Chapter 119: Busy Farm Season
As soon as Christmas is over, East African immigrants begin their busy lives again. Unlike Africa, it is really winter in Europe now and farmers can rest for a while.
In many parts of East Africa, it is the small rainy season of the year (usually from November to December). While growing crops, immigrants have to dredge rivers and ditches and do a good job of drainage and water diversion.
The climatic conditions in the East African colonies are not particularly favorable, but they are above the world average. As long as there is sufficient water, for example, rice can be grown 2.5 times a year (five times in two years).
The land currently being developed in East Africa is all near places with sufficient water sources such as rivers and lakes, or places with abundant rainfall. Once the water problem is solved, planting will not be a problem, so the immigrants have something to do.
That is, there is slack time during the growing process of crops. During the slack time, the East African colonies would recruit immigrants to conquer other areas.
This is the expansion model of East Africa. They serve the people during farming season and serve as soldiers during wartime. Even if there is no war, militia training will be organized. In any case, there is rarely any free time.
Neither delaying production nor delaying fighting is the basis for the orderly expansion of East African colonies. In addition to the militia, East Africa already has a standing army.
Generally speaking, the militia is enough to deal with the natives. Only when they are tough guys that cannot be taken down will the regular army be called in.
However, this situation will only occur when East Africa is expanding. In the future, when East Africa stops expanding or the population is sufficient, there will be no need for militia to participate in the battle.
The main thing is that if we want to clear out the indigenous people, we will not be able to do so without sufficient manpower. They are familiar with the terrain and can hide in the mountains and forests.
It is impossible to play hide-and-seek with the natives with the limited strength of the regular army, so the militia must be mobilized to conduct a large-scale investigation of the land in the conquered areas.
There is no need to worry even if there are a few fish that slip through the net. For example, for many invasive species, even if two or three individuals break in, they cannot find mating partners and thus cannot reproduce.
This is the current situation in the East African colonies. There are definitely some fish that have slipped through the net within East Africa, but they are isolated from society, and it is difficult for them to survive in the wild even in a primitive society like that of the indigenous tribes.
After all, all the good places were occupied by East African immigrants, so they could only live with wild animals. Even if they relied on their own abilities to escape from the beasts and the inspections of the East African colonies and survived to the end, they could only die alone in the end.
For example, most wild animals in Africa live in groups, and very few act alone. Animals can adapt to the East African environment much better than humans.
They still need to stick together for warmth, let alone humans. One important reason why East Africa is not as densely populated as West Africa is that there are fewer people.
The indigenous tribes of East Africa are at most 50-50 with the animals on the East African savannah. The reason why the colonial immigrants in East Africa are different is that they are hit by the dimensionality reduction attack of hot weapons.
No matter how powerful a wild animal is, it can be shot down with one shot. The natives need to unite and cooperate. It takes at least four or five people to deal with a wild beast. As for large animals like elephants and hippos, it takes the cooperation of the entire village to capture them.
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On Christmas Day, the fact that the East African government can take time out to celebrate is a sign of respect for traditional festivals.
The rainy season every year is the busiest time in East Africa, a country with poor development and infrastructure.
The concentration of precipitation is also a challenge for East Africa. In the past, when the rainy season arrived throughout East Africa, rainwater could only gather along the terrain, making low-lying areas easily flooded.
This is also the reason why the indigenous people do not live near rivers. They usually only need to go to the river to fetch water, as they rely on hunting for a living anyway.
Therefore, in documentaries, you can often see Africans carrying kettles on their heads to fetch water from very distant rivers. Of course, some water sources are more dangerous because there are more wild animals near them, which is why Africans do not live near water sources.
But the situation was not so good in the East African colonies. Agriculture was the most important industry in the East African colonies, and the closer agricultural planting was to the water source, the better. As for wild beasts, they had long been eradicated by the East African government, so most East African immigrants lived near water sources such as rivers and lakes.
In order to draw river water to irrigate the fields, canals need to be dug and water wheels and other water diversion facilities need to be built.
When the rainy season comes in East Africa, some river sections are prone to flooding, so in order to avoid floods posing a threat to residential areas and farmland.
During the rainy season, dredging the river and building river embankments became necessary measures. These major projects required the joint efforts of all the people in the colony.
Of course, prevention is the main thing. The chance of a real flood disaster is not high. It only happens in extreme years with too much rain.
As long as preventive measures are taken in advance, the East African colonies can withstand losses.
After all, the land developed in the East African colonies is relatively large, and the part along the river is only a small part. Irrigation is mainly done through ditches.
The conditions are just poor now. When the conditions are better in the future, we will definitely have to introduce important tools such as pumps. Then we will not have to rely on manpower and effort to drive the water-pumping device.
There is no need to wait that long. Primitive power machines like windmills can be introduced in advance. Ernst plans to send people to the Netherlands to learn from their experience.
In fact, the windmills in the Netherlands were first introduced from Germany, but the Dutch came up with various new ways to use them.
In addition to absorbing and draining water, windmills were also used by the Dutch as an important source of power to grind grains, tobacco leaves, press oil, felt, and make paper...
With the advent of the steam age, Dutch windmills gradually declined, but this thing still played a big role in wild places like East Africa.
Anyway, East Africa is not short of materials. The main materials are wood and bricks and stones, and other materials can also be imported from Europe.
The current conditions in the East African colonies do not allow for the entry into the industrial age, but they can use all the advanced tools and experiences from the agricultural age.
The main reason was to save costs. The threshold for industry was too high and it could not be achieved overnight. However, traditional agricultural tools could be made by the East African colonies themselves.
Combined with the advanced experience from the agricultural era summarized over thousands of years, East Africa's production efficiency can at least be raised to the extreme of the agricultural era.
The agricultural era was only a transitional stage in the East African colonies and would not last forever. Ernst also knew that industrialization was the future, but building a house requires laying the foundation first. Industry without agricultural support is just rootless duckweed.
Of course, it is not impossible to carry out small-scale industrialization. The problem is that Ernst might as well just fence off the small place of Hechingen and grow his own industry. East Africa's talent is so good that it cannot be wasted, and large-scale industry cannot be separated from independent agriculture.
The fact that the East African colonies improved East Africa's original primitive social and economic system to the agricultural era was itself an advancement, not to mention that it took only a few decades to complete the agricultural civilization that took other countries hundreds or even thousands of years to achieve.
(End of this chapter)
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