Chapter 1339 - 348: Ambition

Chapter 1339: Chapter 348: Ambition

The very fact that the Third Fleet can place its headquarters in Fujairah speaks volumes; Fujairah lies on the land of the Arabian Peninsula, and Phuket Island where the Fourth Fleet is based is separated from Southeast Asia only by a narrow strait.

Among East Africa’s seven fleets, only the Seventh Fleet has its headquarters on Kalimantan Island, but East Africa is not the only power on Kalimantan Island—its northern part also hosts a United Kingdom colony, which is one of the reasons why the Seventh Fleet is preparing to relocate to Belitung Island.

The Seventh Fleet falls under the jurisdiction of the Pacific Fleet, and within the area commanded by the Pacific Fleet there are many possible locations to choose from, a flexibility that East Africa’s other two major fleets simply cannot match.

So, looked at this way, Qatar, a small peninsula, actually enjoys a more advantageous position than most of East Africa’s naval bases.

"Qatar!" Lomache said. "That’s quite a good choice. The port conditions in Qatar are far better than those of the military ports we currently possess, and Qatar has several excellent natural harbors. Of course, most importantly, Qatar has a natural Deep Water Port that our Beibu Gulf territory lacks. If we can seize Qatar, we can rely on it to build a large naval base for battleships and other large warships to berth."

The Third Fleet is naturally very familiar with the countries in its region, so Lomache and the other Third Fleet commanders are quite clear about Qatar’s natural conditions.

Plato said, "The only concern is whether our dispatching troops to Qatar will arouse the United Kingdom’s misgivings and thereby trigger unnecessary diplomatic and military conflicts."

Lomache rejected this, saying, "It shouldn’t. Although Qatar is a protectorate of the United Kingdom, in reality it is an extremely poor place. If it weren’t for maintaining order and stability in Qatar, the British probably wouldn’t even bother with it."

In the early 20th century, Qatar was so poor that, without exaggeration, the standard of living of Qataris was inferior to that of the natives on the African savannah.

Qatar’s economic pillars mainly had three aspects: first, a pathetically small-scale pastoral economy; second, the very important fishing industry; and finally, pearl diving, Qatar’s most crucial source of income.

Pastoralism is an old trade of the Arabs. In most Arab Countries, the land is barren and lacks rich and stable pastures, so in order to maintain livestock growth they can only continually migrate, seeking sparse grassland to develop animal husbandry.

Qatar has a small number of oases, which were the basic guarantee of the Qataris’ early survival. But Qatar is not large in area, and these oases are far from sufficient to support development and expansion; even combined with fishing, they can only sustain a very small population.

According to East African intelligence, Qatar’s total population is only around twenty thousand, and as is well known, the Arabian Sect is a religion that encourages childbirth. Looking at Qatar’s population, one can see the harsh survival conditions the Qataris face.

In fact, given Qatar’s current population scale, this is already quite a lot. If it relied only on pastoralism and fishing, Qatar could at most sustain about ten thousand people.

That Qatar’s population can reach twenty thousand is mainly due to two factors: pearl diving and robbery.

Pearl diving is one of the important industries along the Persian Gulf coast. In the past, pearls could basically only be obtained through natural collection. In Qatar, thousands of people lived off pearl diving, trading the pearls with surrounding regions to obtain essential subsistence goods.

Robbery is even simpler: it refers to the piracy prevailing in the Persian Gulf. This can also be counted as one of the Arabs’ traditional trades. East Africa’s Beibu Gulf territory used to be called the Pirate Coast, and neighboring countries such as Qatar and Bahrain were no exception.

Before the 1870s, piracy was a very promising occupation for the Arabs along the shores of the Arabian Peninsula.

At that time it was still the Era of wooden sailing ships; even the warships of the European naval powers could not be considered particularly advanced, and commercial vessels were even more fragile, making piracy a flourishing business worldwide.

Especially in regions like the Arab world, where survival conditions are harsh but a certain level of seafaring skill exists, piracy arises most easily—Qatari pirates were among them.

It was thanks to piracy that Qatar’s population could expand to its current scale, but this was already Qatar’s limit. After all, even in the age of sail, Qatar’s shipbuilding industry could not possibly be highly developed, given that they themselves lacked the raw materials required for shipbuilding.

Before the 1870s, Qatari pirates could still paddle small boats and operate actively in the Persian Gulf, but once the Ironclad Ship Era arrived, that approach ceased to work entirely.

Lomache said, "Back then, the reason the British turned Qatar into their protectorate was precisely to suppress the development of Qatari piracy and maintain the stability of the Qatari regime, thereby reducing the soil in which piracy could take root."

"In the last century, the pirates along the Persian Gulf coast were fully capable of harming the shipping business in the Persian Gulf under British control."

"But now the Era has changed. Even ordinary merchant ships are getting faster and faster, so if Qatari pirates want to keep developing, they must achieve a breakthrough in shipbuilding."

"Yet Qatar has no way to do this. Most of Qatar is desert; it cannot even supply its own timber for building large ships. It is also extremely poor and cannot afford to import slightly more advanced vessels from countries like the Ottoman Empire or Oman."

"Even if they really could do so, the development of various national navies now far exceeds their imagination. A large vessel is not cheap, and if it is sunk by naval forces escorting other countries’ shipping, the loss would outweigh the gain."

"Having lost the piracy business, Qatar is already facing severe survival problems, not to mention that its most important source of income, pearl diving, is now under huge threat."

The threat to pearl diving came from the emergence, in the early 20th century, of the industry of artificially cultivating and raising pearls, which caused the price of natural pearls to plummet.

It was just like what happened after the artificial diamond industry appeared: the price of natural diamonds directly nosedived. Of course, some might argue that in the previous world’s 21st century, diamond prices in the jewelry industry remained high, but that was mainly because international capital forcibly endowed diamonds with financial attributes.

It was like real estate in the previous world: a pile of rebar and concrete was speculated to extremely high prices, whereas in fact, the more houses are built, the cheaper they ought to be. After all, in normal logic most commodities are "valuable because they are rare." When houses are being built in ever greater numbers yet prices rise rather than fall until supply vastly outstrips demand, this process is clearly the result of deliberate manipulation.

If this process were "reasonable," then economic crises should not occur in today’s world. From the founding of East Africa until now, the world has already gone through multiple rounds of economic crisis, precisely because Europe, the United States, and East Africa—these industrial countries—have engaged in unlimited, blind expansion of production capacity.

This is also one of the reasons why this round of European war is being fought far more fiercely and bloodily than in original history: East Africa has become a Great Power of world industry, further intensifying the infighting within global capital.

As for the Qataris’ main source of income, pearl diving, no one is going to treat it as a financial product and artificially inflate its price, so after the birth of the artificial pearl industry, Qatar’s pearl diving industry had only one path left—extinction.

Lomache said, "From every angle, taking Qatar may be far easier than we imagine. The British themselves do not value Qatar, so even though it is a British protectorate, we need not care overly much. Moreover, the United Kingdom currently has no spare attention to look after Qatar’s security."

"Not only the United Kingdom; looking across the entire Persian Gulf coast, no one will step forward to seek justice for a backward small country like Qatar. So our acquisition of Qatar is entirely feasible, and using Qatar as a base, we can build two to three naval ports, thus reserving room for the future expansion of the Third Fleet."