African Entrepreneurship Record

This founding ceremony of the East African state fully captured the attention of foreign diplomatic personnel, but that was all; once today’s events spread across East Africa, the heat will probably dissipate.

At most, this wave of attention will circulate on a small scale in Europe, and only via the diplomats who attended the parade and ceremony reporting upward to their own governments, which is unavoidable.

But this also aligns with East Africa’s interests. Public sentiment likewise influences government decision-making. Take Portugal as an example: if it hadn’t been for the strong opposition of the Portuguese public, the impact of the South African War would have ended long ago; by now the Portuguese government might very well have already established diplomatic relations with East Africa.

Through this parade, the foreign diplomatic corps gained a deeper understanding of the East African Army. Judging purely from the parade, the East African Army’s organizational capability, discipline, and weaponry all exhibit the characteristics of a world-class force.

Thus, with the East African Defense Army in its hands, East Africa has no rivals on the African continent, and no overseas power is likely to entertain the idea of mounting a cross-sea ground war against East Africa.

As for the data on the East African Navy, it has always been reassuring, but the East African Navy follows an elite-forces path and likewise cannot be underestimated; at the very least, it has the capability to secure the waters off East Africa.

After the founding ceremony concluded, many observant diplomats had already begun to describe to their own countries the military information revealed by this East African parade.

In his letter, the German ambassador Bulls wrote: ”By combining this parade with the outdated figures from the time of the South African War, one may infer that East Africa’s nationwide standing army is kept at no less than around two hundred thousand men throughout the year. Its territory is vast, so the size of its land forces must be above that of the United States; meanwhile, this parade alone fielded some eight to nine thousand troops. For East Africa, such mobilization capacity is clearly quite easy to achieve.”

Eight to nine thousand men is not a huge number, yet it already comes close to about one-fortieth of the German Army. So in Bulls’s view, it is only reasonable to assume that East Africa’s standing land forces are at least in the two- to three-hundred-thousand range.

He dipped his pen in ink and continued writing: ”But East Africa’s national defense pressure is clearly lower than that of the European states, so its troop numbers cannot match the standards of the continental land powers. This is reflected to some extent in East Africa’s weaponry and equipment: its stock of guns and artillery is in no way inferior to that of the Imperial Army, yet East Africa is not a particularly wealthy country. This suggests that its military is configured for quality rather than quantity.”

There is little problem with Bulls’s assertion that East Africa is not very rich. Viewed as a whole, East Africa is still an agrarian country at present; naturally, its income levels cannot compare with those of the industrialized states of Europe and America.

But the East African Government is clearly not the same as European and American governments. The East African Government controls large quantities of resources and industries, so in terms of governmental wealth, it may well surpass the governments of other countries. This also means that the East African Government’s capacity for resource integration is stronger than that of traditional states.

And resource integration is conducive to improving efficiency and reducing costs, particularly beneficial in promoting the development of a military-industrial sector. Thus, even though East Africa’s troop strength is smaller than that of Germany and France, its actual military expenditures are in no way inferior to those of other countries.

”East African soldiers are in high spirits. Judging from this parade and from the everyday life of the East African populace, East Africa’s provisioning for its troops is definitely not bad. Coupled with a very well-developed compulsory education system, one can infer that the quality of East African recruits may even reach or surpass our own.”

Bulls’s thinking here likely stems from the fact that compulsory education in East Africa lasts longer, so in theory the quality of East African recruits should be higher than that of German recruits.

This is certainly correct, but although East Africa’s compulsory education system is larger in scale and lasts longer, the quality of that education is quite poor. At the same formal level, East Africa is not on par with Germany. However, by relying on the sheer number of its educated population, East Africa can offset part of the gap in education quality.

For East Africa, having a low floor in education quality is not a major issue; what matters is that in the fields where East Africa needs talent, it must be plentiful.

