In addition to these Fuso women, the total number of imperial subjects who actually immigrated from the country to live in the Ryukyu Prefecture was actually only tens of thousands, and this is actually not a small number.

Luzon, which has been developed by the empire for many years, is also a key area for overseas immigration in the empire, and so far, the population has not exceeded 100,000.

The farthest overseas state of Linggo River, which is the farthest away from the empire, has a permanent population of only four or five thousand people, and the Sandalwood Islands, which is still a military region, are currently home to about 3,000 imperial immigrants.

In fact, there are not many imperial subjects in overseas territories and major colonies, the most are only tens of thousands, most of them are only a few thousand, and the few are estimated to be only a few hundred.

Today, the vast majority of the Empire's population, if not all, of the population lives in the native areas, and they need food to feed them.

Li Xuan himself estimated that if there is no huge breakthrough in technology and the yield of grain per mu is not greatly improved, even if the arable land is continuously developed in China, it will not be able to meet the increasing demand for grain, and a huge contradiction between population and land will definitely break out in a few decades.

Li Xuan naturally couldn't sit back and watch this happen, so the ultimate solution he proposed was: immigration!

Not colonization, but immigration, these two words have different meanings in the Tang Empire!

Colonization is the act of a powerful country immigrating to the areas it conquers and plundering the interests of the original local people.

However, the Tang Empire was just a simple immigrant, and did not do much to plunder the interests of the locals.

The immigrants of the empire are only moving people from areas with many people and few people to areas with few people and many people!

As for the areas where there are few people and many places, where do they come from?

What are you doing as the million-strong army of the Tang Empire, raising a good-looking one?

If you don't expand the territory of the empire, what's the use of asking for this million army!

In the past, all kinds of immigrants were just small-scale attempts, but now, Li Xuan is preparing for a real large-scale expansion and large-scale immigration.

In other words, Li Xuan is already preparing to fight again!

For this reason, after the Navy submitted the Xuanping 20-year construction plan, Li Xuan did not hesitate to veto this plan.

Just when the people in the navy thought that this plan was too expensive, so the Son of Heaven would veto it, Li Xuan instructed the navy: The navy is related to the security of the imperial coastal defense and global strategy, so when building the navy, it should be bolder, the steps should be bigger, and the concept should be newer.

To put it bluntly, Li Xuan dislikes the plan made by the navy is too petty!

In this construction plan, in addition to the steam improvement of the existing battleships, there are only two steam battleships and three cruisers.

At the same time, Li Xuan was also dissatisfied with the design of the new warships in the navy, because the concept of these admirals was still retained in the era of sail warships, and compared with the previous warships, the warships made were only propelled by an additional steam engine, and there was basically no innovation in the others.

This is almost unacceptable in Li Xuan's opinion.

This steam engine has been built, and you even built me a traditional sail warship made of pure wood, this is not nonsense.

I want a modern fleet of steam and steel, not a sampan!

In the end, Li Xuan personally put forward a request for naval construction, and in addition to modifying the existing sail warships, in principle, the navy stopped building new pure sail warships, but turned them into steam warships.

At the same time, the design of the new steam warship should follow three principles: greater speed, stronger firepower, and thicker protection!

In the new round of warship construction plan of the navy, it is required to build a fleet that can effectively safeguard the global interests of the empire!

Li Xuan did not put forward detailed technical parameters, because these things were not his job, his job was to put forward strategic requirements for the navy, and this strategic requirement was to safeguard the interests of the empire on a global scale.

As for what kind of warships to build and how large the scale is needed, this is what needs to be done by people from the navy.

To be honest, the people in the navy were frightened by Li Xuan's words, because this time Li Xuan proposed global interests.

This meant that the Imperial Navy was to build a navy with the goal of controlling the world's seas and defeating any one or more maritime powers.

Under such a goal, it is not only necessary to have a sufficient number of warships, but also to have a sufficiently advanced performance of warships.

To this end, the navy has begun to carry out research work on a new generation of warships, which is more of a study of what kind of warships can be built and what kind of warships are needed to enable the navy to safeguard the interests of the empire in the global waters under the current and future expected technical conditions.

In this kind of discussion, the Navy's Ship Administration Department was arguing for three days, and various warship plans were put forward and then rejected.

Either it's technically unrealistic, or the performance doesn't get much of an improvement, or it's too costly.

Finally, the Shipbuilding Department of the Ministry of Shipbuilding synthesized the opinions of many parties, especially with reference to the opinions of the Royal Institute of Technology, the Dingsheng shipyard with the strongest technical capabilities in China, the Jiangnan Arms Company with the highest level of naval guns, and the reformed Navy Steam Engine Factory, and finally came to several conclusions.

First of all, in terms of naval artillery, the Jiangnan Weapons Company gave the opinion that under the current technical limitations, the rifled gun technology proposed by the navy is very immature, and the smoothbore gun is still the best choice, mature, stable, reliable, and the range of the large-caliber smoothbore gun is sufficient, at least the current smoothbore gun, its maximum firing range is far beyond the effective firing range.

Affected by the accuracy of long-range artillery strikes, the current naval combat distance, the best distance is still within 300 meters, beyond this distance, it is difficult to aim and hit.

