Chapter 1198: Chapter 207: Crash Course
To discuss East Africa’s shortcomings, it lies in the short duration of its civilization’s development. Before East Africa, the entire African continent didn’t have a decent modernized nation.
The top student in Africa before East Africa was Egypt, but when placed within the competitive mechanisms of the Europe and Asia region, Egypt could not compete with other blocks at all.
Thus, after East Africa became the most representative Great Power in Africa, the most pressing task was catching up, which is the basic logic through which East Africa swiftly turned from a Great Power into a true global power by means of immigration, industrial development, infrastructure construction, and more.
The period from the late 19th century to the early 20th century can be considered the last opportunity for the African continent. If, during this period, the countries on the African continent could not rapidly rise, they would have no chance to fend off the encirclement of the Western world in the future.
East Africa is the nation that suddenly appeared and led the African continent to play in the pinnacle competition, but the conditions were understandably poor when East Africa took over most of the region in southern Africa.
From the perspective of human civilization’s development, the civilization level in sub-Saharan Africa in the late 19th century remained at least five thousand years behind.
After all, during that time, the Far East Empire and the Middle East had already seen the emergence of relatively mature agrarian civilizations, with many regions transitioning from primitive societies to slave societies.
Therefore, when the East African Colony was established, it was essentially impoverished—so much so that the new government of the Far East Empire in 1949 would be moved to tears.
This resulted in East Africa having to adopt the most radical methods in the early stages of colonial and national construction, such as the early "militarism" model, rationing system, complete nationalization of land, the most aggressive "centralized" model, the "complete planned economy" of the first two five-year plans, and now the "New Economic Policy."
Indeed, the New Economic Policy is also extremely radical. It can be said that during the third and fifth plans, East Africa took an unreasonably lenient approach toward the private economy, essentially implementing a policy allowing anything not forbidden by law, even turning a blind eye to some enterprises that violated East African laws.
These extreme policies and systems share a common point: "quick success." Basically, in each economic development cycle, the East African Government prefers an all-encompassing approach, sacrificing and ignoring certain interests to swiftly expand and develop East Africa’s national power, economy, population, military, infrastructure, agriculture, and more.
Of course, East Africa’s strategy is evidently successful. It is no exaggeration to say that East Africa took only about fifty years to traverse the path that took other nations hundreds or even thousands of years.
At least within East Africa, comprehensive modernization has been achieved. Lands that lay undeveloped for tens of thousands of years have turned into farmlands, villages, cities, roads, and canals. Rivers like the Zambezi River and the Congo River that had never been managed before have seen large-scale artificial governance for the first time, and East Africa’s population has transformed from thirty to forty million primitive indigenous people to over a hundred million modern people who have had basic education...
Though the last point is somewhat unsavory, it indeed created the greatest nation in history on the African continent through large-scale immigration.
By the outbreak of World War I, East Africa was obviously no longer a novice village; rather, it was a global Great Power that could not be ignored, currently capable of competing with any other world powers.
World War I presented East Africa with a crossroads. If utilized well, East Africa would take further steps, and it is foreseeable that post-war East Africa will become unprecedentedly powerful.
Currently, the United Kingdom is the roadblock on East Africa’s rise, so cracking the British interference in East African trade is exceptionally important for East Africa.
Merk said, "Your Majesty, to bypass the British obstruction, we must open more trade routes, among which the construction progress of the Basra railway should be accelerated."
The progress on the Basra railway is relatively slow. According to East Africa’s original plan, it was intended to open the 700-kilometer passage within a year, but now Britain has acted first, which means East Africa must respond even more.
Ernst nodded and said, "Originally, I wanted to use the Basra railway to negotiate with the Ottoman Empire, but now it seems unnecessary, so the Ministry of Railways should accelerate the progress of the Basra railway project to ensure it officially opens before July this year."
Ernst initially planned to use the Basra railway to entice the Ottoman Empire, but it is evident that internally, the Ottoman Empire did not wish to speed up the construction of the Basra railway through territorial exchange.
However, Ernst is not too concerned about this point now. Although Ernst was envious of the oil along the Saudi coast in a past life, East Africa is now very different.
With new territories like Gabon, Beibu Gulf territory, and East Kalimantan incorporated, along with East Africa’s strategic placement in Venezuela, Romania, the United States, and other regions, East Africa has gained a sufficient sense of security in oil resources.
East Africa now has three avenues to obtain oil. Firstly, domestically, the oil resources in East Africa’s north and west can basically meet the daily production and living needs of East Africa.
The second avenue is East Africa’s overseas colonies. Alaska, Beibu Gulf territory, and East Kalimantan are regions relatively rich in oil resources. With these overseas colonies, East Africa can hardly lack oil supply.
The third avenue is East Africa’s investments overseas, such as in the United States, Romania, Austria-Hungary, Tsarist Russia, Venezuela, and other current major global oil-producing countries where East Africa has investments.
These oil-producing regions in other countries can also stabilize East Africa’s energy security, among which only Tsarist Russia poses a relatively large risk, given the internal instability of Tsarist Russia.
Thus, East Africa’s oil energy security has established a three-level firewall, and Ernst need not be overly anxious about this.
Ernst said, "The construction of the Basra railway is one of the key trade routes to stabilize our engagement with the Allies, so the earlier it is completed, the more beneficial it will be to our country’s current economy."
It is worth mentioning that East Africa still hasn’t fully repaid all debts to the two major alliances, so to quickly clear the debt and generate profit, East Africa urgently needs to maintain the scale of trade with Europe.
The main factor leading to this result is the United States. With America around, East Africa cannot eat alone. The competition between the two countries has further flattened the profits from trade with Europe, making it so that neither East Africa nor the United States has repaid the pre-war debts to various European countries.
Essentially, East Africa borrowed heavily before the war, using these loans to nearly triple its domestic industrial capacity.
In 1910, East Africa’s total industrial output value was 120 billion Rhine Shield, and this has expanded to over 270 billion Rhine Shield by 1914.
Using European nations’ money, East Africa’s industry achieved qualitative development, even surpassing the economic and industrial growth rates experienced during the previous two five-year plans.
With over 270 billion Rhine Shield, translated into US dollars, it amounts to roughly 40 billion, while the total industrial production value of the United States before the war was only 240 billion.
Currently, the industrial production value of the United States should be in the 300 billion range, but in the previous life at this stage, the United States had already reached 500 billion. This shows how much market share East Africa snatched from the United States.
Ultimately, Europe’s purchasing power is limited, and with the competition between the two industrial giants, East Africa and the United States, the profits naturally decreased. According to the East African government’s estimate, it will take at least another seven months to completely repay the debts to various European countries.
The intentional obstruction by the United Kingdom will evidently extend East Africa’s debt repayment timeline, so the East African Government must seek alternative paths to maximize East Africa’s gains from the war.
"The Basra railway ultimately has limited capacity, so we must find other means. As the war progresses, the difficulty of trading with the Allies will certainly increase, so it is all the more important at this stage to strengthen trade with the Allies. As the war reaches its mid to late stages, the difficulty of extracting benefits from the Allies will also increase."
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