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March is the best time of year for autumn in South Africa.

Jiang Yaohui and Ding Zhen wandered on the long street outside the city wall of Hezhong Town, and from time to time they met some naval officers and men wearing sky-blue military uniforms and cylindrical military caps along the way.

After smiling and dealing with two fellow villagers from Luoqia County, Jiang Yaohui and Ding Zhen sat down in a snack bar, and then beckoned the owner to serve them beef in sauce made with the famous South African cattle - which is very famous in the local area; There's also a plate of salted peanuts, a plate of ostrich meat, a plate of ostrich eggs with green onions, and of course, the famous South African cod. Don't doubt the spending power of these two people, go out and inquire, who in South Africa doesn't know that the chief masters of the navy are the richest? The most generous?

Located on the outside of South Africa's city walls, this street lined with many shops is a standard annex building. Although the existence of this kind of annexed buildings is very unfavorable for military defense, considering that the main defensive directions of the port in the river are in the west (where the coastal defense fortress is built) and the south (there are defensive fortresses built on the south bank of the river, and there are also attached black tribes to warn), if the enemy can attack below the city, it basically means that they have destroyed the main military force of the people on the east bank in South Africa. It doesn't make much sense for the city in the river to be defended or not. Therefore, Chang Kaisheng, who is now in charge of South Africa, acquiesced to the existence of the attached Guo building.

Today, the population of Hezhong Town has exceeded 10,000 people (more than 3,000 people in the urban area). It is mainly found in the vast countryside of the region on the north bank of the Berg River. Most of these people are bandits from Shandong, horse bandits, orphans of the Shun army, and prisoners of the Qing army, who are not born to be good, coupled with the poor local security environment (they often need to fight with the blacks of the Kama tribe), the people in South Africa are strong, and the guns in the hands of the militia will even be brought home at night, and they usually call friends to hunt the heads of hostile black tribes in exchange for bounties.

In addition to Hezhong Township, there are more than 5,500 people in Gaoda Township in the east, who are also mainly engaged in agriculture. At the same time, it was also the front line against black infiltration, and there were often armed clashes with black stragglers. Today's Kama tribe has gradually unified the entire western part of the Little Kalu and Big Kalu plateaus, and their power is getting stronger and stronger. At the same time, the civilization of the entire tribe changed dramatically by sending the children of the ruling class to learn from the Dutch, and many of the tribe's top brass are now proud to speak Dutch. They had already grown crops, raised cattle and sheep, and made iron, copper, and pottery, but now they had learned more advanced technology from the Dutch, and the productivity of the whole tribe was greatly increased, and the population and livestock were flourishing, and even the musketeers formed a group of more than 200 people.

Such strength. It is no longer something that the East Coasters can afford to insult, so the large-scale clashes between the two sides have gradually subsided in the last two years. Now there are only a few small-scale fights and grass-and-valley operations left, which are no longer painful from a strategic level.

Nearly three years ago, before the departure of Liu Ang, the former captain of the South African Pioneer Team, he had built a settlement called Elephant Fort near the later Kranwilliam Reservoir in the north. After three years of development, the settlement now has built majestic walls, beautiful villages and neat fields, backed by the abundant water of the Elephant River valley (two-thirds of South Africa is severely arid) and the unique terrain and climate, more than 4,500 settlers in Xiangbao have formed industries characterized by wheat, grapes and cattle raising. The region is now experimenting with winemaking, intending to form its own advantageous industry, and then export it back to the mainland to compete with the Xiangshan dry red in Zhenhai County.

A while ago, in view of the fact that the population, economy, and land of South Africa have a certain scale, with the approval of the Executive Committee and the official approval of the Government Council, the application for the establishment of Hezhong County was approved. Hezhong County is governed by Hezhong Township, and has two township-level administrative units, Gaoda Township and Xiangxiang Township, with a total population of more than 20,000 people – more than many local counties.

Among the more than 20,000 people, the proportion of Ming people is extremely high, reaching more than 55%, and the rest are Persian and Baloch women (accounting for 20%); Indians (15 percent), as well as some other ethnic groups. In fact, the Indians were originally very numerous—thanks to the local exile policy—but neither the Charua, nor the Guarani, nor the Krandi, nor the Tverche, were well adapted to the environment of the Old World, and died of disease in large numbers. In addition, these people also died in large numbers during the ongoing bloodletting battles with blacks, so that despite a steady stream of replenishment (from native exiles), their population share is still slowly declining, and it is likely that it will eventually disappear into the racial integration of South Africa.

