Developing the Congo Colony
By 1883, Germany had already begun building its colonial empire in earnest — far earlier than in the original timeline.
It ran counter to Bismarck’s designs, which had sought to restrain colonial expansion, yet the Germans, convinced they were entitled to the share guaranteed them at the London Conference, rushed headlong into overseas ventures.
The German government itself still cared little for colonies, and so the territories secured by private Germans were placed, as in the original history, under the trusteeship of civilian companies.
The man who profited most from this arrangement was Waldemar.
Through his own company he “administered” the Congo and steadily tightened his grip by granting himself exclusive privileges.
For example:
“All land suitable for rubber plantations is to be granted to Euro Bond.”
“What? Isn’t that an unfair deal?”
“Here, we are the law.”
Waldemar’s people seized every asset in the Congo that looked profitable — ivory, copper, gold, cobalt, rubber, diamonds.
Any single one of those commodities could have founded a respectable resource company; Waldemar simply monopolized them all.
And yet no one complained.
“We pay every tax honestly.”
By the years around 1883, Waldemar’s dominion over the Congo was, for all practical purposes, complete.
Having swallowed the Congo whole, he cast an interested eye on the other colonies Germany was preparing to claim.
Cameroon and Togo, ideal for tropical fruit and coffee plantations; South-West Africa, rich in minerals and fisheries — all of them could turn a profit if run properly.
East Africa and the Pacific, however, were exceptions.
To extract anything of value in East Africa you have to push deep inland, and the infrastructure costs are ruinous.
Trying to develop the coastal strip for agriculture instead ran into the problem of livestock disease. Whether horse or ox, everything died before the tsetse fly. Until someone invented and shipped in tractors, profitable farming in East Africa was a fantasy best left alone.
As for the Pacific, the distance from Germany was enormous and the local markets pitifully small; the investment simply was not worth it.
“For now, let’s put money into Cameroon and Togo, where plantations are possible.”
An ordinary colonial investor would have been left sucking his fingers for lack of capital; Waldemar’s situation was different. Money was a surplus resource to him.
Other Germans typically sank a few million marks into each colony. Those sums were nothing beside Waldemar’s outlays. He committed 21 million marks to the Congo and another 6.3 million each to Cameroon and Togo.
The vast capital he poured in, together with immigrants drawn from Russia and Japan, accelerated the development of the German colonies to a pace the original timeline could never have matched.
Ewald Kiesler, a German-Russian who had obtained a post as plantation overseer through Euro Bond, stroked his chin as he watched the first Japanese step one by one down the gangplank.
“Those fellows the Indian laborers who’ll work the plantation?”
“No. They’re Japanese.”
Thomas Müller, a former merchant-ship sailor who had once been to China, knew the difference between East Asians and Indians.
“Japanese?”
“A fairly advanced people from the Orient. Don’t look down on them because they’re short. They can be quite a fierce lot.”
“How fierce can a crowd only a little taller than Pygmies be?”
“Fierce enough to cut off a foreigner’s head for failing to bow to one of their samurai, wouldn’t you say?”
Kiesler swallowed hard. Müller clapped him on the shoulder.
“Just joking. The ones coming this time aren’t samurai — I hear they’re meek farmers, gentle as sheep. As long as you don’t push them too hard, there shouldn’t be any trouble.”
“Well then, that doesn’t sound so bad.”
Most of the Germans regarded the Japanese — making their first appearance in Africa — with curious eyes. The Japanese, for their part, could not hide their tension under the white men’s stares. Having come so far from their homeland, they felt more diminished than ever; and the men facing them were giants.
“Today’s the first day, so let them unpack and rest.”
“Hai.”
Yamagata Tadamasa, the only one who spoke German, bowed at a full ninety degrees. The Germans found his submissive manner satisfactory. The Japanese, still tense, made their way to the quarters the Germans had assigned them.
The crude mud houses, built by Congo laborers, did not look particularly fine, but the Japanese had no choice.
“At least there are beds.”
Of course the “beds” were nothing more than wooden frames stuffed with grass. The newcomers inspected their dwellings and unpacked.
