Chapter 1185 Quick Start
As for the shortcomings of East Africa, it is the short time for the development of civilization. Before East Africa, there was no decent modern country in the entire Africa.
The top student in the African region before East Africa was Egypt, but Egypt was completely unable to compete with other regions in the matching mechanism of the Eurasian region.
So after East Africa becomes the most representative big country in Africa, the most important thing to do is to make up lessons. This is why East Africa quickly transforms East Africa from a big country into a real country through immigration, industrial development, and infrastructure construction. The basic logic of world power in this sense.
The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century can be said to be the last storm on the African continent. If the countries on the African continent were unable to rise rapidly during this period, they would basically never face encirclement and suppression by the Western world in the future. Opportunity.
East Africa is the country that suddenly appeared and led the African continent to the peak competition. But when East Africa took over most of southern Africa, the difference in conditions can be imagined.
In terms of the latitude of the development of human civilization, the level of civilization in sub-Saharan Africa in the late 19th century remained at least five thousand years ago.
After all, at that time, the Far Eastern Empire and the Middle East had already developed relatively mature farming civilizations, and many areas had entered slave societies from primitive societies.
So when the East African colonies were established, they were in a real sense of poverty, the kind that the new government of the Far East Empire in 1949 would have shed tears upon seeing.
This also resulted in East Africa having to adopt the most radical means and methods in early colonial and national construction, such as the early "militarism" model, rationing system, complete nationalization of land, and the most radical "centralization of power" ” model, later the “completely planned economy” of the first two five-year plans, and now the “New Economic Policy.”
Yes, the new economic policy is also very extreme. It can be said that during the Third Five-Year Plan period, East Africa adopted an outrageous degree of laxity towards the private economy. Basically, it was possible to do anything without prohibition by law, and even some violations of East Africa were Legal businesses turn a blind eye.
These extreme policies and systems all have one thing in common, and that is "quick fix". Basically in every economic development cycle, the East African government likes to apply one-size-fits-all at the expense of and disregard for some interests. Let East Africa's national strength, economy, population, military, infrastructure, agriculture and other fields rapidly expand and develop.
Of course, East Africa's strategy is obviously successful. It is no exaggeration to say that East Africa only took about fifty years to complete the journey that other countries took hundreds or thousands of years to complete.
At least in East Africa itself, thorough modernization has been achieved. The land that has not been developed for tens of thousands of years has been turned into farmland, villages and cities, roads, canals, etc., which has greatly affected the Zambezi and Congo rivers. For the first time, large-scale human activities were carried out on rivers that had never been regulated before. Industrial governance, and the population of East Africa has changed from 30 to 40 million primitive indigenous people to more than 100 million modern people who have received primary education...
Although the last point is a bit unethical, it is true that through large-scale immigration , gave birth to the greatest country in history on the African continent.
By the time World War I broke out, East Africa was obviously no longer the novice village it once was, but a world power that the whole world could not ignore. Currently, East Africa could compete with any other great power in the world.
The First World War was another crossroads for East Africa. If it is taken advantage of, East Africa will go one step further. It can already be predicted that East Africa will become unprecedentedly powerful after the war.
Now the United Kingdom is a stumbling block on the road to East Africa's rise, so cracking the British interference in East African trade is particularly important for East Africa.
Merck said: "Your Majesty, to bypass the British obstruction, we must open up more trade channels, and among them, the construction progress of the Basra Railway should be accelerated."
The progress of the Basra Railway is relatively slow. According to the original plan of East Africa, it was planned to take one year to open this 700-kilometer-long passage. But now the UK is doing the first step, and East Africa is naturally doing the 15th step.
Ernst nodded and said: "Originally, I wanted to use the Basra Railway to trade with the Ottoman Empire, but now it seems that it is no longer necessary, so the Ministry of Railways has accelerated the progress of the Basra Railway and strives to officially open the Basra Railway before July this year."
Originally Ernst planned to use the Basra Railway to lift the Ottoman Empire, but the Ottoman Empire obviously did not want to speed up the progress of the Basra Railway project through territorial transactions. But Ernst doesn't care too much about this now. Although Ernst used to be coveted for oil off the coast of Saudi Arabia in his previous life, East Africa is no longer what it used to be.
With the incorporation of new territories such as Gabon, the Tonkin Gulf Territory, and East Kalimantan, as well as East Africa’s advance layout in Venezuela, Romania, the United States and other regions, East Africa has already made significant progress in oil resources. Got enough sense of security.
Today, there are three ways to obtain oil in East Africa. The first is the local area. The oil resources in the north and west of East Africa can basically guarantee the daily production and daily needs of East Africa.
The second one is the overseas colonies in East Africa. Alaska, the Tonkin Gulf Territory, and East Kalimantan are all areas rich in oil resources. With these overseas colonies, East Africa cannot lack oil supplies.
The third one is East Africa’s investment abroad. For example, the United States, Romania, Austria-Hungary, Tsarist Russia, Venezuela and other major oil producers in the world at this stage have invested in East Africa.
The oil-producing areas of these other countries can also stabilize the energy security of East Africa. Among them, only Tsarist Russia is more risky. After all, Tsarist Russia is internally unstable.
So now that East Africa’s oil and energy security has established a three-level firewall, Ernst does not need to be too anxious about it.
Ernst said: "The construction of the Basra railway is one of the key trade routes that stabilizes our alliance with the Allies, so the sooner it is completed, the better it is for our country's economy."
It is worth mentioning that East Africa still has not repaid all its debts to the two major camps, so in order to pay off its debts quickly and make a profit, East Africa urgently needs to maintain the scale of trade with Europe.
The main factor causing this result is the United States. With the United States in East Africa, it is impossible to be alone. The competition between the two countries has further flattened the profits from trade with Europe, which makes East Africa and the United States still unable to pay off. Debts owed to various European countries before the war.
The main reason is that East Africa borrowed too much money before the war. With these loans, East Africa's local industrial production capacity almost doubled.
The total industrial output value of East Africa in 1910 was 120 billion Rhine guilders, and now it has expanded to more than 270 billion Rhine guilders in 1914.
With the money of European countries, East Africa's industry has achieved qualitative development, and even the economic and industrial growth rate has exceeded the previous two five-year plan periods.
And more than 270 billion rhine guilders, converted into US dollars, is about 40 billion, while the total industrial production value of the United States before the war was only more than 24 billion.
The current gross industrial production of the United States should be over 30 billion, but at this stage in the previous life, the United States had already reached 50 billion. This shows how much market share East Africa has taken away from the United States.
After all, Europe’s purchasing power is limited. As the two industrial giants, the United States and East Africa, compete, their respective profits will naturally be less. According to the estimates of the East African government, it wants to completely repay its debts to European countries. Debt, it will take at least another seven months.
But now Britain's deliberate obstruction will obviously prolong East Africa's debt repayment time, so the East African government must find another way to maximize East Africa's gains from the war.
“The Basra Railway has limited capacity after all, so we have to think of other ways. As the war progresses, the difficulty of trade between us and the Allies will definitely increase, so at this stage we must strengthen trade with the Allies. , in the middle and late stages of the war, it will become more and more difficult to get money from the Allied camp.”
(End of this chapter)