Chapter 1712 The Pearl of the Empire: South Africa
The localization of the Nanyang Islands has been carried out for more than ten years, so in the end, Luzon and Mindao were successfully localized and included in the empire's mainland.
In fact, the impact is not that big, people just let it take its course.
However, this is just what most people think. For some people, the successful localization of Luzon and Mindao in Southeast Asia has a huge impact.
Especially for the imperial subjects who have immigrated to Nanyang and the enterprises investing in Nanyang or related enterprises trading with Nanyang, the successful localization of Nanyang is very important.
At the same time, this also gave other overseas territories a great stimulus.
Such stubborn places as the Nanyang Islands can gradually and successfully localize, why can't they?
You must know that there is a reason why the localization of the Nanyang Islands has been so slow. In addition to the ferocious natives and numerous cannibals, the main reason is that the local natural environment is too harsh.
Immigrant mortality rates are too high.
The high mortality rate among immigrants makes immigrants reluctant to come.
There are no such people, so how can we talk about localization!
However, now that the Nanyang Islands, which have such a harsh natural environment, are about to be successfully localized, other overseas territories can naturally follow suit.
For a time, officials from overseas territories in India, the Americas, and Africa were all thinking about how to learn from the advanced localization experience in the Southeast Asian region and complete local localization as soon as possible.
In South Africa, a large number of officials are discussing how to speed up the localization process in the bright conference room on the second floor of the African Affairs Office.
"Although localization in Nanyang is excellent and efficient, not all methods can be used in Africa. We still have to adapt to local conditions and cannot learn all methods!"
"It is naturally unrealistic to learn all methods, but their policy of using barbarians to control barbarians is quite successful, and it can be completely combined with labor policies. This will not only effectively improve the progress of our infrastructure construction in Africa, but also
Complete localization faster!”
"Using barbarians to control barbarians sounds nice. Directly arming these barbarians sounds good, but have you ever thought that the Nanyang Islands are just islands. We can easily use the navy to separate these islands. Even if there are indigenous people,
Even if there is a riot, it can be controlled within a certain range and then be calmly suppressed.
But in Africa, is this possible?
Africa is a whole continent. Once these indigenous people are armed, what will happen if they rebel?"
"I suggest that we should adopt a prudent policy, based on the labor policy, gradually advance from various coastal strongholds, clean up one place, and immigrate to each place, instead of blindly supporting a large number of indigenous people!"
While many officials below were discussing, Tan Youling, Supervisor of African Affairs, was also deep in thought.
Tan Youling is the Supervisor of African Affairs who took office last year. Of course, this position is not actually a formal position, it is just a dispatch. He is just ordered to supervise African affairs and is a type of imperial envoy.
Folks generally call him the African Minister, as well as the Nanyang Minister, the Indian Minister, and the American Minister.
His official position is actually the Deputy Director-General of the African Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and he has a high ranking of the third rank.
In addition, he is also a bachelor of the Hanlin Academy. If this position is a real job, it would be a full fifth grade. However, his bachelor of the Hanlin Academy is not a real job, it is just a false title.
Basically, civil servants who work outside the country on errands, such as the Supervisor of American Affairs, the Supervisor of Indian Affairs, the Supervisor of Nanyang Affairs, the Imperial Ambassador to Europe, etc., all have the false title of Hanlin Academy, which has no actual meaning and is just a symbol.
That's all.
The official system of the Tang Dynasty was relatively complicated. There were errands, principal officials, and false titles. It was even more complicated especially for senior officials. False titles were either used to increase their rank or to demonstrate some political significance.
It's important, but it's not important either.
Sir, this is easy to understand.
But sending this one is more interesting.
For example, they are both ministers, one is an ordinary minister, and the other is able to enter the imperial study room. The nature of the two is completely different.
The former is just an ordinary minister, a second-rank official, but the latter is the minister on duty in the royal study room, one of the nine top officials in the empire, and can be said to be an extremely human minister.
In addition, in various yamen, many officials often have temporary assignments granted by superiors. For example, an official in the governor's yamen may be temporarily assigned by the governor to handle certain matters.
Dispatch often represents real power.
Tan Youling's official position is the deputy director of the Africa Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Based on his official position, he only has certain diplomatic authority, but his assignment is to supervise African affairs.
