African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1138: Dealing with German Colonies

The German government had no time to get involved in East Africa because the German army had already marched to Belgium and the German top brass was now focused on the war.

In this way, Germany's overseas colonies of nearly one million square kilometers fell into the hands of East Africa. Under the influence of East Africa, Germany's overseas colonization process in this life can be said to be even more difficult. In the previous life, Germany's overseas colonies added up to 2.59 million square kilometers, but now it can't even reach half of this number.

It is no exaggeration to say that the economic value of Germany's former colony in Tanzania alone exceeds the sum of all Germany's overseas colonies today.

Take the Central African colonies for example. This is Germany's most impressive colony, but the tropical rainforest alone accounts for more than 80% of the total area, making it difficult to develop.

After all, it is a typical tropical rainforest climate distribution area. The equator passes through German Central Africa, and Germany’s second largest colony, German New Guinea, is also near the equator. Moreover, its geographical location is very bad. Not to mention Germany, even for East Africa it is a deserted place.

Except for Africa, Germany's other colonies are basically distributed on the Pacific islands near Oceania.

Just from the distribution of German colonies, we can see Germany's "frustrating" position among the colonial powers. To put it bluntly, all the overseas territories previously acquired by Germany were basically the dregs of the scraps given by Britain and France, not even scraps. It is no wonder that Germany is dissatisfied with the current division of the world pattern.

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Compared with the gloomy situation in European countries caused by the outbreak of World War I, East Africa was overjoyed. Now that the war has not expanded, East Africa has already gained huge benefits.

Germany's overseas colonies are quite useless to Germany, but they are of completely different significance to East Africa. For example, Togoland and German Central Africa, not to mention their economic value and development difficulty, their strategic value alone is worth East Africa's effort.

Togoland and German Mitteleuropa were located in the north and east of the Gulf of Guinea respectively. By acquiring these two places, East Africa's political influence and military presence could be directly expanded to the Gulf of Guinea region.

For example, Lome, the capital of Togoland, is a natural deep-water port that can serve as an outpost and stable base for the East African Navy in West Africa.

The ports in German Central Africa were more densely populated, the most important of which were Libreville and Chantil. Ernst knew that there were relatively rich oil resources on the coast of German Central Africa, but Germany would not be able to enjoy these resources.

Of course, Ernst would definitely not take the initiative to reveal the oil resources here. The most important thing now is to complete the division and rule of German Central Africa.

At the Rhine Palace, Ernst and officials were actively planning the new territory.

Ernst said: "The German Central Africa was split into two parts, with the northern part being colonized and the southern part being incorporated into the mainland. Basically, the former French colony of Gabon was incorporated into the mainland, while Cameroon remained a colony for the time being."

“The original Central African Development Agreement now seems unlikely to continue, so it has been redesigned based on our ideas.”

The development of Central Africa was a huge project led by East Africa and participated by Germany, Belgium and the Kingdom of South Germany.

But now Germany and Belgium have been dragged into the European war and are unable to extricate themselves. The two countries have even become belligerents, not to mention that German Mitteleuropa has fallen into the hands of East Africa, so the original joint development agreement has become a joke.

"The rainforest area in German Central Africa alone exceeds 300,000 square kilometers. It is extremely difficult to develop it. Without a sufficient population, it is almost impossible to complete. Therefore, we will only develop its southern area first. Bangui and other inland areas of East Africa also have access to the sea with the help of the ports of Douala and Libreville."

"The upgrade of the Northern Railway to a true trans-oceanic railway will further enhance my country's transportation advantages. In this way, my country's northern railway economic zone will be completely formed." The terminus of the Northern Railway is the inland city of Bangui. In the past, because the west was a colony of France and Germany, East Africa naturally had no motivation to continue extending the Northern Railway. Now that the west has completely fallen into the hands of East Africa, the third extension of the Northern Railway is very necessary.

In this way, the "three horizontal" railways in East Africa have basically achieved the function of reaching the two oceans, which is of great benefit to the economic development of East Africa.

“We must also pay special attention to Togoland. Lome must be built into a port city with military attributes as a priority. It is an important outpost of our country in the Gulf of Guinea and guarantees our interests in the South Atlantic region.”

Togoland is probably the Togo of the previous life, located between Ghana and Benin, that is, between the British Gold Coast and the French Dahomey Protectorate.

Before this, East Africa, as the most powerful country in Africa, had almost no presence in West Africa. As Togoland was the first colony of East Africa in West Africa, its significance was naturally very important.

Hermann said: "These two German colonies are more than 500,000 square kilometers. It is indeed difficult to develop and manage them."

Ernst: "So we are going to carry out large-scale immigration activities in these two regions, referring to what we did in the Beibu Gulf Territory, especially Togoland, which will be our main immigration focus area in recent years. Let's set a small goal first, to immigrate one million people to the Togoland region."

Togoland's location can be said to be completely between the world's two major powers. Of course, Ernst's immigration policy is not intended to target the threats from Britain and France. Currently, there is no country in sub-Saharan Africa that can pose a threat to East Africa.

The main reason why Ernst implemented such a radical immigration plan in Togoland was to prevent the local blacks from coming.

West Africa is currently the region with the highest density of black people in the world. As time goes by, within a few decades, the number of black people here will inevitably increase dramatically. According to Togoland's location, except for the south which is close to the sea, it is almost surrounded by black residents on three sides.

Moreover, Togoland's territory is distributed in a long strip, and the north and south sides are almost negligible. This terrain naturally facilitates the infiltration of blacks into Togoland.

Ernst did not obtain Togoland from Germany to prepare for the future of black people, so the best way was to move a large number of immigrants to the local area.

The first are immigrants from East Africa, followed by immigrants from Europe and the Far East Empire. Now that the European war has broken out, it is not particularly difficult to obtain population from Europe, especially Eastern Europe.

Of course, it is definitely not realistic to achieve the 50-50 population ratio that East Africa had in the past. After all, not too many European refugees can be fooled, after all, the conditions in Togoland are too poor.

Today is not like the last century, when the economies of many European countries, including Germany, were not developed. East Africa caught the last train of population outflow from the German region and was able to gain a large number of German immigrants.

Now, many European countries have good economic development, and if you want to get sufficient population from Europe, you can only think of ways from the Kingdom of Naples and Eastern Europe. These countries and regions are currently the tail end of the European economy, with rapid population growth, and have replaced Germany as the most important population outflow area in Europe.

Of course, the people of European countries are not easy to fool after all. The main reason is that there is the traditional European immigration target country, the United States, and now there is also Argentina. There is still a big gap between East Africa and the two countries. What's more, East Africa does not recruit immigrants locally, but recruits immigrants for the colonies.

Therefore, it is predictable what will happen next. The focus of East African immigrants will definitely be on the Far East Empire. Now is a good time to attract a wave of immigrants from the Far East Empire.

After decades of relative peace, the population of the Far Eastern Empire has recovered. In addition, due to the change of regime, the Far Eastern Empire has once again fallen into war and warlord separatism, which has made it convenient for East Africa to recruit immigrants from the Far Eastern Empire.

(End of this chapter)