Chapter 141: New Product
Late July saw an end not only to East Africa's latest war but also to the wave of immigration. In just half a year, Ernst had "poached" so many people from South German lands that the region was suddenly drained.
To quickly occupy the newly seized territory, the Hechingen consortium accelerated its migration efforts, deploying all its ships for immigrants and even hiring numerous vessels from northern Europe. Now that the war had concluded, and enough settlers had arrived, the flow of immigrants stabilized. In the short run, Ernst had exhausted the emigration potential from southern Germany—he'd have to wait a while before another group accumulated.
Not only did the number of German migrants drop to a low, but because of early development efforts, both Far East and Austro-Hungarian emigration also fell to minimal levels. The Far East was experiencing a relatively stable period—especially after the Nian Rebellion was suppressed, northern order was restored. The prolonged wars through the Taiping and Nian uprisings had left many districts from south to north devastated and nearly empty. Now the Qing rulers sought to restore local production, needing considerable population.
Moreover, East Africa's immigration requirements had always been high. Just "in good health" disqualified many in rural areas suffering from opium addiction or disease. If one's constitution was too weak, crossing the sea was basically a mortal gamble. Meanwhile, conditions for Far Eastern immigrants were inevitably worse than those for Europeans—if some returning European visitor told stories that life on the ships was too harsh, they might frighten off future volunteers.
As for Far Eastern immigrants, they had no right to pick and choose. Especially those sailing on Dutch vessels were packed in with cargo under even more dire conditions, nearly as bad as black slaves endured. Fortunately, East Africa paid shipowners by survival rate, so the Dutch merchants did not go to extremes.
Among the many groups, only Paraguayan and Middle Eastern immigration remained steady. The War of the Triple Alliance continued, with the allied forces nearing victory. Hechingen personnel followed as the front moved, gradually extending their labor-recruitment deep into Paraguay's interior. Meanwhile, Middle Eastern immigration consisted wholly of women. With Zanzibari merchants expanding their business, they traded not only slaves with East Africa but also sold Hechingen goods in the Middle East, in exchange providing East Africa with local women.
This was effectively buying and selling people, but the Sultanate of Zanzibar was happy. Now Middle Eastern immigrants came not just from Ottoman-controlled Armenians but also from as far as Russian-ruled Central Asia. The Russian aristocracy, lacking scruples, prized Hechingen's goods as hard currency. Russian officials in Central Asia, with conditions scarcely better than Siberian exile, found it tough to enrich themselves. They could trade Turkic women for merchandise—an easy, cost-free transaction. This caused newly rampant banditry in Central Asia, with raiders robbing wealth and women.
…
With fewer immigrants arriving, Ernst simply reassigned more ocean-going capacity to moving goods. In the past few months, war had forced him to overdo immigration efforts in order to fill out the conquered areas, spending a fortune in the process. Now the colony's population had surpassed one million, so Ernst was in no hurry. A monthly trickle of arrivals would suffice.
His real concern was cutting the colony's development costs by localizing production of cement, iron goods, foodstuffs, etc. For a long time, East Africa had imported modern building materials like cement, even though raw materials for such industry were abundant. East Africa only lacked the factories.
In Europe, cement had been mass-produced industrially since Britain's development in 1824, after which cement plants sprouted across the continent. Cement wasn't truly "high-tech," at least not by Western standards—but outside Europe and America, many still had to import it. For the Hechingen consortium, acquiring equipment for a cement plant was trivial (the first cement factory in Asia was built in Japan in 1871). They could just buy up a small cement plant in Germany. The German states were numerous, each with its own industries, so it was easy for Ernst to find the needed technology and machinery.
And that's exactly what he did. Soon, the consortium acquired a failing Hamburg cement plant. Ernst had no intention of producing cement in Germany, where the industry was already crowded, profits thin, and Hechingen held no major local mines to support traditional heavy industries. Besides, Europe's established industrial giants were not to be trifled with, so Hechingen stuck to light industry and advanced technology. Currently, many electrical and R&D firms in Germany had backing from Hechingen Bank—future cash cows for the consortium.
So after buying the Hamburg plant, they shipped both equipment and personnel directly from the port to East Africa. Being a distressed property whose owner was eager to sell, it was very cheap. As for the plant's employees, Ernst "reassigned" them to East Africa under the pretext of "aid and reconstruction." Obviously, they wouldn't have freely stayed there, so Ernst offered high pay plus deployment contracts for them to guide construction of the colony's first cement factory.
This initial facility would be in Dar es Salaam—Hamburg to Dar by sea was fairly convenient, and shipping them there was straightforward. Ernst planned to build smaller follow-up plants in several important cities: Mombasa, Dodoma, Mbeya, Kisumu, and Songea.
Technically, East Africa's "cities" were more like small towns with tiny populations, where ordinary folks had no real need for cement. Their traditional housing sufficed. The total planned investment of around £50,000 was modest, since demand was currently limited—cement mostly for specialized roads and the colony's few urban projects. So those later mini-factories were smaller than the Dar es Salaam plant.
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Dar es Salaam.
Engineers were rushing to build the colony's first cement-plant workshop. Through telegraph messages, they'd already learned the equipment was en route from Hamburg. This plant would become the largest cement supplier in the entire East African territory for a while. Sizable enough to meet demand quickly, it had to start production soon. Later facilities would be smaller. Spreading them around was more about cutting shipping costs. If East Africa solved its transport problems, there might not even be a need for multiple plants.
And East Africa certainly had manpower. When developing northern Kenya, the colony captured many tribespeople to fill the labor shortage. Hence, in the recent northwestern campaign, they didn't bother enslaving more natives—just forced them all out.
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