February 3, 1888.

Konstantin inspected the Mbeya City Arsenal to observe the development of East Africa's military industry, which is an advanced representative of East Africa's independent military industry and has been one of the most important military construction units in East Africa since the late sixties.

The top brass of the Mbeya Arsenal led Konstantin on a tour of various weapons production workshops, among which the artillery workshop is still one of the places of greatest interest to Konstantin, a former European general.

"Improving the French 75-mm field gun of 1807 effectively solved the recoil problem, and at the same time greatly strengthened the problem of army firepower, so far, the whole army is equipped with a total of 378 guns, which is an important component of the land mobile support artillery, and the annual output is maintained at about 30 guns." The director of the arsenal in the city of Mbeya told the king.

"In the past three years, our factory has also produced 120 mm heavy guns in cooperation with Austria-Hungary, but there are few application scenarios, a total of 49 guns have been produced."

"The self-developed Model 1883 grenadier canister has produced more than 2,000 units, and more than 130 imitation Maxim machine guns."

East Africa is a country that does not strictly enforce patent laws, so the Maxim machine gun is also directly imitated, which has a lot to do with the national conditions of East Africa.

At present, the most open coastal zone in East Africa is still a semi-open market, and the inland areas are basically not open, so for patents, they are not valid in the inland.

This is also a problem of attracting investment in East Africa, it is basically impossible to achieve through the market in exchange for technology, just like Maxim will definitely not invest in East Africa to build a factory, after all, East Africa currently attaches considerable importance to intellectual property rights, so after the birth of the Maxim machine gun, East Africa can only be imitated by purchase, and in 1885 the imitation was successful, in 1886 the factory was built, and by 1888 began large-scale mass production.

This, of course, in itself, was due to Ernst's emphasis on machine guns as a weapon, which had been studied for a long time in East Africa before the Maxim machine gun.

It's just that this kind of research process can't withstand Maxim's genius thinking after all, so East Africa can only imitate the principle of Maxim's machine gun, which is not entirely plagiarism.

"Up to now, the East African Army has been equipped with more than 6,000 artillery pieces of various types, of which coastal defense artillery and small-caliber artillery are the mainstay."

In East Africa, artillery is based on 75 mm caliber, and anything below this value is classified as light artillery, and above or equal to this value is heavy artillery.

This standard is actually in line with international standards, for example, the British heavy artillery standard is a caliber greater than or equal to three inches, that is, 76 mm, and East Africa is a metric country, so in order to facilitate the calculation, the metric system is the mainstay, which results in the 75 mm standard.

At present, the number of large-caliber artillery in the world naturally cannot be compared with later generations, and the 75-mm caliber is also a relatively large artillery value.

Moreover, large-caliber artillery is inconvenient to transport, and the East African Army, which uses animal power as the main power and has imperfect road conditions in the territory, naturally prefers light artillery.

Of course, the road conditions in East Africa are actually in a good state in the world, in the seventies and eighties of the big infrastructure, the level of roads in East Africa is higher than that of Tsarist Russia, basically the same as the United States, but the roads in the United States are longer and more numerous, and the quality of East Africa is more excellent.

As for the rest of the European countries, because of the size of the country, it is not suitable as a reference for the horizontal comparison of East African roads.

Of course, land transportation in East Africa is not only about roads, but also about railways and inland water transport, but it does not have an advantage over European and American countries.

One is that the mileage of the East African Railway is small, even if the Hesse Railway is opened, the East African Railway has only completed the initial networking, and it is mainly based on the two major arteries of the Central Railway and the Northern Railway.

The second is water transport, the East African rivers are poor, can not do the national series, can only achieve regional traffic access, this is especially characterized by the development of lake transport, there are four large lakes in East Africa, even on the world map can be seen at a glance, and the small area of the lake in other regions of the world is also the largest lake, such as Kings Lake (Lake Albert), Lake Constantine (Lake Edward), Lake Hehinden (Lake George), Lake Kivu, Lake Mweru, Lake Ruqua......

Compared with the prosperity of lake transportation, river transportation is completely in an embarrassing situation, the rivers with the highest shipping value are in 100 kilometers, and only the White Nile and the Congo River can reach 1,000 kilometers and are unimpeded, but these two rivers are sparsely populated along the coast.

The Zambezi River flows through an important economic region in East Africa, but only part of the river is navigable due to its canyons and rapids and waterfalls.

By 1888, there were 23 artillery factories in East Africa, three in the Northern Industrial Belt, six in the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone, four in the Central Province, seven in Matabele, two in Hohenzollern, and one in Swabian.

On the whole, the center of gravity of artillery production is in the central region, among which the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone headed by the city of Mbeya is also relatively close to the central region, so the overall military production in East Africa has completed the transition to the inland, and such a layout is conducive to the security of East Africa's national defense production.

Three of the four artillery factories in the Central Province serve the Navy, and one is a military enterprise under the Guards Division, and the Central Province is also the easiest place in East Africa to carry out technical exchanges with Europe, so the military industrial enterprises in the region have the best technology, while other artillery factories rely more on resources and transportation advantages for construction.

Of course, some artillery factories are only subordinate units of the arsenal, not only responsible for the production of artillery, there are a total of 43 arsenal units in East Africa, and the arsenals directly under the army are mainly concentrated in the eight provinces in the central and eastern regions, in addition to the south there is also an arsenal in the city of New Hamburg, and then the navy has seven arsenals directly under it, including three military shipyards.

Take the Mbeya City Arsenal as an example, in addition to artillery, rifles, machine guns, etc. are also very large, and it belongs to a giant military industrial enterprise, which is the first-mover advantage of Mbeya City under the early development of East African military industry.

At the time, the central resource provinces such as Matabele Province had not yet been incorporated into East Africa, and the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone became the only heavy industry production base in East Africa.

At the same time, it is a key layout area of the military industry, and the industrial urban agglomeration along the coast of Lake Malawi led by Mbeya City formed the earliest coal-iron complex in East Africa, and it was not until the establishment of Matabele Province that the status of the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone was gradually replaced.

So far, the military production in the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone still accounts for nearly one-third of East Africa, because once the industry is formed, it is not easy to relocate, and the technology accumulation is more abundant than that of the three central provinces led by Matabele Province.

Many of the domestic equipment in East Africa was first born in the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone, especially in the manufacture of weapons and equipment, which was an absolute leader at that time.

Of course, military products are not limited to weapons and equipment, and light industrial products are also an important guarantee for the army's combat effectiveness, and this is mainly borne by the northern industrial belt.

The cities of Nairobi and Mombasa in the Northern Industrial Belt are one of the important textile industry centers in East Africa, including the cotton and linen textile industry, and the leather industry occupies a dominant position in East Africa.

At the same time, Mombasa and Nairobi are also the most important food processing industry centers in East Africa, the northern industrial belt is rich in coffee, tea, and various types of economic or food crops, and is an important animal husbandry center, close to the northern pastures, and east of the Indian Ocean, west of the Great Lake (Lake Victoria), the northern mountain plateau is an important forestry area, agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery industry almost no shortcomings.

Mombasa is also the bridgehead of East Africa's foreign exchanges, it is very convenient to introduce advanced European technology and machinery and equipment, and there is a northern railway to connect the economic development of the northern industrial belt, so the northern industrial belt has a considerable right to speak in East Africa in the field of light industry, and 37% of the military light industry products in East Africa are provided by the northern industrial belt.

Of course, the shortcomings of the North Industrial Belt are also very obvious, that is, the resources are shortcoming, but this is also an important reason for the development of the North Industry to light industry.

(End of chapter)