African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 940: Capital Relocation Work Begins

While East Africa is digging holes on one hand, it has no time to care about the situation in Spain and the United States on the other hand, because there are more important things to do in East Africa now.

1898 4 Month 1 Day.

The East African government officially passed the draft to move the capital to Rhine City. Moving the capital is obviously a complex and huge project. Fortunately, the First Town City was not designed as a big city from the beginning. It has a small population and industry, and is close to Dar es Salaam. Therefore, except for its political status, other aspects are not prominent, which also provides convenience for the East African government.

This is easy to understand. For example, the capital of the Far East Empire in the previous life had a registered population of more than 10 million. If a decision was made to move the capital to East Africa, there would be more than 10 million opponents. Just thinking about it is enough to make people feel overwhelmed.

However, it must be admitted that the location of the capital of the Far Eastern Empire is indeed good. Apart from the lack of naval strength in modern times, the Bohai Bay is vulnerable to foreign invasion, the population is too concentrated in later generations, and water supply is tight, there are almost no shortcomings in other aspects.

"The process of relocating the capital this time is divided into three steps. The first step is for each government department to separate a part of it and move it to Rhine City to set up a framework in advance. The second step is for some government agencies to move their offices completely to Rhine City, and before 1900, Rhine City will completely become the new political center of East Africa."

Most people have no objection to moving the capital to Rhine City. After all, the First Town City is not a priority option, and the new capital Rhine City far surpasses the First Town City in terms of planning in all aspects. Although Rhine City is still small in scale compared with other cities, its potential is huge.

After the capital relocation was officially launched, the trains on the Central Railway once again increased their workload, and a large number of archives and equipment began to be moved to Rhine City continuously.

At this time, the railway framework of Rhine City was basically complete. To reach Rhine City from the First Town, there was no need to transfer through New Frankfurt. Although New Frankfurt was still the most important railway hub, Rhine City's transportation also had its own system.

In fact, the railways of Rhine City and New Frankfurt City form a dual core in the national railway network, but the railways of Rhine City are used primarily by the government, the military and other departments, while the railways of New Frankfurt City focus on more economical freight transportation.

……

Rhine City.

East African National Library.

The original national library is located in the First Town City, and of course, in terms of size, the largest library in East Africa is in Soga City.

"The Rhine National Library will replace the original First Town National Library, which will be used as a branch library. The books in the new national library will mainly come from the First Town National Library and the Soga City Library, and the capacity will be expanded on this basis. According to the latest plan, the library's collection will reach five million volumes, including other documentary collections, and will become a new knowledge and cultural destination in East Africa."

“With our library as the center, there are as many as 13 colleges and universities and scientific research institutions planned nearby. This will become an important place for talent and cultural exchanges across East Africa in the future.”

The director of the National Library, Crone, feels happy about his future. After all, he loves reading. At this time, the new National Library of East Africa is among the best in the world in terms of scale and collection of books.

Books were relatively valuable items in the 19th century. In order to ensure the safety of books, some libraries would even lock the books on the cabinets with special chains and shells to prevent them from being stolen.

In the early days, East Africa was obviously unable to build a library with a collection of more than five million books. The main reason was that East Africa was "short of books" at that time.

The number of books in the new national library is only a first-stage goal of 5 million. In later generations, large libraries often have tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of books. Therefore, Ernst used this as a reference and invested more in the Rhine National Library. In the future, it will have a collection of at least 20 million books, which makes the scale of the new national library extremely large. It also has an electricity system and a more advanced and complete fire protection system. The architectural style of the Rhine National Library is also very different from the traditional library style, which pays more attention to practicality and improving the reading experience, while Europe and the United States emphasize the palace-like artistic style and are more solemn and dignified.

Therefore, the East African National Library can be said to be the most modern building in East Africa today, breaking with tradition.

Of course, the new national library of East Africa is just getting started, and the total number of books is only more than 200,000. Subsequent books will need to be moved from the east or other regions.

The National Library is just a microcosm of the Rhine City. Many national service agency buildings have been built in the Rhine City in recent years, including the Imperial Palace, the Parliament Building, the Supreme Court, government office buildings, embassies, hospitals, etc.

Currently, the overall core framework of Rhine City is designed for 500,000 people, and a large amount of development space is reserved on the periphery. According to the current construction progress, it is already equivalent to the size of two first-class towns.

After all, the total population of the First Town is less than 200,000, only 170,000. If the initial construction is completed, Rhine City will be nearly three times the size of the First Town.

In other words, the scale of Rhine City is now large enough to accommodate the entire First Town City, which is also the basic condition for the formal implementation of the capital relocation work.

However, due to the small population of Rhine City now, the entire city seems very empty and devoid of life except for the large number of construction workers.

……

"Father, when the capital is moved, I plan to formally upgrade Donghua from a kingdom to an empire. Then you, the king, can become a true emperor."

At the Sweet Palace, Ernst told Constantine his idea directly. In fact, this idea had been buried in Ernst's mind ten years ago, but the East African country was weak at that time and did not have the conditions for it.

Constantine said, "In fact, in my opinion, the king and emperor are just empty titles. Adding a title doesn't seem to have much impact. Besides, if the procedures are too complicated, I'm afraid my body won't be able to handle it."

In Constantine's mind, he is already very satisfied to be the king of a powerful country. As for the title of emperor, he does not care too much about it. After all, the title of Queen of England becoming Empress is just a better name, and the traditional coronation ceremony is extremely complicated, so the elderly Constantine does not want to suffer this.

Ernst persuaded him, "Father, actually, there is another meaning to turning the kingdom into an empire this time. My idea is to divide East African history into two periods through this change of state system. In the early days, we established the Kingdom of Hechingen, which was mixed with a lot of colonial history, and we just took this opportunity to separate it from the previous period."

"Secondly, although you are old, you are still strong, so I will take this opportunity to let you experience the joy of being an emperor. As for the coronation ceremony, it will naturally follow our own East African rules. There is no need to imitate Europe. We can simplify the ceremony."

Ernst's remarks are extremely unorthodox, but Ernst is just a fake "Christian" who can't even remember the contents of the Bible, so this kind of operation is commonplace for him.

Moreover, East Africa is different from Europe. Even if East Africa follows European rules, it will just be like trying to please others and will not please them. So it is better to do things according to its own ideas.

Ernst said: "If we really follow the European tradition, East Africa will never become an empire. After all, there can only be one emperor in Europe. Now Germany, Tsarist Russia, and even Austria and Napoleon of France all call themselves emperors, but their emperor is Caesar. We in East Africa are in Africa, and naturally have different national conditions and interests from Europe."

(End of this chapter)