Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1722 Digestion of South Africa

After two years of delay, the funeral of Governor Jan van Riebeck was officially held on April 1676, 4.On this day, the body of Van Riebeck, who had been in the underground mortuary of the Cape Town Cathedral for two years, was taken out by his friends after obtaining permission from the East Bank, and then buried outside the city On a wasteland privately owned by his family.

Van Riebeck died of crush injuries after his residence was hit by multiple shells and collapsed during the Siege of Cape Town two years ago.For this person, the East Coast people have no ill feeling towards him. After all, everyone is their own master and there is nothing to say.Moreover, Van Riebeck had a good governance, won a lot of rights and interests from the East India Company for the local Boers, and his prestige in the Dutch South African colony was relatively high, even surpassing the founder of the colony and the first governor, Haimer De Young.

Prior to this, because the East Coasters confiscated Van Riebeck's estate in the outskirts of Cape Town, his family could only park the body in the church basement.Two years after the end of the war and everything in Cape Town is back on track, Bai Yutang, the new administrative commissioner of the River Central District, after receiving unremitting complaints from Van Riebeck's family, out of various considerations, has changed the state-owned farm into a state farm. Van Riebeck's estate returned the house and part of the land to them, and finally Van Riebeck's funeral was held as scheduled.

The regional administrative office has been moved to Baiyutang in Cape Town, and he also attended the funeral with Guo Handong, the commander of the South African Garrison Army. It is regarded as a respect for the former governor of Van Riebeck, and of course he did not show it to the large number of local Dutch people. The meaning is more political.

"Why has the immigration to Guangcheng, Yincheng, and Lishan stopped in the past few months? When I went to the local area to check the militia training work, the local cadres always complained that the immigration has almost stagnated, often within a month. Moreover, I heard that the supplies, money and food promised to them are often delayed or even in short supply, which greatly affects the local reclamation work, Commissioner Bai, what's going on?" He showed up at the funeral Afterwards, the two men with the highest status in the Central River area of ​​South Africa left the scene one after the other, went to the nearby grove, chatted while strolling.

The words just now were asked by Guo Handong, and his tone was a little blunt, but it was also in line with his usual style.After hearing this, Bai Yutang could only helplessly spread his hands, and responded: "Now we have just annexed the Dutch South African colony and established two counties, Cape and Pingyu. According to the requirements of the superior and the past practice, new immigrants must not Most of them have to be resettled here in order to dilute the large number of Dutch residents here. Therefore, the number of immigrants sent to Guangcheng, Yincheng, Qisi, and Xinxi is extremely limited. The allocated number of immigrants is less than 3000, plus some people who are occasionally exiled from the mainland, the number is quite insufficient. It is not enough to fill the two counties of Kaipu and Pingyu, let alone send people to Guangcheng and Yincheng. Waiting for the land. Let’s wait, wait another two years, and wait until the Dutch land survey work in Cape and Pingyu is finished.”

The two counties of Cape and Pingyu mentioned by Bai Yutang just now were specially approved by the local Government Administration Council at the beginning of this year. They are respectively the 120th and 121st county-level administrative units in the country. The former Dutch colony of Cape Town), Caigang Township (former Dutch colony of Stellenbosch town) and Baiting Township (former Dutch colony of Gaowens town) are three townships, and Pingyu County is under the jurisdiction of Pingyu Town (formerly the Dutch colony of Bredasdorp), Zhouli Township (formerly the town of Proteum in the Dutch colony), Gebei Township (formerly the town of Haimer in the Dutch colony) and Langling Township (the former town of New Hollen in the Dutch colony) township.

After these two counties were formally brought under the control of people from the east coast, Bai Yutang, commissioner of the regional administrative office, moved about [-] immigrants from the Far East to here at the beginning of this year, and at the same time exiled about [-] Tupi Indians from the mainland. And criminal prisoners were also placed here to dilute the white residents here.

