African Entrepreneurship Records

  Chapter 42 Immigration Boom

   There are still many preachers like Wang Dazhi. They went to their hometowns to promote the benefits of the East African colonies and dispel the concerns of the Chinese.

  Of course, it also finds a way for these illiterate and ignorant suffering people. If there is no way or someone to support them, ordinary people will not easily step into unfamiliar fields.

  Who wants to starve in their hometown, they didn’t know it before, or they didn’t have access, but now they know it, as long as they have food to eat, it’s nothing to sell their lives!

  The most exaggerated one was a preacher named Zhang Gensheng. His hometown was suffering from a drought. When he went back, the response was very strong, including villagers in the next few villages who took the initiative to report.

The situation in the East African colonies is unknown to those affected by the disaster, but Zhang Gensheng does not look like he has suffered. In this era, it is basically determined by how a person lives and his appearance. Most ordinary people have complexions. The muscles are yellow, the bones on the body are clearly visible, and there is no fat.

   And Zhang Gensheng's stop is the kind of healthy state that people in this era are pursuing, which means eating enough.

   And Zhang Gensheng! Who in the neighborhood didn't know that foreigners came here to recruit workers back then, and they barely survived at that time, so everyone watched Zhang Gensheng get on the "thief ship" with the mentality of watching fun. After all, foreign devils can have good intentions.

   There were even rumors that the Western devils were man-eating ghosts, and that Zhang Gensheng would never come back. But now that a year has passed, Zhang Gensheng has returned, and the rumors are self-defeating.

  Looking at Zhang Gensheng, who was dressed in gorgeous clothes and full of energy, the people affected by the disaster naturally asked questions. As for Zhang Gensheng shaving his braids, everyone didn't care much. Didn't they see the village officials almost bowing their heads when they came?

  It shows that people are not afraid of the government at all. After all, in the Qing Dynasty in this era, only the revolutionary party would shave their braids, or shaved their hair like the long hair in the south.

  The government will never talk to you when they see this kind of person. A set of procedures will be pulled away directly. At least they will be imprisoned, and at worst they will be shot.

   Zhang Gensheng obviously does not belong to these two categories, so the acquaintance of the villagers asked Zhang Gensheng what was going on, and Zhang Gensheng naturally knew everything.

  Hearing Zhang Gensheng's description, the villagers were very excited. There is such a good thing in this world. The villagers who can't even eat are naturally running to call each other.

  So the nearby villages also learned about this, and they were very courageous. These villagers thought that everyone would go to this East African colony together, so they could have a support.

  It is understandable for these immigrants to think this way. Unfortunately, the East African colony will not put these people together, and they will still be scattered and distributed to various parts of the colony. Naturally, these villagers will not know.

  Therefore, more than 1,000 people from the area Zhang Gensheng was in charge of signed up to go to East Africa that day.

   In this way, they can only report to the above, ask for a few more boats, and at the same time notify the East African colony to prepare more rations to prepare for receiving these immigrants.

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

In this way, there are many people in the Zhili area of ​​Shandong north of Jiaozhou who choose to go to the Guandong. South of Jiaozhou, especially those at the junction of the three provinces of Huizhou, Henan, and Shandong, choose to go to East Africa. The East African colony is very effective in recruiting people. In charge of food, free rations are provided all the way to East Africa, and when they arrive in East Africa, they must participate in labor.

  Those who really don’t want to leave their homeland naturally have nothing to do with them, but they will regret it in the future. It doesn’t matter whether East Africa is paradise or not. What matters is that East Asia is **** now.

  Afterwards, according to the population registration of the East African colonies, only after the Chinese return to China to persuade immigrants, more than 50,000 immigrants will come to the East African colonies in the next three months.

  The soaring population quickly filled the land gap in the coastal area of ​​the East African colony. Zanzibar next door had only a few hundred thousand people, and the Binhai New Area quickly approached 60,000 people after this immigration activity.

   That is to say, the Ernst family has a big business now, otherwise who would accept 50,000 people in a short time!

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

   And this sudden surge in immigration will temporarily rent more ships from the Dutch, so the price will naturally increase.

   Since then, the Dutch fleet has been divided into three batches, and it will go to the East African colonies every six days. After unloading the population at the port of Dar es Salaam, it will return to East Asia for the next trip.

