Chapter 363: One Million Acres of Rubber Forest
"Huff… huff… huff…"
White steam poured out of the cylinders under the train, a thick mist rushing out to both sides of the rails. Some parts of the locomotive began to move, producing a ticking sound. Then came a rumbling pressure release, and the smokestack that had been letting out thin wisps of smoke suddenly spat out a dense black plume.
A massive jet of white vapor blasted skyward beside the smokestack, immediately followed by the sharp whistle of the locomotive: "Wooo…wooo…wooo…" like the shriek of some monstrous creature.
People standing by the tracks were jolted by the deafening sound. With one final exhalation of steam, the wheels began to turn, the smokestack fully roared to life, belching plumes of black smoke accompanied by a loud whooshing noise.
"Clank-chug…clank-chug…clank-chug…" The Constantino locomotive started rolling along the rails, its hefty steel wheels pounding on the iron tracks with a booming clatter.
Exiting Dar es Salaam's train station, the train steadily gathered speed toward First Town Station.
"Your Majesty, Constantino's top speed can reach fifty-seven kilometers per hour. But for stability and comfort on this trip, we'll keep it to about forty on our way to First Town Station," said one of the engineers on board.
Constantino glanced at his watch:
"So in about ninety minutes, we'll arrive back in First Town?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
His personal carriage had been specially built in Austria. The interior was lavish, on par with those of European monarchs. The highlights were the electric lighting and a small "coffee boiler" produced by Hechingen Household Goods Company—powered by a tiny internal combustion generator. When Austrian craftsmen first built this carriage, they assumed it was meant for the Habsburgs.
The train sped across East Africa's wilderness, scenery flashing past the windows. In the rural areas near each village, curious farmers gathered to watch the spectacle.
"Morse, look—there's that train-thing with a giant machine on top…"
For many in East Africa, including most Austrian immigrants, this was their first time seeing a train. Though some had passed through Trieste (which had a station), very few had ever ridden the rails themselves. Watching the locomotive thunder across open country left them in awe. But soon, as the train came through day after day, people would grow accustomed to the sight. For now, though, it was exhilarating.
This shift in perspective was huge. It shattered the notion many settlers held that Africa was backwards and undeveloped. They realized: the land itself wasn't the problem, it was just that until now, there hadn't been the people or resources to tap its potential.
Far Eastern immigrants, at least, were a bit more open-minded. Before the East African Kingdom's recruitment drive, many of them had never even known Africa existed. Perhaps they'd only heard of places like Korea, Wakoku (Japan), Annam (Vietnam), or, at most, Siam or India. Africa was only familiar to seamen, pirates, merchants, or well-educated officials.
…
In Hessen Province and Mitumba Province—located between Lake Solon (Lake Tanganyika) and the Congo River—runs the Mitumba Mountains. These two provinces had been incorporated into the East African Kingdom not that long ago, earlier than Zambia and the western plateaus by about six months. Yet combined, they had only around seventy thousand people in total—less than Dar es Salaam alone. It wasn't that these provinces were poor; it was just that Zimbabwe and Zambia had taken higher priority.
Historically, if you look at the region that became the Congo (DRC), the most developed areas like Katanga Province (in part) and North/South Kivu are basically the same territory as East Africa's Hessen and Mitumba Provinces. The modern-day DRC, despite abundant resources, was extremely underdeveloped, overshadowed even by neighbors like Tanzania and Rwanda—countries with fewer natural assets but better management. Indeed, various neighboring states sought slices of the Congo's mineral wealth.
All that potential was precisely why East Africa's Hessen and Mitumba Provinces held massive untapped mineral resources. But with minimal transport and low populations, extracting them was far in the future. Economic development there, for now, defaulted to agriculture.
To make good use of these provinces' climate, terrain, and population, Ernst ordered the creation of East Africa's largest rubber plantations. Previously, the kingdom had grown rubber trees around the Great Lakes area in smaller-scale test plots. This time, starting in 1871, Ernst aimed to greatly expand rubber acreage in Hessen and Mitumba.
In East Africa, the most suitable places for rubber included those two provinces plus southern Ethiopia. Yet the Mitumba Mountains had some unique advantages—adjacent to the Congo Basin, receiving moist Atlantic winds, abundant rainfall, and near the equator with consistently high temperatures, unlike the Ethiopian Highlands, which were higher and cooler.
Rubber trees are vulnerable to drought and cold. That ruled out most of East Africa's high plateau. The region's rainfall was too unpredictable, and worldwide, commercial rubber grows best within 17° of latitude on either side of the equator. In the modern era, only one major exception existed: southern China, which managed large-scale rubber at 18–24° N. East Africa's southwestern borderlands, though, matched the classic rubber belt perfectly.
Ernst's data suggested if the Hessen–Mitumba area devoted all its population to planting rubber, they could theoretically cultivate two million mu (about 133,000 hectares). But to be prudent, the kingdom aimed for one million mu first. That would distribute around fourteen mu (about one hectare) per person—some four to six hundred trees each. Meanwhile, these workers wouldn't need to produce their own grain; the kingdom had surplus food from the Great Lakes region. No risk there.
The global market for rubber was enormous. The worst-case scenario? You end up with excess rubber trees. Rubber trees require at least six years to mature. Better to have them standing and waiting for the market than miss the next big opportunity.
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