Overseas colonization is never easy, especially for a new colonial empire like Austria, where there is so much to learn.

The African continent at this time was not a good place, and the most terrible enemy was not the local indigenous people, but the harsh natural environment.

The infestation of poisonous insects and beasts and the rampant ravages of diseases are the core factors restricting countries from colonizing the African continent, otherwise the African continent that is close at hand would have been carved up by everyone long ago.

Frankly speaking, if it weren't for the breakthrough in quinine's production technology and the initial solution of the big problem of dysentery, Franz would not have dared to venture into the African continent.

For the sake of safety, all Austrian soldiers were being educated in hygiene, personal hygiene, camp hygiene, and strictly according to the standards.

Even in order to avoid contracting local diseases, Franz even issued masks, soldiers were warned not to have casual contact with natives, and sexual relations with locals were forbidden, and marriage did not exist.

It is impossible for Franz not to pay attention to it, there is no shortage of people with heavy tastes in any era, let alone in the military camp, but fortunately, there should be more young women in this group of immigrants and can solve this problem.

After more than three months of preparation, on April 28, 1854, the first Austrian colonial advance team departed from the port of Trieste.

With two second-class battleships as the core, with five cruisers, plus more than a dozen large and small auxiliary ships, with the strength of an infantry regiment, he stepped into the first step of colonization, the target - Guinea.

This time, the opponent is an indigenous tribe, and the navy is only equivalent to a training, and maybe it will also fight a canoe-level enemy, mainly the army.

Originally, Franz was also preparing to form a Marine Corps, but it was met with collective opposition from the Army and Navy, the Army was unwilling to weaken their voice in colonial activities, and the Navy simply could not afford to raise it.

This is not a joke, the navy of Austria is really inadequate. If you want to increase your expenses, you need to prove the value of your existence first.

Politics is often such a reality, how much value there is, how much allocation.

If overseas colonies can bring a lot of profits to the empire, then the navy can also change from being raised by a stepmother to being a son.

Franz has no opinion, this is the most rational thing to do, and it is a complete waste of resources to rashly expand the navy without sufficient interests.

Rather than doing so, it is better to invest precious funds in domestic economic construction. Although the domestic economic boom has not dissipated, railway stocks are about to go to the sky with the opening of several main lines.

If Franz had not insisted on prohibiting the duplication of railways, Austria's railways would have learned from Britain and the United States and begun to duplicate construction long ago.

Of course, it is precisely because a railway line is only licensed to one company that it is popular with capital. What is the most profitable thing in this era, of course, is monopoly management.

Under this kind of good news, the government has forced a few unpopular routes to be attached to the high-quality routes, which is also acceptable to everyone.

In order to attract foreign investment, including the charging standards of rail transportation, which are determined by the market freely, Franz is not worried at all about whether this price will rise to the sky.

In the environment of market economy, the market must be determined, the price level in society is determined by supply and demand, and the level of railway freight must depend on the maximization of benefits.

The capitalists naturally know the trade-offs, and now that the railways have just come out to compete for business with traditional means of transport, if there is no price advantage, how can they grab customers?

If you can save money and time compared to traditional transportation, you are making progress. Because the freight is too high, it may affect the circulation of goods, and we must wait until the railway is completed!

All the railway companies in Austria are now in a state of pure investment, and the several main lines that have been opened are also a drop in the bucket, although they are busy and profitable.

These profits were invested in the construction of new railway lines by the railway companies, and Franz knew very well that several railway companies in Austria had never shared a single dividend since their founding.

No one has ever won a profit, and they can still reduce the price? If it is really done, it is estimated that the railway, which is still in demand, will soon become unpopular.

At this time, of course, the Vienna government will not come out to hold them back. The promise of a 10-year tax exemption has been fulfilled, and the government does not charge any fees, which is to encourage everyone to continue building railways.

"Time is life, time is money."

This slogan has become the motto of the top management of all Austrian railway companies. The sooner it is put into production and opened to traffic, the sooner it will be profitable.

So far, all the routes opened to traffic in Austria have not disappointed everyone, and in the context of free pricing, there are no loss-making routes, which greatly stimulates the nerves of some people.

I don't know how many British and French capitalists want to control the Austrian railway network and monopolize it. Then he jumped into the wonderful fantasy created by Franz and shattered himself.

Profits are really lost, and everyone is crazy about building railway lines. Many people think that now is the time to stake their land, and if they occupy one more railway line, they will have more stable income in the future.

Anyway, there is no talk of a railway bubble now, and with the monopoly operation, no one thinks that it will lose money.

In this context, Franz, who monopolizes the supply of sand and gravel raw materials, is naturally making a windfall, and it is expected that by the end of this year, the total railway mileage in Austria will exceed 10,000 kilometers.

At the beginning of Franz's succession, the total number of railways in Austria was less than 3,000 kilometers, and the average annual completion was more than 1,400 kilometers.

In this era, as long as the Americans on the other side of the ocean can be compared. Like Austria, there has been a boom in railroad investment in the United States, but because Austria has diverted some of the money, it is not as crazy as it was in history.

