African Entrepreneurship Record

"Richard", whose real name is Augusta, is one of the heads of the British branch of the Hechingen Consortium's Commercial Intelligence Department's dark line organization.

The Commercial Intelligence Department of the Hechingen Foundation was established in 1866. Its original function was indeed only responsible for collecting commercial intelligence for Ernst's reference.

Later, with the development of the consortium and the development of the East African colonies, national and regional intelligence began to be searched. Ernst directly separated some people from the Hechingen Consortium's intelligence department to form a dark organization, which was nominally the group's business intelligence The collectors were actually an organization of spy agents under Ernst.

Most of its members are selected from the Hechingen Military Academy, have received professional training, and are relatively loyal. The disadvantage is that they are generally young, which is why Augusta and others are relatively immature.

The Hechingen Commercial Intelligence Service secret organization currently does not belong to the East African government, but is a special agent organization under Ernst's private name. Within East Africa, it is stored in the state audit and other departments to monitor the status of operations in East African countries. Lian Kang Standing didn't even know this organization existed.

Although the dark line organization is currently under Ernst's personal leadership, it will inevitably be integrated into the East African state agencies in the future and can be regarded as the predecessor of the East African state security department.

Abroad, the Hechingen Commercial Intelligence Service's backline organizations mainly exist in countries with democratically elected governments such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and France. After all, the experience of the members of the backline organizations is relatively weak, so it is better to carry out work in these countries with lax controls and slowly accumulate intelligence personnel. work experience.

Autocratic countries with strong governments like East Africa are not suitable for espionage activities and can easily reveal their flaws. Of course, the premise is that the state agency system has not collapsed. Old countries like the Far East and the Austro-Hungarian Empire can be infiltrated into sieves.

Fortunately, the current capabilities of Ernst's intelligence agency are limited, and its main activities are in countries that may pose threats to East Africa, with Britain, the United States, Portugal, and France being the focus.

Among them, Britain, Portugal and France have colonies in Africa, while the United States is looking for trade markets everywhere under British suppression. Therefore, East Africa is not very welcoming to American merchants. Just as the United States is actively exploring in the Far East, American merchants are also using the Far East in trade. The situation in Japan is relatively clear. For a country as big as East Africa, it can hide its secrets for a day. Naturally, it does not want to deal with Americans. Even the American businessmen's attempt to establish a trading location in Zanzibar was rejected by East Africa.

In this era, the United States is still the United States, not the American emperor in the previous life, but a poor man under Britain and France, so the character is packaged very well. American businessmen do come to Zanzibar to do business under the banner of fair and free trade, but Ernst refused.

American businessmen operating in the Indian Ocean have concluded that the country of East Africa is quite closed. However, it is understandable that a German overseas colony must be more vigilant without the help of its mother country. Anyway, except for the Austrians, East Africa has not been seen yet. Which country's businessmen do the government look kindly on?

In fact, there are still some, that is, merchants from the Sultanate of Zanzibar. The Sultanate of Zanzibar is the younger brother of East Africa, so East Africa can rest assured. At the same time, a large share of East Africa's import and export trade is conducted through the Sultanate of Zanzibar. The Middle East and Indian Ocean coastal markets also rely on the Sultanate of Zanzibar to open up.

…

City of Dar es Salaam.

Three Hechingen ocean-going ships began to unload the Dreiser gun production machines that had been eliminated from the Hechingen Arsenal in Berlin. The East African government organized a large number of carriages and manpower to pick up the goods at the port.

"This batch of machines are relatively new, only four or five years old. Compared with the machines in the East African Arsenal, they are very advanced and more complete. The parts are all sealed in the boxes. Do not break the seals before arriving at the destination. , and don’t let the rainwater penetrate into the parts in the box.” Vicente, the technician on the ship, said to Bryce, the East African government employee who came to hand over the goods.

Bryce: "Don't worry, we have prepared enough rainproof cloth and hemp rope to ensure that these machines will not be caught in the rain before they reach their destination."

Vicente: "Also, it's best not to be too bumpy on the road. Although these machines are not that valuable, it would be bad if they are damaged due to transportation."

Bryce: "No problem. We have had experience transporting a batch of mining equipment to Mbeya City before. Currently, we send people every month on the road from Dar es Salaam to Mbeya City. Maintenance, unless there is extreme weather, general road conditions can still be guaranteed.”

Vicente: "These are not the important points. I want to know how the factory construction is going?"

Bryce: "I don't know about this, but there should be no problem. After all, the government will definitely consider the factory problem. At least it will be able to complete the construction on your way here. There is no shortage of manpower in Mbeya City. There will be more processing and construction." Several factories still have capacity and are contacted by telegraph, so they must have received the news two months ago.”

The level of infrastructure in East Africa is quite good, especially for large-scale projects. There are about more than 10 million indigenous people living in East Africa. There are so many that East Africa is too lazy to count them now. At least there is an overflow of low-level labor.

Excluding the old, weak, sick and disabled, there are still millions of laborers. However, the life span of the indigenous people is extremely short, and there are basically no people who are too old.

Ernst was lucky. The planning of the Mbeya Arsenal came at a good time. The Prussian government intended to eliminate the outdated Dresser rifles. With the reunification of Germany, military products would naturally be unified into Prussian standards, resulting in Many German military-industrial enterprises are faced with the problem of changing careers. If they are lucky, they will be absorbed by Prussia. If they are not, they will have to close down. Especially in the countries below Germany, many have their own military industries. Although they are mainly small workshops, they Some of the equipment is good, but the scale is relatively small.

So for almost the price of scrap metal, you can buy a bunch of machinery and equipment and piece them together, which really allows Ernst to put together a complete full weapons production chain.

Although the Hechingen Arsenal in Berlin produces guns, parts mainly rely on procurement, and there are complete gun parts and accessories production workshops in these countries.

After acquiring a large number of various weapons production machinery and equipment, as long as they are reassembled and produced in East Africa, basically most of the weapons currently produced in Europe, plus the steel in Mbeya City, can be completed independently in East Africa.

Weapons that cannot be produced in East Africa, including pistols, bayonets, daggers, small artillery, etc., were all provided by East Africa in this procurement.

Although the output may not be satisfactory due to the low production efficiency of manual workshops and the large gap in steel production capacity, the independence of weapons and equipment in East Africa can be considered an important step.