Chapter 424 Escape
In the end, the deal was reached. The two parties reached an agreement to pay the money in one hand and deliver the goods in the other. In this way, they only had to wait for the East African ship to land, and the Far East officials would inspect the goods in Jiaozhou Bay and pay.
The positioning of a weapon like the Dresser rifle is difficult to grasp. It is indeed the first widely adopted military breech-loading rifle in the world. However, the times are developing, and various countries are developing or have equipped more Advanced rifle.
The market for Dreiser rifles is nothing more than backward areas, and Africa naturally falls into this category. However, Ernst will not sell his ropes in Africa, so the only remaining areas are the Far East and South America. an independent market.
In the Far East, only the Far East Empire meets the requirements of East Africa. Other regions are either colonies of other countries or cannot afford the money. This is the helplessness of small countries. Of course, Japan is an exception. If it is just an arms business , Ernst could consider getting involved in the military industry.
...
Night shrouded the entire black continent of Africa. Except for the scattered faint spots of light in the two cities that never sleep, Dar es Salaam and Mombasa, no trace of light could be seen.
The same is true for Bulawayo, which is deep in the hinterland of the East African Kingdom. Outside Bakola, an indigenous village on the outskirts of Bulawayo, hundreds of pairs of bright eyes are looking around.
“Clalulu, is everyone gathered?”
“Chief, I informed each household that everyone is here!”
"Didn't alert the Germans?"
"Don't worry, the Germans never leave the castle at night. They only patrol around during the day, and they will retreat into the castle on time as soon as it gets dark every day."
"That's good, call everyone out today, I hope everyone knows the reason! Just yesterday, the Germans came to ask for someone again."
"Damn Germans, according to In the past, they should have taken some time to come, but now they have come to arrest people before the time has come. We have lost too many people from last year to now, Buck, Momoius, Kallugu..." Clarulu He doesn't know math, but he clearly remembers the names of everyone in the village.
It stands to reason that East Africa must draw lots to recruit young people at the end of the month, but now East Africa needs more labor, so the task was issued in advance, so the indigenous people in Zimbabwe completely exploded.
However, based on the experience of the Ndebele people, the Shona people do not think they can cope with East Africa, and the large tribes of the Shona people have been divided into small areas by region in East Africa, so they cannot achieve series connection.
So small unit villages like Bakola Village can only save themselves. If they can't fight again and again, they can only choose to escape.
“Chief, which direction should we flee to?”
“The Germans have power in the north and south, so we can only run to the west!”
The natives do not have the ability to perform specific logical analysis, but they know that the Germans came from the north and went all the way south, so there are people from the East African Kingdom in the north and south.
As for why the East was not chosen, it was because Germans often came to Bulawayo from the East to replenish supplies. After all, it was the former capital of the Kingdom of Matabele, so East Africa continued to use it as a transfer station for supplies in Zimbabwe. "But in the west, the environment there is very harsh. In the past, tribal warriors went to the west in pursuit of prey. They said it was drier than Bakola."
"Drought is a good thing. The drought shows that there must not be many Germans there. , so we should do the opposite.”
In this way, after determining the direction, the natives of Bakola Village ran away overnight. The early stage of the journey was very smooth, because it was just as they predicted. , East Africa simply cannot deploy many people in the Kalahari Basin.
While the East African kingdom was recruiting young men for railway construction, the Zimbabwe region, which was most severely exploited by East Africa, was also the first to fail. East Africa can be said to be catching a sheep and trying to pluck its wool.
Originally, Zimbabwe had a small population. The entire region had a population of less than one million (3.69 million in 1960). As a result, one project in East Africa had to capture about 100,000 strong men from Zimbabwe. Who could bear this?
Before this, East Africa transferred people from Zimbabwe to work in various places in East Africa on a monthly basis, which was called the "blood tax". Moreover, East Africa did not return goods and exported to export. This form of only importing but not exporting was completely This frightened the Shona people, and various rumors started to arise within the Shona people.
The "blood tax" in East Africa directly frightened the Shona people and became the trigger for the Shona people to flee. They began to plan to escape from Zimbabwe to areas where there were no white people.
Since March, there have been hundreds of "defections" of various sizes among the Shona people, and almost 90% of the Shona people have participated in the defections.
Like rain, they slowly merged from several villages into a large river with tens of thousands of people, running rampant on the grassland, and the animal groups on the grassland provided them with food rations on their way to escape.
A spectacular scene of fauna and indigenous groups suddenly appeared on the African grasslands, all running away. At the peak, more than 300,000 people fled in four directions: southeast, northwest and northwest. When East Africa reacted, they could not stop it, because East Africa was really strong in Zimbabwe. Shortage of manpower.
So the whole of Zimbabwe is like a leaky pocket, with a large number of indigenous people fleeing. The largest number in the east is near Mozambique and several indigenous kingdoms, at least around 100,000.
East Africa intercepted about 100,000 people and directly gathered the workers needed for the railway construction. As for the escaped indigenous people, they either entered Mozambique or flowed into the Kalahari Basin, and the rest were stupider ones. Entering other parts of East Africa, only a handful escaped along the Okavango River into Namibia and Angola.
The "blood tax" is only part of the reason for the "defection" of Zimbabwe's indigenous people. Generally speaking, East Africa is relatively uncivilized in other aspects, such as forcing the indigenous people to the land and making them engage in fixed agriculture. It is very difficult for the Shona people who make a living by hunting and herding. They have neither relevant skills nor experience, so their food output is pitifully low. Moreover, agriculture is extremely boring physical labor. Although hunting is dangerous, it is indeed More freedom.
This "defection" incident has made the East African Kingdom wake up. It seems that a large-scale relocation of the indigenous people of Zimbabwe will be carried out and they cannot be allowed to get close to Mozambique.
To say that East Africa has no bad intentions towards Mozambique would be unbelievable. However, East Africa is not yet ready to annex Mozambique.
Mozambique (including several indigenous kingdoms) itself has many indigenous people, about two million. If East Africa annexes Mozambique in the future, the local indigenous people will definitely have to be cleared.
The escape of Zimbabwean indigenous people into Mozambique means a loss of control, which will increase the cost of future cleanup. If the indigenous people really escape to the west of Angola, then East Africa will be happy to see the result, but they cannot enter Mozambique. Fatty meat on an East African plate.
As for the colony of Angola, why are East Africa not worried? That’s because these indigenous people can escape to Angola, and then they can also escape to West Africa. Unlike Mozambique, which is completely surrounded by East Africa on three sides, with only the sea to the east. In the final analysis, the method of reducing indigenous people in East Africa is to expel them. It is impossible to drive them directly into the sea.
(End of this chapter)