Chapter 726 Going Deeper
"There has been a change in our monitoring target. These Portuguese businessmen are all very well-connected people. Their recent actions fully illustrate the problem. It is like the merchants at the end of the year continue to carry out promotions and discounts in order to earn the last business, so that they can return. They were celebrating Christmas, but it's only March, so their behavior suggests there are other factors that make their business unsustainable."
As an intelligence officer in East Africa, Eureka keenly observed the unusual behavior of Portuguese merchants. They increased their purchases from East Africa and transported the goods at maximum capacity. These are East African specialties, especially crocodile skin and Ivory and other rare items found only in East Africa.
Of course, Mozambique itself does not lack these, but Mozambique’s output is not as large as that of East Africa. After all, they do not have enough manpower, so importing from East Africa is the most cost-effective.
You only need to prepare cash and vehicles, and you can pull the semi-finished goods directly to the eastern port, and then transport them back to Europe by ship for sale.
"Eureka, it feels like our missions have been the most frequent in the past year, but I have a hunch that these are all coming to an end," said his colleague Rice.
"It seems that the other side is preparing to reveal its trump card. How can we continue to go deeper and pass the information back?" Eureka asked.
"Just follow them. Now we are Portuguese, so as long as we follow other caravans, we can further know the detailed reasons for this change." Rice wanted to further solve the mystery, so he planned to follow the Portuguese directly The caravan traveled through the interior of Mozambique and then out to sea in the east before returning to East Africa.
"This is indeed a risky operation. We are not real businessmen after all, so it is easy to make mistakes in details, so in order to avoid misunderstandings, it is best to act like a fledgling." Eureka suggested.
The advantage of Eureka and Rice is that they are young, and young people are always inexperienced, so they no longer appear obtrusive in the eyes of a bunch of smart Portuguese businessmen.
"Having said that, there is an unavoidable problem, that is, if the situation suddenly changes, I am afraid we will not be able to pass the news back to the mainland." Rice said.
"It's all the fault of these Portuguese people. No wonder they have become weaker and weaker over the past few hundred years. They have never thought of repairing the roads in the country, and they have not even popularized and promoted new things like telegraphs, so they have no way to do it in Africa. Compete with us." Eureka also said speechlessly.
As long as you compare East Africa and Mozambique, you will know why the Portuguese suffered a complete defeat in the last war.
That is, they don't pay enough attention to the colonies. The various infrastructures are limited to a few coastal cities that can barely be seen, and there is basically no development of the inland.
Not to mention the construction of railways like those in East Africa, even the number of muddy trails is insufficient. Therefore, it is understandable that Mozambique and Angola have not changed much for hundreds of years. If some modern industrial products are thrown away, the Portuguese colonies have basically maintained their status. What it was like in the time of their ancestors.
This has also brought great inconvenience to intelligence work in East Africa, which is why Eureka and Rice complained.
If they were at home, they would have been able to send messages back to East Africa in time through the telegraph network built in East Africa. However, the Portuguese have not even built a telegraph to the mainland. Instead, they need to travel to East African cities such as Dar es Salaam. Paying to use East Africa's telegraph system is what helped make Dar es Salaam the most important gathering place for business intelligence in Africa.
Eureka: "The Portuguese military power is mainly along the coast. In peripheral areas such as the inland, we can only inquire about some meaningless information from 9 to 5 every day, so we should apply with our superiors to enter the hinterland of Mozambique to investigate. "Fan, as for intelligence transmission, because of the poor construction situation in Mozambique, we cannot overcome it. We can only deal with it first, and at least transmit a lot of data from the hinterland to the mainland, so we should not be anxious."
"It makes sense. Unless the Portuguese restore their glory a hundred years ago, even if they launch a war during this period, they will not be able to make progress easily. After all, our blockade on them is stricter, but East Africa only knows about Mozambique five or six times." Mozambique probably only knows one or two points about East Africa," Rice said.
Rice has actually praised the Portuguese enough. The Portuguese intelligence system has gained twice the result with half the effort in East Africa over the years. It can also be said that nothing was accomplished.
Because there is no sophisticated intelligence system in Portugal, let alone a colony like Mozambique.
In fact, not only Portugal, most of the intelligence systems of European countries in this era were rubbish. Take the last Franco-Prussian War as an example. Napoleon III's important channel for obtaining German troops on the front line was actually the newspapers in the rear.
Of course, this is understandable. There is no household registration policy in Europe, and people move among various countries, especially during wars. Wherever a war breaks out, it will cause a large flow of people in Europe. Moreover, European countries are small in size, and any trouble is very easy to detect. In this case, there really is no need to put much effort into intelligence.
Spending more money will not have the same effect as making more friends and relatives in Europe. According to the complex relationships among European nobles, they are the easiest source of information.
From the central to the local level, the nobility controlled everything in Europe, especially at the grassroots level. The landowners and aristocrats were the hubs that directly contacted local residents. The aristocrats controlled all aspects of the local area, including population information.
In the past, East Africa was able to immigrate so many Germans from South Germany only through friendship with the South German nobles. In rural areas where the population is booming, people are just worthless numbers. Once they are cut, another crop will grow.
This is even more true according to Germany's population density, so East Africa's digestion of these excess populations is beneficial to both parties.
After all, if the population exceeds the acceptable range, it will inevitably cause social problems, and Germany does not have a vast colony like the United Kingdom. If the British can have more children, I am afraid the British government will be very happy. There will always be a place to arrange them. After all, even Criminals have a continent to exile to.
The German population will inevitably spill over to "same-culture areas" like East Africa. Of course, this process has disappeared with the completion of Germany's industrialization, and now Germany has become a new population importing country in the world.
However, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is developing relatively slowly, cannot get rid of this situation for the time being. However, the annual population outflow from the Austro-Hungarian Empire is not large and remains within a reasonable range every year. Unless it is special circumstances during the war years, it will Like the last Italian-Austrian War, which resulted in a massive population loss in Venice.
This was a good thing for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many of the Austro-Hungarian immigrants absorbed by East Africa were Slavs and Italians, which greatly eased the ethnic conflicts in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Of course, doing this in East Africa also caused some negative effects, that is, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were no longer as aggressive as in their previous lives. After all, social conflicts were alleviated and the governance crisis was avoided to a certain extent, so there was no need to resort to extreme war methods. transfer.
The most important thing is that in the last Russo-Turkish War, the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not show the ugly face of taking advantage of the situation in its previous life. Now the relationship between Russia and Austria is far less sharp than in the previous life, and Bismarck can continue to maintain the relationship between the European Three Kingdoms Alliance.