Which one is stronger in the loss of territory?You would never have thought of the first place

Speaking of "losing territory", everyone must beat their chests and feet, feeling that we have suffered a big loss in modern times, and scolding the Western powers.

However, compared to the "loss of territory" of the great powers, we are really "small losses and big losses".

First of all, I would like to point out that the time period chosen for this article is the "loss of territorial colonies" after the beginning of the Age of Discovery, and the starting point is roughly 1500. After all, it was too long ago, and there was no clear concept of "territory".

The countries we are talking about are mainly familiar faces from the Eurasian continent, China, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Turkey, etc., plus Mexico in the Americas.

Some regimes that have disappeared in the long river of history are not counted. Like the Inca Empire in Latin America, I don't know who gave it such a domineering name, it really doesn't match its strength. Of course, it does have a large territory, about 2 million square kilometers.

The four major parts of the Inca Empire.

But the empire, which could not smelt iron, had no cavalry, no firearms, was wiped out by less than a thousand Spanish ruffians. I will not count this kind of "former regime" that has no competitiveness and a sense of existence.

In addition, when describing the loss of territory, this article will choose "the complete loss of territory caused by a relatively single event", such as the loss of North America by France and the loss of the Indochina Peninsula (Indochina), which are separated by several centuries, even if they are two "losses", they will not be combined.

Let's start with each of them.

The worst "loss of territory" in human history was the collapse of Spanish rule in Latin America as a result of the Latin American independence movement. The campaign, which lasted for 30 years, cost Spain 14 million square kilometers of colonies and more than 30 million people.

Strictly speaking, Latin America was considered a Spanish colony, part of the Spanish colonial empire. However, after the Spanish invasion of Latin America, a large number of local indigenous males and combined with indigenous females to "Hispanicize" the natives.

At this juncture of the Latin American independence movement in 1810, most of Latin America, with the exception of Brazil, was inhabited by Spanish descendants, which has been confirmed by molecular genetics. More than 90 percent of the contemporary Latin American population is of patrilineal origin from Europe and North Africa, with only about 10 percent of indigenous males left offspring. Contemporary Latinos also speak Spanish and are Catholic.

Therefore, it is not a big problem to say that Latin America was once the territory of Spain, but compared with Spain itself, the matrilineal blood of Latin American people is more mixed.

If you look at the map above, pre-independence Mexico, including Texas, California, and New Mexico in the United States today, was much larger than it is today.

Seeing this, some friends may say, why don't you mention the British Empire, before the dissolution of people's colonial empire, there were more than 34 million square kilometers, not much larger than the Spanish colony?

Here I want to explain.

The independence of the colonies of India, South Africa, British Africa, I think was the territory lost by the British Empire colonies. Because these places have a different culture and language from the British, they are not allies of the British after independence, and have no common interests with the British.

However, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are of the same language and race as the United Kingdom and the United States, and the differences between the nationals of these countries are smaller than the differences between Cantonese and Shandong.

From the end of World War II to the present, these countries have also been political and military allies. Moreover, these five countries have also established an intelligence sharing mechanism, that is, the Five Eyes Alliance, to share the confidential information of various countries, which is the friendship of wearing a pair of pants.

During the British colonial empire, Australia, Canada and Singapore were originally "Dominions" and enjoyed great autonomy. To this day, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and the island nations on the oceans that previously belonged to the United Kingdom are still headed by the King of the United Kingdom.

Flag of Australia.

Therefore, the independence of Australia, Canada, and the new is not regarded as a "loss of territory", which is equivalent to the United States inheriting the leadership of Britain in the "Anglo-Saxon circle", but the territory is expressed in another way. Just like the Zhou feudal princes finally merged with Qin, changing the soup but not the medicine.

Between the United States and Britain, it is equivalent to Britain handing over its leadership to the United States, and the United States giving Britain security guarantees. A most intuitive example: now the world's nuclear countries, their nuclear ** carriers, that is, ICBMs, are all developed by themselves, only Britain has always used the Yankees' "Trident". Even this kind of artifact can be shared, what do you say these two countries are iron?

Moreover, the circle dominated by the Americans was even wider than it was during the British Empire. In other parts of the world, countries that have concluded military alliances with the United States include Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Colombia, and so on.

