African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1119: Trade with the Ottomans
What really makes East Africa a little embarrassed is that the current relationship between the Ottoman Empire and East Africa can be said to be at a very good stage. In order to gain the support of the Ottoman Empire in the occupation of the Persian Gulf colonies, East Africa has carried out a lot of cooperation with the Ottoman Empire. As of now, the Ottoman Empire is definitely a pro-East African country.

The relationship between the Balkan countries and East Africa is somewhat complicated. Among them, Romania has the best relationship with East Africa, but Romania is not a major participant in this round of Balkan crisis.

Romania is located in the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula and is actually separated from the Ottoman Empire, so the conflicts between the two countries are not as sharp as those with other countries.

The country with the second best relations with East Africa on the Balkan Peninsula is Bulgaria. Bulgaria can be regarded as a small military power on the Balkan Peninsula. In its previous life, it erupted with combat power far beyond its national strength in the First World War.

Therefore, East Africa has always maintained good relations with Bulgaria, especially in military cooperation. East Africa is an important supporter of Bulgaria.

Moreover, considering economic interests, East Africa's trade with Bulgaria is second only to Romania among the Balkan countries.

Serbia is located in the interior of the Balkans and lacks access to the sea, while Greece is basically a lending ground for Britain and its economy is fully controlled by Britain, so Bulgaria has a natural advantage in trade with East Africa.

Of course, compared with Romania, an important oil producing country, Bulgaria is certainly far from being comparable to Romania.

After summarizing everyone's thoughts, Ernst said: "In dealing with the relations with the relevant Balkan countries, according to everyone's suggestions, it is better not to offend them if possible. As for explicitly supporting a certain country, it is indeed not in our interest."

"Moreover, we can only be regarded as bystanders in the Balkan Peninsula and cannot participate in Balkan affairs like other countries. Therefore, we choose to be a bystander to the Balkan war for the time being. Of course, we should participate in the current arms trade market in the Balkan Peninsula."

After all, East Africa and the Balkan Peninsula are separated by the Suez Canal. As long as the Suez Canal is in the hands of the British, it will be impossible for East Africa to interfere too much in European politics. No matter how much it invests, it will not achieve the corresponding effect.

However, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, France, Britain, and even Germany were very different. They were not far from the Balkan Peninsula, or had unobstructed sea routes, so these countries were still the main forces dominating the situation in the Balkan Peninsula. Before East Africa controlled the Suez Canal, it was basically impossible for them to play a leading role.

From this perspective, even if East Africa wanted to do arms business in the Balkan Peninsula, it could only cooperate with the Ottoman Empire first. After all, East Africa could not compete with other European countries in selling arms to the disputed region of the Balkans, and would not be able to get the lion's share.

But the Ottoman Empire was different. In addition to being a Balkan country, it was also a country along the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The trade between East Africa and the Ottoman Empire would not be easily cut off due to restrictions from other countries.

Therefore, after this round of meetings, the first country East Africa contacted was the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire naturally warmly accepted the "goodwill" revealed by East Africa.

Influenced by the military cooperation between Germany and Eastern Austria, the weapons currently used by the Ottoman Empire are accelerating the Germanization. However, it is impossible for Germany to support the Ottoman Empire as conveniently as in East Africa, because Germany needs to take into account the feelings of other countries in the Balkan Peninsula. Even if Germany supports the Ottoman Empire, it cannot bypass the Balkan Peninsula. East Africa can choose to cooperate with the Ottoman Empire in the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf.

So in May 1912, East Africa took the lead in reaching a number of military orders with the Ottoman Empire, and the two countries agreed to complete the handover in Kuwait.

Since the Second Five-Year Plan, East Africa has been interested in expanding its national defense industry. After the Third Five-Year Plan, East Africa's military industry has received a lot of financial support and expanded a number of weapons production lines. These defense industries were originally prepared by Ernst to deal with World War I, and now he can give the Ottoman Empire some benefits.

As a German country, East Africa has many weapons that are interchangeable with Germany. German weapons are now the mainstream in the Ottoman Empire’s army. In addition, the two countries have started closer military cooperation as early as last year, which has laid a good foundation for East African arms exports.

The weapons exported from East Africa to the Ottoman Empire were mainly rifles, machine guns and other military supplies.

In this round of Balkan crisis, most European countries stood on the side of the Balkan countries, so this also gave East Africa a great advantage.

Many strategic materials could be exported to the Ottoman Empire under the pretext of civilian products, such as salt, grain, sugar, cotton, etc. Many of these materials could not be produced by the Ottoman Empire itself, or the production was insufficient.

After all, the Ottoman Empire's territory and climate, it can be said that the land quality is the worst among the world's major powers. This is the result of the Ottoman Empire occupying many of the most fertile lands in the Middle East, such as the Mesopotamian Valley, the Asian Peninsula, and part of the Balkan Peninsula in Europe.

Take food for example. In the past, Turkey, as the most developed country in the Middle East (excluding Israel), had a food self-sufficiency rate of less than 100%. Now the Ottoman Empire occupies a large amount of desert area, and with the deteriorating climate, it is impossible to be completely self-sufficient. The quality of life is even worse than that of Russia.

Therefore, the Ottoman Empire was naturally a major grain importer, and in the past three decades, the growth rate of grain exports from East Africa to the Ottoman Empire was the fastest.

Although the Ottoman Empire was able to produce temperate and tropical crops such as wheat, corn, cotton, tobacco, and olives, it was constrained by water issues and it was difficult to grow and produce them on a large scale like other countries, so it also relied mainly on imports.

Before the industrialization era, the agricultural scale of the Ottoman Empire was quite considerable. The Ottoman Empire was even one of the largest cotton exporters in Europe. But today, the agricultural output of the Ottoman Empire cannot even meet the needs of its own industrial development.

Therefore, in East Africa's trade with the Ottoman Empire, arms exports actually only accounted for a small part, while agricultural products such as grain, sugar, tobacco, coffee and other industrial products occupied a major position.

This is a pleasant surprise for East Africa now. With the large loan, East Africa's industry and agriculture have obtained a large amount of development funds. Now East Africa's industrial and agricultural production efficiency has been further greatly improved.

However, this also brought tremendous pressure to East Africa. After all, products need to be sold, so East Africa faced the problem of overproduction. Trade with the Ottoman Empire temporarily alleviated the overproduction in East Africa's industrial production, especially the defense industry.

So if the world is at peace, it is definitely not a good thing for East Africa. The Balkan crisis has provided East Africa with an opportunity to catch its breath. By taking advantage of the Balkan crisis, East Africa will be able to cope with a future full-scale war in Europe more calmly.

The trade between the Ottoman Empire and East Africa also shows why so many people in the East African government supported the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire had a population of nearly 30 million and a profound historical heritage. The economic benefits it could bring to East Africa were far beyond the reach of a group of small countries on the Balkan Peninsula.

(End of this chapter)