Colonial Development

At First Town, Tanzania, of the Hohenzollern Conglomerate, rows upon rows of sisal seedlings freshly planted in the earth covered the low hills to the southwest, while agricultural workers turned over the soil.

In the paths between them, natives pulled iron plows purchased from Europe to break up the soil, while the Chinese tended the ground around the sisal seedlings. This was delicate work; if the natives did it, they might damage the sisal roots. Thus, only experienced Chinese farmworkers with careful hands could use hoes to dig away bit by bit.

On land where the work had already been completed, Germans, under the guidance of Spanish agricultural experts, directed and supervised natives digging drainage ditches.

Wheat seedlings already planted stretched from the high slopes down onto the flatlands. To ensure water for the wheat, new irrigation canals were being constructed.

As more and more Chinese immigrants arrived, the scale of agriculture had become quite considerable. These new immigrants were assigned by the company to veteran workers who had arrived earlier and gained some experience, joining them in reclaiming the land. The Germans formed the leadership, chiefly responsible for supervision, management, and force of arms.

To guard against troublesome native tribes and slave-hunting parties, the German mercenary corps stationed behind split into groups to patrol the surrounding territory.

The main force continued exploring inland and mapping the land. Sometimes, while returning to rest and reorganize, they also captured laborers along the way and cleared the land around First Town.

The entirety of First Town was expanding westward at a pace visible to the naked eye. Once follow-up personnel arrived, new outposts would continuously spring up in Tanzania's interior.

The entire colonial team had already begun planning a second outpost, located beside the Little Rhine River, thirteen kilometers southwest of First Town. For ease of counting and administration, its name was as plain and unadorned as before: Second Town (Ruvu). Third Town was also in the planning stages.

Third Town (Kitonga) lay north of First Town, at a straight-line distance of roughly ten kilometers. Construction would begin once sufficient personnel arrived.

Thus, the rudiments of an East African colony centered on First Town, linked eastward to Dar es Salaam Port and radiating westward in expansion, had emerged, covering roughly 150,000 mu.

Sisal favored hot, humid high-slope environments with evenly distributed rainfall. In particular, the ideal climate was one of high daytime temperatures, dryness, ample sunlight, and frequent nighttime fog and dew.

East Africa happened to meet these conditions. Sunlight was intense and temperatures high during the day; at night, because it lay on highland terrain, the atmosphere was relatively thin and retained heat poorly, causing warmth to dissipate quickly while moisture in the air readily condensed. Thus, Africa's daily temperature range exceeded its annual temperature range.

The suitable growing temperature for sisal was 27–30°C, with an upper limit of 40°C and a lower limit of 16°C. The difference between day and night should not exceed 7–10°C, which happened to match East Africa's temperature conditions.

Suitable annual rainfall ranged from 800 to 1,200 millimeters. Sisal was highly adaptable, tolerant of barren soil and drought but fearful of waterlogging. Yet it grew vigorously and adapted across a broad range, making it suitable for loose, fertile sandy loam with good drainage and a low groundwater level. Places with poor drainage and frequent dampness were unsuitable. Its cold resistance was relatively weak, and it was prone to physiological leaf spot disease.

All of this data had been provided by the Spanish agricultural expert Ernst had invited from Mexico. Sisal was native to the Mexican Plateau and was later carried around the world by Europeans.

This Spanish expert was a farmer who cultivated sisal in Mexico. Though not highly educated, his grandmother had come from the German territories, so he could also speak German. That was why the East African colony had hired him.

The Mexican Plateau and the East African Highlands were similar, both lying near the equator and sharing somewhat similar environments. The difference was that East Africa lay closer to the equator, which ran straight through its middle, whereas Mexico lay between the Tropic of Cancer and the equator.

Mexico's rainfall was unevenly distributed. Some places were tropical rainforests, while others were tropical deserts. East Africa had better conditions; south of Ethiopia and Somalia, it was basically tropical savanna.

The East African colony adopted corporate management. The Chinese who immigrated here were nominally workers of the Hohenzollern Conglomerate, and in practice they were as well. The land belonged to the Hohenzollern Conglomerate, which also arranged for these agricultural workers to labor collectively.

All immigrants were divided into different work groups to develop East Africa's land in a planned manner. In the end, each group's work efficiency determined its food supply.

The colony's management dispatched people to inspect the agricultural workers' results. Inspection standards included workload and time spent, the quality of farmland development, and the subsequent growth of crops.

In theory, these agricultural workers could receive wages, but no one had received any so far. The Chinese farmworkers did not care much about it. Their primary purpose in coming here was still to make a living. In the Far East, most had lost their land or gone bankrupt through forces beyond their control; with no road left to walk, they had crossed the oceans to East Africa.

The East African colony encouraged such people to come to East Africa to earn a living, because what it lacked most now was people. After comparing the use of Chinese workers and natives, the colony's upper ranks had also discovered that the Chinese were far more efficient and easier to manage.

Most of those natives needed someone from the colonial team standing nearby with a whip before they would lazily go to work, though this was partly due to exploitation by the Hohenzollern Conglomerate.

But all things feared comparison. On one side, the Chinese worked bitterly without complaint and obeyed arrangements, doing whatever they were told without the slightest unwillingness. So why could none of you local lazybones manage the same?

As a result, the colony's upper ranks gradually came to "understand" the boss's painstaking intentions. These Chinese truly were naturally high-quality workers, no less capable than Germans.

Still, these Chinese workers certainly had no small appetite. Ordinary Germans, who could at least scrape together enough food and clothing in Europe, found it difficult to understand the Chinese desire to eat their fill.

And in the East African colony, the more work one did, the more food one could eat. Naturally, they worked themselves to the bone.

Because of colonial reclamation, the animals of the East African grasslands suffered a great calamity. Wildebeests, lions... all manner of large animals were hunted down by the colonial team.

Most of the meat from these animals ended up in the bellies of Chinese laborers. For many Chinese laborers who had gone years without even a taste of meat, it was practically New Year's.

Even in this era, many common people at the bottom of Qing China could not see a speck of oil during the New Year. How could that compare to now, when they could scrape together a meal simply by working hard and occasionally eat meat? Though every day was exhausting, happiness and contentment appeared on these people's faces for the first time.

Once the basic issue of survival had been resolved, some families had already begun the great enterprise of making babies. That was right—the East African colony had Chinese families.

The East African colony encouraged family immigration. After all, forming families was a condition for maintaining stable rule. Of course, large families and clans were excluded. In Ernst's eyes, large families and clans were destabilizing factors; backed by their kin groups, they would band together, and if trouble broke out, it would be no laughing matter. Moreover, they were unfair to society's development.

Therefore, when Ernst recruited people in the Far East, he strictly forbade large families and clans from meddling. Perhaps those families and clans would not have considered coming to East Africa anyway, but Ernst still had to nip trouble in the bud.

As for small households of two or three people, Ernst welcomed them enthusiastically. Setting everything else aside, anyone who formed a family in the East African colony or was already married would receive separate housing. As for the bachelors, most could only live in large shared dormitories.

At present, the colony's ratio of men to women was severely imbalanced. Families were few, and they had already been established in the Far East. Female workers recruited individually were even rarer.

The future task of solving these bachelors' marriage problems would also fall upon Ernst's shoulders, but Ernst had no energy to deal with such matters now.

What Ernst focused on more was industrial development and changes in the European situation.