Chapter 141 Central Asian Bandits
At the end of July, with the end of the war, there was also a wave of immigration from East Africa. For more than half a year, with Ernst poaching people, the southern German region was hollowed out in an instant.
In order to seize the new land seized in the war, the Hexingen Consortium increased its immigration efforts. In addition to using all of its ships for immigration, it also hired a large number of ships from Northern Europe.
Now that the war is over, the number of immigrants is sufficient, and the immigration potential of southern Germany has been exhausted by Ernst in a short period of time. We can only wait for a while before accumulating another wave.
Not only did the number of German immigrants fall back to a low level, but due to their early development, immigration from the Far East and Austro-Hungary also reached a low level.
The Far East is currently in a very politically stable period, especially after the Nian Rebellion was pacified and order was re-established in the north.
The long-term large-scale wars in the Central Plains and North China have basically ended. From the Taiping Rebellion to the Nian Rebellion, many areas from south to north have been emptied of their houses. Now the rulers of the Qing Dynasty have to restart local production, which requires a large population.
In addition, the immigration requirements in East Africa have always been relatively high, and physical health alone has screened out a large number of smokers and sick people in the countryside.
If you are too weak, you will almost certainly die at sea, and the immigration conditions in the Far East are definitely worse than those in Europe.
After all, if European immigrants complain about the poor conditions on the ships in East Africa when they go back to visit their families in the future, wouldn’t that scare off a lot of people?
As for immigrants from the Far East, they were not qualified to be picky, especially those on Dutch ships, where people and cargo were basically mixed together and the living conditions were even worse, almost as bad as the treatment of black slaves.
Fortunately, East Africa pays according to the survival rate, so the Dutch shipowner did not go too far.
Among the many immigrants, only those from Paraguay and the Middle East remained stable.
The Paraguayan War was still going on, and the coalition forces were getting closer and closer to victory. As the front line advanced, the staff of the Heixingen Consortium slowly expanded their recruitment business to the interior of Paraguay.
The immigrants from the Middle East are all women. The business of Zanzibar merchants is getting bigger and bigger. Now they not only trade slaves with East Africa, but also take over the promotion of products from the Hexingen Consortium.
Large quantities of goods and tobacco went to the Middle East, and Zanzibar merchants only needed to pay East African colonial women.
This is human trafficking, but the Sultanate of Zanzibar enjoys it. Now the source of immigrants from the Middle East is not limited to Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. They have even connected with Tsarist Russia, and their business scope extends all the way to Tsarist Russia's Central Asia.
As for the moral integrity of the Tsarist Russian aristocracy, of course, they had no moral integrity. The products of the Hexingen Group were considered hard currency in Tsarist Russia.
The Tsarist Russian officials in Central Asia were certainly not as good as the European masters, and their conditions were only slightly better than those in the exile area in Siberia.
Therefore, it was difficult for Tsarist Russian officials in Central Asia to make more money. Now they only needed to use Turkic women to exchange for goods.
This was a no-cost business for Tsarist Russian officials, so the originally relatively stable Central Asian region was recently plagued by bandits who specialized in robbing wealth and women.
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As the number of immigrants decreased, Ernst conveniently invested more ocean shipping capacity in the transportation of goods. In the war in the first few months, in order to fill the gaps in the newly occupied areas as soon as possible, the Hexingen Consortium was overloaded with immigrants and spent a large amount of money in an instant.
Now that the total East African immigrant population has exceeded one million, Ernst is no longer in a hurry to immigrate. He just needs to wait until the number of immigrants returns to normal levels every month.
What Ernst is really concerned about now is reducing the construction costs of the colony and realizing the implementation of cement, ironware, food processing... in East Africa.
For a long time, East Africa has been heavily dependent on imports of modern industrial materials such as cement. However, there is no shortage of raw materials for these industrial materials in East Africa, and they can be produced by themselves. What East Africa lacks are factories and other facilities.
The first country in Europe to engage in industrialized cement production was Britain in 1824, and then cement factories sprang up all over Europe.
Cement is not a high-tech product. Of course, this high-tech product is only relative to European and American countries. Countries outside Europe and the United States still need to import large quantities.
It was not difficult for the Hechingen Group to obtain cement production equipment (the first cement plant in Asia was built in Japan in 1871). It could be solved by simply acquiring a small cement plant in Germany.
There are so many states in the German region, and each state has some industries, so it is very easy for Ernst to get some technology and factories.
They acted immediately and soon acquired a poorly managed cement factory in Hamburg. Ernst naturally did not plan to engage in cement production in Germany. The cement industry in Germany was already very competitive and the profits were not too high. Moreover, the Hechingen Consortium did not have any large-scale mineral resources in Europe to support these traditional industries.
Moreover, Ernst could not challenge the giants of traditional industries, so Hexingen made his fortune in light industry and relatively advanced technology fields.
At present, many German power companies and technology research and development companies have investments from the Hechingen Bank behind them. These will be the cash cows of the Hechingen Consortium in the future.
After acquiring the cement plant, the company transported the equipment and personnel directly from the port of Hamburg to East Africa using its own ships.
It was second-hand, and the boss was eager to sell it due to the loss, so the price was very cheap, and the employees of the cement factory were directly sent to East Africa by Ernst with the intention of aiding the construction.
If they were asked to stay in East Africa, these workers would definitely not do it, so Ernst offered them high salaries and sent them to East Africa to guide the construction of cement plants.
The first cement plant was located in Dar es Salaam. It was quite convenient to ship it by sea from Hamburg to Dar es Salaam, and it was also easy to ship.
Next, Ernst plans to build a cement plant in several important cities in East Africa. The first batch of cities selected are Mombasa, Dodoma, Mbeya, Kisumu and Songea.
The cities in East Africa, or more precisely, small towns, have insufficient populations and are completely useless to ordinary people. Houses built in the traditional way are fine, at least they are sufficient for now.
The investment was about 50,000 pounds, which was really a very small amount of money because East Africa did not need that much cement. Cement was mainly used on special roads and in East African cities, so the scale of the subsequent cement plants was not even as large as that of Dar es Salaam.
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Dar es Salaam.
The first cement plant in East Africa was being built at a rapid pace, and before the machinery and equipment were shipped to East Africa, the staff in Dar es Salaam received the news via telegram.
This cement plant will become the largest cement production plant in the current East African colony and will remain so for some time.
Because we need to speed up production and meet the needs of the East African colonies as much as possible, the scale cannot be small.
The few more factories built later will also be small factories. The reason for building more is to reduce transportation costs. If the East African colony can solve the transportation problem, it doesn’t matter whether to build them or not.
What East Africa lacked the least was manpower. When developing northern Kenya, the East African colonies captured a large number of tribal people to supplement the labor force. Therefore, during the Northwest Battlefield, East Africa did not capture the natives in the Northwest, but drove them all out instead.
(End of this chapter)
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