Immigration Boom

There were many other speakers like Wang Dazhi, who went deep into their hometowns to promote the benefits of the East African colony and dispel the concerns of the Chinese people.

Of course, it also provided a way out for these illiterate and unworldly suffering masses. Without access or someone to help them, ordinary people would not easily venture into unfamiliar territory.

Who would want to starve at home? Before, they didn't know, or they didn't have the means. Now they know. As long as they are given a meal, what is selling their lives worth!

The most exaggerated was a speaker named Zhang Gensheng. His hometown was suffering from a drought. When he returned, the response was very strong, with people from several neighboring villages actively signing up.

The people suffering from the disaster didn't know the situation in the East African colony, but Zhang Gensheng didn't look like he had suffered. In this era, a person's appearance basically determined how well they were doing. Most ordinary people had sallow complexions, their bones clearly visible, with no trace of fat.

And Zhang Gensheng, standing there, was in the robust condition that people pursued in this era, which represented having enough to eat.

Moreover, Zhang Gensheng! Everyone nearby knew that when foreigners came to recruit workers back then, times were barely sustainable, and everyone watched Zhang Gensheng board the "pirate ship" with a sense of amusement, after all, what good intentions could foreigners have.

There were even rumors that the Western devils were man-eating demons, and Zhang Gensheng was sure not to return. But now, a year later, Zhang Gensheng had returned, and the rumors were self-defeating.

Looking at Zhang Gensheng, dressed in splendid clothes and looking radiant, the disaster-stricken people naturally asked him questions. As for Zhang Gensheng having shaved his queue, people didn't care much. Didn't they see the local officials bowing and scraping when he arrived with his entourage?

This indicated that they were not afraid of the government at all. After all, in Qing China of this era, only revolutionaries shaved their queues, or like the Taiping Rebels in the south, they let their hair grow wild.

The government would definitely not talk nicely to such people; they would be taken away directly. At best, they would be imprisoned, and at worst, shot.

This Zhang Gensheng clearly didn't belong to either of these categories, so his acquaintances asked him about his situation, and Zhang Gensheng naturally told them everything.

Upon hearing Zhang Gensheng's description, those villagers became very excited. Could there really be such a good thing in this world? Villagers who couldn't even get enough to eat naturally went around telling each other.

So, the surrounding villages also learned about this matter. With more people, they gained courage. These villagers thought that they would all go to the East African colony together, so they could look out for each other.

It was understandable for these immigrants to think this way, but unfortunately, the East African colony would not keep them together. They would still be dispersed and assigned to various parts of the colony, which these villagers would not know.

As a result, over a thousand people signed up to go to East Africa in the area Zhang Gensheng was responsible for that day. This caused trouble for the staff at Jiaozhou Bay. After urgently allocating a batch of grain and medicine, they were able to arrange for these people.

This meant they could only report to their superiors and request more ships, while also notifying the East African colony to prepare more rations for receiving these immigrants.

Ernst also bought a batch of grain from Europe and sent it to East Africa for stockpiling.

As a result, while the Shandong and Zhili regions north of Jiaozhou had many people choosing to go to Chuang Guandong, the areas south of Jiaozhou, especially the border regions of Anhui, Henan, and Shandong provinces, chose to go to East Africa. There was one very effective aspect of recruiting for the East African colony: they provided meals on the way to the port, and free rations were provided all the way to East Africa. Upon arrival in East Africa, however, they were required to participate in labor.

For those who really didn't want to leave their homeland, there was nothing that could be done, but they would regret it in the future. Whether East Africa was a paradise or not was not important; what was important was that East Asia was currently hell.

Afterward, according to the population registration of the East African colony, after this action of Chinese people returning home to persuade immigrants, more than 50,000 immigrants came to the East African colony within the next three months.

The surge in population quickly filled the land gaps in the East African Colony Coastal District. Zanzibar next door had only a little over 100,000 people, while the Binhai New District quickly approached 60,000 people after this immigration activity.

If not for Ernst's great fortune, who could have accommodated 50,000 people in such a short period!

Another winner of this immigration was the Dutch. Ernst signed a long-term agreement with the Dutch, and these commissions were basically fixed.

This sudden surge in immigration required temporarily renting more ships from the Dutch, so the price naturally increased.

