Chapter 661 Tanzania Governorate

Huye Wasjie is a man without much ambition, and in fact, he is more in awe of the Austrians than grateful.

After all, Kiran Wasjie and Kalaikabang were almost invincible in the eyes of the former, but such a behemoth is like a balloon that can be poke and burst in front of the Austrians.

Huye Wasjie is very clear about his situation. He actually has no choice. The strength of this neighbor is far beyond his imagination. Perhaps only the British can match it.

But now the whole of India is turbulent. It is not known whether Britain can still maintain its foundation. At this time, it is even more important to have a good relationship with the Austrians.

Moreover, the demands of the Austrian side are not excessive. The territory they demanded is just a piece of land close to the inland and about the same size as Tranquiba.

As for the export labor agreement, Huye Wasjie feels that the untouchables in his territory have been an eyesore for a long time, and it is really worth it to exchange them for money and equipment.

As for the promise not to transport opium to Austria and its colonies and to grow cotton instead, Huye Wasjie didn't care. After all, he had no way to sell opium, and in the end, most of the profits were taken away by foreign companies. In addition, he was criticized by religious people.

In fact, the Varma Plateau and the Ganges Delta in northern India are the main opium producing areas. Too much rainfall in the south is not conducive to the growth of opium. Even if it is grown, it can only be counted as a low-grade product.

(Opium produced in Bengal, also known as Bangong soil, is considered to be the best opium in the world.)

Although growing cotton is not as profitable as growing opium, it is more stable. In fact, this should be regarded as optimizing resource allocation rather than threatening.

However, what Huye Wasjie thinks is not important to Austria. Franz's goal is to use Indian manpower to develop the East African Plateau and confuse the "water" in Sri Lanka.

As for that piece of land, it can be used to grow cotton and confuse the British.

At this point, we have to mention the East African Governorate of the Austrian Empire. Franz's original plan was to use the Dutch to develop East Africa, which would save a lot of money and make it easier to receive them.

As a result, two consecutive governors of Tanzania could not do a good job with Franz's plan, and the number of immigrants attracted was not as many as Franz sent.

The first Benny Erbin was a man of great luck who had the right time, right place, and right people. He had tens of thousands of colonists at the beginning, and had the support of two empires (Austria and Oman). He was a native East African mixed-race, with a rare white skin, and the support of the strongest kingdom in Tanzania.

As a result, because he trusted his black brothers too much, he became too inflated, which eventually led to the Wegin Rebellion.

If Friedrich had not arrived in time, I am afraid that the Tanzania Governorate would have been reduced to a sea of ​​fire, and the siege of the prisoner's fort would have reappeared.

If the Oman Empire took advantage of the situation, Austria's East African colonies would cease to exist, and it would even have to fight another war with the Oman Empire or pay huge tolls to restore the route.

Fortunately, Friedrich directly defeated the army of the Kingdom of Wegin in the Battle of Paradise Castle. Biru Niumbayi (Benny Erbing's younger brother) died in the battle, and most of the 13,000 native warriors that were proud of were killed.

This was not because the Austrian artillery and rifles were accurate, but because Biru Niumbayi blocked all the exits of Paradise Castle himself and wanted to hold on with sufficient supplies.

As a result, the Austrian Empire directly used the newly developed incendiary rockets to burn the city. In addition, Paradise Castle was close to the sea and within the attack range of the Austrian Navy, so the scene was extremely tragic.

The Kingdom of Wegin disappeared from the world, and all its population, livestock, and property were occupied by the Kingdom of Ngoni, which was loyal to Austria.

Of course, Benny Erbin also had achievements. For example, he destroyed three of the seven kingdoms in Tanzania, and his brother destroyed two more.

Now that the Kingdom of Wegin has been destroyed, all the land has been returned to the Austrian Empire, which has quadrupled the area it actually controls in Tanzania. The remaining Ngoni people have enshrined the Austrians as gods, and it is not easy to develop inland.

So Franz did not punish Benny Erbin, but only removed his title as Governor of Tanzania.

The second governor was Hendri van der Meer, a powerful businessman in Bagamoyo. His ideas were similar to Franz's. They both believed that Tanzania's development should not be sought from outside, and advocated using the land advantages of the region to develop agriculture and animal husbandry.

