MTL - African Entrepreneurship Records-Chapter 1 through
Chapter 1 Traveling
February 24, 1862, Germany.
Late at night, the drunken stars radiated a faint light in the black and cold sky.
The perspective turns to the south of Germany. The cold wind in early winter is blowing the branches and leaves of the street trees in the ancient city of Heisingen, and the leaves are rustling.
The rotten wood-colored street lamps formed light and shadows everywhere, illuminating the dark blue stone slabs in one stroke. The pedestrians on the street were lonely, and there was a hollow and ghostly sound in the black alley.
Through the windows of houses scattered on both sides of the street, it seems that people can be heard whispering.
The citizens of Hexingen are enjoying their dinner. The light and shadow of the candles sway left and right in the dark rotten wood window frames, dancing freely like natural dancers.
Walking along the road, slowly leaving the block, a road leading to the outside of the city suddenly opened up, along the low ramp, a luxuriously decorated carriage slowly drove out of the city, along the road to the distance Moving forward on the hill, a solemn and solemn castle stands on the hill.
Soon, the carriage drove to the gate of the castle. The guards with guns opened the city gate after seeing the comer, and the carriage slowly drove into the castle.
The person sitting in the carriage was none other than the ruler of the Hechingen region, Prince Constantine of the Kingdom of Prussia.
Hexingen was originally a small country in southeastern Germany, the birthplace of the Hohenzollern family, and is now part of the Hohenzollern province of Prussia.
The decision maker who promoted Hechingen to join the Kingdom of Prussia was Prince Constantine, whose full name was Constantine von Hohenzollern.
Prince Constantine, who had been exhausted all day, finally returned home and was about to go back to his room to rest.
Suddenly, there was a sound of hurried footsteps coming from the corridor, and it was the old housekeeper Ke Nuo who came.
"Master, it's not good, something serious happened!" Kano reported to Constantine in panic.
"What's going on, Kai Nuo, don't worry, talk slowly?" Constantine said calmly and naturally.
"His Royal Highness suddenly passed out while riding a horse today, and the doctor is now diagnosing him, sir, go and have a look!" Kai Nuo quickly explained.
As soon as he heard that something happened to his son, Constantine's majesty as a superior could not hold back. Regardless of his exhaustion, he quickly followed the butler to the door of his son's bedroom.
The domestic servants were waiting in front of the door, not daring to take a breath, waiting cautiously for the arrival of the old master.
Konstantin couldn't say anything, so he pushed open the bedroom door and walked in. His son Ernst was lying on the bed.
Seeing that Ernst, who had "awakened" in front of him, was safe and sound, Constantine felt relieved. Looking at the doctor waiting aside, Constantine asked, "Doctor, how is the situation?"
The doctor didn't dare to be negligent, and replied respectfully: "Your Excellency, the prince is fine at the moment, but the cause of the fainting is still uncertain. It is most likely caused by fatigue. We'd better ask His Royal Highness later."
Constantine cautiously came to the hospital bed, held his son's immature hand and asked, "Ernst, how do you feel?"
…
Ernst felt that the whole person was ignorant, and his heart was a little dull. He suddenly heard someone asking a question, and he didn't dare to be too deliberate. He said softly, "Uh, I feel a little confused in my head, and I'm still a little unconscious now."
"Then do you remember who I am?" Prince Constantine asked eagerly.
"Of course, father, it may be the sequelae of my fainting, so there should be no major problem."
Constantine turned his head to look at the doctor, and the doctor quickly replied: "Your Excellency, don't worry too much. The prince's physical condition has been checked before, and he is very healthy. You can rest for a while, and then observe and observe. If there is any situation, I will Follow up treatment in time."
Looking at the already dark sky outside the window, Prince Constantine thought for a while and said: "Well, well, you all go down! Let the prince have a good rest."
Everyone quietly exited the room, and the old butler closed the door without hesitation. The relieved Prince Constantine realized that he was covered in cold sweat behind him. Prince Constantine put his hands on his chest and said reverently, "Thank you, Lord. shelter!"
Prince Ernst, as the only seedling of the Heixing root of the Hohenzollern family, has been Konstantin's heart since he was a child.
Konstantin only had this child when he was fifty years old. Not long after Ernst was born, his wife Eugenie de Beauharnay died of a cold, so Prince Constantine loved Prince Ernst very much.
Of course, in history, Constantine had no heirs. From the moment Ernst was born, the timeline of history has changed, and new branches have opened from the main branch.
At this moment, Ernst did not dare to take a breath, lying on the bed like an ostrich, because only he himself knew that he was actually a time traveler. Today, I suddenly awakened the memory of my previous life, so I passed out. In my previous life, I was a "homelander".
Of course, Ernst has been here for twelve years, and it is only today that he realizes that he is a time traveler. Does this count as a new life? It's quite like Zhuang Zhou's dream of a butterfly.
