Chapter 1119 Trade with the Ottoman Empire

What really makes East Africa a little embarrassed is that the Ottoman Empire's current relationship with East Africa can be said to be at a very good stage. In order to gain the support of the Ottoman Empire in the occupation of the Persian Gulf colonies, East Africa has carried out a lot of cooperation with the Ottoman Empire. As of now, the Ottoman Empire is definitely a pro-East African country.

The relationship between the Balkan countries and East Africa is somewhat complicated. Among them, Romania has the best relationship with East Africa, but Romania is not a major participant in this round of Balkan crisis.

Romania is located in the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula and has actually been separated from the Ottoman Empire, so the contradictions between the two countries are not as sharp as those with other countries.

The second best country with East Africa on the Balkan Peninsula is Bulgaria. Bulgaria can be regarded as a small military power on the Balkan Peninsula. In the previous life, it broke out a combat power far beyond the national strength in the First World War.

Therefore, East Africa has always maintained a good relationship with Bulgaria, especially in military cooperation. East Africa is an important supporter of Bulgaria.

Moreover, from the perspective of economic interests, East Africa's trade with Bulgaria is second only to Romania among the Balkan countries.

Serbia is located in the interior of the Balkans and lacks access to the sea, while Greece is basically equivalent to the British lending ground, and its economy is fully controlled by the British, so Bulgaria has a natural advantage in trade with East Africa.

Of course, compared with Romania, an important oil producing area, Bulgaria is certainly far from being comparable to Romania.

After summarizing everyone's ideas, Ernst said: "In dealing with the relationship with the relevant countries in the Balkans, according to everyone's suggestions, it is not offended if it can be offended. As for explicitly supporting a certain country, it is indeed not in our interests."

"Moreover, we can only be regarded as bystanders in the Balkan Peninsula, and we cannot participate in Balkan affairs like other countries, so we temporarily choose to be indifferent to the Balkan Peninsula War. Of course, we should participate in the current arms trade market in the Balkan Peninsula."

After all, East Africa and the Balkan Peninsula are separated by a Suez Canal. As long as the Suez Canal is in the hands of the British, East Africa will not be able to achieve excessive intervention in European politics, and no matter how much investment is made, it will not have a corresponding effect.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, France, Britain, and even Germany are very different. They are not far from the Balkan Peninsula, or have smooth sea routes, so the main forces dominating the situation in the Balkan Peninsula are still these countries. Before East Africa controls the Suez Canal, it is basically impossible to play a leading role.

From this perspective, even if East Africa wants to do arms business in the Balkan Peninsula, it can only cooperate with the Ottoman Empire first. After all, East Africa cannot compete with other European countries in selling arms to the disputed region of the Balkans, and cannot get the lion's share.

The Ottoman Empire is different. In addition to being a Balkan country, the Ottoman Empire is also a country along the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The trade between East Africa and the Ottoman Empire will not be easily cut off due to restrictions from other countries.

So after this round of meetings, the first country that East Africa contacted was the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire naturally warmly accepted the "goodwill" revealed by East Africa.

Affected by the military cooperation between Germany and Eastern Austria, the weapons used by the Ottoman Empire are currently accelerating the Germanization, and Germany cannot support the Ottoman Empire as conveniently as East Africa. Germany needs to take care of the emotions of other countries in the Balkan Peninsula. Even if Germany supports the Ottoman Empire, it cannot bypass the Balkan Peninsula, while East Africa can choose to cooperate with the Ottoman Empire in the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf.

So in May 1912, East Africa took the lead in reaching a number of military orders with the Ottoman Empire, and the two countries agreed to complete the handover in Kuwait.

Since the Second Five-Year Plan, East Africa has begun to intentionally expand the scale of its national defense industry, and after the start of the Third Five-Year Plan, East Africa's military industry has received a lot of financial support and expanded a number of weapons production lines.

These defense industries were originally prepared by Ernst to deal with World War I, and now they can give the Ottoman Empire some sweetness.

As a German country, East Africa has many weapons that can be used with Germany, and the Ottoman Empire's army now has German weapons that dominate the mainstream. In addition, the two countries have carried out closer military cooperation as early as last year, which has laid a good foundation for East African weapons exports.

The weapons exported by East Africa to the Ottoman Empire were mainly rifles, machine guns and other military supplies.

In this round of the Balkan crisis, most European countries stood on the side of the Balkan countries, so this also gave East Africa a great advantage.

Many strategic materials can be exported to the Ottoman Empire under the pretext of civilian products, such as salt, grain, sugar, cotton, etc. Many of these materials cannot be produced by the Ottoman Empire itself, or the output is insufficient.

After all, the land and climate of the Ottoman Empire can be said to have the worst land quality among the world's major powers, and this is the result of the Ottoman Empire occupying many of the most fertile lands in the Middle East, such as the Mesopotamian Basin, the Asian Peninsula and part of the Balkan Peninsula in Europe.

Take food for example. In the past, Turkey, as the most developed country in the Middle East (excluding Israel), had a food self-sufficiency rate of less than 100%. Now the Ottoman Empire occupies a large amount of desert area, and with the deteriorating climate, it is impossible to be completely self-sufficient, and the quality of life is not even as good as that of Russia.

So the Ottoman Empire was naturally a major food importer, and in the past three decades, East Africa's food exports to the Ottoman Empire have grown at the fastest rate.

Although the Ottoman Empire can produce temperate and tropical crops such as wheat, corn, cotton, tobacco, and olives, they are all constrained by water problems and it is difficult to grow and produce on a large scale like other countries, so it also relies mainly on imports.

If it was before the industrial era, the agricultural scale of the Ottoman Empire was still considerable. The Ottoman Empire was once one of the largest cotton exporters in Europe, but today, the agricultural output of the Ottoman Empire cannot even meet the needs of its own industrial development.

Therefore, in East Africa's trade with the Ottoman Empire, weapons exports actually only account for a small part, and agricultural products such as food, sugar, tobacco, coffee, and other industrial products occupy a major position.

This is a pleasant surprise for East Africa now. With the large loan, East Africa's industry and agriculture have obtained a large amount of development funds, and now East Africa's industrial and agricultural production efficiency has been further greatly improved.

However, this also brought great pressure to East Africa. After all, products need to be sold after they are produced, so East Africa is facing the problem of overproduction, and trade with the Ottoman Empire temporarily alleviated the overproduction of East Africa's industrial production, especially the defense industry.

So world peace is definitely not a good thing for East Africa. The Balkan crisis has provided East Africa with a breathing space, and by taking advantage of the Balkan crisis, East Africa can more calmly deal with the future European full-scale war.

From the trade between the Ottoman Empire and East Africa, we can also see why there are so many people in the East African government who support the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire has a population of nearly 30 million and a profound historical background. The economic benefits it can bring to East Africa are far beyond the reach of a group of small countries on the Balkan Peninsula.