July 1873.
After more than half a year of hard fighting, the entire Canal No. 1 section of the Central Canal had been completed, taking nearly four months longer than the East African government's planned schedule.
This was also a helpless choice, because the natives' enthusiasm was truly difficult to bring fully into play. In the original course of history, the period when Sub-Saharan Africans had the highest labor efficiency was precisely the era when Westerners ran slave plantations.
Once African regions gained independence one after another, Black nations would generally fall into a cliff-like decline in productivity. With no one restraining them, they would return to the unbound freedom of primitive society.
This was not unique to Africa either. India and Southeast Asia were actually the same. Although the colonizers' actions were unforgivable crimes, in areas that had been completely colonized, work efficiency might have been the highest in their history.
East African "laborers" faced the same problem. Even with whips and corporal punishment, these "laborers" could only barely reach the standard of ordinary workers slacking off.
Because if they were beaten too much, these "laborers" instead developed resistance and triggered Stockholm syndrome. The "laborers" became obedient and tame, but they also learned how to loaf on the job as much as possible while "enjoying" themselves.
Sometimes, whether someone was working seriously could not be seen with the naked eye, especially in work like digging earth. East African overseers could hardly carry scales around to weigh whether every shovel of dirt dug by a "laborer" met the standard.
In fact, East Africa really did do this, though through spot checks. Overseers were responsible for visually inspecting the natives' workload. If an overseer felt that a worker was slacking off, he would halt the work and measure the amount of