”...In my view, since East Africa will in future be one of our important partners in economic, commercial, cultural, and political exchange, our military cooperation with it—especially on the level of land forces—should be strengthened. If it can become an extension of our own arm, it will be greatly advantageous for us in the future struggle over world power.”

With that, Bulls’s letter came to an end. He took a sip of tea and said to his servant, ”Send this letter back home.”

To be fair, the military strength displayed by East Africa in this parade does not differ much from what it showed during the South African War, but it is hardly surprising that it has drawn Bulls’s close attention.

After all, although military development can undergo major changes over time, it is also common for it to remain stable within certain cycles.

From the Franco-Prussian War to the present, especially in the field of land armaments, aside from the outlier that is East Africa with its private stockpiles, other countries have actually seen little change—nothing more than minor tweaks to traditional weapons such as rifles and artillery. The truly intense arms race has instead been concentrated in the naval sphere.

Of course, this applies to countries in the first tier. Many backward countries and regions still have much room for progress—for instance, the African natives in the West African interior, who are still using cold weapons or even primitive weapons.

Bulls’s main focus, however, is on the changes in the East African Defense Army over the past decade. After all, ten years have passed since the South African War, and ten years is more than enough time for a country’s army to become corrupt.

This parade thus served as an important reference point for assessing whether the East African Army has maintained its combat effectiveness. At least on the surface, the East African Army still displays good spirit and discipline, which is quite sufficient for Germany, which seeks to win East Africa over.

After all, no one wants a future ally that becomes a drag. Consider the army of Austria-Hungary: Germany has always known that the Austro-Hungarian forces had many issues, yet they could never have imagined that, in another timeline, Austria-Hungary’s military performance would be so abysmal that it could not even easily deal with a small country like Serbia.

Germany’s ability to choose allies in its previous life was indeed questionable, but that does not mean it did not assess allies and enemies. For example, one of Germany’s key bases for judging the United Kingdom’s military decline was the United Kingdom’s dreadful performance in the Boer War.

Now, thanks to East Africa, the Boer War that should have occurred in this period never happened. The British will not make a greater spectacle of themselves, and no one knows what effect this will have on the German government’s judgment.

In this sense, the British, who suffered heavy losses in the South African War, ought to ”thank” East Africa. However weak East Africa may be, it is still a Great Power with a population in the tens of millions. If the United Kingdom had instead been beaten badly by a Boer republic with only a few hundred thousand people and troop numbers comparable to the British Army, that would have been the truly humiliating outcome.

If the South African War shaved five points off the United Kingdom’s prestige, then the Boer War in the previous timeline cut it by fifty, if not more. In effect, East Africa extended the lifespan of British hegemony to some degree.

Struggles for power and profit among Great Powers often begin in peripheral regions: by probing each other’s strengths and weaknesses there, they eventually launch a decisive blow. In the previous timeline, Germany tested the United Kingdom through the Second Boer War, and tested France through the Moroccan Crisis.

It is just like in the twenty-first century, when several Great Powers conduct foreplay in regions such as the Middle East, Europe, Egg Bay Island, and the Philippines: the more flaws a country exposes, the more disadvantageous its position in international competition.

Thus, this East African parade likewise had a somewhat similar purpose. The East African Navy certainly cannot compete with other countries overseas, because the East African Navy is not strong enough and mishaps would be easy; once it capsizes, it could trigger a chain reaction, which would be detrimental to East Africa, now that it already possesses numerous overseas colonies.

Showing off its muscles through the Army is therefore a relatively moderate method. After all, no state dares to wage a war against East Africa on the African continent. The Army can still serve to demonstrate that East Africa’s forces remain sharp and thereby cut off certain countries’ unhealthy ideas.

At the turn of the century, East Africa also needs to continuously send signals outward—that the East African Army is still capable of fighting. Only in this way can it maintain neutrality amid a worsening international environment. In the absence of war, this objective can only be achieved through parades or military exercises.