Chapter 1385 - 370: Second Peace Conference

Chapter 1385: Chapter 370: Second Peace Conference

An ancient saying goes: Excess leads to decline; when a state or object is overly prosperous, it will inevitably decline. Currently, the economy of East Africa seems to be in this phase.

If various countries wish to avoid such a result, they must open new paths to break free from this cycle. The United Kingdom and previous maritime overlords achieved this by continuously conquering other regions, thereby breaking the limitations of their domestic development.

This led to the rise of global colonialism, peaking from the late 19th to the early 20th century, but by the outbreak of World War I, colonialism clearly could no longer resolve the original issues. The world had been carved up, leaving no new markets to establish.

This is why the old order defenders, England and France, have shown signs of decline in recent years. However, in terms of their economic and social development, the United Kingdom and France are not developing slowly; they just pale in comparison to emerging industrial nations like the United States, East Africa, and Germany.

Nonetheless, for countries like East Africa that arrived later, breaking the world order established by England and France is no easy feat. Germany was the first challenger, but ultimately, it struggles to break the constraints set by England and France due to its size.

Germany’s geopolitical disadvantage compels it to take risks. Even if it doesn’t start a war, it would ultimately be strangled by neighboring powers from the cradle.

East Africa and the United States, being distant from Europe’s troubles and large in size, instead have this as their talisman on their paths to rise.

In reality, the process of East Africa rising on the African Continent and the United States rising on the North American Continent in terms of difficulty is rather similar.

When the United States was established, its enemies were primarily Native Americans on the North American Continent, while East Africa faced the Bantu people in Africa. Although separated by hundreds of years, the civilization level of Native Americans two hundred years ago and the Bantu during East African colonial period were nearly indistinguishable.

The former excelled at tools of stone and created a relatively prosperous Stone Age civilization; the latter could produce crude iron tools but had a relatively deficient civilization. While the West African origin, though hosting several ancient civilizations, was also a secondary civilization of the Arabian Sect.

No matter the development level of either, as long as they hadn’t reached a relatively mature feudal society stage, they were no match for Americans and East Africans armed with hot weapons.

Feudal society still had some resistance capacity against colonialism, like the Far East Empire in the 19th century. If Ernst had faced Bantu people whose civilization level matched that of the Far East Empire, the Rhein Royal Family would never have established a foundation in Africa.

Not to mention feudal society, most Bantu people hadn’t entered into a slave society but were in a transition between primitive society and slave society. Only regions closer to North Africa, such as the Bantu states like Buganda, which was exterminated by East Africa, counted as relatively rudimentary feudal kingdoms, influenced by the Arabs.

Bantu civilization is difficult to assess using traditional civilization criteria. Even in the Buganda Kingdom, a feudal kingdom, the slave system was likely prevalent.

This resembles 19th-century East Africa and America before the Civil War. Undoubtedly, the United States was a typical capitalist nation, yet the slave system existed, and East Africa was even more complicated. Nineteenth-century East Africa was entirely a hodgepodge, with shadows of slavery, peasant slavery, feudal monarchy, capitalism, and even collectivism.

This placed East Africa always as an exceptional presence on the world stage, explaining why prior to the 19th century East Africa practiced a policy of isolationism. Without this, East Africa’s social system might have prompted collective crusades by the International Community, embodying the ’five poisons.’

Entering the 20th century, East Africa gradually aligned its systems with the so-called "International Community," which is now Europe.

Europe holds the world’s discourse power and hegemony. Therefore, once European countries reached a consensus, they naturally could "define" any other region and country in the world.

And it was precisely due to the inability of European countries to reach a consensus regarding the United States and East Africa that they escaped calamity, just like how Germany and Austria-Hungary never interfered with East Africa over social system issues.

Though Germany and Austria-Hungary deep down looked down on East Africa, this African nouveau riche, East Africa was at least "a poor relative" to them, half akin to themselves; this was one of the major reasons East Africa leaned towards the Allies during World War I.

...

October 1919.

European nations held a second round of peace conferences again at The Hague in the Netherlands, four months after the conclusion of the first peace conference.

In the first peace conference, although countries like France and Austria-Hungary had leaned towards ending the war, the conflict between the United Kingdom and Germany was the main obstacle to European peace.

As de facto leaders of the Allies and Allies, neither the United Kingdom nor Germany were willing to end the war easily, for neither had achieved the desired results.

The United Kingdom participated in World War I primarily to suppress Germany, while Germany aimed to overthrow British hegemony. With neither achieving their ultimate goals, they naturally remained deeply unsatisfied.

However, as time progressed, both countries, despite their reluctance, were forced to mutually concede due to the war’s prolongation. Besides the rise of domestic anti-war sentiment and the activities of the Labor Party in Europe, changes in the battlefield also compelled both countries to refocus their efforts at the negotiating table.