African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 151: Chapter 141: Slave Economy

In August, at the Mbeya mining area, the indigenous people were shackled with wooden restraints on their feet, carrying hoes to clear the surface weeds and rubble.

Because their movements were hindered, their efficiency was low, but the East African overseers standing by were not at all afraid of inefficiency going awry.

East African rulers never expected these natives to be highly efficient; they simply set a fixed target each day and that was it.

If they couldn’t meet their quotas, they would naturally face the lash of the whip and a reduction in rations.

Anyway, the natives were doing the rough work, and the East Africans didn’t expect perfection, as long as the quantity was enough.

Digging earth, hauling bricks, digging trenches, chopping trees... these were all skills that anyone could quickly pick up. The natives would do the rough work, and then East African immigrants would just refine them.

Especially in the Mbeya mining area, with a very sparse population, East Africa relied heavily on indigenous labor to maintain coal production.

Currently, over three thousand indigenous laborers worked at the Mbeya coal mine. Although nominally laborers, they were essentially slaves.

In sub-Saharan Africa, there were two types of civilizations: one was primitive society, existing as tribes, the other was slave society, existing as slave-owning kingdoms.

East Africa was definitely a slave society, because it really did have a large number of Black slaves, and they were an important part of the East African colonial economy.

Before the East African colonies were established, East Africa had many slaves, but the civilization was still mainly tribal.

Thus, the indigenous people of the Tanganyika region were known as the Eastern Bantu Tribes.

The establishment of the East African colonies essentially transformed East Africa’s civilization from primitive society to a slave society.

The difference was that the East African native tribes used slaves for trade with Arabs, and even for sacrifices and as food.

In contrast, the East African colonies used slaves for production and construction, transforming them from commodities (food) into production tools.

At the same time, East Africa itself was in a transition from a slave society to a feudal society.

The immigrants of East Africa were authentic feudal subjects who had not been influenced by liberal ideas.

While the number of Black slaves in East Africa was decreasing, the entire East Africa, by then dominated by feudal subjects, would experience at least a short-lived feudal era.

Of course, no matter what stage it entered, East Africa’s construction still relied heavily on indigenous people, much like the plantation economy in the southern United States; even under capitalism, slaves were used where needed.

To undertake construction, especially in tropical regions, human lives were essential, with the East African highlands being fairly comfortable compared to other tropical regions, which were truly deadly.

The East African colonial government was well aware of this. Although coastal areas were developed early (including the construction of the Sultanate of Zanzibar), they were far less livable than inland areas.

The local residents often had to work under high temperatures, and even more so for the slaves.

Mbeya stood at an altitude of around seventeen hundred meters. The higher the altitude, the lower the temperature, so despite being in the tropics, Mbeya was quite cool.

This good weather naturally suited the indigenous people for working in the mines, and the immigrants weren’t idle either; maintaining the wooden frameworks (pit props) supporting the mine shafts required immigrant labor.

To be honest, it wasn’t particularly difficult work, but the indigenous people couldn’t do it; they would either muddle through or pretend not to understand.

It’s as if a small wooden framework support had become an unsolvable global challenge for the African natives.

In reality, these natives simply lacked patience. They preferred to do grueling but non-technical labor rather than completing slightly technical tasks.

This is not an exaggeration; before they were captured by East African colonies, while still in tribal conditions, they could weave shelters from twigs, carve wood into beautiful sculptures, polish weapons, and make bows and arrows...

But once in the hands of the East African colonies, those innate skills seemed to vanish overnight, rendering them useful only as brute labor.

Early on, some disbelieving East African colony managers tried to use Black people for farming (at that time still in the east), but they made a mess of the rice seedlings in the paddies. The Chinese farmers were dismayed, and eventually, everything had to be redone from scratch. (When our agricultural personnel assisted African peanut planting, they encountered similar issues; even when taught hand-in-hand, the locals couldn’t learn to plant seeds at consistent intervals. Ultimately, our agricultural personnel created ropes marked with spacing indicators, and the Africans could finally plant peanut seeds correctly by following the ropes’ markings.)

Agriculture was East Africa’s primary industry, and grain output was crucial to East Africa’s economic condition, so the natives couldn’t be allowed to ruin things.

The natives’ work was thus confined to those without technical content and demanding a lot of physical labor.

For example, in developing farmland in East Africa, after slash-and-burn, the land had to be turned over, but East Africa’s current animal labor was notably insufficient, so the natives became substitutes for animal power.

The indigenous slaves in Mbeya were used as mine cars, and all the raw coal in the mines needed to be carried out by the indigenous slaves.

Despite this, the East African colonial government remained dubious about these natives and had to conduct periodic inspections in the mines to prevent violations by the natives underground.

Meanwhile, exporting Mbeya’s coal didn’t require these natives; instead, oxen and horse carts were used to transport the coal to East Africa.

Although Mbeya’s capacity was not particularly high, it was far more than the current demand of the East African colonies.

Ernst stored this coal across East African locations for contingency, with only a few steam engine factories in East Africa requiring coal for energy.

Although East Africa was predominantly grassland, it also had extensive forest areas, so there was no shortage of timber everywhere to meet local fuel needs (cooking and heating), which kept coal demand low.

However, the coal extracted in Mbeya couldn’t be wasted, so it was stored in warehouses throughout East Africa.

As for selling to Europe, Germany, with the Ruhr area, didn’t lack coal. It would also encroach on the shipping capacity used for immigration, making it entirely infeasible.

Furthermore, as East Africa planned to build some basic factories, coal would be indispensable for major efforts. Once the Mbeya coal mine was developed, East African colonies no longer needed to import coal from Germany to East Africa, saving a substantial amount of money.

The extraction of coal in Mbeya primarily utilized indigenous slaves, which was very cost-effective, as they just needed to be fed.

Beyond that, there were virtually no other investments. Many tools were sourced locally, except for some iron tools that had to be imported from Europe.

Besides the development of the Mbeya mining area, a large number of slaves were employed across East Africa for production construction, but primarily in larger-scale projects. After all, immigrants shouldn’t stay idle, and much work was still required from the immigrants themselves.

For example, in the development of farmland, indigenous people were initially used as substitutes for animal labor, but once the land was developed, the immigrants had to take over and complete all the work themselves.

Meanwhile, immigrants also had to serve in the army, routinely clearing colonial areas of wild beasts and participating in colonial expansion tasks.