December 28, 1868.

This year, the statistics of East Africa are also slowly grinding out, because of the growth of various data, geographical expansion, population growth, industrial addition and other factors, the statistical process is also much slower than the previous two years.

The immigrant population, which used to be counted directly from the archives of the seaport area, was recorded when each migrant.

And this year, such a model will not work, because the number of newborns has exploded, which needs to be reported in every place in East Africa and verified by relevant personnel.

By the end of November 1868, the population of the entire East African colony was more than 1.75 million, close to 2 million.

It may be an exaggeration to reach this level in close to three years, but East Africa has indeed done it, after all, no one in this era has bothered to actively recruit immigrants as hard and expensive as East Africa.

The journey from the immigrants to East Africa was almost covered by the East African colonies, and the freight and food were all provided by the Hexingen Foundation.

1.75 million is all the data of East African immigrants and newborns, not including the indigenous people of East Africa, the number of indigenous people should hover between 1.3 million and 1.5 million, when there are many projects in East Africa, the demand for labor is large, East Africa will go to the west to catch some, when the project is small, the number of slaves will continue to decrease, and every day Dar es Salaam port will send a batch.

The number of slaves was so large that it was almost one to one of the native population, and even the American South did not have such a terrible ratio, so it was simply ridiculous to worry about the lack of labor in the East African colonies, and East Africa was not stupid.

In this way, Ernst was quite restrained, after all, East Africa immigrated from all over the world to enrich the strength of East Africa, not to raise a bunch of uncles, so the East African colonies still squeezed the value of immigrants as much as possible, rather than letting black slaves do all the work.

Throughout 1868, the expansion of the East African colonies was not very prominent, because the opponents were too weak, and the area of the northwest region was not large compared with East Africa, and as for the northern part of Kenya, although it was also developed this year, it was less difficult.

Because this is the sphere of influence of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, although the Sultanate of Zanzibar does not actually rule here, the local tribes and northern forces have basically been beaten by the Sultanate of Zanzibar.

Including the Geludi Sultanate in the Somali region, it was also a younger brother during the Omani Empire, and it was only out of the control of the Omani Empire more than ten years ago.

According to the normal trajectory of history, within a few years, the Sultanate of Zanzibar (the Omani Empire is made up of two parts, Muscat and Zanzibar, and later the Sultanate of Zanzibar became independent and belonged to the royal family) will once again turn the Sultanate of Gredi into its vassal.

It can be said that the emergence of the East African colony temporarily relieved the Sultanate of Graddi from its plight and prevented it from being annexed by the Sultanate of Zanzibar.

In the north of East Africa, in addition to the Sultan of Gredi, there is also the traditional overlord of East Africa, Ethiopia, but this year, Ethiopia's Abyssinian Empire was beaten by the British, and the emperor committed suicide, so naturally he couldn't support the row.

Therefore, the development of the northern part of Kenya is very smooth, and the population is more sparse than that of the south, so it is better to colonize and develop.

The Northwest Territories and northern Kenya make East Africa cover more than 2 million square kilometers (not including Lake Victoria and other waters).

In terms of industry, East Africa is still negligible, and to be honest, the dozens of factories and workshops in East Africa are not enough to look at in feudal countries, let alone compare with European countries.

Take Prussia 20 years ago, for example, the number of large and small factories and factories was as high as 78,000, and the number of workers was as high as 550,000.

Therefore, agriculture is still as stable as a mountain in the industrial structure of the East African colonies.

By November 26, 1868, the East African colonies had cultivated about 20.4 million mu, with an average planting area of about 12.75 mu per capita (excluding slaves and recent immigrants to East Africa).

Among them, the rice planting area has not increased much, totaling 1.1 million mu, and the new development is mainly in eastern Kenya and near the Great Lakes (Lake Victoria) area, and the output is expected to reach 220 million catties.

The wheat planting area is about 6.6 million mu, that is, about 440,000 hectares, which has almost quadrupled, and the estimated output is more than 1 billion catties, that is, about one million tons.

This year, there has been a breakthrough in corn planting, and as the main ration for livestock and slaves, the planting area has reached more than 5 million mu, or more than 300,000 hectares.

In addition, the area under sorghum and millet cultivation has reached more than 2 million mu.

Among them, sorghum is one of the native species in Africa, which is very suitable for cultivation, mainly as a supplement to maize.

Corn, millet and sorghum are easier to care for than rice and wheat, especially sorghum, which in East Africa relies on extensive planting and thin harvesting.

These are the main food crops in East Africa, of which rice, wheat and millet are the main food rations of East Africans, while maize and sorghum are mainly used as indigenous and livestock, and the rest of the land is used for cash crops.

Sisal is still the largest cash crop in East Africa, followed by soybeans and coffee, in addition to peanuts, sesame, rubber, cloves, cotton, tea and other crops.

