This was also one of the important distinctions between East Africa and other colonizers in their colonial methods. East Africa placed greater emphasis on stability and controllability, and for that, it was willing to pay higher colonial costs.
If East Africa had not been a nation established only in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Ernst would have been willing to learn from the methods of other colonial powers. But by the end of the nineteenth century, traditional colonialism had already reached the end of its life.
At the time, colonialism's final frenzy was merely a last flash of returning light. After entering the twentieth century, the various problems and contradictions revealed by colonialism became ever more apparent.
Therefore, from Ernst's perspective at the time, even if East Africa were to continue expanding overseas through colonization, it had to make changes. This became the overall thinking behind East Africa's later series of approaches that ran counter to traditional colonial models.
In international society at the time—and even in the eyes of many countries today—East Africa's overseas colonization was exceedingly bizarre. This was because East Africa's gains from overseas expansion were far smaller than its expenditures on that expansion.
However, Ernst had never considered short-term gains and losses at all. East Africa sought to profit from its colonies not merely over the next decade or several decades, but all the way into the twenty-first century, maintaining an overseas colonial system that might endure for more than a century.
So long as this system could endure into the twenty-first century, East Africa would recover its costs sooner or later.
May 7, 1935, Berlin.
After the preliminary groundwork had been laid, Germany officially drew back the curtain on its annexation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire today. Members of parliament and government representatives