Chapter 1138 Dealing with German Colonies
The German government had no time to get involved with East Africa, because the German army had already marched to Belgium at this time, and the top German leaders were now focused on the war.
In this way, Germany's nearly one million square kilometers of overseas colonies fell into the hands of East Africa. Under the influence of East Africa, the process of German overseas colonization in this generation can be said to be even more difficult. In the previous life, Germany's overseas colonies totaled 2.59 million square kilometers. , and now it does not even reach half of this number.
It is unceremonious to say that the economic value of the German colony of Tanzania in the previous life alone is greater than the total of all German overseas colonies today.
Take the Central African colonies as an example. This is already Germany's most aggressive colony, but the tropical rainforest alone accounts for more than 80% of the total area, making it difficult to develop.
After all, it belongs to a typical tropical rain forest climate distribution area. The equator passes through German Central Africa, and Germany’s second largest colony, German New Guinea, is also near the equator, and its geographical location is very bad, let alone Germany. , even for East Africa, it is a place where nothing matters.
Except for Africa, Germany's other colonies were basically distributed on the Pacific islands near Oceania.
Just from the distribution of German colonies, we can see Germany's "aggrieved" status among the colonial powers. To put it harshly, all the overseas territories Germany acquired before were basically the dregs of leftovers donated by Britain and France. Even the leftovers were Not really. It’s no wonder that Germany is dissatisfied with the current division of the world structure.
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Compared with the gloom and gloom brought about by the outbreak of World War I in European countries, East Africa is 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 have completely different meanings for East Africa, such as Togoland and German Central Africa. Putting aside the economic value and difficulty of development, their strategic value alone is worthy of East Africa's action.
Togoland and German Central Africa are located in the north and east of the Gulf of Guinea respectively. With these two places, East Africa's political influence and military presence can 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 solid base for the East African Navy in West Africa.
German Central Africa has more densely populated ports, the most important of which are the ports of Libreville and Gentile, and Ernst knows that there are relatively rich oil resources on the coast of German Central Africa, but these resources are not available to Germany. No more blessings to enjoy.
Of course, Ernst would definitely not be able to take the initiative to reveal the oil resources here. The most important thing now is to complete the split and rule of German Central Africa.
At the Rhine Palace, Ernst and officials were actively planning the new territory.
Ernst said: "Splitting German Central Africa into two parts, establishing a colony in the north, and annexing the south to the mainland, is basically to incorporate the former French colony of Gabon into the mainland, while Cameroon will temporarily maintain colonial status."
"The original Central Africa Development Agreement now seems unlikely to continue to be implemented. It will be redesigned based on our ideas."
The development of Central Africa is a huge plan led by the former East Africa, with the participation of Germany, Belgium, and the Kingdom of South Germany.
But now both Germany and Belgium have been involved in the European war and are unable to escape. The two countries have even become warring countries, not to mention that German Central Africa has fallen into the hands of East Africa, so the original joint development agreement has become a joke.
"The upgrade of the Northern Railway into a true two-ocean railway will further enhance our country's transportation advantages. In this way, the economic belt along the railway in northern my country can be completely formed." The end point of the Northern Railway is the inland city of Bangui, and in the past Because the west is a French and German colony, East Africa naturally has no motivation to continue extending the northern railway. Now that the west has completely fallen into the hands of East Africa, a third extension of the northern railway is necessary.
In this way, the "three horizontal" railways in East Africa have basically realized the function of connecting 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, and its military attributes will be given priority. It will be an important outpost of our country in the Gulf of Guinea and ensure our country's interests in the South Atlantic region."
Togoland was probably Togo in its previous life, between Ghana and Benin, between the British Gold Coast and the French Protectorate of Dahomey.
Previously, East Africa was the most powerful country in Africa, but it had almost no sense of presence in West Africa. As East Africa's first colony in West Africa, Togoland's significance is naturally very important.
Hermann said: "These two German colonies already exceed 500,000 square kilometers. It is indeed difficult to develop and manage them."
Ernst: "So we want to carry out large-scale immigration activities in these two areas. We will refer to our approach in the Beibu Gulf Territory, especially Togoland, which will be our main immigration focus area in recent years. We must first determine a Small goal, to immigrate one million people in Togoland.”
Togoland's position can be said to be completely between the two major powers in the world. Of course, Ernst's immigration policy was not intended to target the threats of Britain and France. Currently, no country south of the Sahara can pose a threat to East Africa.
The main reason why Ernst implemented such a radical immigration plan in Togoland was to prevent local blacks.
West Africa is currently the region with the highest concentration of black people in the world. As time goes by, within a few decades, the number of black people here will inevitably skyrocket. According to Togoland's location, except for the sea in the south, it is almost surrounded by black residents on three sides.
Moreover, the territory of Togoland is distributed in a long strip, with the north and south sides almost negligible. This kind of terrain is naturally conducive to the penetration of black people into Togoland.
Ernst did not acquire Togoland from Germany to make wedding clothes for future black people, so the best way was to bring in a large number of immigrants there.
The first are immigrants from East Africa, followed by immigrants from Europe and the Far Eastern Empire. Now that the European War has broken out, it is not particularly difficult to obtain populations from Europe, especially Eastern Europe.
Of course, it is certainly unrealistic to achieve the 50/50 population ratio that East Africa had at the time. After all, there will certainly not be too many European refugees who can be deceived. After all, the conditions in Togoland are too poor.
Today is not like the last century, when many European countries, including Germany, had not developed economically. East Africa had caught up with the last train of population loss in the German region and was able to gain a large number of German immigrants.
Now, many countries in Europe are developing well economically, and if they want to get a sufficient population from Europe, they can only find ways to do so from the Kingdom of Naples and Eastern Europe. These countries and regions are currently at the tail end of the European economy, and their populations are growing rapidly. They have replaced Germany became the most important place of population emigration in Europe.
Of course, people in European countries cannot be fooled after all. The main reason is that the United States, the traditional target country for European immigrants, now has Argentina. Compared with the two countries, there is still a big gap between East Africa and the two countries. What's more, East Africa does not recruit immigrants locally, but Recruit immigrants for the colony.
Therefore, one can imagine what will happen next. The focus of East African immigrants will definitely be on the Far Eastern Empire. Now is a good time to attract a wave of immigrants from the Far Eastern Empire.
After decades of relative peace, the population of the Far Eastern Empire has recovered. In addition, due to the change of political power, the Far Eastern Empire has fallen back into war and warlord rule. This has made it easier for East Africa to recruit immigrants from the Far Eastern Empire.
(End of chapter)