The War Court and Lap Pillow, Austria's Mandate of Heaven

Chapter 1458 Native Ransom and Quinine

It is inevitable that the natives from different tribes are forced together and are wary of and suspicious of each other.

When the Austrian colonial army arrived, chaos reigned. Some tribes were fighting each other, some were scrambling to escape, and some even fought against each other.

Soon Franz's desk was filled with reports of victory from the colonies, often reporting that tens of thousands of enemies had been annihilated while the country's own losses were in the double digits or even single digits.

Franz was not surprised by this. After all, this was in Africa, and it was hard to say how much truth there was in these good news.

Many colonies burned the bodies of the indigenous people in the name of preventing and controlling plague, and even the remaining bones were taken away by civilian colonial teams to be made into fertilizer in order to improve efficiency.

As for the captives, most of them were divided up by the Kingdom of Dahomey and the Empire of Oman. The Austrian Empire did not participate in the slave trade, it simply handed over the captives to those who were willing to pay the ransom.

In fact, many people from top to bottom in the Austrian Empire wanted to do this deal. After all, direct slave trading could bring much higher profits than handing over the captives to the Kingdom of Dahomey and the Empire of Oman.

The Austrian Empire's maritime power was also sufficient to support this trade, and Austria's allies even prepared markets, such as the United States, Brazil, and the Viceroyalty of La Plata.
However, Franz still did not intend to get involved in this kind of business. On the one hand, it was easy for other countries to catch him, and on the other hand, it was easy to form path dependence, which was not conducive to the long-term development of the colony.

Besides, the Austrian Empire signed an anti-slavery agreement. It would be fine if it was just skirting the rules, but if it really took off the mask and got involved, wouldn't that be slapping itself in the face?
Franz could put on a mask and be Mr. K, but he would never tell others that he was the king of the underworld of the Austrian Empire.

As for the Americans and Brazil, are they really speaking up for the Austrian Empire?

"Why could the British Empire trade slaves for hundreds of years? Why couldn't the Austrian Empire?"

This kind of argument is just for listening, it is not acceptable.

Oman and Portugal were too small in size and did not trade enough slaves, making them more easily suppressed by Britain, which led to inflated slave prices.

Historical Tip: Before the 20th century, the largest import commodity from Africa to the United States was black people.

Rather than complaining about injustice, it was more like adding fuel to the fire. The Austrian Empire's direct involvement in the slave trade could, on the one hand, drive down prices, and on the other hand, bring bad luck to the British.

In short, all the risks are borne by Austria, and they just have to sit back and reap the profits.

Franz didn't want to compete with those guys to see who had the lower moral standards, so he simply developed a ransom system.

That's right, don't you, America and Brazil, want cheap slaves? Buy them yourself!
Don't you British people pity those black people? Pay them!

Anyway, the black prisoners of war are there, and whoever wants them can pay. If you don't have money, forget it.

As for what the people who redeemed the prisoners of war wanted to do, it had nothing to do with the Austrian Empire. Steel can be used as a weapon or a farm tool. You can't stop producing steel just because it can be made into a weapon to kill people.

How can the British say that the Americans and Brazilians are not saving the people by ransoming the black prisoners of war? What if they really want to invite the blacks to eat watermelon and fried chicken in the manor and enjoy the sunshine at 37° north latitude?

The British may not care about evidence but only reason when dealing with small countries, but Austria is not a small country. Since they cannot provide evidence, they can only follow Franz's rules.

Moreover, if the British had not been behind the scenes and provided guns and supplies, the colonies of the Austrian Empire would not have been in such a mess. These ransoms were only to make up for the losses of the Austrian Empire. After all, colonies really cost a lot of money.

Many of the crops that were burned took several years to grow. During this period there was only input but no output. Ordinary colonial teams could not afford it at all, and the Austrian Imperial government had to bear it.

This is also one of the important reasons why agricultural development in British colonies was slow. Private capital mostly focused on short-term interests and had poor risk resistance.

To put it in a counterintuitive way, agriculture is actually a high-risk industry.

Various natural disasters, including floods, droughts, typhoons, earthquakes, locusts, rats, various birds and beasts, and crop diseases. The most famous of these is the potato late blight that caused the Great Irish Famine.

These factors will lead to reduced agricultural production or even total crop failure.

There are other human factors, the most important of which is war.

Taking this indigenous attack as an example, the small colonial team operated by private capital lost some manpower in the attack, and some crops were destroyed.

Such losses plus compensation are enough to bankrupt the operators behind it. It will take three to five years for the destroyed farmland to regain productivity. Not many people are willing to spend such a huge amount of time and money to continue fighting in the colony.

“From the discovery of the New World to the establishment of the thirteen colonies in North America, hundreds of years of development were not as good as the ten years after the enactment of the Homestead Act.”

Some people will definitely think of this sentence, but the environment of the African continent is far inferior to that of North America. The Supergiant Plains, which is considered by Europeans to be the "Promised Land of God", is no joke. The dark continent of Africa is nothing compared to the white forbidden area.

Not to mention how many people are willing to leave their homeland and go to Africa to open up new land, are ordinary people really ready to bravely venture into Africa?

If Franz really tried to copy the United States, it would either become a joke or a catastrophe.

At this time, even those officially authorized and powerful civilian teams will deliberately ignore some things repeatedly emphasized by the Austrian officials for various reasons such as saving costs.

For example, in terms of hygiene, serious plagues often broke out in areas colonized by civilian teams of the Austrian Empire. Without militarized management, some hygiene habits would be difficult to form in a short period of time.

What’s even worse is that many colonial teams would falsely report the number of people, but not distribute quinine to their men. Some did not want to spend money, always hoping that they could avoid malaria.

Some people smuggle goods to make a profit.
In short, the quinine reserves of the Austrian Empire's civilian colonial team were always insufficient, so people often died from malaria.

Improper handling of corpses would cause plague, thus starting a new vicious cycle. Moreover, these private teams often concealed the disaster, and when the Austrian colonial government discovered it, it was often out of control.

Why didn't the Austrian Empire distribute quinine directly, but required the colonial teams to buy it? Did Franz think quinine was more important than human life? Or was money more important than human life?

This kind of moral kidnapping question is meaningless.
For him, neither quinine nor money was important. What was important was that Franz did not expect those people to exchange human lives for money. As for why quinine was not distributed directly, many people actually overlooked a problem.

That is, the price of quinine at that time was comparable to gold. Before 1870, the price of a pound of unprocessed quinine was almost equivalent to a pound of silver, and the price of purified quinine was even higher.

If Franz had released the supply of quinine, his efforts over more than ten years would have certainly promoted the great development of British and French colonies, and even caused the world's colonial boom to break out ahead of time.