The advantage of more than 20,000 people in Hezhong County has completely suppressed the southern Dutch colony. Although the Dutch have come to realize the importance of South Africa in recent years, and have tried every means to relocate large numbers of boers (peasants) from within the country, numbering almost two thousand; Coupled with the stimulus of trade with the Kama tribe, the Dutch managed to "trick" more than 1,000 German immigrants with dreams of making a fortune from the neighboring poor areas of Germany; Add to this the fact that the Batavia High Court of the Dutch constantly sentenced the exile of Han Chinese (Han Chinese from Southeast Asia) to the Cape of Good Hope, as well as their own capture of the natives from Madagascar, and the population of the entire Dutch colony of Fort Good Hope has exceeded six thousand (more than half of whom were slaves).

This is a staggering figure, because even decades later, there were no more than 2,000 white South Africans – because the Dutch East India Company had no intention of developing the area in the first place, and had no competitors, so they sent some of their employees (not settlers, who had no land ownership) to grow crops and graze cattle and sheep to replenish the fleet.

This colonial policy was naturally unattractive to European immigrants, and therefore throughout the XVII century. More than 250,000 European immigrants have poured into North America. But very few people come to South Africa. But that's different now. Due to the rise of the East Coasters in South Africa, the Dutch, after careful research, found that they could not allow the place to be controlled by the East Coast family, so they reduced their investment in the East Indies a little, and then used the money to recruit a large number of settlers from the Old World and promise them land ownership, so that a large number of poor peasants soon came to the area.

Two thousand Dutch, who spoke Low German, plus more than a thousand German countrymen, constituted the majority of the white population in the Fort of Good Hope. And when these Germans intermarry with the Dutch, their next generation will basically lose their cultural identity. And these whites and their descendants in the colony of Fort Good Hope will sooner or later form a new people, the Afrikaners.

These 6,000 men were spread over a vast area, and as far north as Malmesbury, they had begun to border the forces of the East Coast, and here was the border line that both sides had tacitly recognized. The Dutch were able to survive in South Africa by logging down and building houses, building forts, cultivating land, grazing cattle and sheep, fishing for fish, and struck commercial and political alliances with the blacks (implicitly targeting the East Coasters to share the enormous pressures they faced).

Moreover, I heard that as the civil strife in France continued to break out, the Dutch began to recruit a group of immigrants from France to South Africa through their own channels. These French brought with them advanced viticulture and winemaking techniques. The Dutch themselves were the most technologically advanced agricultural countries in Europe, plus the hard-working and hard-working German peasants. The population, arable land, and economy of the entire colony of Fort Good Hope are on the rise. There is no doubt that the huge upfront investment made by the Dutch East India Company will pay off handsomely sooner or later.

But perhaps because southern Africa wasn't chaotic enough, just last month, several ships from the Principality of Courland suddenly appeared in the Cabinda region north of the Congo River and landed in large numbers. The landed men included a small number of armed soldiers and more than 500 Courland immigrants, who took with them a full set of household goods, livestock, and seeds, and looked like they were ready to settle down and do their job.

In fact, when it comes to the arrival of these migrant ships from the Baltic Principality of Courland, it is still a matter of the East Coast themselves. After the failure of the Principality of Courland to colonize Tobago, her ruler, Archduke Jacob, was not reconciled, and his thirst for wealth continued to seek a new overseas colony that would bring new money to him and his country.

Zheng Yong, who was in charge of the Great Northern Trade at that time, wrote a letter to Archduke Jacob for this reason, and he sent people to colonize Africa, but Archduke Jacob did not reply at that time, and Zheng Yong did not care, thinking that the matter was over. But now it seems that Grand Duke Jacob really listened carefully to Zheng Yong's advice, and then really sent a ship to colonize Africa.

The colonies, which were still engaged in tobacco cultivation that the Grand Duke himself had long cherished, did not take any aggressive stance after landing in the Cabinda region – it seems that they had learned a lesson from being driven out by the Indians and the Dutch on the island of Tobago – and they exchanged gifts and traded with the locals, and they got along fairly well. The next step should be to find a way to build a stronghold and settle here to grow tobacco leaves.

As for why the island of St. James in Hanoi, The Gambia was chosen as a stronghold in history, you ask me and I ask who to go? Maybe it's because they think they have a good relationship with the East Coast and want to be closer to the people on the East Coast, no, they also sent someone to visit the river harbor a while ago, which roughly means watching and helping each other and the like.

All in all, on the chessboard of southern Africa, in addition to the Portuguese, Dutch, and East Coasters, there is now a new chess player - a small country with a population of just over 200,000 people. (A good event for pie in the sky, cool mobile phones are waiting for you!) Follow from ~ Dian/Chinese network public account (WeChat add friends - add public account - enter ddxiaoshuo), participate now! Everyone has a prize, now pay attention to ddxiaoshuo WeChat public account! (To be continued......)