Chapter 538: Hohenzollern version of the "African Scraping Plan"
"Uncle Carl, you see this area is Lake Chad. Just from the map, you can see how vast its water area is. It is no exaggeration to say that it is probably second only to the Great Lakes (Lake Victoria) and Lake Solon (Lake Tanganyika) among the lakes in Africa."
Today, Lake Chad has not dried up like it did in later generations. Its water area may be around 30,000 to 40,000 square kilometers (the lake area will expand rapidly during the rainy season), so it is also very conspicuous on the African map drawn up in East Africa.
Prince Carl was indeed envious. Such a huge lake would make anyone excited. Lakes and rivers represent civilization, especially a lake as big as this one next to the Sahara Desert.
"Ernst, does this so-called 'Lake Chad' really exist?"
It is no wonder that Prince Carl would ask this question. In fact, Lake Chad was discovered as early as the early 19th century, but the speed of updating and dissemination on the map could not keep up. It was not until recently that European countries began to explore Africa on a large scale.
But I'm sorry, East Africa alone accounts for nearly one-third of Africa, and even among two-thirds of Africa, only West Africa is worth exploring. Although the group of poor people in North Africa declined along with the Arab Empire and the Ottoman Empire, a rotten ship still has three pounds of nails, and the cultural imprint is not easy to erase. This is also one of the reasons why Algeria became independent from France in the previous life.
"Uncle Carl, don't worry. If you ask which country knows Africa best, it must be our East Africa. In fact, the British discovered Lake Chad in 1822. At that time, they wanted to explore the relationship between the Niger River and Lake Chad. Later, our expedition team also went to the local area for investigation, and the data is more detailed."
To be precise, the first European to discover Lake Chad was a Scotsman. In fact, there is no direct connection between Lake Chad and the Niger River. On the contrary, in ancient times Lake Chad was one of the sources of the Nile River. At that time, Lake Chad was even larger than the Caspian Sea today.
Ernst then introduced the entire Chad region to Prince Carl, "The northern part is really not a good place. It has an arid climate and widespread deserts. However, the grasslands in the south are similar to many areas in East Africa, with a rainfall of 500 to 1,200 mm, which is very suitable for agricultural development. Although the climate in the north is a little worse, there are no competitors. If possible, you can occupy as much land as you want. You won't suffer any loss anyway. After all, the Arab Empire was also born in the vast sands of the Arabian Peninsula."
It is definitely not a pure desert. There are many places that produce grain on the Arabian Peninsula, but with a large population, there is definitely not enough grain. The situation is almost the same in central and northern Chad.
"To the east or south is the Cameroon region, which you can also consider. Darfur in the northwest is an Arab country. If you want it, you have to do it yourself. The people of Darfur should be more difficult to deal with than the blacks in the south."
"We can send troops to clear Chad and parts of Cameroon for you to use as a forward base for colonization. You just need to steadily advance westward and northward."
With a stroke of his pen, Ernst ceded nearly two million square kilometers of land to Sigmaringen, which made the experienced Prince Karl breathe faster unconsciously.
Too grand? Or rather, rough, this is the charm of immigration, unlike Europe where people may fight to the death for the land of a village.
Of course, East Africa only said that it would establish a base for Signaringen, and this base was the land of the former Wadai Empire.
The Wadai Empire was a sultanate established by the nobles of the Abbasid Dynasty. In fact, many countries bordering the north and west of East Africa are sultanates, that is, Arab countries, but Chad and Cameroon, including Darfur, are Arab countries dominated by black people.
Those original sultanates no longer exist. The culprit is East Africa. When East Africa expelled the western black kingdoms from its territory, they all passed through here to West Africa.
Such a large-scale population migration is bound to lead to conflict with local indigenous countries. Maybe they can still resist after a round of migration, but the blacks in East Africa continue to pass through the region, and many countries have been destroyed long ago. After all, the blacks expelled from East Africa are also strong, and they need material supplies even if they are so far away, so the local people suffered.
What Ernst said about sending troops to help Sigmaringen was actually just a formality. There were actually very few black forces left near East Africa.
Prince Carl: "Although this piece of land is large, it is a bit too far from the ocean, and it is inconvenient to manage."
The distance from the Indian Ocean coast to Chad is indeed not short. It would be convenient if it were from the Atlantic direction, as France did in previous history. However, among the German countries in the world, Germany is the most powerful in the Atlantic. The German navy is not enough in its own coastal waters, so the South Atlantic became the sphere of influence of Britain and France.
Of course, Germany is now also symbolically colonizing West Africa, but because France is so powerful in the local area, it is naturally difficult for it to make a big splash. However, Germany has indeed caused considerable trouble to France's West African colonization.
The reason is still because of East Africa. East Africa swallowed up Germany’s two most important colonies in Africa in the previous life (German East Africa and German Southwest Africa), so in this life, Germany has invested more energy in the West African colonial cause.