In fact, the 57-year-old man wrote a development plan of more than one million words for Franz. Just based on the number of words, Franz knew that he must have been planning for many years, and he should be given a chance to show himself.

In fact, Franz also read Hendri van der Meer's development plan. Generally speaking, it was quite standard and the market analysis was quite in place.

In particular, he took advantage of the serious shortage of grain production in the Oman Empire and West Asia, the internal strife in the Abyssinian (Ethiopian) Empire, and the fact that Egypt's grain self-sufficiency rate plummeted after its defeat in the Turkish-Egyptian War.

This is a European with very flexible beliefs. He believed in Protestantism in the Netherlands, Catholicism in Austria, and various sects of Islam in the Arab world.

His understanding of East Africa and West Asia is far beyond that of ordinary people, and he has extensive connections and "friends" everywhere.

Franz's previous plan in East Africa was based on cotton and coffee cultivation, supplemented by grain cultivation. In order to avoid conflicts with the Oman Empire, spices and dye crops based on cloves were not planted.

Hendry van der Meer believes that such progress is too slow and is a waste of land resources. Food crop cultivation should be vigorously carried out, so as to grasp the lifeblood of the countries in East Africa and West Asia, strengthen the strength of Tanzania, and create a solid foundation for the Austrian Empire. Contribute a lot to the economy.

Franz felt that he had at least drawn an SR, so he allocated a large amount of manpower and material resources to support it.

But what Franz didn't expect was that this old man actually wanted to engage in a slave economy. The reason is that the Omanis can do it, the French can do it, and the Americans can do it, so why can’t Austria do it?

Although according to econometric calculations, theoretically speaking, the slave economy is a more efficient economic system when sharing a unified market (researched by Nobel Prize winners in economics, not the author's statement).

Forget it is contrary to the laws of the Austrian Empire. The slaves captured in the Tanzania colony are all genuine indigenous black people.

Putting aside the issue of language communication, the work efficiency of this group of people was far beyond Hendry Vandermeer's imagination.

It was impossible to dig even a trench, and the crooked ground had to be dug again by the colonists. The efficiency of loosening the soil was not as good as that of cattle or horses.

What's even more outrageous is that these black people don't know how to use tools. They wear out tens of thousands of shovels and pickaxes in a month, and some can even break several shovels in a day.

At first, the colonists thought that there was a problem with the quality of the tools. As a result, several strong men of the colonists could not break them after turning them around for a long time. They broke after being handed over to the black slaves for a long time.

Lazy and greedy, every meal is a war. Strong slaves often rob the weak ones, and those with more people rob those with fewer people. Almost every day, several slaves or colonists will be killed. By.

Later, Hendry VanderMeer did the next best thing and prepared to send the slaves to the border wall. In his eyes, this was an easy task, but as a result, the wall fell down when the wind blew, and when animals touched it.

It rained all night and the border wall literally disappeared.

Hendry Vandermeer had to supervise the work himself, and found that the so-called walls were just a mixture of small mounds of earth and stones, not square, but ovals.

In addition, black slaves often stole seeds and colonists' belongings. Hendry Vandermeer thought that the whip would make these guys behave better.

But in the end, the whips were all broken, and those slaves still did what they should do.

Seeing that the delivery date was approaching, Hendry Vandermeer looked at the black slaves who were eating raw rice, wheat, cotton, and even raw sisal. His eyes went dark and he fainted.

Hendry van der Meer wanted to make a big splash in Tanzania, but he was so angry that he suffered from high blood pressure, cerebral thrombosis, and finally hemiplegia and he could only rest in bed.

So now Franz could only take over the affairs of Tanzania himself, but he could not spare so much time to appoint Benny Erbin and Hendry Vandermeer as assistants to the governor.

Franz's first order was to ask the Omanis to come and take away these black indigenous people. At this time, it was unrealistic for the manpower of the Tanzania colony to develop the Tanzania colony.

Even for existing cotton and coffee fields, planting and care are no problem, but picking is definitely a big problem.

This is not because the Austrian colonists had steel plates in their legs and could not kneel down, but because the quantity was too large and they could not be finished. They had to finish picking before the second rainy season, otherwise they would be in trouble.

East Africa is different from West Africa. West Africa has only one rainy season and one dry season a year, while East Africa has two rainy seasons a year.

This is actually very tricky. Farming must strictly abide by time rules, and some varieties cannot be planted at all.

