African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1161 Poisoned Bait

This kind of troublesome and thorny issue naturally has to be left to the parliament to resolve. This is Prime Minister Kuyper's ultimate way of shifting the blame. Of course, when it comes to territorial transactions, the Dutch Parliament cannot be avoided.

Moreover, the Dutch Parliament had considerable power. Prime Minister Kuyper, who was a pro-German, even had the idea of ​​joining the Allies before the war, but this dangerous idea was stopped by the Dutch Parliament. Ultimately, the Dutch Prime Minister became pro-German, but the Netherlands maintained a neutral position, which could be considered a blessing in disguise.

And after the final discussion of the Dutch Parliament, of course... they agreed to the East African deal. After the parliament nodded, it was basically confirmed, and it was useless even if the Queen and the Prime Minister opposed it.

As a small country, the Dutch have a completely different mentality from other countries, especially the powers like Britain, France and Germany. Even when the Netherlands was at its most powerful, its mentality was not too inflated compared to the current powers.

Of course, the Dutch Parliament agreed to conduct territorial transactions with East Africa this time mainly for two reasons: one was that the Netherlands was afraid that East Africa would turn against it, and the other was that the Netherlands’ interests would not suffer much loss.

After all, East Africa is a world power. If it falls out with the Netherlands, it will make Dutch lawmakers feel very dangerous, so it is better to buy East Africa.

The Netherlands is a country with a strong business atmosphere, and most Dutch people only look at practical benefits. After being evaluated by the Dutch parliament, this territorial transaction not only did not cause any losses, but instead made a huge profit.

Of course, this mainly refers to economic interests. If we consider it from the perspective of territory, sovereignty, etc., the Netherlands will suffer a great loss. However, for the Dutch, they themselves value economic interests more. This is the characteristic of a mercantilist country.

This characteristic of the Netherlands meant that even during the Japanese shogunate period, the Dutch were not shut out of Japan. In Japan, the Dutch did not preach, nor did they interfere in Japan's internal affairs, and they were wholeheartedly doing business.

The Dutch did whatever the Japanese government asked them to do and did not go against the Japanese government.

This is why Japan did not drive out the Dutch during its period of isolation. On the other hand, countries such as Spain, Portugal, and Britain, in addition to wanting to make money from Japan, also wanted to take the opportunity to interfere in Japanese politics, which was unacceptable to the Japanese ruling class.

So the Netherlands is a country that is very aware of the times. Of course, this may also be because the Netherlands is a small country and does not have the capital to learn from the practices of other powers.

This time, the Dutch Parliament’s attitude towards East Africa fully reflects the principle of “doing things within one’s means”. Since it cannot be stopped, it might as well collude with East Africa.

1914 9 Month 30 Day.

The East African government formally reached confirmation of all transaction terms with the Dutch government, and East Kalimantan officially became part of the East African colony.

As a price, the East African government paid the Netherlands 60 million Rhine guilders in land purchase fees in exchange for nearly 300,000 square kilometers of land in East Kalimantan. The East African government also promised to ensure that most of the interests of Dutch citizens in East Kalimantan remain unchanged, and the two governments will jointly invest in the development of East Kalimantan. Local tax revenues will be shared according to the investment ratio and will last for 20 years.

The Dutch government was quite satisfied with this result. The purchase cost paid by East Africa alone was far from comparable to the actual income of East Kalimantan today, not to mention that the colonial income has now declined sharply.

Moreover, under the commitment of the East African government, the Dutch basically guaranteed most of their original interests, which would allow East Kalimantan to continue to generate income for the Netherlands in the next twenty years without having to pay additional fees to maintain the military expenses of the East Kalimantan colony.

On the contrary, East Africa gained administrative, military and other powers in East Kalimantan, and most of Kalimantan Island fell into the hands of East Africa, leaving only the British influence in the north.

