Chapter 679 Belgian Congo
East Africa does not have many neighboring countries, but Belgian Congo is one of the more friendly ones. After all, Belgium is only a small country in East Africa, and its strength as a colony in Africa is very weak. However, they are somewhat related.
In fact, Portugal and the Hechingen royal family can be said to be related, but it is only two generations back, related to my grandfather's uncle. After the death of the former queen of Portugal, there was basically no contact, which is why East Africa beat Portugal without mercy.
If there is a conflict between East Africa and Belgium, negotiations will definitely take place first. After all, King Leopold II of Belgium is Karina's grandfather, so the relationship is much closer.
In 1885, Belgium was also the "big" winner in colonization. With the help of the Berlin Conference, it completely secured the "legitimacy" of its colonization of the Belgian Congo and was recognized by all countries.
After the consensus of various countries, especially France, East Africa and Portugal, the Belgian Congo was established. It is located to the north of the Portuguese colony of Angola, to the west of East Azande Province of East Africa, and to the south and east of the French colony of Gabon, with a total area of 260,000 square kilometers. The Belgian Congo is a natural buffer zone like in its previous life.
Of course, compared with the Belgian Congo in the previous life, the area has shrunk ten times. After all, the area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo reaches more than two million square kilometers.
However, it is not clear whether this is a loss or a gain for Belgium. In the past, the economic situation in Congo-Brazzaville was much better than that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The buffer zone of the Belgian Congo is East Africa, Portugal and France. None of the three want to border each other directly. East Africa and Portugal are still okay as they have already settled a mess, but France is different. Both East Africa and Portugal are somewhat wary of France. France doesn't have much idea about Portugal, but the mainland has no idea either. The same cannot be said for the colonial government.
Colonial governments generally have relatively large autonomy. After all, their generals are away from the army and are not subject to military orders. They can act first and report later. Many powerful countries were forced to expand their territories without realizing it.
This does not include East Africa. After the founding of East Africa, all administrative, military and financial powers were centralized in the central government, and all actions needed to be reported to the central government. Therefore, the territorial expansion of East Africa was promoted in a planned manner by the central government.
The advantage of this is that East Africa can save costs, concentrate resources and strength, and achieve a dimensionality reduction attack on indigenous countries.
Don’t underestimate the backwardness of the natives. Even a rabbit will bite if it is cornered, let alone the strong and healthy black people.
One characteristic of a colony is that a small number of sovereign states rule over the majority of the indigenous people, and the sovereign states have very small numbers of troops, with some colonies perhaps having only a few hundred armed forces.
There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of black people. That's like ten thousand pigs. It would be difficult to control them with just a few hundred people.
Therefore, colonization is definitely not an easy task, and the number of colonial troops cannot be too large. After all, many colonies are not rich, and if too many troops are sent, even the cost cannot be recovered.
This is the case with the Belgian Congo colony, where there are currently only more than 2,000 soldiers on the payroll.
The territories of the Belgian Congo in the past were all located in present-day East Africa (Kinshasa). There was even a part of East Africa that belonged to the French Congo in the past, mainly on the left bank of the Ubangui River, and distributed in a narrow strip along the Ubangui River and the lower Congo River.
The territory is small, so the population is much smaller, but the population density is much higher than that of Congo in the previous life. After all, the population of the Congo rainforest cannot be compared with that of the western coastal areas.
In essence, the present-day Belgian Congo is the former French Congo, and later the Republic of Congo-Brazzaville (with Brazzaville as its capital).
Of course, the capital of Belgian Congo is not in Brazzaville, but in the Atlantic coastal city of Pointe-Noire.
Cape Noire means "Black Cape". In 1484, Portuguese navigators saw black rocks on the cape when they passed by here, so they gave the place this name.
At the same time, because of this distinctive feature, Cape Noire is an important navigation coordinate on the coastal routes of West Africa, and like the Skeleton Coast, it has a distinct regional color.
As Belgium's only colony, Pointe-Noire, the capital of Belgian Congo, is also its most densely populated area, with a population of more than 2,000 people, including more than 1,000 Chinese.
The main reason for the large number of Chinese people in Pointe-Noire is that too few Belgians went to colonize Africa. After all, Belgium itself is relatively wealthy, and there are options such as the Netherlands and France around it, so going to Africa, where the environment is harsh, to make a living is really unthinkable.
"Belgian Congo is different from East Africa. White people are white people, yellow people are yellow people, and black people are black people. A perfect class distinction has been formed. However, because of East Africa, the yellow people here still have a little status. As for the black people, they are much more miserable. According to our rough statistics, in the years of Belgian colonization, the number of black people has dropped by at least hundreds of thousands. Especially in Pointe-Noire, we can see many black people with incomplete limbs." Kairos, the East African consul in the Belgian Congo, and his subordinate Val said.
East Africa naturally has direct contact with the Belgian Congo government and has permanent staff who are mainly responsible for trade in East Azande Province, the Congo rainforest region, and the Danube Province.
These three provinces and regions are very close to the Atlantic Ocean and have no railway connection to the east, so most freight needs to go through Belgium. As for Portugal, there is naturally nothing to talk about between the two sides.
Belgium has no choice but to give the yellow race some status, because it is next to East Africa, and East Africa is near the Belgian Congo, with Bangui as its center, where a full division of troops is deployed, and half of the East African army is Chinese.
Every day, the East African army patrolled along the Ubangi River, posing a great deterrent to surrounding forces, and the Belgian Congo was one of them.
"Of course, the status of the yellow people in the Belgian Congo was not very high. It is easy to understand them as the British Indian vassal army outside India," said Kairos.
Even so, Belgium's attitude towards Chinese immigrants is much better than in the past. In the past, Belgium introduced Chinese from the Far East Empire, and their treatment was basically no different from that of local blacks.
Of course, there was no instruction from the East African side, but it was a spontaneous action on the Belgian side. After all, East Africa is not a saint, and it will not have any special feelings towards Chinese people in other regions unless they are its own citizens.
The reason why the United States' anti-Chinese behavior caused dissatisfaction in East Africa was actually because its laws reached out to the Chinese in East Africa. The Chinese in East Africa have East African nationality, so East Africa naturally could not sit idly by.
"Mr. Kairos, what does this have to do with our daily work?" Val asked.
"It doesn't matter much. As I said before, there are only Germans in East Africa. There is no such thing as a group divided by skin color. We only talk about nationality and safeguard the interests of East African citizens, that is, the interests of people with East African identities in the Belgian Congo, including overseas companies, employees of the Hechingen Consortium, and even soldiers of the East African Defense Force," Kairos emphasized.
Val had some complaints in his heart. It sounds good to say that people are not divided by skin color. In fact, everyone in East Africa knows that the country’s attitude towards black people is different. However, given the decreasing number of black people in East Africa, there will be no place for black people in East Africa in the future, so it makes sense to say so. It’s just that this will take 20 to 30 years of transition.
(End of this chapter)
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