Chain Reaction (1)

With a loud thud, a France cruiser rammed straight into the midsection of the Britain cruiser HMS Berkshire. Fortunately, the French Navy cruiser did not ram its hull, otherwise the HMS Berkshire would have been destroyed immediately. However, being hit in the middle like this, the HMS Berkshire cruiser was also seriously damaged. A large gash was punched in its hull, but fortunately it did not tear below the waterline, and a section of the bridge was also torn off.

Another Britain cruiser was also rammed by another France cruiser, but it quickly changed course and avoided the impact.

However, this change of course naturally cleared the way, allowing the France merchant ships to smoothly enter the Carroll Port.

The collision between a France warship and a Britain warship naturally caused some diplomatic turmoil. Upon receiving the news, both the Britain and French Foreign Ministry summoned each other's ambassadors to lodge strong protests.

The Britain summoned the France ambassador to lodge a strong protest against the French Navy's reckless ramming of a British Navy vessel, demanding that the France government apologize to Britain, punish those responsible, compensate for the damages, and guarantee to restrain its navy from causing such incidents again.

Almost simultaneously, France Foreign Minister Talleyrand summoned the Britain ambassador to protest the Britain government's unprofessional and barbaric actions of the British Navy in wantonly interfering with the French Navy's freedom of navigation, intercepting and ramming French Army warships. Talleyrand, on behalf of the France government, demanded that the Britain government apologize to France, hold those responsible accountable, compensate France for its losses, and assure France that they would respect France's right to freedom of navigation.

The diplomatic negotiations between the two sides were essentially a matter of each side talking past the other. After they finished speaking, the Britain began sending reinforcements to Ireland and instructed their British Army in Ireland to go on the defensive. The France, of course, seized the opportunity to sail freely. As a result, the Irish Independence Army, which had suffered even greater losses, became active again.

As a result, the supplies and troops originally intended for North America were intercepted and temporarily diverted to Ireland.

Of course, the impact of this incident went beyond that. First, once the news spread, the Britain were perceived even more as a paper tiger. If the France and United States could touch this paper tiger's backside, why couldn't we?

So the Britain's old enemy, the Netherlands, also got moving.

In 1795, taking advantage of the chaos of war on the Europe continent, the Britain seized the Netherlands colony in Cape Town. The Netherlands, powerless to resist at the time, had no choice but to accept it. Later, after the Europe peace was restored, the Netherlands repeatedly demanded the return of their Cape Town colony from the Britain. Of course, the Britain response was always the same. "Who cares?"

This is quite normal, as Cape Town controlled one of the most important shipping routes today—the route from Europe to the East. For a global colonial power, the strategic importance of this colony cannot be overstated. So, having already acquired the colony, why would it possibly be returned?

However, the Britain colonization of Cape Town was unsuccessful. Due to various entanglements in Europe, the Britain simply couldn't commit much manpower to Cape Town. Therefore, besides the native Black people, the majority of the population in Cape Town were Netherlands. These people originally lived in Cape Town, far from the wars in Europe, and spent their free time bullying Black people, using them as slaves for work. They would occasionally collect tolls—or rather, parking fees—from passing merchants, then resell supplies at inflated prices for a profit. In short, they lived a very comfortable life, enjoying hotpot and singing songs.

But who knew that such a wonderful life would be envied by bad people, and suddenly a group of Britain appeared out of nowhere and seized the port of Cape Town.

Although the Britain didn't go out of their way to oppress the Netherlands, they merely retained the authority to collect tolls. The Netherlands could still bully Black Africa and continue their system of slavery, which had disappeared in civilized Europe countries. Overall, the Netherlands actually lived quite well. Compared to other places, the Britain in Cape Town were relatively benevolent in their governance.

However, for benevolent governance to be effective, there must first be a period of "not practicing benevolence and righteousness." This is similar to the strategy Master Lu described. "Imagine a form of violence that 'dehumanizes' people—not only dehumanizing them, but even worse than cattle and horses, utterly worthless; until people envy cattle and horses, lamenting 'In times of chaos, even a dog in times of peace is better than a human,' then give them a price roughly equivalent to that of cattle and horses, like the Yuan Dynasty law where killing someone's slave resulted in compensation of an ox. Then people will be sincerely convinced and praise the prosperous and peaceful era. Why? Because although they are not considered human, they are ultimately treated like cattle and horses."

Even the Confucian master Mencius, when discussing the feasibility of benevolent governance with the King of the Liang Kingdom, first presented the evidence that "none of the kings of today dislike killing." In other words, those kings had already completed the preparatory work of "not treating people as human beings," and now as long as you declare "you are already equal to cattle and horses," you can gain the support of the masses.

However, the Britain in Cape Town skipped the process of "treating people as less than human, worse than cattle or horses, nothing at all," and instead directly gave them a price "roughly equivalent to cattle or horses." It's no wonder those people were resentful.

Indeed, the Britain left a great deal for the Netherlands. If the previous rulers had been Africans instead of Netherlands, none of those rights would have been left to them. But the Netherlands Africa in Cape Town didn't feel they had received any special treatment; they only knew that all those benefits used to belong to them, and now much of it had been taken away by the Britain.

This naturally fueled the hatred of the Netherlands towards the Britain. However, considering that the Netherlands had been thoroughly defeated by the Britain more than once or twice (although there were occasional times when the Netherlands managed to turn the tables and overpower Britain, they were ultimately still defeated), the Netherlands immigrants in just the Cape Town area were not really willing to directly confront the Britain.

But now, with the glorious examples of North America and Ireland, especially this time when the France openly challenged the Britain to a game of bumper boats, yet the Britain didn't dare fire a shot, it became almost immediately common knowledge that the Britain were a paper tiger. Even the Netherlands began to consider reclaiming their lost territory. Of course, Cape Town was far away, and the Netherlands settlers there were unaware of this yet, but the Netherlands was already making preparations for them.