Judging by population alone, the initially unified Italy was already no weaker than France. In industry and other fields, Italy had also naturally surpassed countries such as Spain, becoming the sixth-ranked nation in Europe in terms of overall strength.
Since Spain had become the gatekeeper of the great powers at the end of the last century, it had remained the slowest-developing among them, or, to put it bluntly, it had been living off its old capital.
Thus, Italy, having only just completed its initial unification, had naturally overtaken Spain to become Europe's sixth most powerful nation. Once Benito formally integrated Italy's resources, the gap between Spain and Italy would likely widen further.
The current European great powers, ranked in order, were Britain, Germany, Russia, France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, and Spain. However, compared with the five traditional European giants ahead of them, both Italy and Spain remained somewhat controversial.
Yet compared with Italy and Spain, the development of the countries below them was even more pitiful to behold.
For example, both the initially unified Italy and Spain produced hundreds of thousands of tons of steel annually, while the Far East Empire's annual steel production during the same period only fluctuated around several tens of thousands of tons. In particularly bad years, it might not even reach ten thousand tons.
The Ottoman Empire's annual steel output was only several thousand tons. However, with a population of just over twenty million, its per capita steel production actually exceeded that of the Far East Empire.
Even so, their steel output was merely a fraction of that of the great powers. Yet even that fraction surpassed most regions of the world, for among non-great-power nations, the Far East Empire and the Ottoman Empire were already considered the strongest.
As for railways, textiles, military strength,