Chapter 479 The Cow and Horse Empire
Early 1878.
Central Province, Kidatu Village Agricultural Cooperative.
Lovis, the head of Kidatu Village, preached the new policy to the villagers: "Okay, calm down now. I have brought you good news. The new policy issued by the government has been conveyed. According to The Kingdom has instructed that our country will solve the slave problem within the next thirty years. In order to adapt to changes in the international community, we should currently promote the replacement of slaves with large livestock such as cattle and horses. According to the township government documents, our Kidatu Village allocates 230 cattle for cultivated land. Six, used to replace farming slaves."
Lemy: "Village chief, this is good news, isn't it just to replace slaves with animals? And slaves can do some rough work besides farming, which is better than animals. “More!”
"Lemy, what do you know? No matter how useful this slave is, it will not last long. Our East African country has special conditions, so we have to use slaves as a tool to improve East Africa's productivity for the time being. However, slaves are not allowed by the international community and will inevitably be Eliminate them, and no matter how capable the slave is, he can't be as efficient as a large animal. There is still the possibility of riots."
Lemmy muttered: "I think black people are very useful. Besides, can't we suppress the little black people?"
" Haha, the United States thought the same way at the beginning. Now the problem is that the black slaves in the United States have been liberated. In the future, black slaves will People will definitely have a very important impact on American society. It is unknown whether it is good or bad, but we cannot let the situation in the United States happen in East Africa. The Mamluks in Egypt were slaves who became the masters. I don’t want the kingdom to encounter this historical situation in the future, so Don't always think about exploiting others and being indolent, the real In the final analysis, happiness is created by oneself, and it will not last through exploitation. "
Rovis' ability to say this is obviously very different from the ordinary people in East Africa. In fact, he has accepted it in the early days. The group of people educated by Hechingen have very high basic cultural literacy, if not he is the village chief!
The replacement of slaves did have a certain impact on production in East Africa. After all, compared to animals, humans are the highest form of productivity at present. They can complete many difficult tasks that animals cannot understand in their lifetimes.
"Village chief, these cattle seem to correspond to the labor force of our village. Is one allocated to each person?"
"What good thing are you thinking about? Do you know how to raise cattle? In other words, you have come into contact with cattle before. What if you raise them to death? "
Rovis's words are very objective. Not many ordinary people in East Africa have ever been exposed to cattle, and this is true for immigrants from both the East and the West.
Immigrants from the Far East who can go to East Africa are the real poor class. If they really had a cow, they would not come to East Africa to make a living. Let alone a farming cow, it would be hard to find a farm tool in their hands. is a problem, and European immigrants do not have a clear understanding of the role of cattle, because cattle farming was not popular in Europe before. The real large-scale use of cattle in white countries is the United States. The main tasks of cattle in Europe are transportation and providing dairy products and beef.
Furthermore, raising cattle is a technical job, and the cost of raising cattle is currently beyond the reach of ordinary people in East Africa with their small wages.
Rowes: "Farming cattle are uniformly raised by cooperatives and bred by specialized personnel. Like slaves before, they can only be used upon application. According to the regulations of the kingdom, separate pastures and sites will be divided."
The climate of the savanna is It is a large natural pasture, but East Africa does not follow the path of Argentina, so a lot of land is used as farmland. In fact, the cost of animal husbandry is smaller. After all, there is no need to cultivate, modify the soil, or even build large farms. Intensive water conservancy facilities of large scale. East African agriculture calls itself smallholder agriculture. In fact, it is completely different from smallholder agriculture. It has a strong division of labor and cooperation and has the nature of capitalist agriculture. It is actually more similar to the Soviet Union. However, there is no Soviet Union now, and there is no such template for a communist country in the world. , there is no reference for the East African agricultural model, so the most similar model to East Africa is European serfdom. The means of production are concentrated in the hands of serf owners. The difference in East Africa is that there is only one serf owner. Ernst does not expect East African agriculture to create Huge economic value, farmers are relatively free, but there are also real serfs in East Africa, that is, black farming slaves.
"It is a general trend to replace slaves with animals. This trend is not only in our village, but will be implemented throughout East Africa in the next few years. Central Province is now a pilot area." Rowes said to the villagers they said.
Of course, the current implementation of sending livestock to the countryside in East Africa is not immediately popularized. It is only promoted in planting areas, and a certain number of slaves will still be retained in cash crop plantations.
The main driving force for the implementation of bringing livestock to the countryside in East Africa is after more than ten years of development. The two major pastures in East Africa have cultivated a considerable number of livestock, especially the northern pastoral areas and the plateau pastoral areas. The number of livestock in these two areas has now reached tens of millions. , which provides a foundation for East Africa to transform backward productivity in rural areas.
The number of tens of millions of cattle is actually not large for East Africa, because Texas alone in the United States has more than 50 million cattle. This is only the number of cattle in one state in the western United States, and East Africa counts both cattle and horses, so East Africa still has a long way to go compared with those powerful countries in animal husbandry.
"Village Chief, since livestock are going to replace slaves, what are these slaves used for? Are they sold?"
Rovis said: "Who knows about this! Anyway, the kingdom Naturally, we will find a way to deal with it, so we don’t have to worry about it!”
Selling is impossible. Currently, there is no such a large slave market that can swallow so many slaves at once, such as the Ottoman Empire. The purchase volume has dropped. After all, he is busy fighting the war with Tsarist Russia and the funds are not very abundant.
For this reason, East Africa specially lowered prices to carry out promotional activities. By subsidizing the Arab ship dealers in Zanzibar, a subsidy was given for sending a ship of slaves, and East Africa did not care where they were sent. In this way, the Ottoman Empire had a large number of slaves in a short time. The black animals competed with the gray animals of Tsarist Russia, and the black animals also had to eat. The grain market in East Africa suddenly revitalized. After all, the Ottomans had stopped purchasing grain from Tsarist Russia, and the market was vacated.
So in the Tenth Russo-Turkish War, the Ottomans fought badly in the Balkans, but the losses in parts of Asia were not as great as in history. Among them, the Caucasus was the most prominent. The Ottomans even formed a black legion to fight against Tsarist Russia.
This is also related to the human trafficking between the Ottoman Empire and East Africa. East Africa bought a lot of white people from the Caucasus, especially women. The forced migration of these people to East Africa was not smooth sailing, and the local people would resist. This played into the Ottoman Empire's intentions, so it struck hard at other local ethnic groups. The vacant land naturally fell into the hands of the Ottoman nobles, and the Ottoman Empire If the nobles wanted to develop these lands, they also needed people. Black slaves became high-quality labor. Moreover, the Ottoman Empire had the means to control black slaves and was not afraid of black slaves occupying dove nests.
So in the Caucasus region for more than ten years, the number of black people in the Caucasus region increased to more than 300,000, working for the Ottoman nobles. Once the war broke out, the Ottoman nobles incorporated these black slaves into the army. They played the human wave tactic with Tsarist Russia, so the Tenth Russo-Turkish War may not end as easily as in history. As long as the black people do not die, the Ottomans will be able to continue fighting. Of course, the filling speed of black people cannot be that fast. , which also placed demands on the Ottoman Empire’s logistics.
Without the intervention of Britain and other countries, the Ottoman Empire still has the desire to fight. As for the situation in the Balkans, there is no way. The Balkans are full of rebels, and the Ottomans have no idea how to exert force there. Perhaps, for example, Romania controlled by Sigmaringen could actually be considered an independent country long ago, but it was still under the name of the Ottoman Empire. It was the same as Egypt at present. The empire became completely independent.
(End of this chapter)