However, the issue of East Kalimantan was not completely settled because of the transaction between East Africa and the Netherlands. Dealing with the Netherlands was only one aspect. There were still many indigenous countries and tribes in East Kalimantan.

These countries did not act entirely in accordance with the will of the Dutch government, but instead had great autonomy. They only paid protection fees to the Netherlands every year to obtain the protection of the Dutch, rather than being puppets of the Dutch. Therefore, if East Africa wants to deal with East Kalimantan, it also needs to strike at the indigenous forces in the east of the island. The local indigenous people are mainly divided into two groups, one is Malay, and the other is the real natives of Kalimantan.

As can be seen from the Kutai Sultanate mentioned earlier, there are still a group of foreign rulers who were originally Green Christians. In fact, there are also complex forces such as Hinduism in East Kalimantan, but Hinduism is also unable to compete with the Green Christians and declined several centuries ago.

These non-native religious forces were actually non-Western colonizers at the time. They are not good guys and are also within the key attack range of East Africa.

Rhine City.

When the good news of the acquisition of East Kalimantan came, the East African government naturally cheered. The outbreak of World War I can be said to be an accelerator of East African national destiny.

Up to now, East Africa's overseas expansion has achieved astonishing results, with hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land being acquired at any time. It is impossible for anyone to remain indifferent.

Of course, Ernst was still relatively calm. He was certainly very excited about getting East Kalimantan, but from the very beginning, Ernst's design for East Kalimantan was a poisoned bait.

Of course, Ernst would not say it clearly now, but pretended to be calm and said to everyone: "Obtaining East Kalimantan is a good thing for our country, but it is not easy to consolidate our rule in East Kalimantan. While European countries are busy now, we should deal with all the unstable factors in East Kalimantan."

"First, we need to wipe out the national regime in East Kalimantan. Britain is now trapped in Europe. If we take action against the local indigenous people, they will not be able to get external support. This will save us a lot of trouble."

"The second point is to start orderly immigration activities in East Kalimantan, and at the same time crack down on the original pagans and educate them to Germanize. Those who obey me will prosper, and those who disobey me will perish. There is no need for the indigenous people who are unwilling to accept the transformation of East Africa to exist."

Ernst has always regarded the Green Church as a scourge, mainly because once you are infected, it is very difficult to get rid of this trouble. In the past, the Green Church countries in the South Seas were very powerful, the most typical of which was Indonesia, and there was no need to say more about others such as Bangladesh, Malaysia, etc.

The "terrorist policy" that Ernst wants to implement in East Kalimantan is actually a copy of what the Indonesian government did in the previous life. This is the only way to eradicate the problem and turn the East Kalimantan region into one of the stable bases for radiating influence in East Africa in the future.

Anyway, too much debt is not a worry, and too many lice are not an itch. Ernst has accepted such cruel and inhumane things after doing them many times. He does not want to leave these troubles to future generations to solve. Facts have proved that when future generations want to solve them, it is already very difficult.

For example, in the past, Europe and the United States both encountered many social problems due to the absorption of a large number of refugees or immigrants from different cultures.

With Ernst's instructions, it is clear that a bloody storm will break out in East Kalimantan.

In fact, this is far from the end of the disaster in East Kalimantan. East Kalimantan is Ernst's bait. After stabilizing the situation in East Kalimantan, Ernst will direct his country's companies to vigorously develop the oil resources in East Kalimantan.

If history does not deviate too much, this will definitely hook the mouth of a certain island country in East Asia in the future. In this way, East Africa will be able to use the power of the island country to disrupt the local deployment of Britain, France, the Netherlands, the United States, Australia and other countries. East Africa will finally enter the market and thoroughly plow the South China Sea region, so that the South China Sea can truly become East Africa's South China Sea.

This will further turn the Indian Ocean into East Africa's inland sea, and the South China Sea is an important fulcrum of East Africa's Indian Ocean policy. In particular, if key nodes such as the Strait of Malacca are not controlled, East Africa cannot truly control the Indian Ocean.

(End of this chapter)