The entire Neo-Holy Roman Empire had more than 12,000 kilometers of railways, and yes, the small states of Germany had more than 2,000 kilometers of railways.

It cannot be said that it is crazy, the most active railway construction in this era in history is the German region, in 1850 the total length of railways in the German region reached 5,856 kilometers, more than twice that of Austria in the same period.

If Franz had not promoted the construction of Austrian railways, the fastest railway construction in Europe would now be in Germany, and only the French could match them.

Of course, this is only France in the era of Napoleon III, and in 1854 the total length of railways in Germany was more than 3,000 kilometers more than in France.

Since 1854, the French railways have grown rapidly, and the total length of the French and German railways during the Franco-Prussian War was only a few hundred kilometers apart.

The Russians were the slowest of the major European powers to build railways, and because of the war in the Near East, their construction of railways almost stopped, reaching only 1,626 kilometers by 1860.

It can be called a shame for the great powers, Belgium and Spain are more than them, and Britain, France and Germany at the same time have exceeded 10,000, which is not an equal magnitude at all.

As the land area grew, so did the original plan for a railway network. There is no need for the government to promote this, and the private railway companies have taken action on their own initiative.

The Austrian tender for railway lines is very interesting: the faster the start and the sooner the completion time, the easier it is to win the bid.

In any case, the railway lines are authorized free of charge, and the railway company must start and complete the construction within the promised time limit, and fines will be imposed for exceeding the time limit.

The test is everyone's capital chain, Franz did not play any conspiracy, as long as the railway company is operating well, there is no problem if it can be completed on time.

Once the capital chain is broken, it will be miserable, if the construction has not started, it is okay, it is a big deal to pay some fines and return the unbuilt railway line.

If construction has already started, or even most of the project has been completed, but there is no financial support for the construction of the second half of the construction, it will be a big loss.

All the investment was wasted, and the government took over the unfinished project to continue construction. Whether the railway company will go bankrupt and reorganize or die outright is not within Franz's consideration.

Anyway, it's all a conspiracy, and it's put in front of everyone in a dignified manner, not that the government is deliberately cheating people, and the bidding notice is clearly stated.

All these risks, under the temptation of monopoly, everyone still rushed to it. British and French capital came in, as did Austrian native capital, and speculators were scrambling for a piece of the pie.

Because of the government's provision of free labor, the cost of building Austrian railways in this era was artificially reduced, and on the surface the financial statements of various railway companies were very good.

It can be said that Franz also broke his heart for the construction of Austrian railways. It won't work if you don't speed it up, because the new economic crisis is just a few years away.

If we could not use foreign capital to promote the construction of domestic railways in the midst of the economic boom, the economic crisis would break out and the railway bubble would be detonated, and the final unfinished project would have to be taken over by the Austrian government.

How big is the bubble economy in Austria? No one gave Franz an answer to this question, but one thing can be seen, and that is the rate of economic growth.

If a commodity worth 100 guilders is speculated to 1,000 guilders, then the wealth will increase by 900 guilders invisibly, and the market will accept it, but once the market can't accept it and fall back to the original price of 100 guilders, the 900 guilders added in the bubble will be evaporated.

This is the reason why so much wealth can be evaporated overnight in an economic crisis, which is essentially that the bubble has been punctured and the market has returned to rationality. It's just that because of the relationship between supply and demand, in the end, the commodity will often fall below its own value.

The economy in Austria is growing at such a fast rate that even if all the industries in Austria were to stop, the bubble on the stock market alone would have to grow by at least one point a year.

This era is different from later generations, when the government intervened in the market economy by administrative means and avoided the outbreak of a major economic crisis.

At present, it is completely allowed to develop naturally in the market economy, with an average of one small economic crisis every seven or eight years and one major economic crisis every few decades.

Every time a crisis breaks out, the total volume of industry often falls by 20 or 30 points, and it is not impossible to drop by 40 or 50 percent at most times.

Anyway, the bigger the bubble, the more it will fall in the end, and the faster the economic growth will be in the early stage, which is a bit like a roller coaster.

In 1854, the new Holy Roman Empire had a total of 23,000 kilometers of railways under construction, and the situation of blind investment in railways was already very serious.

However, Franz has no intention of stopping it, but is ready to push it again, wanting to make the market hotter.

The explosive economic development model is always unstoppable. Austria's industries are growing explosively, with an average annual growth rate of more than 15 percent and economic growth of more than 10 percent since the outbreak of the war in the Near East.

Without a westward expansion strategy, this figure may be one or two points higher. Rationality has long since ceased to exist, and the market has gone mad, almost to the point where you can make money by investing in everything.

The contribution of the Russians was enormous, and from the outbreak of the Near East War, Austria entered an era of trade surplus. Before that, Austria was running a trade deficit for almost a long time.

Obviously, the factor that created the illusion of "investing in everything to make money" in the capital market was the sudden war in the Near East.

Because of the war, a large amount of cash flowed from Russia into Austria, which stimulated the economic market, and many capitalists were blindly expanding production capacity in order to make a big profit before the end of the war.

The early opening of overseas colonies was also a means of diverting the domestic economic crisis, but the African colonies were just beginning to play a negligible role in the coming economic crisis.