While East Africa was regulating the Little Rhine River, Vienna was also widening the Danube River. However, unlike East Africa, which regulated for the sake of regulation, Vienna had a rather special reason: the 1873 World Expo being held there. It was therefore a political vanity project.
The World Expo began in May, but Ernst did not go to join the festivities. On one hand, his schedule was packed; on the other, the Vienna World Expo was far too chaotic.
Although Ernst had not participated before, the World Expo was a showcase of the world's goods, so the Hohenzollern Conglomerate took an active part in it.
The Hohenzollern Conglomerate's exhibits were divided into three main categories: "European technological and industrial products, East African specialties, and trade goods handled by the Hohenzollern Conglomerate between the Far East Empire and Europe."
The technological and industrial products were those of the various companies under the Hohenzollern Conglomerate, with particular emphasis on electricity, light industry, and medicine.
East African specialties were mainly concentrated in East Africa's cash crops, which were among its strongest industries. Grain farming and dairy and livestock farming, by contrast, were the domains in which Europe and America held the upper hand.
Thus, under the impact of the economic crisis, East Africa's exports of commercial grain to Europe had nearly ground to a halt, retaining an advantage only in regions such as the Middle East and North Africa, where agricultural development was unsuitable.
Tropical cash crops, on the other hand, were an entirely different matter. If only cash crops were considered, the United States was not weak either, but most of the United States lay in the cool and temperate zones, with only some subtropical climate and no tropical climate at all yet—it had not annexed Hawaii.
If possible, Ernst had