Suzuki Kenkichi, a young farmer, was examining the house he would share with his wife when he noticed cracks running through the walls and started in alarm. He could not leave his wife in such a dreadful place. After some hesitation he approached the leader of the immigrant group, Yamagata Tadamasa.
“Yamagata-sensei.”
“What is it?”
Yamagata spoke to Suzuki with an authority quite unlike the deference he showed the Germans. Though the appointment was unofficial, he had been named head of the settlers’ association by the Japanese government — a sort of civil official. An ordinary peasant was not free to speak to him as an equal.
“The houses aren’t as good as the government described. Mud walls are one thing, but cracks in them seem a bit much.”
“And?”
Yamagata’s curt reply left Suzuki looking flustered.
“Pardon?”
“We brought people who could barely touch a few yen a year in some barren village to a fine job like this, and that’s all you have to complain about?”
“No, no, that’s not what I—”
“Human beings are animals. Stand and they want to sit; sit and they want to lie down; lie down and they want to sleep. The nation has shown consideration. You, Suzuki-san, should put up with a little discomfort instead of grumbling.”
Suzuki could say nothing more. He returned weakly to the mud house. His young wife, Tanae, met him with a worried face.
“What did Yamagata-sensei say?”
“He told me to endure it.”
Tanae patted his shoulder.
“It’ll get better once we’ve settled in. Still better than Tōhoku, isn’t it?”
Suzuki sighed at the thought of home.
Japanese immigrants had begun arriving in the Congo and elsewhere, yet they could not supply all the labor needed. A few thousand hands were nowhere near enough to work the vast undeveloped plantations and mines. If Germany was to realize the full potential of its colonies, it would have to mobilize the African Black population as well.
The difficulty was that these people lived in tribal societies far removed from civilized norms. They understood neither the value of money nor the necessity of labor; putting them to work was far from simple.
In that light, even the wicked practices of Belgium’s Leopold II became somewhat comprehensible.
The Germans’ answer to the problem was straightforward.
“We’ve got surplus manufactured goods piling up at home. Bring them over and use them as trade goods.”
Meet the rubber or ore quota and you receive practical items — cloth, needles, cooking utensils — in exchange. The method cost money, but the Germans had never expected large immediate profits. The essential point was to implant the very idea of “labor” among the Congolese.
Work for the Germans and you receive something. Only when that notion took root could the plantations secure a labor force.
Euro Bond’s management technique left other German colonial investors puzzled.
“Aren’t colonies places you invest in for profit? Can they even break even running things like that?”
In the long view, however, Waldemar’s method was far more economical. Turning the natives into willing wage laborers rather than virtual slaves, as other colonial empires did, raised productivity and lowered the risk of rebellion. A single uprising could reduce invested infrastructure to rubble and force the expenditure of astronomical sums on suppression.
In the original timeline Germany spent five to six hundred million marks crushing the Herero and Nama revolts in South-West Africa in 1904 — when the entire colonial subsidy for all its possessions in 1903 had been a mere 23 million marks.
Waldemar regarded such waste as absurd. Better to manage the place with a little more dignity.
Once a month he cabled the Congo to check on progress. Under his supervision the situation was generally sound. The Japanese immigrants obeyed orders docilely; the local Congolese came to regard mining or rubber gathering as decent work and drifted in whenever the mood took them.
Even so, the seemingly smooth development of the Congo was not without problems. The trouble was the sex ratio.
Whether Japanese or German, the settlers in the Congo suffered from a severe imbalance of men and women. Women simply did not welcome migration to the wilderness. Unless already married or deeply in love with a partner, few women ever made the journey as far as the Congo.
The Germans were somewhat better off because the “Russian Germans” had emigrated as entire households, yet no fundamental solution existed.
“Just tell them to earn hard, go home, and get married.”
It was regrettable for a man who needed permanent settlers, but he could hardly force German women to the Congo. Japanese women were easier to move, since the Japanese government could apply compulsion, yet that route brought its own difficulties.
A good many of the women the Japanese authorities offer are prostitutes.
Import a pack of whores and venereal disease would race through the cramped colonial society in no time.
Waldemar decided to abandon the sex-ratio problem. The happiness of the colonial population had never been his concern, so the decision cost him little effort.
The world is wide, and there is much to do.
He soon turned his gaze elsewhere.