African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1046 Battleship Perseverance
After more than a year of construction, East Africa's first new battleship was officially launched, making East Africa officially the second country in the world to own a dreadnought.

Although East Africa started building dreadnoughts earlier than Britain, Britain's powerful shipbuilding industry and rich shipbuilding experience enabled the British dreadnought to be completed three months earlier than East Africa, so East Africa was unable to grab the title of dreadnought.

Bagamoyo Port.

The "Perseverance", like a steel behemoth, lay across the port. The East African Navy officially took over the battleship, which made the Commander-in-Chief of the East African Navy, Bruce, and other major naval generals very excited.

Bruce sighed, "The overall concept of the British Dreadnought is basically the same as that of the Perseverance. However, the British shipbuilding technology is more profound than that of our country, with more skilled workers. In addition, the British Royal Navy has a century of heritage, so the Dreadnought started later than the Perseverance, but was completed earlier. Although it is a pity, our country is the second country after the United Kingdom to own this type of battleship."

Helveyin, a staff officer of the Indian Ocean Fleet, said: "The Royal Navy has been the flag of the world's navy for nearly a hundred years. Even if our HMS Perseverance is launched earlier than the HMS Dreadnought, it may not have the same momentum as the HMS Dreadnought. Now, except for East Africa, other countries are re-drafting their naval plans based on the HMS Dreadnought. It is conceivable that the HMS Dreadnought will be an epoch-making warship. In the future, all countries will use the HMS Dreadnought as the standard for naval competitions."

Even if the East African Navy's Perseverance was completed and launched earlier than the Dauntless, it would not have attracted the attention of other countries, because the East African Navy had previously been considered to be of average standard among the navies of the world.

But the Dreadnought is different. The British Royal Navy is the weather vane of the navies of various countries and has led the development of the world's navy for almost a hundred years. Therefore, any unusual movements of the Royal Navy will be closely watched by all countries. In addition, the Dreadnought is an epoch-making work, and with the previous Russo-Japanese War as a reference, it is easy to trigger a new round of naval competition.

Of course, although Perseverance was launched later than Intrepid, it does not mean that other countries are not paying attention to it.

The Austro-Hungarian Navy sent people to watch the launching ceremony of the East African battleship HMS Endeavour. The two countries' in-depth cooperation in the naval field also made the Austro-Hungarian Empire most familiar with the development of the East African navy.

Austrian Vice Admiral Erich looked at the East African battleship Perseverance with a complicated expression, and said to Bruce, "I really envy you. Although the Perseverance was launched a little later than the Dreadnought, the performance of this battleship is probably not much worse than that of the Dreadnought. After all, the standard displacement of the Dreadnought is less than 20,000 tons, while the standard displacement of your Perseverance is more than 20,000 tons. I heard that you also have a Bagamoyo, and many technologies have been applied in advance. I think this battleship Perseverance should have made great progress on this basis."

"Back then, the East African Navy was established with the help of our country, but now it has surpassed our navy by a lot, which is really embarrassing."

The more this happened, the more sad the Austrian Navy felt. The East African Navy could be said to be the apprentice of the Austrian Navy. Now the teacher had stagnated and was being surpassed by the apprentice. No one would feel good about this.

Bruce patted Erich on the shoulder and said, "The East African Navy's current achievements have a lot to do with the help of Austria. Moreover, the unsatisfactory development of the Austrian Navy in recent years is not the fault of your navy. In the final analysis, it is all about money. Isn't it the same for our East African Navy before? Without funding, let alone the Perseverance, it would be difficult to maintain the original size of the navy."

Bruce's consolation had no effect. Instead, his words further aroused Erich's anger: "It's all because of those guys in Hungary. If the Hungarian Parliament had not disagreed to increase the naval military budget, the Imperial Navy would have left the Adriatic Sea long ago. But now it is being suppressed by Britain and France."

In the past, the Austro-Hungarian Navy's main enemy was unified Italy. Unified Italy was naturally a naval power in Europe, and at least had no problem suppressing the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a land power.

In this time and space, only half of Italy is left, so it is naturally unable to participate in the naval competition, and it cannot pose a threat to the Austro-Hungarian Empire as in the previous life. This is obviously good news for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, without the threat of Italy, the development of the Austro-Hungarian Navy has been more strongly suppressed by Hungary, so the Austro-Hungarian Navy is naturally difficult to develop, and it sits on the bench like the East African Navy before.

As for the British and French navies in the Mediterranean, both countries were naval powers, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire had absolutely no "confidence" in facing such competitors. If it was an evenly matched opponent like Italy, perhaps the Austro-Hungarian Navy would not have been so decadent.

This is easy to understand. After the unification of Italy, it was definitely an enemy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As for the historical relationship between Britain and France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it is not an exaggeration to say that they were "in cahoots with each other". Although there was competition, there was also a lot of cooperation. Moreover, due to the long distance, the relationship between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the two countries was not as rigid as that between Germany.

Bruce: "Austria-Hungary is one of the important powers in Europe. Your navy is indeed not keeping up with the current naval competition in terms of development."

In the 1990s, the East African Navy seemed to be sitting on the sidelines like the Austro-Hungarian Navy, but in fact the core of the naval development of the two countries was completely different.

East Africa's navy was no longer expanding on a large scale on the surface, but it strongly supported the development of its own shipbuilding and military shipbuilding industries. Although the expansion of the East African navy was slow, the replacement of naval ships was successfully completed. Therefore, the East African navy has been in development, while the Austro-Hungarian navy was truly stagnant.

Especially in the field of shipbuilding, East Africa carried out "localization" integration of its own shipbuilding industry in the 1990s, which made the localization rate of East Africa's shipbuilding industry reach 70%, and the military shipbuilding industry was completely localized.

On the other hand, although the Austro-Hungarian Empire also had the ability to manufacture pre-dreadnought battleships, many key equipment had to be imported from Britain or other countries. If it was in peacetime, there would naturally be no big problem, but if the foreign trade between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany was cut off by the Allies like in the First World War in the previous life, this would definitely be a huge blow to the Austro-Hungarian Empire's shipbuilding industry.

Of course, the development of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's shipbuilding industry is closely related to the national conditions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself. Although it is one of the most powerful countries in the world, the Austro-Hungarian Empire has never been a naval power in the traditional sense. At least in terms of national development, it has focused more on the army.

At the same time, as one of the industrial powers in Europe, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was actually only a semi-industrialized country like East Africa. Its land area seemed relatively large in Europe, but its resource situation was not necessarily much better than that of Germany.

Take the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s industry for example. It was concentrated in Bohemia, which was formerly Czechoslovakia. It was also a helpless move.

After all, Bohemia is located on the edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the political core of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Austria and Hungary, are relatively short of resources. In contrast, Germany, in addition to the Ruhr area, also has the Silesia Industrial Area in the east and the Saarland Industrial Area in the west.

The Bohemian Industrial Zone concentrated nearly 70% of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's industry. If the Bohemian Industrial Zone fell, it would definitely be a heavy disaster for the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

From the perspective of the distribution of industrial areas, East Africa and Germany are much more resistant to war than the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That is to say, the Bohemian region in the north of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was integrated into Germany relatively early. In addition to the Czechs, there were also a large number of Germans. Otherwise, Bohemia might have become independent like Hungary.

(End of this chapter)