The same goes for France's Northwest African colonies.

Now everyone knows that there are no colonies in Africa anymore, and all countries are independent. However, the French still hold the right to issue the currency of Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Cameroon, Central Africa, Congo (Brazzaville), Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Chad.

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There are only two ** banks in this string of countries that are responsible for issuing currency, and the managers are French, half locals, and there are French people on the board, and all directors must agree before the plan can be passed;The chairman of the board of directors who was in charge of the final decision was also French.

In addition, the French are free to invest, settle down, and trade in this string of countries, and French goods enjoy low or even zero tariffs, and more than half of the foreign exchange reserves of these countries are francs, so most of their imports come from France.

In this case, I also do not think that France "lost" Northwest Africa.

In Latin America, on the other hand, the situation was not an ally with Spain after independence. Although Spain's overseas investment is mainly in Latin America, the scale of this is nothing compared to the capital operation of the Americans. Moreover, Spain's political influence in Latin America is significantly inferior to that of the United States. Therefore, I define the Latin American independence movement as the complete loss of territory in Spain.

The second tragedy, the national independence movement after World War II, led to the loss of the Dominion of India and the African colonies of Britain.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with saying that India is the territory of the British Empire. In 1877, Queen Victoria of England inherited the legal rule of the Mughal dynasty and was crowned Emperor of India.

Moreover, India as a British colony is not the current India, it includes the whole of South Asia and Burma, covering an area of about 5 million square kilometers, with a population of about 400 million in 1950.

In terms of population loss alone, this is unprecedented and most likely unprecedented.

It was also during this period that the British colonies in Africa became independent, with a total area of about 8 million square kilometers, and the two combined exceeded 13 million square kilometers.

The third tragedy was the independence of Portuguese Brazil.

The situation in Brazil was similar to that of Latin America, to which Spain belonged, and after establishing Brazil as a colony, the Portuguese also "Portugueseized" the region. Unlike Spanish Latin America, the nature of "Brazilian independence" is debatable.

In 1807, when Napoleon's France invaded Portugal, King Maria I of Portugal fled with members of the royal family, and under the protection of the British navy, they took refuge in Brazil, and the following year announced that Portugal had moved its capital from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro.

By 1820, Napoleon had been killed, and King João VI of Portugal returned to Portugal with members of the royal family, leaving his second son, Prince Pedro, to rule Brazil.

It was this Prince Pedro who declared Brazil's independence in 1822 and established the Brazilian Empire, with its capital in Rio de Janeiro, covering an area of more than 8 million square kilometers.

Therefore, it is difficult to figure out whether Brazil and Portugal are a family affair, whether Portugal has lost Brazil, or whether Brazil has lost Portugal.

The fourth tragedy, the collapse of the Soviet Union.

If the change in the ownership of the colonies is not counted, but is limited to the loss of its own territory, then the collapse of the Soviet Union is the largest loss of territory in the history of mankind due to a single treaty, which caused the Russian-dominated Soviet Union to lose 5.3 million square kilometers of land.

In addition, the collapse of the Soviet Union was the largest loss of population in the country (excluding changes in colonial ownership) caused by a single treaty in the history of mankind, and the population of the new Russia was only half that of the former Soviet Union, a decrease of 1 in an instant500 million people.

Although the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was established after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this so-called "Commonwealth" has now fallen apart, and only the four Central Asian countries are still following Russia in a consensual manner, Georgia and Ukraine have already fought with Russia, and the three Baltic countries are even more anti-Russian.

So, I also classify it as a complete territorial loss.

Fifth, France lost its North American colonies.

This is also a "very famous abroad, very unpopular at home" event. The American historian Stavrianos divides the global expansion of the West into three phases, the second of which ended in 1763. What major events took place this year?

The answer is called the Treaty of Paris.

France lost World War 0, the Seven Years' War, and after the war, the French signed this treaty.

Before the war, the French occupied eastern Canada and the Mississippi River basin in North America, with a total area of nearly 5 million square kilometers, all of which were lost through this treaty.