Afterward, the Dutch fleet was divided into three batches, arriving at the East African colony once every six days. After unloading the population at the port of Dar es Salaam, they immediately returned to East Asia for the next trip.

After these immigrants arrived in the East African colony, some would be assigned to the western regions under construction, such as the Great Lake (Lake Victoria) region and the Lake Tanganyika region...

The majority, however, would first fill the vacant land in the coastal district. After driving out the natives, the land here had been lying idle.

Now that people had arrived, they were immediately divided into groups and assigned to the hinterland of the coastal district for land reclamation, starting from the north and heading south towards the First Town.

The continuous stream of immigrants did give the Zanzibaris at the port of Dar es Salaam a small shock. When the Sultan of Zanzibar heard about the huge stir caused by the immigrants, he didn't take any action and instead became even more complacent. It could be said that the East African colony had now firmly established its footing.

Even if Zanzibar and Portugal joined forces, they could not shake the rule of the East African colony in the region. The previous reliance on military threats was only a temporary measure. Now that the population had increased, it was truly long-term stability.

With the help of these immigrants, over a hundred villages were formed in the coastal district, each with a population of several hundred people. The three later constructed strongholds were upgraded to three town-level administrative districts due to population expansion, with each town-level administrative district having one to two thousand people.

As soon as the population in these towns increased a bit more, Ernst planned to establish some simple primary industries there, forming the embryonic form of cities with some industries.

Moreover, this immigration was no longer dominated by individuals as in the past. Affected by natural disasters, some small families also came to East Africa collectively to make a living.

For the convenience of rule and management, these immigrants were dispersed, and immigrants from different regions were mixed together to form new villages.

Therefore, the residents in these new villages might not even speak the same dialect and were unfamiliar with each other, naturally making them more reliant on the coordination and management of the colony.

Brand new iron farm tools were distributed to these immigrants. With the production tools in hand, the immigrants were full of energy. With the help of advanced farm tools, some native captives, as well as horses and cattle.

The immigrants developed nearly 500,000 mu of land, accounting for 10% of the total land area of the coastal district, 30% of the arable land, and 70% of the irrigated arable land.

Among them, paddy field area reached 200,000 mu, with an estimated single-season rice harvest of 30 million kilograms. After deducting rations (one jin of rice produces about six liang of polished rice), there would still be a surplus of 8 million jin. The remaining land was planted with sisal and other crops.

The grain was used for further immigration and expansion needs, so it was not intended for export. The value brought by sisal exports, 5% of which was used to pay wages for immigrants and management personnel in the colony. Although the residents of the colony did not use it, as there were no entertainment venues or other consumption places in East Africa, Ernst did not need to pay them too much salary, it was mostly symbolic.

As a result, the land that immigrants in the East African colony had to reclaim was more than eight mu per person, which required a great deal of physical labor. However, Ernst did not shortchange them on rations, which were close to the per capita staple food consumption of later generations. Therefore, even without paying them wages, Ernst felt no burden.

After all, in the Far East, you could work yourself to death and still not get enough to eat, while in the East African colony, although it was still hard work, the food was far superior to all countries in the East Asia region at that time.

Moreover, although the reclaimed land was vast, the intensity was not as high as imagined. For example, the quality of the farm tools transported from Europe was much better than those in the Far East. The use of livestock, coupled with native labor and collective operations, reduced the labor intensity.

Nor did it require the meticulous farming of the Far East. Pesticides and fertilizers were transported from Europe, and farmland management was relatively rough.

Of course, in order to improve the production enthusiasm of these immigrants, the colony also formulated a set of effective reward and punishment systems. Those who did well ate well, especially with the distribution of meat. Those who did not do well might go hungry and be punished with compulsory labor.

During the off-season, the East African Colony Coastal District organized the construction of 196 kilometers of primitive dirt roads, basically connecting the six most important towns in the coastal district.

By the end of October 1866, the total number of new and old immigrants in the entire East African colony, plus Germans, exceeded 97,000. In the Tanganyika part of the East African colony, important locations and land were basically under control.

And between these immigrant settlements, there were vast tracts of land occupied by local natives, numbering possibly over three million. Except for the coastal district, other areas still had native tribes of considerable size.

Compared to these vast numbers of natives, the East African colony had initially completed the strategy of "towns surrounding villages (tribes)."

But immigrants were still continuously arriving from the Far East to this land of East Africa, all of which provided the conditions for further expansion of the East African colony.