Chapter 726: In-depth
"There have been unusual movements in our surveillance targets. These Portuguese merchants are people with very rich channels. Their recent actions fully illustrate the problem. It's like merchants at the end of the year constantly offering promotions and discounts in order to earn the last business so that they can go home for Christmas. But it's only March now, so their behavior shows that there are other factors that prevent their business from continuing."
As an intelligence officer in East Africa, Eureka keenly observed the unusual behavior of Portuguese merchants. They increased their purchases from East Africa and transported the goods at full capacity. These were East African specialties, especially crocodile skins, ivory and other rare items only available in East Africa.
Of course, Mozambique itself is not short of these, but Mozambique's production is not as large as East Africa. After all, they are short of manpower, so importing from East Africa is the most cost-effective.
All you need is cash and a vehicle to transport the semi-finished goods directly to the eastern port, and then ship them back to Europe for sale.
"Eureka, it feels like the last year has been the most busy we've been on missions, but I have a feeling these will all be over," said his colleague Rice.
"It seems that the other side is ready to reveal its cards. How do we go deeper and pass the information back?" Eureka asked.
"We just need to follow them. Now we are Portuguese, so as long as we follow other caravans, we can further understand the detailed reasons for this change." Rice wanted to further solve the mystery, so he planned to follow the Portuguese caravan directly through the hinterland of Mozambique, then go out to sea in the east, and then return to East Africa.
"This is indeed a risky operation. After all, we are not real businessmen, so it is easy to make mistakes in the details. In order to avoid misunderstandings, it is best to act like a rookie," Eureka suggested.
The advantage of Eureka and Rice is their youth, and young people are always inexperienced, so they do not seem out of place in the eyes of a group of shrewd Portuguese merchants.
"Having said that, there is one problem that cannot be avoided, that is, if the situation changes suddenly, I am afraid we will not be able to convey the news back to the mainland," Rice said.
"It's all the fault of these Portuguese people. No wonder they have become increasingly weaker over the past few hundred years. They have never thought about repairing the roads in their country, and they don't even popularize and promote new things like the telegraph. That's why they simply can't compete with us in Africa." Eureka said speechlessly.
A quick comparison between East Africa and Mozambique will show you why the Portuguese suffered a crushing defeat in the last war.
That is, they did not pay enough attention to the colonies. The infrastructure was barely worth mentioning in a few coastal cities, and there was basically no development of the inland areas.
Not to mention building railways like in East Africa, even the number of muddy tracks is very insufficient, so it is understandable that Mozambique and Angola have not changed much in hundreds of years. If we exclude some modern industrial products, the Portuguese colonies basically maintain the appearance of their ancestors.
This also brought great inconvenience to intelligence work in East Africa, which is why Eureka and Rice complained.
If they were in their own country, they could have transmitted the news back to East Africa in a timely manner through the telegraph network built in East Africa. However, the Portuguese have not even built a telegraph to their homeland. Instead, they need to go to East African cities such as Dar es Salaam and pay to use the East African telegraph system. This is also the reason why Dar es Salaam has become the most important gathering place for commercial intelligence in Africa.
Eureka: "The Portuguese military force is mainly on the coast. In the inland areas, we can only get some meaningless news from 9 to 5 every day. So we should apply to our superiors to go into the hinterland of Mozambique for an inspection. As for intelligence transmission, because of the poor construction situation in Mozambique, we can't overcome it. We can only deal with it first. At least we need to transmit a lot of data from the hinterland to the mainland, so we shouldn't be in a hurry."
"That makes sense. Unless the Portuguese regain their glory a hundred years ago, they will not be able to make progress easily even if they start a war during this period. After all, our blockade of them is more stringent. However, East Africa only knows about Mozambique by 5 or 6 points, and Mozambique probably only knows about East Africa by 1 or 2 points," said Rice.
Rice has actually praised the Portuguese enough. The Portuguese intelligence system has achieved a lot in East Africa over the years, if not twice the result with half the effort. It can also be said that it has achieved nothing.
Because there is no sophisticated intelligence system in Portugal itself, let alone a colony like Mozambique.
In fact, it was not just Portugal. Most of the intelligence systems of European countries at that time were rubbish. Take the last Franco-Prussian War as an example. The important channel for Napoleon III to obtain information about the German troops on the front line was actually newspapers in the rear.
Of course, this is understandable. Europe does not have a household registration policy, and people move between countries. Especially during wars, wherever a war breaks out, it will cause a large movement of people in Europe. Moreover, European countries are small in area, so any disturbance is very easy to be discovered. In this case, there is really no need to put too much effort into intelligence.
Spending more money will not produce the same effect as making more friends and relatives in Europe. Given the complex relationships among European nobles, they are the easiest source of information.
From the central government to the local governments, the nobles controlled everything in Europe, especially at the grassroots level. The landowner nobles were the hubs that directly connected with the local residents. The nobles controlled all aspects of the local area, including population information.
The reason why so many Germans were able to immigrate from South Germany to East Africa was because of their friendship with the South German nobles. In rural areas where the population was booming, people were just worthless numbers. Once you cut a crop, it would grow again.
This is even more true given Germany's population density, so it is beneficial for both parties if East Africa absorbs these excess population.
After all, if the population exceeds the support capacity, it will inevitably cause social problems. Germany does not have vast colonies like Britain. If the British could have more children, the British government would probably be very happy because there would always be a place to accommodate them. After all, even criminals have a continent to be exiled.
The German population will inevitably overflow to "same cultural regions" such as East Africa. Of course, this process has disappeared with the completion of Germany's industrialization, and now Germany has become a new population importing country in the world.
However, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was developing relatively slowly, could not get rid of this situation for the time being. However, the annual population outflow from the Austro-Hungarian Empire was not large, and it remained in a relatively reasonable range every year, except in special circumstances during wartime, like the last Italo-Austrian War, which led to a large loss of population in the Venice area.
This was a good thing for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many of the Austro-Hungarian immigrants absorbed by East Africa were Slavs and Italians, which greatly eased the ethnic conflicts in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Of course, East Africa's actions also triggered some negative effects. Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were no longer as aggressive as in the past. After all, social contradictions were eased, and the ruling crisis was avoided to a certain extent, so there was no need to divert it through extreme means of war.
The most important thing is that in the last Russo-Turkish War, the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not show its ugly face of taking advantage of the situation as in the past. Now the relationship between Russia and Austria is far less tense than in the past, and Bismarck can continue to maintain the relationship of the European Triple Alliance.
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
