Chapter 429 Weak Foundation
On the train from Trieste to Vienna, Ernst browsed the Austrian countryside in a private carriage, with green wheat fields on both sides of the railway, farmers hurrying on the country roads, ox carts pulling goods, and occasional villages.
The scene in the Austrian countryside is actually not much different from that in the Middle Ages. If you were not sitting on the train, you probably wouldn't be able to feel it. So every time Ernst took a train, he would have a sense of time and space confusion.
Overdrive leads to situations like what Ernst encountered, where the powerful driving force of the Industrial Revolution was actively changing European society, and this was happening simultaneously in more distant East Africa.
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With the arrival of the railway workers, the East African Railway project was officially launched, and the indigenous railway workers were divided into more than 20 groups to carry out repairs along the railway line.
Mountains were cut through and bridges were built over rivers. Under the command of technical personnel, the railway line was gradually cleared.
The north side of the Muchinga Mountains is a key point that the East African Railway must overcome. There is a swamp here that the railway cannot avoid.
The East African government's approach was simple and crude. They used a large number of black people to carry out manual dredging of the area. Thousands of black people, under the threat of rifles, took various containers of water to drain the water from the swamp.
"In addition to the large number of hippos and crocodiles living in the swamp, there are other dangers lurking in the swamp, such as poisonous snakes. These creatures are deadly threats to our workers, so this kind of work can only be done by the indigenous people."
"This swamp can only be cleaned manually. It will take several months to clean it up at normal speed. So we must hurry up and complete this section of work before the rainy season arrives to prevent it from being filled up again after the rainy season arrives."
Therefore, in order to prevent accidents, the East Africans forced the natives to work day and night and tried to complete the cleanup of the swamp area within two and a half months.
There are many things like this that need to be done for the construction of the Central Railway, such as cutting down virgin forests to make room for the railway and clearing away obstructions such as boulders.
At the starting point of the railway, the first railway extension, a large amount of raw materials were pulled inland through the flesh and blood of the indigenous people. The thousands of pounds of rails were all carried manually, and the slightest carelessness could easily cause fatal injuries to the workers.
At the same time, in order to ensure the construction of the railway, East Africa built three cement plants, twenty-three logging sites and quarries along the line, and a new steel plant in the Kalabari area of Zambia.
In 1873, East Africa's annual steel production was 240,000 tons. After the Kalabari Steel Plant goes into production, East Africa's steel production will exceed 300,000 tons.
In fact, after the steel plant in Mbeya was upgraded, its annual output increased to more than 80,000, which can meet a large part of the demand in East Africa.
The total steel demand for the East African Railway is about 8 million tons, while Germany's total steel production in 1873 was about 3 to 4 million tons. Therefore, importing some steel from Germany and Austria can save East Africa a lot of money.
East Africa's steel production is actually among the highest in the world, but in comparison, its coal production is somewhat insufficient, at only about 1.5 million tons. During the same period, Germany's production was 27 million tons, while Britain and the United States' production exceeded 100 million tons.
However, due to the impact of the economic crisis, the steel and coal production capacity of various countries will suffer a large-scale contraction in the future. In contrast, East Africa will enter a stage of rapid growth.
In addition to the huge demand for steel for railway construction, the demand for shipyards in East Africa is also relatively large. Although the Bagamoyo Shipyard cannot build ironclad ships of 1,000 tons, it has received orders for more than a dozen gunboats under Ernst's inclination, and the tonnage of East African gunboats is generally over 400 tons.
Inland shipyards should not be ignored. By 1873, the number of inland shipyards in East Africa had expanded to 37. In addition to several large lakes, the demand for shipyards in the Zambia River and Congo River basins was the greatest.
Apart from the railway and shipbuilding industries, East Africa will introduce a series of factories in the future, and the demand for steel will be at a relatively strong stage.
These are some basic data of East Africa before the construction of the railway. After the completion of the railway, the construction of the major southern industrial zone (Zimbabwe) and the development of the copper mining industry in Zambia, the industrial growth of East Africa can reflect the real level of development during the economic crisis.
In fact, Ernst also wanted to learn about the five-year industrial plan and take advantage of the economic crisis to make East Africa take off, but this was completely impossible for East Africa.
When most people look at the Five-Year Plan, they feel that they can do it too. But in fact, there are only two examples of Five-Year Plans, one is Tsarist Russia and the other is the Far East. Tsarist Russia’s First Five-Year Plan started in 1928, and the Far East’s First Five-Year Plan started in 1953.
In the textbooks, it seems that as soon as the First Five-Year Plan was completed, the two countries got rid of their status as agricultural countries, and after the completion of the Second Five-Year Plan, the Soviet Union directly leapt into an important industrial country in the world.
In fact, during the Tsarist era, Russia already had a complete industrial system. For example, now it is the fifth largest textile country in the world, with tens of thousands of kilometers of railways and more than 3,000 factories. Before the Soviet Union, it had nearly 10,000 factories and more than 3 million workers.
At that time, Tsarist Russia was already one of the great powers. How could it fall behind? It can only be said that the Soviet Union fully stimulated the potential of Tsarist Russia and made Tsarist Russia the closest to the world's first in history.
The industrial level of the Far East was poor, but a number of military-industrial enterprises and state-owned enterprises were built during the Westernization Movement. A number of private capitals were also developed from the Beiyang period to the Republic of China. After 1953, there were actually a group of professionals in the local area, and with the support of the Soviet Union, initial industrialization was barely achieved.
Ernst was certain that the Far East's foundation in 1953 must have been much better than that of the current East African Kingdom, and its leadership was much more capable than that of the East African Kingdom, and that the First Five-Year Plan for the Far East was still difficult to implement.
Therefore, under the current conditions in East Africa, there are a total of more than 170 factories, most of which are low-tech and crude processing manufacturing industries, and the people's education level is completely unable to support industrial development.
For example, the planned economy is mainly reflected in the word "plan". The formulation and implementation of plans are extremely challenging for a country's execution capabilities. If Ernst wanted to implement a five-year plan, the first problem he faced was how to solve the talent problem. These all required high-quality talents to implement.
The East African Kingdom is developing agriculture, and the bureaucratic ability level can barely keep up. If they want to develop industry, it will be quite difficult for them. As for the current industries in East Africa, they are all realized by the overflow of talents from the German region. The management of the Hechingen factory was dug up and hired from Germany and Austria. In the final analysis, it is still a problem of people.
(End of this chapter)
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