African Entrepreneurship Records

Chapter 679 Belgian Congo

East Africa does not have many neighboring countries, and the Belgian Congo is the one with relatively friendly relations. After all, Belgium can only be regarded as a small country in front of East Africa. Among African colonies, its strength is very weak, and everyone is still somewhat related.

In fact, Portugal and the royal family of Hechingen are also related, but they have to go back two generations and are related to grandpa's uncle. After the death of the former queen of Portugal, there was basically no contact. This is also the beginning of East Africa's fight against Portugal. The reason for showing no mercy.

If there is a conflict between East Africa and Belgium, they will definitely negotiate first. After all, King Leopold II of Belgium is Karina's grandfather, so the relationship is much closer.

In 1885, Belgium was also the "big" winner of colonization. Taking advantage of the Berlin Conference, it completely secured the "legitimacy" of its colonization of the Belgian Congo and was recognized by all countries.

After the unification of opinions by various countries, especially France, East Africa and Portugal, the Belgian Congo is located to the north of the Portuguese colony of Angola, to the west of the East Azande Province in East Africa, and to the south and east of the French Gabon colony, with a total area of ​​260,000 square kilometers, the Belgian Congo is as much a natural buffer zone as it was in its previous life.

Of course, compared with the Belgian Congo in its previous life, the area has shrunk ten times. After all, the area of ​​the Democratic Republic of the Congo has reached more than two million square kilometers.

However, I don’t know whether this is a loss or a gain for Belgium. In the previous life, the economic situation of Congo-Brazzaville was more than a little better than that of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The buffer objects of the Belgian Congo are East Africa, Portugal, and France. None of the three countries want to be directly bordered. East Africa and Portugal are already a bad debt, but France is different. East Africa and Portugal both have feelings for France. A certain degree of vigilance. France has no idea about Portugal, but if the mainland has no idea, the colonial government may not necessarily do so.

 Colonial governments generally have relatively large autonomy. After all, they will be outside, and military orders are not subject to certain restrictions. They can kill them first and then report them. Many powerful countries have passively expanded their territories without knowing it.

 This does not include East Africa. After the founding of East Africa, all administrative, military, and financial powers were centralized in the central government, and all actions needed to be reported to the central government. Therefore, the expansion of East Africa's territory was planned and promoted by the central government.

The advantage of this is that East Africa can save costs, concentrate resources and strength, and achieve dimensionality reduction against indigenous countries.

 So, colonization is definitely not an easy task, and the number of colonial troops cannot be too large. After all, many colonies are not rich, and sending too many troops will not even recover the cost.

There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of black people. Even if there are 10,000 pigs, it would be troublesome to rely on a few hundred people to control them.

In the previous life, the territory of the Belgian Congo was all in what is now East Africa (the Democratic Republic of the Congo). East Africa even had a part of the territory that belonged to the French Congo in its previous life, mainly on the left bank of the Ubangi River, narrowly distributed along the Ubangi River and the downstream Congo River.

One of the characteristics of colonies is that a small number of suzerains rule over most of the indigenous people, and the suzerains have very few troops. Some colonies may only have a few hundred armed forces.

Don’t look at the indigenous people who are very backward. Rabbits will bite people when they are in a hurry, not to mention strong black people.

This is the case in Belgium's Congo colony. Currently, the number of active troops in Belgium's Congo colony is only more than 2,000.

The land is small and the population is much smaller. However, the population density is much higher than that of the Congo in the previous life. After all, the population of the Congo rainforest cannot be compared with that of the western coastal areas.

 Essentially, the current Belgian Congo is the French Congo in its previous life, and later the Republic of Congo-Brazzaville (with Brazzaville as the capital).

Of course, the capital of the Belgian Congo is not Brazzaville, but in Pointe-Noire, a city on the Atlantic coast. Cape Noire is the "black cape". The Portuguese navigator saw the black rocks on the promontory when he passed here in 1484, so he gave the place this name.

 At the same time, because of this distinctive feature, Point Noire is an important navigation coordinate on the West African coastal route, and has an obvious regional color just like the Skeleton Coast.

As the only colony of Belgium, Pointe-Noire, the capital of the Belgian Congo, is also its most densely populated area, with more than 2,000 people, including more than 1,000 Chinese.

The reason why there are a large number of Chinese in Pointe-Noire is mainly because there are too few people from Belgium to colonize Africa. After all, Belgium itself is relatively wealthy, and there are options such as the Netherlands and France nearby. Therefore, it is really unthinkable to live in Africa with a harsh environment.

"The Belgian Congo is different from East Africa. White people are white, yellow people are yellow people, and black people are black. It has formed a complete class distinction. However, because of East Africa, the yellow people here still have a little bit of status, and the black people are miserable. According to our rough statistics, the number of black people has dropped by at least hundreds of thousands in the past few years since Belgium was colonized. Especially in Pointe-Noire, we can see many black people with missing limbs." East African Consulate in the Belgian Congo Consul Kairos and his subordinate Val said.

East Africa is naturally directly connected with the Belgian Congo government, and has permanent staff who are mainly responsible for trade in East Azande Province, the Congo rainforest area, and the Danube Province.

These three provinces and regions are very close to the Atlantic Ocean, and there is no railway connecting the east, so most freight needs to go through Belgium. As for Portugal, the two sides naturally have nothing to talk about.

Belgium has no choice but not to give yellow people any status, because it is surrounded by East Africa, and East Africa has deployed an entire division of troops near the Belgian Congo, with Bangui as the center, and half of the composition of the East African army is Chinese.

Every day, the East African army cruises along the Ubangi River, so it poses a great deterrent to surrounding forces, and the Belgian Congo is one of them.

"Of course, the status of the yellow people in the Belgian Congo is not too high. It is easy to understand them as the British Indian servants outside India." Kailos said.

Even so, Belgium’s attitude towards Chinese immigrants is much better than in the previous life. In the previous life, Belgium introduced Chinese from the Far Eastern Empire, and the treatment was basically the same as that of local black people.

Of course, there was no instruction from East Africa, it was considered a spontaneous act by Belgium. After all, East Africa is not the Holy Mother. Unless they are nationals of their own country, they will not have special feelings towards Chinese from other regions.

The reason why the United States' anti-Chinese behavior aroused dissatisfaction in East Africa was essentially because its bill reached out to East African Chinese. East African Chinese have East African nationality, so East Africa naturally cannot sit idly by.

“Mr. Kairos, does this have anything to do with our daily work?” Val asked.

"It doesn't matter much. As I said before, there are only Germans in East Africa. There are no groups divided according to skin color. We only talk about nationality and safeguard the interests of East African citizens, that is, the interests of nationals with East African identity in the Belgian Congo. , including overseas companies, employees of the Hechingen Consortium, and even members of the East African Defense Forces, etc.," Kailos emphasized.

Val was secretly complaining. It sounds nice to say that people are not divided according to skin color. In fact, people in East Africa know that the country's attitude towards black people is different. However, given that the number of black people in East Africa is getting smaller and smaller, there will be no black people in East Africa in the future. position, so it makes sense to say so, but it will take two to thirty years to transition.

 (End of this chapter)