Chapter 172 Expansion and Immigration Issues
At present, East Africa is developing very rapidly. Although it is now an era of industrialization, East Africa has almost no industrial development.
However, the conditions in East Africa itself were not very good, especially before the development of East African colonies, when most of the local people were still in a primitive hunting civilization.
The vast land has not been developed and utilized, and the Zanzibar Sultanate, the only modern country, relies mainly on the slave trade in its mainland part.
It was a remarkable achievement for the East African colonies to bring the local area into an agricultural society.
Agriculture is the foundation of East Africa. Even in the past, East Africa was one of the few agricultural areas in Africa, basically able to achieve a self-sufficient level. Tanzania and countries near the Great Lakes region are important agricultural countries in Africa.
Of course, compared to being an agricultural country, East African countries would definitely prefer to be a resource-rich country. However, judging from the development of East Africa in the past, East Africa is one of the more economically backward regions in the whole of Africa.
Because East Africa's resource endowment is not outstanding in the whole of Africa. Of course, this also has some advantages. In the past, East Africa had fewer conflicts and wars than other regions in Africa, and the society as a whole was relatively stable.
Of course, lack of prominence does not mean a lack of resources, but rather that East Africa lacks the main mineral resources for industrialization, such as coal, iron, and oil. These mineral resources, which are in great demand and widely used, are the foundation of industrialization.
For example, in the past, Africa had the most famous and highest-yielding diamond resources in the world. This hyped luxury product was of little help to Africa’s industrialization, and its profits were taken away by European and American capital.
As for coal and iron resources, Africa as a whole has relatively small reserves compared to other continents. The oil resources are good, but they are mainly distributed along the coasts of North Africa and West Africa.
The fundamental reason why the African continent is considered rich in resources by the world is that Africa has a low level of development and low resource utilization rate. The mining industry is a pillar industry in many countries.
Moreover, with the development of science and technology, especially after the 21st century, the demand for non-ferrous metals, including heavy metals (such as copper, lead, zinc), light metals (such as aluminum, magnesium), precious metals (such as gold, silver, platinum) and rare metals (such as tungsten, molybdenum, germanium, lithium, lanthanum, uranium) has been increasing, especially the research and development of rare metals, and these resources are relatively abundant in Africa.
But in terms of importance, the status of oil, coal, iron, copper, aluminum and gold is unshakable.
Especially energy. So many wars are energy wars, and many countries have fought each other for energy.
As for oil resources, forget about it in East Africa. After looking around, only South Sudan has considerable reserves. But Ernst does not intend to have a conflict with Egypt now. Any country with some strength deserves respect.
We can make some efforts in coal. East Africa has small coal reserves, but southern Africa has abundant coal resources, especially in Zambia and Zimbabwe. These two places happen to be "ownerless" now.
Moreover, Ernst had long been interested in Zambia and had always been obsessed with the Katanga Plateau copper belt (Central African copper-cobalt belt).
This is the most easily accessible world-class important metal mining belt in East Africa, which can directly affect the pricing power of the world's copper mines.
With the northwest of the Great Lakes and northern Kenya secured, the main direction of colonial expansion in East Africa in 1869 was certainly the Katanga Plateau.
This time, East Africa as a whole maintained its previous expansion strategy, trying to avoid conflicts of interest with regional powers and other colonizers, and bypassing its core interest areas, namely Egypt, Britain, Portugal and other forces.
Currently, there are vast buffer zones between East Africa and the above countries or their colonies to avoid direct contact between the two forces.
To the south was the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, and to the north was Egypt and the British colony of Somaliland. East Africa was separated from these powers by terrain or indigenous peoples.
This also means that East Africa's next expansion can only be westward, and to the west is Congo. Ernst is not very interested in the tropical rainforest, and there is nothing in the northwest to attract East Africa to expand.
So only the southwest region is left. The first thing is to take over the Katanga Plateau, and the second is to prepare for the expansion of energy reserves (coal) in the future.
The above is the current resource situation of the East African colonies, the surrounding situation they faced and the expansion plan for 1869.
In 1869, the immigration target for East Africa was to break through the population of two million. Yes, Ernst’s requirements are so low now. Currently, the population of East Africa has reached more than 1.75 million. It can be said that it is easy to break through two million. It may be possible to do it relying solely on the new population.
Two million is a threshold. Once Ernst crosses this threshold, he will no longer have to worry about security issues in East Africa as he did before.
Next, the East African immigration work can proceed as usual. There may not be too many ups and downs in the future. In the future, the additional ships and transportation capacity of the Heixingen Group will no longer be invested in immigration, but will be used for industrial transfer and commodity transportation.
This change also means that East Africa's screening standards for immigrants are increasing instead of decreasing. In the past, there was an urgent need for immigrants, so it was inevitable that the standards would be lowered at work. Now, the requirements for immigrants will increase instead.
Of course, the growth rate of East African immigrants should not change much. Since the second half of 1868, East Africa has entered a stage of slow immigration.
The Far East and Germany are politically stable and peaceful, and civilians' willingness to go to sea has dropped significantly. In addition, due to excessive efforts in East Africa before, the immigration potential of the two regions has been exhausted and it will take time to recover.
Therefore, East Africa’s current immigration capacity is somewhat in excess. Fortunately, the newly introduced Slavs have made up some of the gap, but overall the immigration speed has entered a slowdown phase.
Of course, East Africa still welcomes immigrants from Germany, but there is really not a drop left. With the decrease in German immigrants, Ernst deliberately reduces the number of other immigrants entering East Africa.
German immigrants need to account for at least 30 percent, other European immigrants should be at 20 percent, the Far East should be around 30 percent, and other regions (such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the Americas) should account for 20 percent.
Although there are many Chinese immigrants, there are more European and other immigrants, and the Europeans are mainly Germans. In addition, there is intermarriage between immigrants from various regions in the East African colonies. The population structure has become relatively stable. All that needs to be done next is to continue to promote German culture.
This is also an important factor why Ernst no longer pursues the number of immigrants. Every batch of immigrants must be neutralized by a certain number of German immigrants. Now that the number of German immigrants is decreasing, the number of other immigrants must be reduced, or new sources of immigrants must be introduced to prevent any region from being dominated by immigrants other than German immigrants.
As a German throughout his life, Ernst had to ensure the dominant position of German culture and thought in East Africa, especially in the early colonial period.
Moreover, Ernst now needs to prepare for the Franco-Prussian War. The Franco-Prussian War is an important opportunity. Ernst must seize the opportunity to take the Hechingen Consortium to a higher level. At the same time, the opening of the Suez Canal this year will also have a profound impact on East Africa. Ernst will definitely make some adjustments to the East African colonies, and the immigration issue will no longer be so important this year.
(End of this chapter)
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