Chapter 523: A Trip to Northern Rhodesia

After flipping through the telegrams a few times, Pamela Mountbatten pulled out a few of them, picked up the phone and waited for a moment, “Marina, Zakharova, come here, it’s Alan who has an article on the evolution of island-type animals, you guys run it by me and submit it to the journal Nature.”

“Did he really write that?” Seeing the blank stare coming from Pamela Mountbatten, Princess Margaret changed her wording, “I mean, he has such a wide range of hobbies. But those two women of unknown origin seem a bit mean.”

“A little mean, yes, but not exactly of unknown origin.” Pamela Mountbatten replied in an unimpressed manner, “The two of them are from Northern Rhodesia, and have come over specifically to protect me.”

Wasn’t it surveillance? Princess Margaret wanted to say so, but as soon as Pamela Mountbatten’s words had left her mouth she dropped her gaze on Princess Margaret again, as if waiting for something.

So the whole room was as quiet as a chicken until two frosty-faced, tall two women came to the door, Marina coming in and saying directly, “Miss Pamela, where are the papers?”

“That’s all of them! No problem going by yourself, Zakharova and I will go to the medical company.” Pamela Mountbatten dressed as she spoke, then looked to Princess Margaret as if she remembered something, “Margaret, why don’t you go?”

“There’s nothing going on anyway!” Princess Margaret was a little embarrassed to express her desire to follow.

“Here’s today’s schedule plan!” Pamela Mountbatten had finished dressing and gave Zakharova a form, “The list of privatization and mergers and acquisitions regarding the arsenal is the main agenda in the territory recently, the current shipbuilding industry is in the middle of a boom period, wanting mergers and acquisitions isn’t too easy, this side is put on one side first, and mergers and acquisitions of the military-industrial enterprise information has to be examined and reviewed, this is also our most concerned matter, and this one we also include Mr. Mihailovich.”

“Ms. Pamela, I know.” Zakharova looked over the schedule grid, “About the trip to Libya?”

“The exploration team has already gone, I myself don’t necessarily have to make the trip myself, the nearest place worth making a personal trip to is New Delhi, the medical companies have been consolidated and a series of preparations should have been made. By the way, those of you who ran away to Northern Rhodesia should not be at odds with the Germans, right?”

Seeing Zakharova with a smile on her face, Pamela Mountbatten returned the same smile, “It seems I was right. But thank you Northern Rhodesia for the Comet airliner order, I know that the Northern Rhodesian Commissioner alone would not have been able to accomplish this without your strong support.”

Of course the most pressing matter for Pamela Mountbatten now was for Charles Brooke to be able to get his previous, Sarawak dominion back from the Colonial Department, and she hoped to be able to get this done before she left for New Delhi, to save a long night’s sleep.

At this very moment, after Alan Wilson had finished writing his report on the necessary writing to Whitehall, he boarded a plane, accompanied by Grace, for an impromptu trip to the capital of Northern Rhodesia.

This trip to Cairo had not been thought of as a visit to Northern Rhodesia, but Grace had come to Cairo to initiate the invitation, and Alan Wilson, thinking that he had indeed once promised that he would make a trip to Northern Rhodesia, went along with the invitation to be a guest.

Hedy Lamarr’s appearance surprised Grace, but Alan Wilson did not see eye to eye with Grace, mentioning that he hoped to find a couple of assistants for Vivien Leigh.

“Uh, is it someone reliable?” Grace mused for a moment, her eyes resting on Hedy Lamarr for a large number of moments and continued, “Mr. Allen, I think a few may not be enough, how many female assistants do you really need?”

“French Woodpecker Studios, the United States will only need Vivian, that’s all for now.” Alan Wilson was not embarrassed at all, he only wanted a few assistants cum bodyguards, these leaks out of the Balkans wanted hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of colonies.

“But I heard that you guys have some misunderstandings with the Southern Rhodesia side?” Alan Wilson was reluctant to talk more on this issue, and instead asked about the recent mutual accusations between North and South Rhodesia, inquiring what was going on.

The origins of Rhodesia stemmed from the Victorian period, when Cecil . John. Rhodes was the son of a sickly clergyman from Hertfordshire, with a head full of the notion of Britain leading the world’s heavyweights and a bank account full of the lucrative gold-digging profits of the South African gold rush.

