now, the Suez Canal, which has consumed a lot of manpower and material resources from the Chu Empire, has finally been completed.

On April 29, Chengshun fifty-two years, part of the final work on the canal was completed.

This means that the planning and survey of this canal began in the late 1930s in Chengshun, and the canal company was established in 1944, and construction officially started that year. It took a total of eight years to dig, and a total investment of It was finally completed at a cost of nearly 40 million Chu Yuan. The initial estimated investment cost was 30 million Chu Yuan, but subsequent additional costs resulted in the final total investment exceeding 40 million Chu Yuan.

However, even the investment cost of more than 40 million Chu yuan is actually very low, and can even be said to be a saving, because the specifications of the canals dug by the Chu Empire are larger than those dug by the French in the original time and space. High... But even so, the French spent more than 18 million pounds that year, which in gold terms would be about 40 million yuan.

The prices seem to be similar, but in fact the canal dug by the Chu people has higher specifications and a greater amount of construction... The Suez Canal dug by the French has a water depth of only eight or nine meters in most sections, and the navigable water depth is only seven meters.

However, the canal dug by the Chu people has a navigable water depth of thirteen meters. Even if the safety margin is removed, large ships with a draft of ten or even eleven meters can be safely navigated.

The Yamato-class battleships of the early days during World War II only had a draft of 10.4 meters, and the American battleship Iowa only had a draft of 10 meters.

The draft of 20,000 to 30,000-ton aircraft carriers during World War II was generally seven or eight meters, while the super aircraft carriers after World War II were around 11 meters.

In other words, purely from the perspective of water depth, the Suez Canal built by the Dachu Empire can fully meet the navigation requirements of the super aircraft carrier in the original time and space... Of course, for safety, it is best to navigate with a light load.

Of course, in fact, the navy of the Dachu Empire did not put such high requirements on the water depth of the canal... because the navy itself never thought that it would build such a super battleship of 50,000 to 60,000 tons, or even 100,000 tons in the future... Now the navy Even the construction of a 20,000-ton battleship has been criticized as a super prodigal... I really don't have the courage to propose a larger 30,000-ton super battleship construction plan.

The reason why the top leaders of the Chu State directly set the construction standards of the Suez Canal and the Panama Cloud Canal at the level of 13 meters of navigable water depth is mainly because the tonnage of commercial ships is getting larger and larger... Nowadays, the super-large luxury 30,000-ton Although there are still relatively few passenger ships, they are also increasing steadily, and there are a lot of them around 20,000 tons!

As for the freighters, there are quite a few freighters with more than 10,000 tons.

If this situation continues to develop, the empire predicts that the tonnage of freight or passenger ships will surge significantly in the next twenty to thirty years.

It was obviously impossible for the empire to start an expansion and deepening project just a few years after the canal was opened to navigation, so the specifications were set relatively high from the beginning.

The reason why the specifications are higher than the canal dug by the French in the original time and space, but the cost is roughly the same... is mainly because the Chu people have more advantages in cost control. At the same time, when the Chu Empire dug the canal, all aspects of it were The technology is also more powerful than that of the French in the original time and space, and a large number of mechanized equipment are used.

When the French dug canals, they could only use a small amount of steam engine equipment, but the main projects still relied on manual digging.

But the Chu people, when digging the canal, had already used a large number of gasoline engine-powered excavators, bulldozers, trucks carrying earthwork and other construction materials, etc. Their excavation efficiency was higher and the unit cost was lower. .

At the same time, the French can only lag behind in terms of labor cost control.

Although the French are also engaged in colonialism, they still have to pay local workers, even if they pay very little... The source of the indigenous labor force for the Chu people to dig the canal is not direct employment, but cooperation with labor dispatch companies... …Use free labor dispatched by labor dispatch companies…

In human terms, the French would at least give some money to these indigenous workers digging the canal, but the Chu people simply refused to pay!

By doing this, labor costs will naturally come down... Of course, the free labor lost is slightly more, but it is not particularly large. It is only a mere three hundred thousand, which is twice as much as the labor lost by the French.

Well, don’t really think too much...compared to the indigenous people who have disappeared due to unspeakable reasons in the Americas, Africa, and even parts of India, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world in the past few decades...this is only a fraction of the 300,000 or so Not even a fraction of it!

After the Chu people entered the second industrial revolution, they treated the indigenous people much better...otherwise, Europe would all have direct territories under its own jurisdiction!

As for the territories directly under the Chu Empire, such as the Americas, Southeast Asia, today's peninsula, and North Africa, there are no indigenous people.

In short, the Chu people are better than the French in controlling indigenous labor costs...

The labor cost was well controlled, and the mechanized excavation performed by the Chu people was very efficient and the unit cost was low. Therefore, in the end, the Chu people were able to complete this higher specification project at a cost of only 40 million Chu Yuan. The canal was dug.

The canal project was completed, and several navigation tests for small-tonnage vessels were conducted. After establishing a complete navigation management procedure through the tests, the Suez Canal Company organized the first navigation test for large-tonnage vessels on May 13.

The person participating in the navigation test was a large cargo ship with a full load displacement of 14,000 tons, the Anyue, which belonged to the Indian Ocean Shipping Company. After negotiation between the two companies, the ship returned to the mainland from Europe and sailed through the Mediterranean. Then it passes through the Suez Canal and enters the Indian Ocean.

And this Anyue cargo ship may not be anything on the sea. A large cargo ship loaded with more than 14,000 tons is actually just a small black spot on the vast sea.

But when the cargo ship entered the canal, it appeared to be so huge... that one had to be careful in a canal with a water surface width of two to three hundred meters and a water bottom width of tens of meters to avoid accidentally running aground.

Because the ship itself weighs more than 4,000 tons, the load capacity is 10,000 tons, and the full load weight reaches more than 14,000 tons. Such a heavy ship is also quite large.

The total length of the ship reaches 130 meters, and the width of the ship reaches nearly 17 meters. Because it is fully loaded with cargo, its draft also reaches 8.4 meters.

If such a modern ship, which can be considered a giant, navigates in such a narrow canal, it must be cautious, otherwise it will easily run aground.

After all, although the navigable water depth of the canal is nominally 13 meters, it is only in the middle of the channel. The water depth on both sides of the main channel is not that high, but slowly shrinks towards both sides...

In other words, if it deviates from the main channel, a small amount will be fine, but if it deviates too much, it will be stranded.

However, for this navigation test, the canal company is fully prepared... and even to avoid accidents, there are many high-powered tugboats accompanying it along the way... to make corrections at any time if the Anyue cargo ship deviates from the main channel. channel.

It was a scary journey, but finally the Anyue was safely sent out of the canal and successfully entered the Red Sea!

After this successful navigation, the Suez Canal Company couldn't wait to officially announce that the canal's navigation test for large-tonnage ships had been successful, and announced that the canal would be officially opened to navigation one month later.

The Suez Canal Company can't wait to collect a large amount of navigation fees... That is a huge investment of more than 40 million yuan, which must be recovered!