Therefore, he actually has the undisputed highest political power in Africa. The entire Africa, even the North African regions along the Mediterranean, such as Morocco, fall under his jurisdiction.
In this area, except for the direct mobilization of troops and interference in taxation work, he can basically intervene in other matters, including declaring war on an indigenous tribe, negotiating peace, etc.
Even taxation and military affairs, he can intervene to some extent.
For example, he does not have the authority to collect taxes, but he can provide tax subsidies to companies or ordinary people within his authority, which is equivalent to lowering taxes in disguise and meddling in taxation to a certain extent.
Many officials in the empire like to use various tax subsidies, tax rebates and other means to attract investment or simply reduce the burden on enterprises or people.
In this regard, the tax department often ignores this. They only collect taxes according to fixed regulations. After receiving the taxes, they leave a certain proportion of the taxes to the local government as local fiscal funds, and the rest will be directly transferred to the national treasury.
The money allocated to local finance, your local government can do whatever they want, whether it is all embezzlement or all tax refunds, it has nothing to do with them.
There is also military affairs, directly mobilizing the army for combat. Not to mention Tan Youling, other civil servants do not have this authority, and there are not even many within the military who have this authority.
However, as the Supervisor of African Affairs, Tan Youling can declare war and launch war when and where he deems appropriate.
How should I put it? In Africa, how to fight a war after it is launched is the military's business, but whether to fight or not is up to him. The military does not have this authority.
From this perspective, he actually also possesses certain military power.
But it's not absolute. If the military doesn't like him, or doesn't agree with a certain war, even if he declares war, the military can still choose to work as a foreigner.
Therefore, the war that the military wants to fight may not be possible.
But if the military doesn't want to fight a war, it certainly won't be able to fight it.
So a lot of the time, it has to be discussed.
Tan Youling, the African minister, naturally has huge power.
But it’s also stressful!
He previously served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of his native country, and although he specialized in African affairs, to be honest, this was his first time serving in Africa.
By the time he figured out the basic situation here, several months had passed.
Then, like the previous African ministers, he focused his work on localization!
The Holy Emperor cares about localization, and the military and political bosses in Jinling are naturally flattering, so they also care about localization. When it comes to civil servants and military officers in overseas territories, localization work is very important.
It's the kind of person who gets promoted if he does well, and gets fired if he doesn't do well.
Because the quality of localization work has been directly used as a criterion for measuring the performance of officials in overseas territories.
As for the industrial and commercial economy, it is useless.
Anyway, no matter how the overseas territories are developed, they can only engage in agriculture, and at most dig gold mines. Don't expect other industries. Business is mainly service industry, plus overseas trade and the like.
But the empire's top brass didn't care much about this.
This goes on and on, so localization has become the only breakthrough point for officials in overseas territories. If they want to be promoted, they should engage in localization.
It is said that the governor of Luzon has been preparing to be transferred back to his homeland to serve as governor of a certain province because of his contribution to the localization of Luzon. It seems that his rank has not changed, but the Luzon province is more important than the local province.
, clear at a glance.
If Tan Youling wants to achieve success as Minister of Africa, localization is an unavoidable task.
However, after careful analysis, he found that localization in this place was quite difficult.
One is that the African continent is too big, and many people from the Tang Dynasty have never set foot in the inland areas. It’s not that they can’t go, but they don’t dare to go. The natural environment in the inland areas is too harsh and people will die in minutes.
Even the natural environment in Nanyang is better than that in central Africa.
Whether it was the Portuguese in the past or the Tang Empire today, their presence in Africa was limited to coastal ports and did not penetrate into the inland areas at all.
Even in South Africa, what Datang actually controlled was only the South African plains with South Africa Port as its core.
The South Africa Plain is the name given by the Tang Empire to the two small plains connected to each other at the southernmost tip of the African continent. The two small plains combined are actually only about 20,000 square kilometers, which is not as big as Dajuan Island.
However, these two plains have a Mediterranean climate that is extremely rare in Africa. They have abundant rainfall and fertile land, making them very suitable for farming.
In addition, there is a large mountain range to the north, which stretches for hundreds of kilometers, directly cutting the South African plains from the African continent to the north.
At the same time, the Port of South Africa is also a necessary port connecting the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
The combination of these many conditions made the Tang Empire regard this area as a key development area.
More than 100,000 people immigrated here to farm and trade.
After many years, South Africa has become a pearl of the empire on the African continent!