Sisal is being overtaken by soybeans, which are nitrogen-fixing plants and are used for rotational crops, which are mixed with wheat and the like.

Although the cultivation area of coffee is not small, the harvest is still far away.

Interestingly, many cash crops are concentrated in the Great Lakes region, such as rubber, which is currently found along the shores of the Great Lakes and near the rivers in the Great Lakes basin.

Tanzania is a tropical region suitable for rubber cultivation, but only if the water supply is guaranteed, and East Africa does not actually have a shortage of water, but it is less water than tropical rainforest areas.

In the past, Africa was the second largest rubber producing area after Southeast Asia, and Tanzania was among the top 10 rubber plantations in Africa.

However, because the Tanzanian government does not attach importance to rubber planting, the planting technology is updated slowly, and the local people are not keen to take care of this responsible crop, resulting in the cost of rubber production in East Africa is much higher than that of Southeast Asia and other regions, and even needs to be imported from Southeast Asia, while Tanzania can actually achieve self-sufficiency in rubber planting. (Data from 1978 to 1991 for General Tyres in East Africa, which has a direct rubber plantation in Tanzania)

Therefore, the main factor restricting agriculture in East Africa is the uneven distribution of precipitation in time and space, as in the wheat growing regions of East Africa, water sources are mainly used to ensure that wheat and other food crops are prioritized, while in the more water-scarce north, millet and sorghum are widely cultivated.

Many cash crops require large amounts of water during their growth, and the Great Lakes region and the eastern coastal plains are the most rainied places in East Africa.

In particular, the newly occupied land in the Great Lakes region, the Mitumba Mountains, which is flanked by the Congo Basin to the west, has more abundant rainfall.

Of course, some cash crops do not require much water and are suitable for dryland cultivation, such as cotton, sesame, etc.

The development of so much land was indispensable for the widespread use of slaves and advanced iron tools, and although East Africa could not achieve the level of mechanization in Europe, it was still good compared to other regions.

The import of iron agricultural tools from Europe was a major expense in the East African colonies, which also led to the priority of almost all available funds in East Africa on the import of iron tools, and even in order to ensure the priority of agricultural tools, many families in East Africa did not even have an iron pot, clay cooking utensils and ovens were popular, and most of the tableware was wooden.

Iron ore mining in East Africa is relatively small, only as an ancillary product of coal mining, and there is not even a modern steel mill in East Africa, relying only on traditional kilns and a few small blacksmith workshops (blacksmith shops) left behind by the Sultanate of Zanzibar in the east.

Of course, East Africa does not want to build steel mills, the question is how to transport machines in, and steel mills in this era definitely belong to the king bomb industry, which determines the level of development of a country.

If you want to introduce it, the price is very high, and the most uncomfortable thing is that the traffic conditions in East Africa are still at the level of people pulling horses.

In this era, iron and steel plants were built near the resource areas and were resource-oriented, such as the Ruhr area, which was built on coal mines.

Unlike in previous days,21 the Far Eastern countries have built many large steel plants in coastal areas, relying on seaborne imports for coal and iron resources, and at the same time facilitating the sale of products to the world by sea.

So Ernst has never built a steel mill in East Africa until now, and the little coal that East Africa relies on slaves is only supplied to a few factories powered by steam, and there is still a lot of surplus, and as for the amount of money that the factories need, even the wheelbarrow can support the operation of the East African factory, not to mention that there is such a thing as a horse-drawn carriage in the world.

The only industrial advantage of East Africa and the backward countries of the same era was that there were several factories using steam engines along the coast, including the only steam engine used for drainage in the Mwanza coal mine.

With the exception of a few primary agro-processing plants (sisal, tobacco, flour, etc.), the rest of East Africa is a slightly larger "workshop" and workshop, purely by manpower, such as the engine used by the Mwanza shipyard that was brought in from Germany, while the rest of the hulls were built by hand.

In other words, how developed the handicraft industry in East Africa depends entirely on how developed the Sultanate of Zanzibar is on the coast of East Africa, it is a pity that the economic center of gravity of the Sultanate of Zanzibar has always been on the island of Zanzibar, and Ernst, who is a man and a line, did not copy Zanzibar, after all, it is necessary to leave a way for the Sultanate of Zanzibar to survive (the most important thing is that the Sultanate of Zanzibar has ties with the British, and the British supported Oman to compete with Portugal and other countries during the Omani Empire).

Of course, there is also a military factory in East Africa, which is considered the most advanced industry in East Africa, but it is only at the stage of repairing broken guns and making improvised explosives to produce bullets.

Compared to industry, East Africa's agriculture is really good, and it can meet local demand and export at the same time.

However, this is based on the premise that East Africa is sparsely populated and a slave economy prevails, not how high the level of agricultural productivity in East Africa is, and the agricultural productivity of East Africa is at the upper middle level in the world.

(End of chapter)