After fleecing Britain and France, Ferdinand felt utterly refreshed. He then turned his gaze toward another unlucky victim—Japan. In this war against America, every country had gained something more or less; Japan alone had become the exception.
They had been forced to abandon Hawaii, and now they had to give up the Philippine Islands as well. Britain, France, and Bulgaria had already delivered their final ultimatum: this month was the final deadline. If they did not leave, they would not need to leave at all.
The partition of the Philippine Islands was once again placed on the agenda. Though its land area was not large, it consisted of more than seven thousand islands, naturally rich in resources. Just looking at how this tiny patch of land would have a population of over a hundred million in later generations was enough to show it.
Moreover, the Philippines possessed more than twenty types of mineral resources, chiefly copper, gold, silver, iron, chromium, and nickel. Its copper reserves stood at roughly 4.8 billion tons, nickel at 1.09 billion tons, and gold at 136 million tons. Its geothermal resources were estimated at the equivalent of 2.09 billion barrels of crude oil, while the waters northwest of Palawan Island held approximately 350 million barrels of petroleum reserves.
But the problem was that this place was not easy to divide. The Philippine Islands were mainly composed of three parts: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, along with the attached Mariana Islands.
On the surface, giving each party one region seemed easy enough. In reality, development among the three regions was wildly uneven. Luzon was rich enough to drip oil, while the other two had yet to develop in this era.
How to divide them was the question. This time, the United Kingdom would not compete for them. Its