Chapter 595: Agitation
While the Orangemen were secretly criticizing the so-called Transvaal Restoration Army, the Transvaal Restoration Army's daily "training" also began.
In Bloemfontein, there was a newly established "Provisional Government of the Transvaal Republic", and the president of the new government was Pretorius the Younger.
Pretorius the Younger, who had been unemployed in Cape Town for a long time, was finally invited back by the British and became the leader of the resistance organization of the former Transvaal Republic.
The first thing Pretorius the Younger did after arriving in Bloemfontein was to gather his former subordinates and hold a dinner in Bloemfontein.
"Everyone, we are all victims of the invasion by East Africans. The East Africans deprived us of our most important property, which is land. East Africans simply launched a sneak attack with their advanced weapons and large army, and the Transvaal Republic was forced to disband.
But we Transvaal people will not be easily defeated. Even in Orange, we can still unite and work together to fight against the East African invaders and finally take back our own property. "Pretorius the Younger announced at the dinner.
Pretorius the Younger's words were not very nutritious, but they still resonated with everyone, because the provisional government still consisted of important figures from the former Transvaal Republic, who were also the biggest victims of the East African invasion of the Transvaal Republic.
They were originally large farmers and landlords. Although East Africa allowed them to transfer their assets, the most important asset to them, the land in the Transvaal Republic, was taken away by East Africa.
So they only had resentment towards East Africa. Now the British provided a platform to bring them together again, and the Provisional Government of the Transvaal Republic became the group in the world that hated East Africa the most.
"Damn East Africans!"
"We must drive East Africans out of Transvaal, take back our Transvaal land, and recover our homeland!"
"The Transvaal people will never surrender..."
Young Pretorius was very satisfied with everyone's performance. At least on the surface, everyone was quite positive.
Pretorius returned to the podium, raised his arm, gestured, and said, "Everyone, please be quiet for a moment. I know that you are all loyal patriots, but it is undeniable that our enemies are too powerful compared to us.
The East Africans have an army of more than 100,000 people, while all of us Boers only have a few hundred thousand people. So dealing with East Africa is not a matter of just shouting slogans, but requires every Boer to do his best. "
"President Pretorius, what do you think we should do?"
Pretorius was very satisfied with this question. He said confidently: "Thanks to my efforts, the British Cape Town Colonial Government is willing to provide support and help for Transvaal's restoration. We also have the Portuguese, who are also victims, as allies. This has reversed our unfavorable situation in East Africa. Now we invite representatives of our friendly countries, Britain and Portugal, to come to the stage and speak."
Then, the Governor of the British Orange Free State colony and officials from the Portuguese Mozambique colony took the podium to the applause of the crowd.
Everyone came together out of hatred for East Africa, or rather, because of conflicts of interest, so they were very empathetic and unanimously condemned the East African militarists.
"East Africa is not an invincible force. Although East Africa has a vast territory, it is precisely because of this that the power of East Africa is extremely dispersed. Therefore, if we go to war with East Africa, it will only be regional, not the entire East Africa. So there is no need to worry about the paper data of East Africa." The British Governor of Bloemfontein came up with the theory of his own advantages.
As East Africa has come to the fore in the international community, some of its specific data cannot be concealed, such as the Central Railway hidden deep in the heart of East Africa that day and some inland commodity information in East Africa.
With the help of various information from Dar es Salaam and other areas, the British basically summarized the general strength of East Africa.
The British even got a rough map of East Africa. For example, many cities could not be hidden unless they had no goods to export.
For example, tobacco from Harare. In Dar es Salaam, you can know that this tobacco mainly comes from Harare in East Africa and is transported to Dar es Salaam by rail.
In this way, the British knew that there was a city called Harare in East Africa, and that this city’s external connections were achieved through railways, and that it was definitely suitable for tobacco cultivation.
If you want to know more about the specific location of Harare City, you need to get more useful information indirectly.
For example, if we know that Harare is the provincial capital and a city along the railway, then we can determine with a high probability that Harare is within the former Matabele Kingdom.
It is impossible to get more specific information because ordinary people do not have access to detailed railway distribution maps, and even East African railway employees cannot obtain the national railway distribution map of East Africa.
The name of Harare was entirely given by Ernst, and no one knows what it means specifically. There are many cities in East Africa named after Ernst for his own convenience of memory.
This made it more difficult for the UK to obtain intelligence. It was difficult to obtain intelligence directly from East Africa, so the only way was to obtain information about East Africa from other information, including history, culture, geography, economy and other aspects.
For example, the export volume of coffee in East Africa can be used to estimate the minimum area for coffee cultivation in East Africa, but the cultural and historical aspects are more difficult because East Africa has no historical culture.
Moreover, East Africa did not inherit the indigenous culture, which is very different from Portugal's Mozambique. Many place names in Mozambique come from the indigenous people, but East Africa does not have this custom. Therefore, comparing the original map of the inland East Africa drawn by the Portuguese with the current map of East Africa can be said to be irrelevant.
The military strength of East Africa is the easiest to judge, because East Africa has stationed troops in the border area between Cape Town and Mozambique all year round, and the number is no less than 50,000.
After learning that there was a railway in the interior of East Africa, the military strength of East Africa had to be further increased, because the railway could mobilize troops in the rear at any time. Therefore, if a conflict occurred between the two countries, seizing the East African railway would have to be a new military goal.
Knowing this, the Governor-General in Bloemfontein wanted to encourage his allies and conceal the intelligence obtained by Britain in order to prevent anyone from scaring the Boers and Portuguese and knowing who would act as his thugs.
"East Africa's strength is not formidable. We will continue to provide Transvaal and Mozambique with the latest weapons and equipment from the British Army. This will offset East Africa's weapon advantage and put the two sides on the same level of combat effectiveness. What is being tested is everyone's courage, and I believe everyone will unite against the East Africans."
The Governor-General in Bloemfontein encouraged the Boers as much as possible because he knew that how much aid Britain could provide to the Boers depended entirely on how much money the Boers could pay. Britain was naturally not stingy and had to give the Boers some benefits after all.
Let the Boers and Portuguese know that the world's most powerful country, Britain, is behind them. East Africa is just a newly emerging country, which may be a little stronger, but it is not to be feared.
This is the same as the United States supporting Western Europe to fight against the Soviet Union, or supporting Japan and South Korea to fight against the Far Eastern Empire. It is nothing more than giving some benefits and letting other countries act as pawns.
According to the economic size of the United States in its previous life and its right to distribute global resources, it would naturally support whoever it wanted to support, and as long as the puppet government was not too incompetent, the economy could be revived.
(End of this chapter)
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