"The important fact for world history is that France lost North America and India in the 18th century," he writes. ”

After the Mexican-American War, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed between the United States and Mexico in Mexico City on February 2, 1848. Under the treaty, the Americans "bought" three territories of Texas, California and New Mexico, totaling 2.3 million square kilometers, from Mexico for $18.25 million**.

The eighth misery is the independence of the Belgian Congo.

Belgium lost 2.3 million square kilometers of its colony.

The ninth tragedy is the independence of Dutch Indonesia.

The Netherlands lost 2 million square kilometers of colonies.

The tenth tragedy, finally our turn, that is, between 1860 and 1880, Tsarist Russia took advantage of the Second Opium War, the Taiping Rebellion, the uprising of a certain religious believer in the northwest, the invasion of Aguba, and the uprising of the Twisted Army to extort the Chinese territory it had acquired. On the Internet, they are called "Outer Northeast" and "Outer Northwest", with a total area of about 1.6 million square kilometers.

Compared with the above countries, this is not a "particularly heavy" territorial loss, but it is a "particularly funny" and "particularly wretched" territorial loss.

Most of the above nine cases are territorial changes caused by large-scale uprisings and large-scale wars, and the one in Portugal is more special, as two members of the royal family divide the territory. And the Qing court lost these territories and did not fight a battle with the ** people.

Take, for example, the Treaty of Aihui.

In May 1858, the British and French forces attacked the Dagukou Fort, and the Second Opium War broke out.

* When they learned of this, they sent the Governor of Eastern Siberia, Nikolai Muravyov, with more than 500 soldiers, to the city of Aihui and demanded a "revision of the border treaty" with China, declaring that the two countries should be bordered by the Heilongjiang and Ussuri rivers.

On May 23, Heilongjiang General Yishan and Heilongjiang Deputy Governor Ji Lamin A arrived at Aihui and refused the request of the ** people, saying that the "Treaty of Nebuchu" had been clearly demarcated.

On May 27, Muravyov led 500 Russian troops to conduct a "large-scale military Xi";The next day, he was frightened by the fact that the 1,500-strong garrison of Aihui was armed with forty artillery pieces, and he signed the Treaty of Aihui with Muravyov without authorization

More than 60 million square kilometers of territory north of Heilongjiang and south of the Outer Xing'an Mountains will be assigned to **;At the same time, it recognized more than 400,000 square kilometers east of the Ussuri River to the Pacific coast as a zone under the joint administration of Russia and the Qing Dynasty.

In fact, in the Crimean War that ended five years ago, Tsarist Russia was beaten all over the ground by the British and French forces.

However, the lovely, naïve, and innocent Xianfeng credulously believed the promise of the Russian envoy and signed the Treaty of Peking, confirming the terms of the Treaty of Aihui.

Ridiculous!Pathetic!Shame!

The eleventh tragedy is still us, that is, the "maintenance of the status quo of Outer Mongolia" as determined by the Yalta Agreement

This move led to the loss of control and caused half of the Wulianghai Sea to become an enclave, with a total loss of about 1.6 million square kilometers of territory.

That's it, there are a few more honors on the list, such as:

After the Crimean War, Tsar Alexander II, fearing that the British would attack Alaska from Canada, sold the land to the United States with a land area of 14250,000 square kilometers.

During World War I, Soviet Russia withdrew from the Entente and the subsequent Soviet-Polish War, which led to the secession of Poland, Finland, the three Baltic states, most of Belarus, and Western Ukraine, with a total area of nearly 1 million square kilometers.

After World War I, the Treaty of Sèvres between the Allies and Turkey and the subsequent re-signing of the Treaty of Lausanne resulted in the final loss of about 800,000 square kilometers of territory.

It should be explained here that the map of the Ottoman Empire that we often see today did not last long. Between 1600 and 1900, the Ottomans lost control of southern Ukraine, the Caucasus, Greece, the Northern Balkans, and Egypt, so this is not combined. Before World War I, Ottoman Turkey was not very large, about 1.6 million square kilometers.

After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I, Austria + Hungary stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles was equivalent to 25% of the pre-war Austro-Hungarian Empire, with a population equivalent to 30% of the pre-war period, an industrial output equivalent to 28% of the pre-war value, and an agricultural output equivalent to 25% of the pre-war value.

The war launched by Germany hurt Austria-Hungary, where did it all start?