I have a question that arises from an historical example I remembered (again from Portuguese expansion history)
The portuguese and a tough time building their fleet and when they arrived in India they didn´t think twice. They fortified a series of large trade posts and then built a large shipyard (I think that it was in Goa) and brough shipmakers from Portugal.
This shipyard built some of the biggest (and best) ocean going ships of it´s time.
a small quote from an history book
in the beggining of the XVI century a portuguese ship had ' a crew of 120-150 men ,carried 500 soldiers on board' and reached the '1000 to 2000 tons of weight'!
'whenever an english ship sighted a portuguese warship it quickly steered clear, out of range of the cannons'
OK this tech supperiority went down the drain in 1580 but the point of this post is:
can we use a colony to build up our military might or not?
P.S. The portuguese also used local troops extensively (like in 1 portuguese officer and 100 locals ratio!) and it didn´t matter where they were from (continent, race, creed etc)!
The portuguese and a tough time building their fleet and when they arrived in India they didn´t think twice. They fortified a series of large trade posts and then built a large shipyard (I think that it was in Goa) and brough shipmakers from Portugal.
This shipyard built some of the biggest (and best) ocean going ships of it´s time.
a small quote from an history book
in the beggining of the XVI century a portuguese ship had ' a crew of 120-150 men ,carried 500 soldiers on board' and reached the '1000 to 2000 tons of weight'!
'whenever an english ship sighted a portuguese warship it quickly steered clear, out of range of the cannons'
OK this tech supperiority went down the drain in 1580 but the point of this post is:
can we use a colony to build up our military might or not?
P.S. The portuguese also used local troops extensively (like in 1 portuguese officer and 100 locals ratio!) and it didn´t matter where they were from (continent, race, creed etc)!
