Waltz is talking about the submarine cable from the South Ryukyu Islands to Fuzhou, and the straight-line distance from Miyako Island to Fuzhou is nearly 700 kilometers, so this workload and consumption are very huge, so the task of the No. 1 cable state-owned plant in Dar es Salaam is very large.

Maury: "The submarine cable is indeed not simple, and the quality requirements are higher, after all, the situation in the sea is complicated, and ordinary cables can't withstand it, but you probably give a parameter, through the bottom, our factory is also good to make psychological preparations, I don't know what is the length of this Far East submarine cable laying?" ”

Waltz: "Hey, it's no secret that we in East Africa had a conflict with Japan in the Far East a while ago?" It's a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean on the map, and our navy heard that there was a fight there, so it's our place, but it's too far away from East Africa, so we must solve the communication problem there. ”

Mori also had a general understanding when he heard this, don't look at Murray is from a German hillbilly, but he also reads a lot of books, in terms of the cultural level of this era, it is "up to astronomy, down to know geography." ”

This is not an exaggeration, because the simplest books that Mori had access to in the East African troops were East African textbooks, and East African textbooks were both history and geography.

Maury: "If the Southern Ryukyu Islands are telegraphed, it will definitely not be a small project, as far as I know, this archipelago is hundreds of kilometers away from the Far East Mainland, so I will take a ruler to estimate how far this archipelago is from the Far East Continent, and arrange next year's production tasks, so as not to fight an unprepared war,"

Waltz: "There's no need to be so troublesome, this Southern Ryukyu Islands are about six or seven hundred kilometers away from the Far East mainland, and you can produce according to the first guarantee and according to the length of 500 kilometers, then there will be no problems, and then you will make up for it." ”

Mori: "This telegram is not simple, and it seems that the significance of the Southern Ryukyu Islands to the country is not ordinary, so there must be other factories that have also received tasks, right?" ”

Waltz nodded and said: "You think right, there are a total of more than a dozen factories participating in this production task, and some companies in Europe are bidding, and the factories we have received the task in East Africa are mainly Dar es Salaam, Bagamoyo, Tanga and Mombasa, because of the sea, it is also convenient to produce." ”

Maury: "Then this is a big move, we haven't taken on such a big job before, in the past, the submarine cables laid in East Africa were imported from Europe, three years ago or four years ago, the submarine cables from Pemba Island to Bagamoyo were still shipped from the Austro-Hungarian factory. ”

Waltz: "If you don't import from Europe, do you still grow out of the ground?" I remember that the factory was one of the first cable factories in East Africa, and it was established three or four years ago, and at that time, you probably couldn't even figure out how the machine worked, right? ”

Maury: "You're right, at that time, I and the two technicians in the factory were the ones who could make machines, and we had to teach everything, and at that time, the raw materials were imported from overseas, so we made small repairs and made up for it." ”

When the first cable factories in East Africa were established, even the raw materials were not available, and the railway had only been opened to traffic at that time, so the inland copper mines had not yet been developed, so most of the copper mines were imported from Austria-Hungary and then processed along the coast of East Africa.

As for coal mines and rubber, there is no shortage in East Africa, the coal mines in East Africa are close to the coast, as for the rubber is completely the world's largest rubber producer in East Africa, the second is Brazil, the advantage of Brazilian rubber is close to the coast, especially the Amazon Plain, there is the Amazon River, shipping is very convenient, and the collected rubber can be shipped directly to all parts of the world.

East Africa is much worse in this regard, the main rubber production area in East Africa is in the east of the Congo Basin, the Congo River is also useless, and the downstream estuary is a waterfall group, so it can only be transported to the east coast by land, which is more time-consuming and laborious.

However, there are other regions in East Africa that can be substituted for rubber, especially the eastern coastal plains and plateaus, where precipitation is relatively abundant and can be transported directly to the city of Dar es Salaam by central railway.

In contrast, the city of Mombasa has the advantage of the Northern Railway and the Great Lakes Shipping, which can transport rubber from the Great Lakes region and the province of Hesse to the east, and the disadvantage that the city is far from the copper producing areas of East Africa.

So the development of Dar es Salaam and Mombasa is like two locomotives, no one will let anyone, there is no problem in saying that it is a locomotive, the two most important railways in East Africa, the Central Railway and the Northern Railway, the starting point is just Dar es Salaam and Mombasa, and of course, there is a new port city of Hamburg to the south of the Central Railway.

As the saying goes, the train runs fast because of the headband, and the city of Dar es Salaam and Mombasa play the role of the locomotive, as for the new port of Hamburg, after all, the time is too short, and the heritage cannot be compared with these two old cities, and the future is uncertain.

However, Ernst does not think that the new port of Hamburg will overtake the two old-timers, and it is even questionable whether it can even mix in the top three in the coastal cities.

This involves the port of Maputo, which Ernst has in mind, but the port of Maputo is still in the hands of the Portuguese, and when East Africa really uses means to take it, I don't know when, at that time, the new port of Hamburg has been developing for many years, and the first-mover advantage is obvious.

For example, if Maputo was in the hands of East Africa, it would definitely go to Maputo, but now it has been completed, allowing the city of New Hamburg to take the lead.

The driving effect of the railway on the economy is quite obvious, especially the main line of the Central Railway, and there may be no railway line in East Africa that can surpass the Central Railway in the future, after all, when Ernst designed this line, it can be said that he coordinated the most elite area of the entire East Africa.

In the Central Railway, the more well-known African capitals in the previous life included Dodoma (the capital of Tanzania), Lusaka (the capital of Zambia), Harare (the capital of Zimbabwe), and the city of Dar es Salaam, Pretoria, which served as the capital; A cadre of important African cities, Mbeya, Bulawayo, Lubumbashi, etc.

The line basically covers most of the mineral producing areas, cities and villages in East Africa, so the East African cities that can be connected with the central railway will not have a low starting point for future development.

The new port of Hamburg, a sea and land transportation hub, combined with the rich mineral resources of the former Transvaal Republic and the Zulu Kingdom, can compete with Mombasa and Dar es Salaam if it can develop reasonably in the future, but it depends on whether the leadership of the new port of Hamburg will give it a lot in the future.

As for now, only the cities of Dar es Salaam, Mombasa, Mbeya and Nairobi are in the first echelon of the East African city economy.

If the new Port of Hamburg wants to be on an equal footing with these cities, it will depend on the subsequent development, but it should not be difficult to surpass the cities of Mbea and Nairobi in the future, that is, it is a matter of time, because the new Port of Hamburg is in South Africa and has resources that are difficult for the two cities to reach.

As for Mombasa City and Dar es Salaam, it is almost impossible to be overtaken, these two cities are the most advantageous conditions in East Africa, involving the large regional economy of East Africa, but on the whole, Dar es Salaam is more dominant, after all, Dar es Salaam is surrounded by other cities to help, and Mombasa City can only be warmed with Nairobi and Tanga City.

(End of chapter)