章 9: Problems Up North

"Well, Fuck." Felipe cursed while hearing the bad news. His money maker was just burnt down in the USA.

A factory in New York was burnt down. It was making him stupid amounts of money. Nevertheless, it did the work, and he has two more factories down the south, but if it happens once, it happens again. They are close to that.

It has been two weeks since the Reconquista of Venezuela. He is now dealing with land management, and the correspondence came crashing in.

In 1815, the five years old Felipe used his money to make matches. At the time, he was living in the UK, but he was able to start a matches empire in the States. Making a loan from the bank of England and beginning mining red phosphorus in the states and the Manufacturing Matches. They are known as one of the giants of the states.

In 1815, they won big by betting hugely on the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte. They were able to create loans because they had made a lot of war bonds. Shortly after, they left the country alongside Simon Bolivar with the promise of an Empire—He delivered.

Such a factory became quite profitable later as Matches became essential in daily routine. In 1820 when the young Empire was appearing, the Phosphorus Company founded most of the campaigns of the Empire. It is also why Felipe felt so enraged when he heard of the treasonous actions of Venezuela. To him, General Paez was stealing from him.

Felipe was not a chemistry buff but a history buff. He remembers watching videos about Fuzzy Jaw and how the women working in the matches factories would develop a phosphorus/bone disease for constantly working with white phosphorus to make matches and how production changed to red phosphorus, and how it would be able to be put on the strip and not in the phosphorus itself.

So, it was only a matter of time before he got the right formula. He did.

And even though Felipe has never been to the States, he hired an outstanding CEO to grow his company into a mini-industrial Empire in the states. It also helped to spread the recognition of the house of Aragon. He could only feel lucky, and aside from loose managing and high pay, Felipe did not do much afterwards.

The house of Aragon has "Aragon" as its name, the same way that the royal Family of England changed from the name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the house of Windsor. It was too German, and there was a war with Germany in 1917.

A similar thing happened in the Fall of Constantinople. The house of Palaiologos, the most and noblest Family of Byzantium, fled to Spain just like their predecessors did back in the 800s when France took over Byzantium.

Marriage gave them the right timing for the Reconquista to drive the Moors out of the Iberian Peninsula alongside the Kingdom of Castile. Then the kingdom of Spain happened, and so the politics of Spain happened. They stayed out. The Family Split branched to The Netherlands to be as far of political strive; the other branch stayed in Spain.

The Branch of the Netherlands obtained a noble duchy in the Empire of Germany while they were at it, and when Napoleon hit, they left for England. Meanwhile, the branch of Spain ended up all dead in plots and wars. Leaving Felipe and his father, the Emperor of Colombia, the only members of the House of Aragon.

The Emperor, Luciano Jaime de Aragon, went to Spain in the late 1800s, answering family contacts to practically rescue them just after Napoleon had ravaged the country, killing civilians left and right. He fell in love with a noble lady, had Felipe and fled back to England.

"This is fucking stupid."

Felipe looked at the top of the letter where the double-headed eagle was looking at opposite sides, each with a crown and a crown in the middle. Only the papers with the coat of arms of the House of Aragon would be used for the communication of company businesses.

The double-headed eagle is the symbol of Byzantium and the symbol of the Holy Roman. The house of Aragon can be considered the noblest house out there, even more, aristocratic than the Habsburgs. That is when the Empire formed in South America. All the kingdoms and empires recognized it as an independent country on a whim.

That is also why the people of Colombia accepted them as the new monarchs, marketing themselves as the last roman noble house and true successor to the Spanish Throne. They were headbutting with Spain, which now has the Bourbon Family, a French noble house.

"I need more money to start an industry here in the east of the Empire. Here are the only mines of the Empire. The Grand Duchy of Venezuela will be the main centre of industrialization. I also need to introduce coffee cultivation into the Empire. I can create industry by exploiting the phosphorus of Peru."

They financed all the conquering of Simon Bolivar, from The New Granada to Chile, which made him the crown Prince of the Peruvian Kingdom. They intend to annex the kingdom into the Empire at any time. He is also the Crown Prince of the kingdom of Chile. Though he is not the Crown Prince of Bolivia, as the name implied, the state of Bolivia exists and was created under the Emperor's Permission. After all, an Emperor is a King of Kings.

Monarchism has been spreading across the South American Continent, from the Brazilian Empire that the Portuguese fled to the new monarchist appearing in northern South America as the Colombian Empire. The only one that stuck to Republicanism is the Republic of Argentina.

Felipe couldn't care less. The job given to the army of Bolivar was to liberate all the Spanish Held ports from their possession and bring south America under one crown, the crown of Aragon. The Colombian Empire. Though the only responsibility of the Kingdom of Peru, Bolivia and Chile is to provide soldiers, they are completely independent with their parliaments as constitutional monarchies.

So yeah, Felipe quickly got his hands on resources from Venezuela to Chile. And unlike the Colombian Empire, the Kingdom of Peru had many Phosphorus Deposits where he could start industrializing matches factories. After all, his Empire also needs matches and bringing them from the states needs to be clarified.

Ecuador's region suffered, so the Venezuelan Region… all the country suffered. He had to work fast and quickly.

"I guess it is time to use the low price of Cotton from the States." His Empire was hurting due to imports of cheap textiles. He remembered that two people could play the same game. Making Clothing with cheap raw materials will be his thing.

He doesn't mind the slave labour, it is not ethical, of course, but his most prominent issue is that it doesn't move the economy. The moral value of that comes second. The Empire abolished the trading of slavery. Still, they have not banned slavery as a whole. However, they made it so that all people in the realm were born free, meaning that any newborn slave would no longer be enslaved under the Empire's skies.

All in all, he works with the cards he has been dealt with. And he doesn't care about anything related to it.

"…" He remembers he was still dealing with land distribution. He had to make it worthwhile for people to start moving the economy, so he established the Bank of Venezuela, a bank meant to create mortgages for people willing to buy land from the new government to plant and develop.

Taking a lot of lands owned by dead aristocrats of the Empire and selling it for a fraction of the price and encouraging planting of crops meant for daily consumption in the Empire, like rice, corn and potatoes.

He doesn't want to control the market, but at the same time, there is no market. He has to bring seed for the creation of it all. He also wants to increase meat production exponentially to compete with Argentina. For that, he needs to start producing soybeans.

At the same time, he wants to bring sushi rice from Japan. He liked his other life more than the normal one in his previous life.

He is also responsible for laying down the road system of Caracas and the other cities. He wants something different from the grid cities of American cities. He wants to force his successor to make metro lines underground and the surface be left for the people to walk, which will bring tourism in the long future.

That same thing goes for the new allocation of land. It can't be done in a grid system. For the past six years, he has worked hard in the Region of The New Gradana and Ecuador to create a template to make the cities. He has given instructions to the Venezuelan Region to follow. Still, they intentionally ignored it, and now it is a massive mess for him.