Chapter 25 – A Ticket to the Arms Industry
As a supplementary part of the agreement, Ernst specifically secured an "entry ticket" into the arms business from Prussia, solving his "starting from nothing" problem. This time, Ernst made his goal clear right from the start: he needed weaponry for the East African colony under the Hexingen royal family's rule.
After all, owning and using weapons in Europe itself wasn't an issue. But setting up a proper production line was a different story; even older technology was typically kept from spreading. Yet if Ernst stated it was for colonial use in East Africa, the Prussian government had less reason to worry about how he would use it, as long as they could check his accounts and collect taxes.
The Prussian royal family and government were surprisingly generous: besides granting a small arsenal, they also passed on several soon-to-be-retired flintlock production lines and a bullet-manufacturing line. They also guaranteed that, moving forward, Ernst could purchase other military supplies from Prussian arms companies such as Krupp—so long as he paid in full and refrained from using them within Europe.
At the moment, Prussia was phasing out front-loading flintlock rifles in favor of breech-loading rifled guns, spurred on by lessons from the Second Schleswig War. They were happy to hand over the old flintlock assembly lines to Ernst, conveniently clearing space for new production. For Ernst, obtaining these outdated lines was already more than enough. He planned to equip his East African colony with hardware that was, admittedly, on the verge of obsolescence.
Immigration to the East African colony was picking up. There would be more outposts in the future. For now, Ernst had just over two thousand hired German soldiers to secure the colony, while the Chinese immigrant population had grown to nearly three thousand. In fact, two thousand soldiers was not a small figure. During World War I, right before the war, German East Africa only had about 68 white officers, 60 white noncommissioned officers, 132 white medical and administrative personnel, 2 black officers, 184 black NCOs, and 2,286 black soldiers—a relatively small force overseeing 900,000 square kilometers of territory. But Ernst was investing in East Africa on a scale unmatched by the historical German Empire.
In earlier times, Germany saw East Africa as a useful colony for producing cotton, rubber, sisal, and other cash crops. It believed that if it won its big bets in Europe, it could dominate any colony afterward. So Germany effectively gave up defending its overseas territories in World War I and focused on Europe. Ernst, on the other hand, was building East Africa as his personal fallback. So he took population growth, farming, and industry more seriously.
For now, ramping up immigration meant avoiding a repeat of the South African scenario, a "swap of populations" akin to what the United States once did—though Ernst wouldn't do it as crudely. He had no plans of mass slaughter, but rather, if necessary, he might just ship out the local population once he had the means. Farming was his current priority in East Africa. In addition to growing cash crops, he insisted on producing enough food staples to sustain the immigrant population, ensuring a stable colonial development. Industrialization still lay far in the future. The region's basic conditions were too poor. Ernst wasn't even mining yet because discovering valuable resources too soon might invite trouble, and he wanted to wait until he fully controlled the colony.
To truly secure East Africa, Ernst needed a sizable force. Almost no Germans were willing to migrate there, so he planned to form a Chinese army. Future colonial expansion would inevitably pit him against native tribes and other colonizers. He did not want a repeat of historical German East Africa, which got dogpiled by neighboring colonies in World War I. If conflict arose, Ernst intended to outnumber his enemies severalfold. Fair fights were pointless; overwhelming force was the way to go.
He didn't trust building an army from local Africans, recalling that in history, Britain raised 250,000 native troops from its colonies to confront a few thousand Germans in East Africa—and for a time, the underdogs still toyed with them. So those natives either fought halfheartedly or had no real desire to fight, which Ernst suspected was just their usual attitude. Could he "fix" that mentality through comprehensive education? Possibly, but the cost in time and money would be astronomical, and colonizers came to enrich themselves, not do charity.
So, in the next three years, Ernst intended to assemble a 50,000-strong Chinese army in East Africa. To keep this force under control, all officers would be Germans, with graduates of the Hexingen Military Academy serving as staff officers. Ernst would also like to boost the number of Germans there eventually, but there was no good way yet. Who wanted to move to a "barbaric" land? Only once the colony's infrastructure improved, or Europe was engulfed by conflict, might he lure ordinary Europeans to emigrate.
For now, the planned Chinese army would be armed using the old flintlock production lines. This force wouldn't be a professional standing army but rather farmers-turned-soldiers, engaged in daily production and mobilized as needed. Their main opponents were primitive local tribes, armed mostly with stone-tipped spears, wooden bows, and limited metal weapons. Such adversaries didn't justify forming a specialized professional army; a group of Chinese settlers armed with outdated flintlocks, trained to aim and shoot, would be enough to impose dominance.
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