Fortunately, the knowledge and common sense learned in the previous life cannot fool me, coupled with the evidence of historical events, such as the dead Napoleon the Great who shocked the mainland, the loose German Confederation, the still developing Prussia, and the mighty Austrian Empire , and his identity as a member of the Hohenzollern family...
Speaking of the Hohenzollern family, they are well-known, but the Ernst family is somewhat different from the famous Hohenzollern of Brandenburg, Prussia. My own family is a young branch of the Hohenzollern family. Located in the southwest of Germany in the previous life, there is a young branch of the Hohenzollern family next to it - Sigmaringen, which belongs to the same Swabian branch as Hechingen where I am. learn.
Historically, they have conspired for the Spanish throne, and in the future they will be Romanian emperors. From this point of view, except for their own family, they are all prominent families with names in history books.
If you want to ask why there is no Hexingen Hohenzollern, um... because the Hechingen line in history has become extinct, but the arrival of Ernst changed history.
While Ernst was still sorting out his brain circuits and memories, Constantine had come to his senses and began to ask, "Do you feel better? Ernst."
"Yes, father, I want to sleep and live again." Ernst replied pretending to be relaxed.
"It's good that you have nothing to do. You will inherit the title in the future. Don't put too much pressure on it. It doesn't matter if you spend your whole life in a daze. I don't ask you to make progress, but you must grow up healthily and pay more attention to rest. , eat more healthy food, don't overindulge like those prodigals and dandies..."
Barbarala said a lot before Constantine gave up. He tucked Ernst's quilt, told him to take a good rest, and called the servant if he had something to do, and then he got up and left the room.
The candlelight flickered faintly, illuminating the dark walls, and the room fell into silence.
Ernst curled up under the quilt to make his body warmer, and began to organize his thoughts.
Speaking of which, Ernst in his previous life had a promising job and was sent by the company to Africa as an engineering consultant. His life in Africa was boring, and he often moved with the construction site.
In my previous life, my place of work was basically an isolated wilderness, with frequent power outages and network outages, and sometimes encountering supply shortages. Fortunately, the salary was decent.
The days in Africa greatly changed Ernst’s cognition. Ernst worked in Tanzania, a distant African country, in his previous life.
Working in Tanzania made Ernst rediscover Africa. Before going to Africa in person, under the influence of the media and news, Ernst had the impression that Africa was synonymous with backwardness, poverty, harsh natural conditions and turmoil.
But when he was actually working and living there, Ernst overturned his previous ideas, and most of the information on the Internet was partial.
In terms of the environment alone, the temperature and precipitation conditions in Tanzania are better than those in my hometown, the North China Plain.
Originally, he knew that Africa was extremely hot. The huge tropical rainforest, the endless prairie, and the huge desert of the Sahara were deeply reflected in Ernst’s mind, but when he arrived in Tanzania, Ernst found that the temperature here was between ten and ten Between a few degrees and thirty degrees, neither hot nor cold. The annual rainy season is also abundant in precipitation, with excellent rain and heat conditions.
Tanzania is a small and unknown country. Due to work reasons, Ernst became familiar with it. Through searching information on the Internet and comparing it with the actual situation, he will find that this country is unexpected.
Although it is located in the tropics, it has become a livable place because of the plateau terrain, similar to the Brazilian plateau.
The land is flat, the vegetation is dense, and the savannah is the majority. This also changes my perception, because the grassland in Africa conflicts with the grassland in my traditional perception.
Before seeing the savannah with his own eyes, Ernst naturally imagined the grasslands of the world as Mongolian grasslands in his mind.
But when he arrived in Africa, Ernst saw a different scene. The savannah can be said to be a unique combination of trees and grasslands. That region is described as a bitterly cold place in the north of the country, while the African savannah is a real natural paradise.
Farmers here can generally have a good harvest, and it is based on rough planting methods. The biggest distress of local farmers may be that it is laborious to fetch water for irrigation, and there is a lack of water conservancy projects and basic farmland irrigation systems.
The living standard of the local people is not too bad, and the rough way of life can also make poor Africans happy.
Because it is located in the tropical grassland, fruit and meat can be supplemented to a certain extent, coupled with the rough small-scale peasant economy, the living standard of farmers at the end of the ancient East Asian dynasty is a little higher.
Of course, the attitude towards life is also an important factor. During the nearly 100-year colonial history, Westerners forcibly pulled them from the primitive hunting lifestyle to modern society.
The concept of Africans has not changed in time, and the complex, sophisticated and natural survival mode of East Asians is difficult to reflect in Africa.
Industrial conditions also have a major feature in Africa. The mineral resources here are not as superior as they are said on the Internet. Take Tanzania as an example.
This is a mining and exporting country, but many major mineral resources are actually not as rich as imagined. Coal, iron, copper, and oil are available, but compared to those countries with real resources, there are not many.
Many resources are not ranked in the world, but because of the extremely low level of industrialization, the wealth of mining resources has resulted.
In my impression, East Asia is a poor mineral country, which is actually related to the high degree of industrialization in East Asia, but when comparing the actual mineral resource reserves, Tanzania is the younger brother.