  After these immigrants arrive in the East African colonies, some of them will be allocated to the areas under construction in the west, such as the Great Lakes (Lake Victoria) area, and the Lake Solon (Lake Tanganyika) area...

   Most of them still fill in the blank area of ​​the coastal area first, and after driving out the aboriginals, the land here has always been deserted.

   Now, as soon as the manpower arrives, immediately arrange to enter the hinterland of the coastal area to open up wasteland in groups, starting from the north and going south to the vicinity of the first town.

The steady stream of immigrants did give the Zanzibarans in the Port of Dar es Salaam a little shock. The Sultan of Zanzibar did not move after hearing the huge commotion caused by the immigrants. Instead, he lay flatter. It can be said that the current East African colony has completely gained a firm foothold.

  Even if Zanzibar and Portugal unite, they will not be able to shake the local rule of the East African colonies. In the past, the threat of force was only a short-term means. Now that the population has increased, it is the real long-term stability.

  With the help of these immigrants, more than 100 villages have been formed in Binhai District. These villages are roughly in the size of a few hundred people. The three strongholds built later were upgraded to three town-level administrative districts due to population expansion, and each town-level administrative district has one to two thousand people.

  As long as the population of these towns is a little larger, Ernst intends to put some simple primary industries here to form some prototype cities with some industries.

  Moreover, the immigrants this time are no longer the majority of individuals in the past. Affected by natural disasters, some small families also collectively went to East Africa to discuss life.

  In order to facilitate governance and management, these immigrants were dispersed, and immigrants from various regions were mixed together to form new villages.

  So the residents in these new villages may not even have the same dialect, and everyone is not familiar with it. Naturally, they rely more on the coordinated management of the colony.

  Brand-new iron farm tools were allocated to these immigrants. The immigrants who got the production tools were full of enthusiasm, with the help of advanced farm tools and some indigenous captives, plus horses and cattle.

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

   Among them, the area of ​​paddy fields reaches 200,000 mu, and it is estimated that 30 million kilograms of rice can be harvested in a single season. After cutting off rations (one catty of rice produces about six or two rices), there will be a surplus of eight million catties. The rest of the land is planted with sisal and other crops.

Among them, the food is used for further immigration and expansion needs, so no export plans are made, and 5% of the value brought by the export of sisal is used to distribute wages to colonial immigrants and managers, although colonial residents do not use it After all, there are no entertainment venues and other consumption venues in East Africa, so Ernst doesn't need to pay them too much salary, which means that the symbolic meaning is greater.

In this way, the land to be reclaimed by the East African colonial immigrants is more than eight acres per capita, which brings a lot of physical labor, but Ernst did not treat them badly in terms of rations, which is almost close to the per capita staple food consumption of later generations, so even if they are not given Ernst didn't feel any burden in paying wages.

   After all, in the Far East, you can’t eat enough food after working so hard, but in the East African colonies, although you are still very tired, the food is far better than all the countries in East Asia.

  Although there is a lot of land reclaimed, the intensity is not as great as expected, such as tools. The quality of these farm tools shipped from Europe is much better than that of the Far East, and the use of livestock, indigenous labor and collective operations have all reduced labor intensity.

   And there is no need for intensive farming like the Far East. Pesticides and fertilizers are shipped from Europe, and farmland management is relatively rough.

  Of course, in order to increase the production enthusiasm of these immigrants, the colony has also formulated an effective reward and punishment system. If you do well, you will be full, especially the meat distribution. If you don’t do well, you may be hungry and have to work as a punishment.

  During the slack season, the East African Colonial Coastal Area organized 196 kilometers of original dirt roads, basically connecting the six most important towns in the coastal area.

  By the end of October 1866, the new and old immigrants in the entire East African colony plus the Germans totaled more than 97,000, and the important locations and land in the Tanganyika part of the East African colony were basically controlled.

   Between these immigrant strongholds, there is still a large area of ​​land occupied by local aborigines, the number of which may exceed 3 million. Except for the coastal area, there are still large-scale aboriginal tribes in other areas.

  Compared with these large numbers of indigenous people, the East African colonies can be said to have initially completed the strategy of encircling the countryside (tribes) by cities (towns).

  But immigrants are still coming to the land of East Africa from the Far East in a steady stream, which provides conditions for the further expansion of the East African colonies.

  (end of this chapter)