At the same time, according to the usual practice, they counted the former Dutch residents of the two counties, and those who were willing to stay as citizens of the east coast immediately went to the township government level and obtained an identity certificate, and those who did not want to stay were limited to find a way before the end of 1676. Leaving - on this point, the Dutch ambassador Van Beveninghe has discussed with the east bank before and determined a solution. It is expected that these people should be able to leave by boat within this year.

And the land of these people who left, the east bank government also uniformly purchased according to the market price of the country.Although the Dutch were reluctant, thinking that the price was too low, they had no other choice but to admit it and leave.The land of those who did not leave was also measured uniformly, and then counted and redistributed. People with more land were forced to buy it by the government, and those with less land were purchased with loans from the government. The principle is that the upper limit of the land owned by each person should not be More than [-] acres, and this is also a clause clearly recorded in the "Household Law" of the East Coast Republic of China.

After these tasks were completed, the government confiscated a large number of Xhosa black and Khoisan red slaves in the two counties (of course, some economic compensation will be considered for the slave owners, but not too much), and they were sent to the Work in some state-run farms built by the government, and promise them that they will be free after seven years of working, and go to live in the Free State of North America. Life is not too difficult for years.

Undoubtedly, measuring the land and confiscating slaves made the local Dutch residents extremely angry, not to mention that the Protestant Lutheranism they believed in was not recognized by the East Bank government, and the church was ordered to close.The superposition of these things once caused many Dutch people with ulterior motives to initiate a riot, but it was quickly suppressed by the officers and soldiers of the Eighth Mixed Battalion of the Army who were waiting in full force, without any splash, and it also made other people's hearts cry. His heart cooled down quickly, and he calmly and helplessly accepted everything in front of him.

And it was the strong deterrence of more than 1000 officers and soldiers of the Eighth Mixed Battalion that allowed the next nearly [-] immigrants to be distributed smoothly and safely.They live together with the Dutch in proportion, and their intention to dilute the proportion of local whites is quite obvious. I believe that in the next few years, a large number of residents will still be relocated, further diluting the number of local thousands of Dutch Boers, and eventually turning this land into It is the land where the people of the east coast are firmly rooted.

In what Bai Yutang explained to Guo Handong just now, this part of the immigration was mentioned, and he said that at least in the next two years (1677, 1678) all the immigrants obtained in the Inner Hezhong area would also try their best to be resettled in the two counties of Cape and Pingyu Therefore, it is basically impossible for Guangcheng, Yincheng and other places to receive foreign immigrants-of course, from another perspective that is not easy to publicize, the four towns of Guangcheng, Yincheng, Qisi, and Xinxi will have a very large number of towns in the future. The big ones may not be under the jurisdiction of the Hezhong District Administrative Office, so of course they are unwilling to send the few immigrants here.After all, once the administrative regions of South Africa are re-divided in the future, and these four townships will no longer be managed by the Hezhong District Administrative Office, isn't everything they are doing now just making wedding dresses for others?This is something they would never agree to anyway!Therefore, the above-mentioned four townships can only wait hard, at least until 1679 before new immigrants may move in.

Guo Handong is not clear about the twists and turns, but as a young and promising young man in the army, the mind of making contributions is constantly dominating his brain.For example, the war against the Kama Kingdom just ended last year, and he managed to drive those people far east, and acquired a large area of ​​land for the country (but it has not yet been actually controlled), and now Thinking of launching a new round of offensive, continue to expand the territory.That's why he asked the question just now. If Guangcheng, Yincheng and other places are not well built and the production is not developed enough, they cannot be used as an effective forward base and supply base. Saying it is definitely not good news.

Of course, Bai Yutang also understood what Guo Handong meant, but now the two of them held important civil and military positions, their identities were different, and their priorities were also different.Bai Yutang couldn't understand what Guo Handong's idea was, he just wanted to seize the time to make another big contribution in South Africa, make another "big news", so that he would have enough capital to be promoted to other places—— Liao Xiaoyao, the captain of the Far East Denglai Pioneering Team, is about to return to China to serve on the executive committee. There are even rumors that he will serve as the chairman of the executive committee, replacing Chairman Qi Wangping, who has overdue his service for two years. Is it the position of the captain of the Denglai Pioneering Team and the commander of the Denglai security that has always attracted everyone's attention?

