Chapter 424: Escape
Finally, the deal was done. Both parties reached a consensus that money would be exchanged for goods. In this way, they only had to wait for the East African ship to land, and the Far East officials would inspect the goods in Jiaozhou Bay and make the payment.
The positioning of the Dreiser rifle is difficult to grasp. It is indeed the world's first widely used military breech-loading rifle, but times are changing and countries are developing or have already equipped more advanced rifles.
The market for the Dreyse rifle is nothing more than backward areas, and Africa is naturally one of them, but Ernst will not sell his own ropes in Africa, so there are only two independent markets left, the Far East and South America.
In the Far East, only the Far Eastern Empire meets the requirements of East Africa. Other regions are either colonies of other countries or cannot afford the money. This is the helplessness of small countries. Of course, Japan is an exception. If it were just an arms business, Ernst could consider getting involved, but forget about the military industry.
…
The night enveloped the entire black African continent. Apart from the faint spots of light scattered in the two cities that never sleep, Dar es Salaam and Mombasa, there was no trace of light.
The same is true in Bulawayo, deep in the heart of the East African Kingdom. Outside the indigenous village of Bakora on the outskirts of Bulawayo, hundreds of bright eyes are looking around.
"Clarulu, is everyone gathered?"
"Chief, I notified every household one by one, and everyone is here!"
"Without alarming the Germans?"
"Don't worry, the Germans never leave the castle at night. They only patrol the surroundings during the day. As soon as it gets dark every day, they retreat into the castle on time."
"That's good. Let's call everyone out today. I'm sure everyone knows the reason! Just yesterday, the Germans came again to ask for someone."
"Damn Germans, according to the previous schedule they should have come after a while, but now they come to arrest people before the appointed time. We have lost too many people from last year to now, Buck, Momoyus, Kallugu..." Clalulu doesn't know math, but he clearly remembers the name of everyone in the village.
Normally, East Africa should draw lots for conscription at the end of the month, but now East Africa needs more labor, so the task was issued in advance, so the natives of Zimbabwe completely exploded.
However, with the experience of the Ndebele people as a precedent, the Shona people did not think they could cope with East Africa. Moreover, the large Shona tribe was divided into small areas by East Africa, so they were unable to achieve connection.
Therefore, small villages like Bakola Village could only save themselves. Since they could not defeat the enemy, they had no choice but to escape.
"Chief, which direction should we flee?"
"The Germans have power in the north and south, so we can only run west!"
The natives did not have specific logical analysis abilities, but they knew that the Germans came from the north and moved all the way south, so there were people from the East African Kingdom in both the north and the south.
As for why the East was not chosen, it was because Germans from the East often came to Bulawayo to replenish supplies. After all, it was once the capital of the Matabele Kingdom, so East Africa continued to use it as a transit station for supplies within Zimbabwe.
"But the environment in the west is very harsh. Warriors of the tribe have gone to the west in the past to chase prey. They said it was even drier than Bakola."
"Drought is a good thing. Drought means there must not be many Germans there, so we should do the opposite."
Just like that, after determining the direction, the natives of Bakola village fled overnight. The journey was very smooth in the early stages because, as they had predicted, it was impossible for East Africa to deploy many people in the Kalahari Basin.
When the East African kingdom was recruiting young men for railway construction, Zimbabwe, the region most exploited by East Africa, was the first to collapse. It can be said that East Africa was taking advantage of the situation by fleecing the sheep.
Zimbabwe's population was not large to begin with, and the entire region's population was less than one million (3.69 million in 1960). As a result, a project in East Africa required the capture of about 100,000 able-bodied men from Zimbabwe. Who could bear this?
Before this, East Africa had been drawing people from Zimbabwe on a monthly basis to various places to perform labor for East Africa, which was called "blood tax". Moreover, East Africa did not return the goods and exported them abroad. This form of only importing and not exporting completely frightened the Shona people, and various rumors also arose within the Shona people.
This "blood tax" in East Africa directly frightened the Shona people and became the fuse for their mass exodus. They began to plan to escape from Zimbabwe to areas where there were no white people.
So starting from March, there were hundreds of large and small "defections" by the Shona people, and almost 90% of the Shona people participated in the defection.
They were like rain, slowly flowing from several villages into a river with a population of tens of thousands, rampaging across the grassland, and the animal groups on the grassland provided them with food on their escape.
A spectacular sight of herds of animals and indigenous peoples fleeing appeared on the African grasslands. At the peak, there were more than 300,000 people fleeing in the four directions of southeast, northwest, northeast and southwest. By the time East Africa reacted, it could not stop them because East Africa was really short of manpower in Zimbabwe.
So the whole of Zimbabwe is like a leaky pocket, with a large number of indigenous people wandering around. The largest number is in the east, near Mozambique and several indigenous kingdoms, at least around 100,000.
East Africa intercepted about 100,000 people, directly gathering the workers needed for the construction of the railway. As for the escaped natives, they either entered Mozambique or flowed into the Kalahari Basin. The rest of the stupider ones entered other areas of East Africa, and only a very small number fled along the Okavango River into Namibia and Angola.
In the case of the "defection" of the indigenous people of Zimbabwe, "blood tax" is only part of the reason. Overall, East Africa is not very humane in other aspects. For example, the indigenous people are forced to stay on the land and engage in fixed agriculture. This is very difficult for the Shona people who live on hunting and grazing. They have neither the relevant technology nor the experience, so the food output is pitifully low. Moreover, agriculture is extremely boring physical labor. Although hunting is dangerous, it is indeed more free.
This "defection" incident made the East African kingdom realize that it had to carry out a large-scale relocation of the natives of Zimbabwe and not let them get close to Mozambique.
No one would believe that East Africa has no bad intentions towards Mozambique. It’s just that East Africa is not yet ready to annex Mozambique.
Mozambique (including several indigenous kingdoms) itself has a large number of indigenous people, about two million. If East Africa annexes Mozambique in the future, it will definitely have to clear out the local indigenous people.
The escape of Zimbabwean natives into Mozambique means a loss of control, which will increase future cleanup costs. If the natives really escape into the area west of Angola, East Africa would be happy to see it, but they cannot get into Mozambique, which is the fat piece of meat in East Africa.
As for the Angolan colony, why East Africa is not worried is that this group of natives can flee to Angola, and then they can flee to West Africa. Unlike Mozambique, which is completely surrounded by East Africa on three sides and only connected to the sea on the east, East Africa’s means of reducing the number of natives is ultimately based on expulsion. It is impossible to drive them directly into the sea.
(End of this chapter)
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