The addition of an autonomous province, aside from being reported in Vienna's newspapers, did not stir the slightest ripple in the New Holy Roman Empire.
The public had little reaction, but the Vienna Government was different. An annual income of several hundred thousand Divine Shields might not be much, but their investment was small too!
Austria might have many colonies, but in reality, they barely made any money at all.
By the end of 1861, apart from West Africa, the earliest-developed region, which turned a profit of 126,000 Divine Shields thanks to its gold mines and plantations, every other region was operating at a loss. It was merely a matter of how much they lost.
The colonies in Central America lost 2.164 million Divine Shields;
The Nigerian colonial government lost 1.448 million Divine Shields;
The colonies in the Congo region lost 684,000 Divine Shields;
The colonies in the South Seas region lost 682,000 Divine Shields;
The Cameroon colony lost 342,000 Divine Shields;
The Libya colony lost 216,000 Divine Shields;
The Sinai Peninsula lost 205,000 Divine Shields;
Cyprus, Crete, and other Mediterranean islands lost 186,000 Divine Shields;
The Patagonian Plateau outpost lost 28,000 Divine Shields;
Various other colonial outposts collectively lost 128,000 Divine Shields.
Added together, all of Austria's colonies had suffered total losses of 5.957 million Divine Shields in 1861.
That was still under the condition that no major foreign military campaigns had been launched. If war broke out, that figure would multiply severalfold, perhaps even more than tenfold.
These enormous losses were the core factor constraining Austria's colonial expansion. Especially in the initial stages of opening up a colony, it was nothing but pure investment.
Although the newly added Lanfang Autonomous Province was hardly worth mentioning, in the year-end accounts for 1861, it had shared 580,000 Divine Shields in