To be honest, Bai Yutang didn't intend to make things difficult for such a promising young military officer.It's just that if you want to show off, do I, Lao Bai, just want to remain unknown for a lifetime?Why don't you make progress?What are you kidding?Do you know how many paths I have traveled and how many expectations I have carried?How could it be possible to accompany you to fight for military exploits just because you want to make military achievements!Therefore, when the interests of the two faintly conflicted, Bai Yutang did not give in too much, but worked step by step according to the previously formulated work plan, trying to digest the Dutch South African colony.After all, he also needs political achievements and merits. It is impossible to rely on the military in everything and act as their logistics supply officer. How decent is that!

After the funeral, Bai Yutang patted Guo Handong who looked a little unhappy, didn't say anything, and then returned to his new office in Cape Town to handle government affairs.The first one is naturally the South African railway project that has been approved countless times and has been shot down countless times!

This railway, starting from Hezhong Port, crosses the three counties of Hezhong, Tianxiong and Lishan (a branch line from Gaoda Township to Cape Town may also be built), basically covering the best areas of South Africa, and radiating almost two Ten villages and towns with a population of more than [-], there is still a need for construction. At least compared with some loss-making lines in the local area, this place should be able to barely maintain a balance of payments. Of course, the premise is that the cable telegraph subsidy must also stay on the railway. department.

Since more than half of the start-up capital of this railway was raised by the local government of South Africa—the other half was invested by the central government, which is said to have borrowed the wind of today’s large infrastructure—so it was dubbed the “Diamond Railway” by many people in China, which means South Africa's Trans-River region scraped together start-up capital by shipping almost all the diamonds it collects back home to sell.At the same time, the central government appreciates this kind of determination to sell iron and steel to build the railway, and finally decided to allocate part of the funds from the transportation lottery to help the Hezhong District Administration to build the railway.

In addition to the top priority of the railway, Bai Yutang is also very concerned about Walvis Bay and Hailan, which are also under the jurisdiction of the Hezhong area.To be honest, these two ports are located on the coast of the Namib Desert, but they can indeed create great economic news, so they have also attracted some local investment. They plan to renovate and strengthen the docks here. Throughput efficiency.In addition, Bai Yutang is even considering whether to build a large leather processing factory or a seafood processing factory here to improve the local processing level and keep as much profit as possible locally.You know, the fishery resources and seal resources here are too rich, which can create massive benefits every year. It is also the only way for ships going north to return to the mainland via South Africa. The geographical location is also quite critical, so it is worth investing in. Maybe it will become another big cash cow under the administration of the Hezhong District Administration in the future.

Finally, it is all kinds of trade with the New China Pioneering Team that is close at hand-strictly speaking, it is not too close, and when the weather cooperates, it will take more than half a month's voyage.Now, various plantations are blooming in Xinhuaxia Island, vanilla, sisal hemp, pepper, cane sugar, coffee, cocoa, cotton and other special products have become bulk export materials, which are sold everywhere, not only in the local area, but also in Ottoman, Persian The market is almost occupied.

And it is precisely because these cash crops are so easy to sell that the area of ​​local grain cultivation is relatively small. Except for some sorghum, watermelon and other crops planted in some dry land, most of the grain is imported.Among them, rice is imported from the Kingdom of Melina on the Central Plateau, and agricultural products such as wheat, peanuts, sesame, soybeans, and corn are imported from the middle of the river in South Africa (the grain export of Yicheng area has not yet been on the right track), and beer, wine, etc. are even more important. This is the case, so there is a very deep trade foundation between the two places, which is very worth taking advantage of.For example, I recently heard that the New China Exploration Team is going to launch the largest attack on the natives along the coast in many years. It is currently in the process of raising logistics supplies, and the Hezhong area has received a large order of food. This is the direction of our efforts in the future. Well!

(End of this chapter)