In terms of Shancong coal, iron and oil, East Asia has world-class large mines, and the most inferior oil also has several famous large oil fields.
Tanzania was considered an oil-poor country before the discovery of oil on the east coast. But Tanzania is not a small country in people's traditional perception.
In terms of land area, it is 940,000 square kilometers, almost one-tenth of East Asia, but the desert in the northwest of East Asia alone accounts for nearly a quarter of the area, and there are alpine plateaus that are too high and difficult to develop. Unclear mountains, only the east has considerable conditions for agricultural development.
The main body of Tanzania is a plateau, but the altitude of the plateau is not too high, the terrain is relatively gentle, and the equator is interspersed, the temperature is moderate, and the precipitation is moderate. On the contrary, it has created a well-known agricultural country in Africa. The comprehensive natural agricultural conditions of Tanzania are estimated to be second only to those in Africa. Nigeria.
In terms of population, Tanzania is also a country with a large population by international standards. It has passed the 50 million population mark and is still growing rapidly. But Tanzania still has a lot of uncultivated land, fishery resources are not fully developed, and the population limit is more than that.
As for industrial conditions, although mineral resources are not very rich, it depends on who you compare with. At least a group of small and medium-sized countries in Europe are far behind. It is completely sufficient if the primary industrialization is met. Africa's overall mineral resources are not rich among all continents. The resources are concentrated in South Africa and West Africa, as well as North Africa, which has unique oil resources. Tanzania's mineral resources are also medium-sized in Africa.
Tanzania is not bad in terms of transportation. It is located on the traditional commercial waterway of the Indian Ocean. Dar es Salaam is one of the few well-known large ports in Africa. Before the opening of the Suez Canal, it was an important world-class commercial node. The pearl of the Indian Ocean was a whim in history. The Oman Empire established a semicolon here - the Kingdom of Zanzibar.
It can be seen that Tanzania's conditions in all aspects are not bad, so why is the level of development so low?
Before Ernst went to work in Africa, influenced by traditional media, he believed that there was only one reason for Africa’s poverty. Africans are lazy and rely on the sky for food.
But after arriving in Africa, Ernst discovered the one-sidedness of this kind of thinking, which is an appearance.
A variety of factors are the source of poverty in Africa. Before the arrival of the colonists, the overall level of civilization on the African continent was very low. The isolation of the Sahara Desert caused most parts of southern Africa to be civilized deserts. Only Ethiopia in West Africa and East Africa developed independence. civilization and was greatly influenced by the Arabs.
The Bantu people in West Africa were the first people to open up to the south, but the Bantu people only developed the characteristics of the civilization of the early countries, and their technical level was extremely low. When they migrated south, they had to pass through the Congo rainforest and the beasts like the Central African prairie everywhere area. The expansion of the Oman Empire in the Middle East was limited to Zanzibar Island and the coast of East Africa, and civilization did not expand to the interior of Africa.
In Central and South Africa, there are widespread tribal social forms dominated by hunting. The tribes on the Mongolian grasslands were influenced by the culture of the Central Plains and developed political power. In Africa, however, it is a desert of regimes. The aborigines lived a life of fighting against wild animals.
The arrival of Westerners forced this area, which was dominated by primitive tribes, into the system of modern society.
According to Ernst's own experience, this destructive method is difficult to make the local aborigines integrate into the modern society. For example, the western mountainous area of the land of abundance in East Asia was still slavery when the Republic was established. It is difficult to change some habits of the local people.
What's more, the Westerners who did not come from poverty alleviation and the social form are not as good as the primitive tribal society of slavery in Africa.
In fact, the tribal system was already a very advanced system for Africans at that time.
At that time, the most basic forms of families and villages still existed in many parts of Africa. How should I put it, even the lions on the African grasslands also existed in this form of family!
So the starting point of African civilization is very low, almost equal to no, and it remains at the same level as prehistoric civilization.
Africa was forced to embark on the road of civilization under the guns of the Westerners, which is also the cause of continuous wars in Africa after independence.
Tanzania certainly does not have the impact of large-scale wars, and the overall stability of modern Tanzania ranks among the best among African countries.
However, Tanzanians lack the experience of governing the country. They have no history to learn from, the starting point is low, and the social solidification has resulted in little overall progress. Although there are some developments, they are insignificant compared with the whole world, just like East Asia and the Middle East in later generations are far ahead of Africa. .
But compared with the one-shot countries in Africa, Tanzania can already be said to be one of the most successful countries in Africa.
Ernst can’t help but feel embarrassed when he thinks back on his life experience in his previous life. Working from an area with complete infrastructure to an area with basically no infrastructure is a disaster. Later, Ernst gradually adapted to that kind of life.
Of course, now is not the time to recall the past life. I have traveled through history and returned to modern Europe. A new life is beckoning to me again, and I am about to seek my place in the torrent of history.
(end of this chapter)