Therefore, the naval artillery can only choose the traditional smoothbore gun, but the artillery shell can be generally equipped with grenades, and the grenade fired by the large-caliber smoothbore gun is still amazingly powerful, and the lethality of the wooden warship is huge.

In terms of hull, Dingsheng Shipyard took out a test ship made of steel to show the navy, although this test ship, although only a few tens of tons, not even power, only a smooth hull, but still gave the navy great shock and inspiration, because this proves that the hull of the battleship can also be built of steel, of course, limited by the high cost of steel, and the lack of power, it is unrealistic for the whole ship to use steel, but in the hull of the hull to install steel plates, It is entirely feasible to strengthen the protection capacity.

In terms of power, the steam engine project team of the Royal Institute of Technology gave exciting news to the navy, and the developers of the steam engine project said that theoretically speaking, it is not a problem to design a larger horsepower shipboard steam engine at all, and they obtained a steam pressure of up to five megapascals on the prototype of the first high-pressure steam engine!

But how to build this kind of high-horsepower steam engine, sorry, that's not their responsibility, they are only responsible for theoretical research and development.

The Navy Steam Engine Factory is cautious to say that due to the current processing technology and other limitations, it is impossible for them to increase the air pressure of the steam engine unlimitedly, and even the volume of the steam engine can not be enlarged indefinitely, according to the current technical capabilities, at present, they can only manufacture a single 200-horsepower ship-based steam engine at most, and after the completion of many large-scale equipment on their new generation production line, in about five years, they will be able to manufacture a single steam engine of about 500 horsepower.

As for five years, the time is too far away, and they themselves could not have expected it.

All aspects of firepower, hull, and power are given their own opinions, and according to these opinions, the shipbuilding department of the Navy has finally come up with a new generation of warship design schemes!

When Li Xuan saw the design of this battleship, he had to say that this technology tree seemed to be a little crooked!

The design scheme of the new generation of warships he saw had nothing to do with the traditional style warships, but it was also very different from the steel warships of later generations.

This new generation of warship design scheme, the standard displacement is designed to be 1,500 tons, the reason why it is not designed is too big, it is because the Datang Navy has not built a larger warship, lack of large-tonnage slipway, but in addition to this 1,500-ton design scheme, in fact, there is also a 3,000-ton design scheme, well, the difference between the two is only the difference in the size of the hull, the difference in the number of guns, and the rest is basically the same.

In addition, the hull is much more slender than the traditional style warship, and just looking at the design drawings, you can see that this kind of battleship will be very beautiful after it is built.

The outer armor of the hull is no longer covered with thick planks as before, but is wrapped in wrought iron from wood, and its defensive ability is lower than that of resisting the medium and close shelling of all naval guns at this stage, even if it is a twenty-four pound (32 pound) cannon, it is helpless against this armor.

In terms of firepower, the navy has considered that the enemy's warships are all wooden warships, and the ability to resist strikes is not strong, and at the same time, howitzers are already very mature and stable, and the main mode of engagement of the navy is no longer to strike at the enemy by firing solid bullets, but to fire grenades to strike at the enemy, and the pursuit is not to sink the enemy's wooden armor, but to use the explosion of grenades to kill and injure the enemy's living forces and destroy enemy ships.

In this case, the Navy believes that the best way to fight is to drop as many grenades as possible in the shortest possible time, so that the enemy ships become a ball of fire and sink to the bottom of the sea in the sound of explosions!

At the same time, in order to simplify logistics, the caliber of artillery should be as uniform as possible.

Under this idea, this new battleship has two decks with guns, and the guns loaded are only two calibers, one is a twenty-four-pound cannon, and the other is a nine-pound cannon, and the main one is a twenty-four-pound artillery, and the number of the two types of guns adds up to sixty-two.

It seems that the number of artillery pieces is not large, but the projectile projected per unit time and the killing effect on the enemy are more than the gun layout of previous battleships.

In terms of power, the use of steam sail hybrid, the use of hybrid is a must, after all, the steam engine power is still not enough, and it is expected that in many places can not add coal and water, at this time, it is necessary to use sails.

In daily sailing, the sail is the main power, and the steam engine is only the auxiliary power.

In terms of steam engines, the madmen of the navy planned to install four steam engines in one go, so that their total power would reach 800 horsepower.

At the same time, in terms of propulsion, the propeller propulsion is not used, but the propeller propulsion is used, because after many tests, the navy found that although the propeller technology is not mature, it is still much better than the paddle wheel propulsion.

The gun layout of this newly designed battleship still retains the gun layout of a sail battleship, but the hull and power are completely different from the traditional style battleship, and the shell is still iron!

This kind of battleship, in Li Xuan's opinion, is very strange, this is neither a sail battleship nor a steel battleship.

If you have to position, then this should be a transitional battleship!

It was a special product of the Imperial Navy's transition from sail ships to steel warships due to technical limitations and tactical needs.

However, although this battleship with the design code name of 'New Generation Steam Battleship' is only a transitional product, Li Xuan still has high hopes for it, and gave the first ship the name 'Jiangnan', which is the first battleship in the empire to be named after a provincial-level place name, which shows that Li Xuan attaches great importance to it.