After a round of research and discussion, Franz finally arrived at an unexpected answer—the British could no longer hold on.
This "could no longer hold on" did not mean the British were about to collapse. In fact, the British Empire was at the height of its power, and no one was yet capable of threatening their world empire.
It was simply that colonial empires existed to make money by nature. Now there were too many international conflicts, with countries stabbing one another in the back and digging pits for each other, greatly increasing the cost of maintaining their colonies.
Investment kept growing, while returns failed to rise in step—and sometimes even declined because of unrest. Against this backdrop, it was hardly strange that the London Government wanted to put an end to these needless struggles and reduce colonial costs.
In the original timeline, there had also been a colonial conference—the Berlin Conference—but it had been orchestrated by the Belgians. Leopold II had exploited the contradictions among the great powers and successfully obtained the Congo region.
Now that the Congo region had fallen into Austrian hands long ago, and the African Continent had already been divided up for the most part, Leopold II naturally would not waste his efforts.
There would be no Berlin Conference now. The major colonial empires still lacked an opportunity for in-depth communication and mediation of their conflicts.
Though the United Kingdom, France, and Austria were allied, they had merely reached an understanding on core issues. When it came to the details of each individual colony, they had not yet had time to discuss them.
Just because the three great powers held the upper hand in the colonial scramble did not mean they could do whatever they pleased. In truth, none of the major colonial empires was