Two rainy seasons means double the floods. At this time, Europe's infrastructure cannot keep up, let alone Africa.

The water conservancy project at this time was a joke. Vienna was flooded three times and Paris was flooded twice in twenty years.

Although no buildings in London were destroyed by floods, the overflowing Thames River caused a large amount of garbage and waste to fill the streets. At the same time, a large amount of stagnant water in the city could not be drained in time, which indirectly led to the occurrence of the London Plague.

In 1858, the Danube River flooded, killing hundreds of people in Austria and destroying nearly a thousand houses, not to mention those in the downstream countries.

At this time, there was almost no water conservancy project construction in East Africa, which is one of the reasons why the colonial settlements were all located near the mouths of rivers.

In addition, this kind of short-term, high-intensity rainfall has also caused another problem, that is, it is extremely difficult to build and maintain roads.

Portugal, the Netherlands, Oman, and even the indigenous kingdoms failed to build a road that could connect various cities to the interior for hundreds of years.

The floods flowing freely will often wash away the roads, and the continuous heavy rainfall will erase all traces of its existence. There are also swarms of animals and wildly growing plants. Everything tells the story of the great disaster. The wildness of nature.

Then there was the biggest problem in colonizing East Africa, terrible diseases. The warm and humid climate here during the rainy season could easily create a large number of mosquitoes, spreading terrible diseases.

If it weren’t for the trade with the Oman Empire, the output of Tanzania’s colonies (cotton and coffee trees would still take time) would not be enough to buy quinine.

PS: Franz had already developed allicin, and quinine was grown in Chenla and Kalimantan in Southeast Asia, so the loss was not that great.

(Chenla and Kalimantan were both important quinine production areas in later generations, so transplantation was not too difficult, although it took several years to successfully grow it.)

So where can we find laborers with strong disease resistance, cheapness, and good at growing food and cotton?

The answer is India. India's anti-drug talent can be said to be full level. At least Franz did not have the courage to challenge the clean and healthy Ganges water.

Of course, in addition to this, from an economic perspective, India is close enough to Tanzania and is also affected by the monsoon, which greatly shortens the time for transporting laborers and reduces the mortality rate (loss rate).

During this period, whether it was black slaves or indentured workers, the loss rate on the road was more than 15%, and it was possible that the loss rate was close to 50% in case of emergencies.

There was no such trouble at all from Tranquiba to Bagamoyo. It only took more than ten days under the influence of ocean currents and monsoons, which was really short for the sea.

Moreover, as the untouchable class, the Dalits are not property to the local Indian princes, but outright garbage.

Modern people always like to use the Japanese samurai's sword-wielding to say that the island country has no human rights, but those Japanese samurai still have to find a good excuse, such as being hit, insulted, etc.

However, in India, the high castes really don't need any reason to kill the untouchables. It can be that the shadow falls on someone's feet, the smell of the body is smelled, or even leaving footprints on the road can become a reason for them to be beaten, ravaged, and killed.

And even to this day, these atrocities against the Dalits have not stopped.

"India does not need Dalits." - From the mouth of a famous Indian politician.

They are spurned, exploited and oppressed by society. They are all landless hired farmers and people engaged in "unclean industries", generally laundry workers, cleaners, butchers, etc.

Even as the lowest-level excrement workers, they do not have the right to obtain excrement. The excrement belongs to the Shudras (the fourth class) who lead them and are also responsible for driving.

According to the ancient tradition of India, people of any caste cannot contact these inferior people or accept things used by them to avoid being defiled.

They have no right to enter temples and various religious places, let alone to receive education in schools.

In the 19th century, these Dalits not only had no surnames, but many even had no names.

Dalit means "oppressed people" and is also called "untouchables".

However, for Franz, there is no better pioneer than them to go to Africa at this time. These people have been enslaved by the caste system for a long time, and humble obedience has been engraved in their bones.

But compared with the primitive African natives, their sociality and organization are much better, and they learn new things much faster than black people.

In Silicon Valley, Dalits account for a considerable proportion of senior Indian engineers (Indian executives are not counted here, because Dalits are relatively unsuitable to be managers).

When he heard that the Austrians wanted Dalit workers, Huye Wasjie immediately expressed his willingness to cooperate, and the price was easy to negotiate, just give a little.