On the train from Trieste to Vienna, Ernst browses the Austrian countryside from a private carriage to the green wheat fields on both sides of the railway, the farmers hurrying on the field roads, the ox carts hauling their goods, and the occasional village.

The scene in the Austrian countryside is actually not much different from that of the Middle Ages, and if you don't sit in the train, you probably can't feel it, so much so that every time Ernst rides the train, there is a sense of time and space.

Heightened development brought about the situation that Ernst had encountered, as the Industrial Revolution was a powerful driving force that was positively changing societies in Europe, while it was happening in much further afield East Africa.

……

With the arrival of railway workers, the East African railway project was officially launched, and the indigenous railway workers were divided into more than 20 regiments to repair the railway line.

Under the command of technicians, the railway line was gradually cleaned up.

The northern side of the Muchinga Mountains is a key point for the East African Railway, where a swamp is an area that the railway cannot bypass.

The East African government's approach was simple and brutal, using a large number of blacks to manually dredge the area, and thousands of blacks were forced by rifles to remove the water from the swamp in various containers.

"In addition to the abundance of hippos and crocodiles, there are other dangers lurking in the swamp, such as poisonous snakes, which pose a deadly threat to our workers, so this kind of work has to be left to the natives."

"This swamp can only be cleaned by hand, and it is estimated that it will take a few months to clean up at the normal speed of the project, so we must hurry up and complete this section of the work before the rainy season comes, so as to prevent it from being backfilled by rain after the rainy season comes."

So, in order to prevent accidents, the East Africans forced the natives to work day and night, trying to complete the clearing of the swamp in two and a half months.

For the construction of the central railway, there are many more things like this, such as cutting down primeval forests, making room for the railway, clearing boulders and other obstructions.

At the starting point of the railway, the first railway extension, a large number of raw materials are pulled inland through the flesh and blood of the aborigines, and the thousand-pound rails are all handled manually, and it is easy to cause fatal injuries to the workers if they are not careful.

At the same time, East Africa has built three cement plants, 23 lumber yards and quarries near the railway, and a new steel plant in the Kalabari region of Zambia.

In 1873, East Africa produced 240,000 tons of steel annually, and the output of East Africa will exceed 300,000 tons after the Kalabari steel plant is put into operation.

In fact, the annual output of the steel mill in Mbeya alone has increased to more than 80,000 after the replacement of shotguns, which can meet a large part of East Africa's demand.

The total steel demand for the East African railway is about eight million tons, and the total steel production of Germany in 1873 is about three or four million tons, so importing some steel from Germany and Austria can save a lot of money for East Africa.

East Africa's steel production is actually the largest in the world, but coal production is somewhat underwhelming, only about 1.5 million tons, compared to Germany's 27 million tons and Britain and the United States exceeding 100 million tons.

However, due to the impact of the economic crisis, steel and coal production capacity will suffer a massive contraction in the future, while East Africa will enter a stage of rapid growth.

In addition to the large demand for steel for railway construction, the demand for East African shipyards is also relatively large, although the Bagamoyo shipyard cannot build thousand-ton ironclad ships, but it also gets orders for more than a dozen gunboats under the tilt of Ernst, and the tonnage of East African gunboats is generally above 400 tons.

By 1873, the number of inland shipyards in East Africa had expanded to 37, with the largest demand in Zambia's West River and Congo River basins, in addition to a few large lakes.

In addition to the two industries of railways and shipbuilding, a series of factories will be introduced in East Africa, and the demand for steel will be in a relatively strong stage.

These are some basic data in East Africa before the construction of the railway, and it is only after the completion of the railway, the construction of the large southern industrial zone (Zimbabwe), and the development of Zambia's copper mining industry, that the industrial growth of East Africa can reflect the real level of development in the economic crisis.

In fact, Ernst also wanted to learn from the five-year industrial plan to take advantage of the economic crisis to take off East Africa, but this was completely impossible for East Africa.

Ordinary people look at the Five-Year Plan, and they feel that I can do it, but in fact, there are only two examples of the Five-Year Plan, one is Tsarist Russia, and the other is the Far East, the First Five-Year Plan of Tsarist Russia began in 1928, and the First Five-Year Plan of the Far East began in 1953.

In the textbooks, it seems that as soon as the First Five-Year Plan was completed, the two countries got rid of their status as agricultural countries, and the Soviet Union directly became an important industrial country in the world after the completion of the Second Five-Year Plan.

In fact, in the era of Tsarist Russia, Tsarist Russia already had a complete industrial system, for example, now, Tsarist Russia is the fifth largest textile country in the world, there are tens of thousands of kilometers of railways, more than 3,000 factories, and before the Soviet Union, it reached nearly 10,000 factories and more than 3 million workers.

At present, Tsarist Russia is already one of the great powers, how far can it lag behind? It can only be said that the Soviet Union has thoroughly stimulated the potential of Tsarist Russia and made Tsarist Russia the closest to the world's first place in history.

The industrial level of the Far East was stretched, but during the Westernization Movement, a number of military enterprises and government-owned enterprises were also built, and a number of private capital was also developed in the Republic of China during the Beiyang period, and after 1953, there was actually a group of professionals in the local area, and with the support of the Soviet Union, it was barely possible to achieve initial industrialization.

Ernst was sure that the foundation of the Far East in 1953 must have been much better than that of the present East African Kingdom, and that the leadership was much more capable than that of the East African Kingdom, which was still more difficult to achieve.

Therefore, the current conditions in East Africa, the total number of factories is more than 170, and most of them are low-tech rough processing and manufacturing, and the level of education of the people is completely unable to support industrial development.

Like the planned economy, which is mainly embodied in the word plan, formulating plans and implementing plans is an extremely test of a country's ability to execute. If Ernst wants to carry out the five-year plan, the first problem it faces is how to solve the problem of talent, which needs to be carried out by high-quality personnel.

The East African kingdom develops agriculture, and the level of bureaucratic capacity can barely keep up, but if it is an industry, it will be quite difficult for them. As for the existing industry in East Africa, it is all realized by the spillover of talents from Germany, and the management of the Hexingen factory is all mined and hired from Germany and Austria.

(End of chapter)