African Entrepreneurship Record

1917 to 1918 were two years of turmoil in the international world. We were already at the juncture of World War I, and the establishment of Soviet Russia was a major historical event that was no less important than World War I. In 1918, another thing happened. , adding another fire to the already heated international situation.

In March 1918, with Britain's active solicitation, the United States finally hurriedly declared war on the Allies. The Allies, which had just lost their Russian general, were instantly given a shot in the arm.

In the Rhineland, East African governments once again engaged in heated discussions.

East African Finance Minister Rogans said: "It is obviously reasonable for the United States to join the Allied Powers. From an economic perspective, from the outbreak of the war to the present, the United States has become the largest creditor of the Allied Powers. If the Allied Powers fail, the United States will inevitably face The risk of the Allies being unable to repay the loan.”

"This is obviously unacceptable to the U.S. government and businesses. If the Allies lose the war, not only will the Americans not be able to make a huge profit from the war, but they will lose everything."

"This may trigger a bankruptcy crisis for domestic companies in the United States, thereby triggering a national economic crisis. A large number of unemployed workers may have more serious consequences for the U.S. regime than if it did not participate in the war. Therefore, the United States has been tied to the chariot by Britain."

Although East Africa is also a creditor of the Allied Powers, East Africa is different from the United States after all. The most important point is that the scale of interest exchanges between East Africa and the Allied Powers is much larger than that of the United States.

This meant that the victory or defeat of the Entente and Central Powers was not enough to have a decisive economic impact on East Africa.

What's more, since 1917, East Africa has begun to withdraw from the European market on a large scale, turning its energy to conquering the markets of southern countries, and working to cultivate its own economic sphere of influence.

Moreover, East Africa's loan review is obviously not friendly to European countries. The most typical one is the previous trade between East Africa and Russia. Russia's national credit is almost zero in East Africa, and the trade between the two countries is even settled through barter.

Of course, it is also true that the financial industry in East Africa is underdeveloped. It has only been less than ten years since the free market was opened, private capital is very weak, excessive government intervention, etc. This has made the development of the financial industry in East Africa very slow. The only advantage is that it is relatively stable.

After all, the financial industry is a game where the big fish eats the small fish. The financial industry in East Africa cannot be the opponent of other established financial powers. Therefore, in the early stage, the East African government must intervene in the financial market to maintain the stability of its own "fish pond".

On the contrary, compared with East Africa, there are almost no thresholds for large and small financial institutions in the United States, and the U.S. government also lacks free market supervision. A large number of U.S. financial institutions, companies and even the U.S. government issued large amounts of war bonds to Europe.

In addition, there is another factor that cannot be ignored, that is, the United States has extensive connections with Europe in the financial field, which cannot be compared with East Africa.

Before the opening of the market, financial cooperation between East African and European countries was almost limited to the government level, while American companies and financial institutions have been developing for hundreds of years, and even have European financial backgrounds, especially the original sovereign country of the United Kingdom. There is a certain degree of integration between the financial industry and the United States itself.

This has led to the fact that almost all companies and financial institutions with certain strength in the United States have their own channels for contacting Europe.

At the same time, it also means that the U.S. government cannot prevent U.S. companies and financial institutions from having direct connections with Europe. Of course, the U.S. government obviously has no such intention.

This makes American companies and financial institutions greedy for European wealth almost unscrupulous in lending to European countries.

In the field of industrial capital, American companies could not resist the temptation of the European market, because in the early days of the war, the United States was poorly prepared, which made East African industrial products popular in the two European camps.

How could Americans not be jealous when they saw East Africa making money in Europe, so this further stimulated competition between Americans and East Africa for the European market in the middle and later stages of the war.

As for why it is Europe, the reason is very simple, that is, Europe has strong consumption power and strong accumulation. It can be said that the markets outside Europe combined are difficult to compare with the European market.

In the hundreds of years since the Age of Discovery, there is no doubt that most of the world's wealth has flowed into Europe. Otherwise, Europe would not be able to support the existence of the five top powers (England, France, Germany, Austria, and Russia).

When the United States wants to enter the European market, it faces restrictions from Britain and France. This is different from East Africa. There are several more trade routes between East Africa and Europe than the United States (including land trade routes). However, due to its location, the United States has European trade cannot bypass Britain and France.

Of course, Russia's Siberian Railway is an option, but the railway obviously cannot compete with the sea route. What's more, the Siberian Railway is very long, has harsh weather along the way, high maintenance costs, is prone to breakdowns, and the Russian railway system is inefficient. This has led to Outside Japan and the Far Eastern Empire, few countries attach importance to the Siberian Railway as a trade route.

In contrast, the Berlin-Baghdad-Basra Railway, the most important land trade artery between East Africa and the Allied Powers, is only one-third as long as the Siberian Railway, and the climate conditions are much better than those along the Siberian route.

However, as the Ottomans entered the war, this transportation artery has now come to a standstill. At the end of last year, the British sent troops from Persia and directly entered the Persian Gulf territory in the southern part of the Ottoman Empire.

In short, it is difficult for the United States to compete with East Africa in terms of geographical conditions for trade with Europe. Of course, the United States is not without advantages. After all, the North Atlantic route is conducive to trade between the United States and the Allies.

Britain and France, the two core countries of the Allies, are originally countries along the North Atlantic coast. Coupled with the obstruction of the British, American entrepreneurs who want to make a fortune from the war can only continue to increase trade with the Allies.

It can be said that in the past four years, the interests between the United States and the Allies, especially Britain, have become increasingly bound. From the perspective of economic interests, it is not surprising that the United States joined the Allies.

Logans went on to say: "The United States' geographical disadvantages have left them with only the Allies as their only cooperation target. Even if the U.S. government wanted to bypass the Allies and the Central Powers to conduct large-scale trade activities, it could not do so. Today, the Allies have basically completely cut off the Central Powers' foreign trade."

"Americans are like gamblers who are betting red-eyed. They keep betting on the Allies and even spend all their wealth. So from an economic perspective, the United States will never let the Allies fail."

"And what ultimately pushed the United States to join the war was most likely the collapse of the Russian Tsarist regime, which unbalanced the war between the Allies and the Central Powers."

Summarizing Logans' words, we can roughly infer the deep-seated reasons why the U.S. government joined the Allies.

To a large extent, the U.S. government was also forced to join the First World War by the huge interest groups composed of American financial institutions, enterprises and other organizations. Even if the U.S. government wanted to learn from East Africa and sit back and watch the situation, it would be impossible to do so.

East Africa does not have this kind of trouble. Of course, East Africa also has its own interest groups, especially the powerful bureaucratic groups in East Africa, but the problem is that the bureaucrats in East Africa are not deeply connected with Europe.

Even in the German region of Europe, that is, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the two core sources of East African immigrants, the interests of the upper classes of both sides are not close enough, while the opposite is the relationship between the upper classes of the United States and the United Kingdom.

In the final analysis, most of the bureaucrats in East Africa are from the lower class. Even if they want to curry favor with the noble fellows in Germany, they may not be interested in this group of "political upstarts".

Moreover, the geographical location of East Africa does not allow East African bureaucrats to go to Europe. The transportation from East Africa to Europe cannot be avoided by sea. It takes more than ten days during this period. Generally, it is not an important matter. It is difficult for East Africans to find opportunities to deal with European nobles. On the contrary, there are many small countries in Europe, and there are many nobles, so it is much more convenient to visit each other.

These reasons have affected the exchanges between East Africa and European countries, but Ernst is happy to see it happen.