"Uncle Carl, don't worry about that. We can help you. The northern railway all the way to the Great Lakes region can provide you with transportation capacity. The rest of the route to Chad is also under our control. On the contrary, in the South Atlantic direction, our navy is too weak to compete with other countries."
Not to mention Britain and France, East Africa's maritime strength in the South Atlantic is not even as strong as Portugal's. The reason why East Africa was able to launch an attack on Angola was entirely due to its inland areas supporting the front line through railways and roads.
Therefore, if Sigmaringen wants to colonize Chad and surrounding areas, it would be best if it goes through the interior of East Africa. Of course, railway fees must be paid, and it can also make some money from Romania to subsidize the East African economy. In addition, if Sigmaringen wants to colonize Chad, it will definitely need a large number of people to pass through East Africa, and East Africa will have to provide services for their food, drink, defecation and urination.
Brothers should settle accounts clearly. East Africa’s support for Sigmaringen has been very generous. After all, no one else who wants to use the East African Railway has this opportunity.
Anyway, Prince Carl was very satisfied and even thought that he had made a big profit. East Africa was equivalent to giving him a colony for free, and it had great potential. Of course, the remaining problems needed to be solved by himself.
"Well, I will discuss this with Leopold and the others."
Apart from its own strength, Sigmaringen's biggest reliance is East Africa and Romania. East Africa has already been cleared, and the rest depends mainly on itself and Romania.
However, Ernst reminded: "You still have to distinguish between family and country. In fact, the military pressure of colonizing Chad is not great. It just requires population and materials, which we in East Africa can provide at cost price. So I suggest that Sigmaringen and Romania colonize these areas separately. Darfur in particular can be left to the Romanian army to deal with. It is best to keep southern Chad in your own hands."
Although Carol I was the monarch of Romania, Romania was not his private property, so it was best to use public power for personal gain and use Romania to serve the Sigmaringen royal family.
That is to say, Sigmaringen and Romania cooperated to colonize Chad and surrounding areas, otherwise it would be quite difficult for Sigmaringen to rely solely on its own strength.
"Can you also provide information on population?"
"Of course, but we can only provide Far Eastern Chinese. As for white people, you can only recruit them in Romania and the surrounding areas by yourselves."
In recent years, East Africa has absorbed all the redundant German population in Europe, especially Germany. Now that the economic crisis is over, the German economy has started to develop again. Although it has been affected by the "long-term depression", employment is guaranteed. After all, those who used to compete with them for jobs have gone to East Africa, especially the farmers in East Prussia who went bankrupt due to the agricultural crisis.
Therefore, historically, it was impossible for a wave of immigration from Germany to the United States in the 1880s. In the 1870s, the United States itself was in a state of economic crisis, so it did not absorb German immigrants. This means that all the German immigrants in the original twenty years of history went to East Africa.
Therefore, the possibility of Sigmaringen recruiting German immigrants on a large scale from Germany is close to zero, as East Africa cannot recruit them itself.
Therefore, we can only think of solutions from countries like Romania. As for Far East immigrants, East Africa can provide them. In fact, the number of Far East immigrants in East Africa has greatly decreased recently, and it is even difficult to get a ticket for immigration to East Africa.
Because one of the important choices in the national immigration policy for East Africa is population hedging. Now that Germans can no longer be recruited, the meaning of hedging has been lost.
So now many ships in East Africa have begun to turn to serving the black trade, mainly providing cheap labor services to the Americas. That is to say, the peak wave of immigration from East Africa has ended and it is now transitioning to a normal immigration country.
The immigration policy in East Africa over the past decade or so has led to three results. One is the large-scale development of East Africa, which has alleviated the economic crisis in the German region, eased the contradiction between population and land in the Far East, and provided a large amount of black labor for the development of the United States. Correspondingly, the number of white immigrants in the United States has decreased relatively.
The United States is a capitalist country, and capital is calculated. Compared with going to Europe to advertise and pay for the shipping fare, it is obvious that the blacks on the southern plantations are more cost-effective.
As for the slave trade, the northern factory owners could not see it. After all, the blacks flowing out of the South were all free. They might be a little older, but they were obedient and easy to manage. They were even more useful than before. As for getting blacks for free from the plantation owners, the American society did not want to fight another Civil War this time.
Ernst gave land and people to Sigmaringen, which was certainly not out of generosity, but to build a black isolation zone to completely separate the blacks in West Africa from those in East Africa in the future.
There is already Belgian Congo in the northwest and Ethiopia in the northeast, so the only thing left is a gap in the middle that needs to be filled.
With the support of East Africa, Sigmaringen will most likely succeed in colonizing Central Africa (Chad, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and parts of Sudan).
It is also possible that Germany would establish one or two colonies in West Africa. After all, Germany had colonies such as Togoland (Republic of Togo), Cameroon and even Gabon (Germany and France competed for Morocco, and France compensated Germany for its products) in West Africa in the past.
Then the three direct descendants of the Hohenzollern all had their own sphere of influence in Africa, and the title of the Hohenzollern family as the African chiefs was established.
(End of this chapter)
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