The Key to a World Empire
After reaching a basic agreement, the two sides also discussed the future education of the people of Saint-Domingue.
Dessalines told Lucien that he had noticed France's wealth was inseparable from France developed industry and agriculture, which in France was inseparable from France advanced science and technology. Therefore, he hoped that France could provide assistance to Saint-Domingue in the field of education.
Lucien stated that helping people around the world achieve common prosperity is France's inescapable responsibility, and France is willing to provide assistance to any country that pursues freedom, democracy, and prosperity to the best of its ability.
Therefore, both sides reached an agreement on sending black officials from Saint-Domingue to France for education and training. From now on, Saint-Domingue can send a group of officials to France every year to receive various technical training programs so that they can acquire new ideas and skills to better serve the people of Saint-Domingue.
This move is essentially cultivating a representative for France interests in Haiti. Or to put it more bluntly, cultivating a collaborator.
As early as when the problems in Saint-Domingue first emerged, when the three brothers were discussing how to deal with the situation, Joseph raised the issue of so-called "soft colonization" and "hard colonization."
"Our productivity is increasing rapidly, and Europe demand can hardly support our high-speed development. We need more colonies. But there are two models of colonization: soft colonization and hard colonization. Hard colonization means seeing a piece of land, sending an army to seize it, enslaving or killing the natives, and then having your own people cultivate it. That's what the Spain and Britain did."
As for 'soft colonization,' there are precedents. Europe organized 'slave-hunting caravans' in Africa to capture enslaved Africans. However, the Africans resisted fiercely, and the Europe suffered considerable casualties. Furthermore, losses occurred during the transport of slaves, resulting in excessively high costs for slaves, making them unsellable or unprofitable even if sold. If this situation had continued, the slave trade would have ended long ago.
However, some ingenious Europe invented a sophisticated method of "fighting blacks with blacks". Instead of capturing black slaves themselves, they used various industrial products to bribe certain black tribes, inducing them to attack other tribes and resell the captured blacks from other tribes to them.
As a result, one group of white people supported one tribe, another group of white people supported another tribe, and the black people fought each other, eventually turning other black people into slaves. The white people reduced their costs, avoided risks, and made a lot of money. Yes, this is the precedent of what I call 'soft colonization'.
However, this approach is still too crude and can only be considered a rudimentary form of soft colonization. True soft colonization means that the land is not marked as the territory of a certain country on the map, but is directly labeled as such, appearing as a completely independent nation, yet their economy is closely intertwined with ours. They provide us with raw materials, and we dump industrial goods on them, or use them as a base to dump industrial goods on many other places.
The black rebellion in Saint-Domingue was just the beginning, illustrating that hard colonization was encountering increasingly serious problems. The situation in the Americas, both North America and South, was becoming increasingly dire. In North America, with the United States as an example, Spain's colonies were now quite unstable. This is one reason why they so readily returned Louisiana to us. But can we hold onto Louisiana after taking it over?
France doesn't have enough surplus population to transfer to Louisiana, so the relocated population will likely consist mainly of people from all over Europe. The France won't have a significant advantage, but that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that traditional hard colonies naturally tend to separate from their mother countries. Because their interests don't align with those of their mother countries, even shared bloodlines and cultures are useless."
"So, can soft colonization solve this problem?" Napoleon asked.
"Not necessarily, but it will be better. Because the colonists will no longer be directly targeting us, but rather people like Toussaint Louverture or Dessalines. This adds a buffer. If we can establish a truly 'democratic' system among them, enabling them to peacefully replace the governor and avoid a violent revolution, then our control might be more covert and longer-lasting. Furthermore, by making their economy completely dependent on us, we can also ensure they live a slightly better life, reducing centrifugal forces. Finally, we need to incite conflict between them and their neighbors, forcing them to rely on our protection."
"Like Canada and the United States today?"
Both Canada and the United States were originally Britain colonies in North America. Before United States independence, Canada harbored similar resentment towards the Britain. However, after North America independence, due to trade competition with the United States, coupled with other factors such as religion, Canada and the United States are now somewhat irreconcilable. Numerous minor skirmishes occur along the Canada - United States border. In particular, some Indigenous peoples manage to obtain weapons on the Canada side and use them to resist the United States' collection of scalp taxes.
"Yes. Saint-Domingue is our first experiment. If it works well, we can gradually expand it and use this method to cause trouble in other countries."
"If the communication technology problem can be solved, it wouldn't be impossible to simply treat Louisiana as part of mainland France and call it the Louisiana Department, just like the other departments within France. But right now, Joseph, when exactly will you get that thing of yours finished? I've already poured so much money into it! If that money were turned into cannons, I could land on Britain."
"Nonsense! It only cost you a few bucks!" Joseph scoffed. "Landing in Britain? Where are you going to land? From Dover? Don't you even know what kind of terrain Dover has? The Britain have those forts there; you could drag your entire navy up there and still not be able to take them down! The entire English Channel on our side is all cliffs and precipices. To land, you'd have to go around to Scotland. Such a long supply line—what are you waiting for? That little bit of money isn't enough!"
"That's all your fault! It's the thing you created at Verdun. Would Dover be in this state now? You're the one who ruined it!" Napoleon retorted, throwing the blame squarely at Joseph's head.
"It's almost there, very soon. The most crucial preliminary technology is almost complete. It's really almost there, and I assure you, Napoleon, give me another month, and I won't need your funding anymore to get it done." Joseph strangely didn't refute this, but said it like this.
"No," Napoleon said, "You must be hiding something from me. You must have taken my money and done something else, haven't you, Joseph?"
"No, that's not true. It really was all spent on research into cutting-edge technologies," Joseph said. "And that research itself can be profitable."
"You're using that country's money for personal gain."
"What country's money? What private business? Isn't the country ours? To paraphrase the Sun King, 'We are the country!' What country's money?" Joseph said disdainfully.
"Well, I like that," Napoleon said. "Tell me, what exactly was your preliminary research?"
"Well, this involves some very advanced science. These things aren't publicly available yet, and not many people know about them. You can certainly take a look, but I can't guarantee you'll understand them... Anyway, based on some experimental phenomena and mathematical calculations, we've arrived at a conclusion: there exists a wave that can propagate through space at the speed of light, which we call an electromagnetic wave. We think this can be used to transmit information, just like sound waves..."
"You told me about this last time, I understand, I figured it out," Napoleon said, somewhat displeased that Joseph had underestimated him. "You've forgotten? I think your brain is getting worse and worse."
"I already told you? Ah, it seems I remembered wrong." Joseph said nonchalantly, "Everyone makes mistakes sometimes."
"Alright, just tell me what the preliminary research is, and what money-making results you got?"
"We've invented a light that uses electricity to illuminate the room," Joseph said. "We've previously discovered that electric current causes heating. And when a wire gets hot, it emits bright light. That was one of our research goals—to develop an electric light. While researching the light, we discovered a new phenomenon: when a current-carrying wire is at a high temperature, it can generate current in another wire that isn't in contact with it. Based on this phenomenon, we created a wave rectifier, a key technology for wireless communication. However, this thing has a very short lifespan and breaks down almost immediately. We studied it along with the light, and incidentally applied for funding under the name of the wave rectifier. Recently, we've finally seen a glimmer of success. As for the corresponding byproduct, it's the electric light for illumination." Joseph said, "Before long, well, Napoleon, you'll be able to build another great spectacle in Paris."