Chapter 412: Buy and Build
After discussing the naming of the naval school, the construction of the Ferdinand Naval Academy was also settled. Like the Hechingen Military Academy, Ernst served as honorary president.
Prince Constantine said, "Ernst, are you addicted to being a school principal?"
"Father, you misunderstood me. Although my personal military accomplishments are not very good, my expertise is in the ideological construction of the campus."
Although Ernst does not often participate in teaching work, he believes that he has unique characteristics in ideological and political construction. After all, he has received this kind of education since he was a child.
"Vigorously developing the navy is a necessary measure for the East African Kingdom at present. The East African navy has become East Africa's fatal weakness, which makes the East African Kingdom much more likely to be threatened by the sea than by land.
In comparison, the East African Army has less pressure on defense, because the East African Army has developed to the first in Africa in terms of size. To be frank, unless the country's strength is exhausted, no country can currently defeat East Africa in the interior of Africa.
As for the navy, our shortcomings are very obvious. We have insufficient personnel and ships. As long as other countries send a fleet, the East African navy may be completely sunk to the sea. Therefore, developing a navy that can protect the coastal waters of East Africa is now our primary goal. "Ernst said bluntly.
The development of the East African navy was urgent. Of course, Ernst would not expand the navy to an exaggerated degree. The main reason was that, as Archduke Ferdinand said, East Africa lacked a system, not powerful ships and guns. Even if more ships were purchased, if there was no system to maintain them, they would just be a pile of scrap metal.
Constantine: "The navy is a long and arduous task. It cannot be accomplished overnight. Even a strong country like Germany cannot develop its navy all at once without decades of development. Therefore, it is enough for our East African Kingdom to proceed step by step and operate the African region down to earth."
Germany's size is much more exaggerated than East Africa. Except for its advantage in area, East Africa's data are far inferior to Germany. But now Constantine is quite satisfied. At least the two can be compared. The Principality of Hechingen did not have this qualification before.
But the East African Kingdom was by no means complacent. First of all, East Africa had in fact become the world's largest exporter of slaves, which ran counter to the increasingly powerful abolition movement in the international community.
In Ernst's view, the abolition movement was nothing more than crocodile tears, extremely hypocritical, and only used to deceive the saints of Europe.
The actual reason is that with the development of British industry, the slave trade no longer made money. In the past, British industry was completely dependent on the slave trade, and industrial products had to rely on slave ships to be sold all over the world.
Now that productivity levels have increased and product quality has greatly improved, the British no longer need to force the sale of their products through the slave trade. Instead, they have embarked on the path of promoting free trade. In fact, once the British encounter setbacks, they will return to their old ways. The Opium War is an example.
In the past, there were many examples of Europe and the United States doing desperate things. For example, in the automotive industry, when they made money, it was free trade, but when others made money, it was dumping, and anti-dumping investigations were conducted.
As for the market, you can only enter it if others are willing to open it to you. Otherwise, you have to forcefully open up other people's markets like in the colonial era. Otherwise, how can Europe and the United States reap the benefits of the world and live a life with good human rights? In fact, before Ernst traveled through time, Europe had already embarked on the old path, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to reap the benefits. So, they should first think of ways to improve the pensions and other benefits of their own citizens.
As for the United States, it has been following the path of foreign immigrants suppressing its own residents. The Latinos have to wash their dishes with sparks, the lower-class rednecks are suffering terribly, and the old industrial areas and old-style villages have declined beyond recognition.
The same was true for the slave trade. The bulk of the profits were actually snatched away by later participants, so Britain and France improved their "morality" and transformed from slave traders to "noble gentlemen" who opposed the slave trade.
East Africa is one of these latecomers. Now that the world economy is booming, major powers such as Britain and France will not bother with the East African Kingdom. Once the economy encounters a downturn, it will inevitably embark on the path of expansion again.
After hundreds of years of development, the two traditional colonial regions of North America and South America have begun to break away from the control of the great powers, so Africa is the next preferred target of the great powers.
In this undercurrent that has already begun to emerge, if the East African Kingdom wants to remain unscathed, it must develop its own navy and keep the enemy out of the country.
Ernst went on to say, "Father, please pay more attention to the purchase of warships. For the time being, don't consider other small ships."
Archduke Ferdinand: "Of course, this is my duty, but small ships are also an indispensable part of the navy. What do you think in this regard?"
Ernst explained: "My plan is to have these small ships designed and built by the four major shipyards under Hechingen, so as to accumulate talents and technology for East Africa's independent shipbuilding."
There is absolutely no problem in entrusting Heixingen's own shipyard to build small self-use ships. In fact, if the funds are in place, it is also feasible to undertake the construction of some large warships.
But Ernst didn't dare to gamble. It was very common for private enterprises to manufacture warships in Europe. Even a powerful navy like the British Navy took the path of combining military and civilian forces.
However, the shipyards in Hechingen had no experience in building military ships, especially some advanced technologies.
As for the wooden warships that East Africa had previously built, the technology came from the Venetian Shipyard. The Venetian Shipyard had experience in building ships for the Venetian Navy in the era of sailing warships, while the other three shipyards copied the technology of the Venetian Shipyard.
However, with the rise of steam power and ironclad ships, the Venetian shipyard had actually declined. It was only after Ernst injected capital that it began to restart research on steam power.
Ernst went on to say: “The Bagamoyo Shipyard will undertake most of the work this time. We can import more technology from Europe, but we need to train more workers.”
Most of the workers at the Bagamoyo Shipyard were immigrants from Germany and Italy, with only a few from the Far East.
This is also a characteristic of East Africa. In fact, in factories that require a little bit of technology, the workers are mainly immigrants from Germany.
Immigrants from the German region have received basic education, so they are more suitable to be industrial workers. However, some immigrants from the Far East cannot even tell left from right and cannot count to five, so it is really difficult to get them to work in factories.
Of course, this situation is also changing. The first generation of primary school students in East Africa graduated last year. This is one of the reasons why East Africa can send students to study in Germany and Austria-Hungary.
In this regard, East Africa has some advantages over the Far East. There is no language barrier. The first batch of official students from the Far East also went to study in Germany and the United States this year, with a total of 50 people, of which 30 went to study in Germany and Austria-Hungary on the recommendation of the East African embassy.
The East African Embassy's reasons were also very sufficient. As a feudal monarchy, you send students abroad not to study in Germany and Austria, which are also monarchies, but instead choose the United States. I really don't know what you are thinking. You deserve to destroy the Qing Dynasty.
The first batch of East African students was 500, which was not a large number because in the early East African colonial era, there were not many people who brought their families to East Africa. In addition, East Africa itself had its own education base in Germany. The schools in the Principality of Hechingen maintained a scale of more than 20,000 students every year (including orphans from Europe and Germany).
(End of this chapter)
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