"Father-in-law, the navy recently reassigned three ironclads. I'm preparing to secure a colony in the Far East."
"Hmm, do you have something in mind?"
The Far East was undoubtedly the most enticing region of the colonial age. The Huaihai Economic Zone and Zhuhai Trade Zone in East Africa were among the Hohenzollern Conglomerate's key markets, though those two areas could only be considered economic colonies.
There was little to say about economic colonialism. Even in the twenty-first century, it remained the most common form. Aid to Africa, for instance, was in fact also a form of economic colonialism.
Colonialism, colonialism—naturally, it meant having the people of a given region create value for capital beyond that region. East Africa was no saint either. If there had been no profit to be made in the Far East, it would never have devised regional economic development models like the Huaihai Economic Zone and Zhuhai Trade Zone.
The global trade system led by the United States in his previous life had been the supreme embodiment of economic colonialism. After all, a colony was defined as a country or region stripped by capitalist states of political and economic independence, then controlled and exploited by them. America's pack of underling allies were all of this type.
In fact, compared with this kind of economic colonialism, the East African mainland more closely resembled a traditional colony in the strict sense. It simply had no mother country over its head. East Africa's nearly twenty million black slaves were proof enough of that.
Ernst took a map from the drawer and spread it flat across the table. It was, strikingly, a map of the Far Eastern seas.
"Father-in-law, you also made a trip to the Far East last time. You should be familiar with this place, shouldn't you?" Ernst