Chapter 1138 Dealing with German Colonies
The German government has no time to engage in East Africa, because the German army has already marched to Belgium at this time, and now the top German officials are focused on the war.
In this way, Germany’s nearly one million square kilometers of overseas colonies fell into the hands of East Africa. Under the influence of East Africa, the process of German overseas colonization in this life can be said to be even more difficult. In the previous life, the total number of German overseas colonies was 200 590,000 square kilometers, but now it does not even reach half of this number.
To put it bluntly, the economic value of the German colony of Tanzania in the previous life alone exceeded the sum of all of Germany's overseas colonies today.
Take the Central African colonies as an example. This is already Germany's most aggressive colony, but the tropical rainforest alone accounts for more than 80% of the total area, making it difficult to develop.
After all, it belongs to a typical tropical rain forest climate distribution area. The equator passes through German Central Africa, and Germany’s second largest colony, German New Guinea, is also near the equator, and its geographical location is very bad, let alone Germany. , even for East Africa, it is a place where nothing matters.
Except for Africa, Germany's other colonies are basically distributed on the Pacific islands near Oceania.
Just from the distribution of German colonies, we can see Germany's "aggrieved" status among the colonial powers. To put it harshly, all the overseas territories Germany acquired before were basically the leftovers of charity from Britain and France. The scum is not even leftovers. It is no wonder that Germany is dissatisfied with the current division of the world structure.
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Compared with the gloom and gloom brought by European countries due to the outbreak of World War I, East Africa is overjoyed. Now that the war has not expanded, East Africa has already won Huge benefit.
Germany's overseas colonies are quite useless to Germany, but they have completely different meanings for East Africa, such as Togoland and German Central Africa. Putting aside the economic value and difficulty of development, their strategic value alone is worthy of East Africa's action.
Togoland and German Central Africa are located in the north and east of the Gulf of Guinea respectively. With these two places, East Africa's political influence and military presence can be directly expanded to the Gulf of Guinea region.
For example, Lome, the capital of Togoland, is a natural deep-water port that can serve as an outpost and solid base for the East African Navy in West Africa.
German Central Africa has more densely populated ports, the most important of which are Libreville and Gentile, and Ernst knows that there are relatively rich oil resources on the coast of German Central Africa. , but Germany is no longer blessed to enjoy these resources.
Of course, it is impossible for Ernst to take the initiative to reveal the oil resources here. The most important thing now is to complete the split and rule of German Central Africa.
At the Rhine Palace, Ernst and officials were actively planning the new territory.
Ernst said: "Split German Central Africa into two parts, with the northern part establishing a colony and the southern part being incorporated into the mainland. Basically, the former French Gabon colony was included in the mainland, while Cameroon Maintain colonial status for the time being. "
"The original Central African Development Agreement now seems unlikely to be implemented. It will be redesigned according to our ideas."
The Central African Development Agreement is the original East Africa. A huge plan led by Germany, Belgium, and the Kingdom of South Germany.
But now Germany and Belgium have been involved in the European war and are unable to escape. The two countries have even become warring countries, not to mention that German Central Africa has fallen into the hands of East Africa, so the original joint development agreement It became a joke.
"The rainforest area of German Central Africa alone exceeds 300,000 square kilometers. It is extremely difficult to develop it. Without a sufficient population, it is almost impossible to complete. Therefore, we only develop the southern area first, while Bangui and other inland areas of East Africa The region also has access to the sea through the ports of Douala and Libreville.”
“The northern railway has been upgraded to a true two-ocean railway, which will further enhance our country’s transportation advantages. In this way, our country’s northern coast will be expanded. The railway economic belt will be completely formed. "The end point of the northern railway is the inland city of Bangui. In the past, because the west was a French and German colony, East Africa naturally had no motivation to continue to extend the northern railway. Now the west has completely fallen into the hands of East Africa. , it will be necessary to extend the construction of the Northern Railway for the third time.
In this way, the "three horizontal" railways in East Africa have basically realized the function of connecting the two oceans, which is of great benefit to the economic development of East Africa.
“We must also pay special attention to Togoland. Lome must be built into a port city, and its military attributes are given priority. It is an important outpost of our country in the Gulf of Guinea and guarantees our country’s interests in the South Atlantic region. .”
Togoland was probably Togo in its previous life, between Ghana and Benin, between the British Gold Coast and the French Protectorate of Dahomey.
Previously, East Africa was the most powerful country in Africa, but it had almost no sense of presence in West Africa. As East Africa's first colony in West Africa, Togoland's significance is naturally very important.
Hermann said: "These two German colonies have exceeded 500,000 square kilometers. It is indeed difficult to develop and manage them."
Ernst: "So If we want to carry out large-scale immigration activities in these two areas, we will refer to our practices in the Beibu Gulf Territory, especially Togoland, which will be our nearest In the next few years, we will set a small goal to immigrate one million people to Togoland, the main key area for immigration.”
Togoland’s location can be said to be completely between the two major powers in the world, of course. Sturt's immigration policy is not intended to target the threats posed by Britain and France. There is currently no country south of the Sahara that poses a threat to East Africa.
The main reason why Ernst implemented such a radical immigration plan in Togoland was to prevent local blacks.
West Africa is currently the area with the highest density of black people in the world. As time goes by, within a few decades, the number of black people here will inevitably skyrocket. According to Togoland’s location, except for the sea in the south, it is almost surrounded on three sides. Surrounded by black residents.
Moreover, the territory of Togoland is distributed in a long strip, with the north and south sides almost negligible. This kind of terrain is naturally conducive to the penetration of black people into Togoland.
And Ernst did not get Togoland from Germany to make wedding clothes for future black people, so the best way was to move a large number of immigrants there.
The first are immigrants from East Africa, followed by immigrants from Europe and the Far Eastern Empire. Now that the European War has broken out, it is not particularly difficult to obtain populations from Europe, especially Eastern Europe.
Of course, it is certainly unrealistic to achieve the 50/50 population ratio that East Africa had at the time. After all, there will certainly not be too many European refugees who can be deceived. After all, the conditions in Togoland are too poor.
Now is not like the last century. At that time, many European countries, including Germany, had not developed economically. East Africa had caught up with the last train of population loss in the German region and was able to gain a large number of German immigrants.
Now, the economies of many European countries are developing well, and the only way to obtain a sufficient population from Europe is from the Kingdom of Naples and Eastern Europe. These countries and regions are currently at the tail end of the European economy. It is also growing rapidly and has replaced Germany as the most important population outflow destination in Europe.
Of course, people in European countries are not easy to fool after all. The main reason is that the United States, the traditional target country for European immigrants, now has Argentina. Compared with the two countries, there is still a big gap between East Africa and the two countries, not to mention that East Africa is not Instead of recruiting immigrants for the homeland, they recruited immigrants for the colonies.
So, one can imagine what will happen next. The focus of East African immigrants will definitely be on the Far Eastern Empire. Now is a good time to attract a wave of immigrants from the Far Eastern Empire.
After decades of relative peace, the population of the Far Eastern Empire has recovered. In addition, due to the change of political power, the Far Eastern Empire has fallen back into war and warlord rule. This has made it easier for East Africa to recruit immigrants from the Far Eastern Empire.
(End of this chapter)