Using diplomacy and bribery, threats and schemes, Rhodes created a company to acquire concessions in the African hinterland, far north of the British province of the Cape of Good Hope. This area was then called Zambezia.

Rhodesia was named after him, and the British government never took direct control of the area, but allowed Rhodes’ company to retain a high degree of autonomy, and backed it up with British troops from outside the region. White settlers, mainly from Britain and South Africa, would first capitalize on the agricultural and mining concessions, and later take complete political control of this vast, rich and mineral-rich land.

As for Northern Rhodesia, a huge copper mine was later discovered, but the population was small. Alan Wilson pondered, could it be because of the conflict over the ownership of the copper mine.

Grace shook her head and spoke directly to explain, “It was the southerners who were smuggling medicines into Northern Rhodesia, and we discovered them.”

“What’s in that?” Alan Wilson frowned, this was considered a big deal.

“It would have kept the natives alive, and after we arrived to live in Northern Rhodesia, we were naturally interested in Southern Rhodesia, which had been developed much earlier, and wanted to comb through history to see if there were any lessons to be learned from this neighbor to the south.” Grace paused at this point and said, “Naturally we began to study the Rhodesian Land Distribution Act.”

Alan Wilson nodded his head, he knew about this bill, this bill divided the land of Rhodesia equally between the tribesmen and the colonizers, forty percent of it belonged to the tribes in common, forty percent of it was the private farms of the colonizers, five percent could be purchased and operated by the tribesmen, and the remaining fifteen percent was used as a nature reserve.

The bill stipulates that the colonists are not allowed to enter the tribal lands or interfere in the internal affairs of the tribe, and that the tribe is to respect the colonists’ private ownership of the land. Tribal people can come to the colonizer’s private farms to work, go to school, and trade with the colonizer for supplies that the tribe needs. Some tribesmen also stay on the colonizer’s land and settle down, integrating into the capitalist production system.

“We found that the soil body allocation bill in Southern Rhodesia, after it came into existence, has tripled the native indigenous population. Keep in mind that this was a 1930’s act, and it’s only been twenty years since then.” Grace explained, “In addition to fertility forces, there’s also the fact that modern medicine has saved so many indigenous lives from escaping beyond the laws of nature that since two years ago, my father and the chiefs of the Ustasha have decided that it’s the duty of every man to prohibit the entry of foreign medicines into Northern Rhodesia.”

It was called professionalism! Alan Wilson’s eyes widened a little, and he had to say a word of admiration, worthy of being from the Balkans, needless to say, it must have been the scarcity of medicines that created the demand, allowing the Southern Rhodesia side to find a business opportunity, leading to mutual accusations and confrontations.

“What are you talking about?” Heidi Rama turned ghostly awake and yawned, her days had been quite full lately, her whole body had a kind of lethargy, she was always drowsy compared to the men’s glowing spirits.

“It’s nothing, Grace said she’d take us around Victoria Falls sometime.” Alan Wilson, with a gentle face, did not for the sake of telling Hedy Lamarr about the local conflict, and the other was not fit to hear that.

It was like these Slavs thought that, as in Southern Rhodesia, the enactment of a seemingly equitable land distribution bill would sooner or later roll over because of the growth of the indigenous population, but these Slavic populations weren’t much.

This Alan Wilson can think of, maybe Mihailovich and the others, will think of something from Europe. Maybe they’d send someone to encourage the anti-Titoist organizations to organize people who didn’t like the current government to cross the border, but that effort would only be better than nothing. After all, as a socialist country, the administration was still very strict.

Even if it was Mihailovich targeting the entire Eastern European countries above, infiltrating everywhere to organize smuggling, he probably wouldn’t be able to fill up the white population of Northern Rhodesia fast enough.

Eventually, the plane landed in Lusaka, the most important city in Northern Rhodesia, which is also the center of Zambia’s industry and commerce and an important distribution center for agricultural products. It is surrounded by the country’s main production areas for maize, cotton, tobacco and other crops and large pastures.

North Rhodesia colonial government is also here, out of the airport Allen Wilson found Lusaka is also decent, watching the appearance also thought it was a European honesty, of course, the scale is not big is to be expected.

Just here the prevailing language, it is difficult to imagine that this is a British colony.

“We’re learning English as well, it’s already included in the textbooks for underage learning, as for adults, it’s more difficult to learn now.” Grace pointed to a signboard that clustered multiple languages, “The two languages under English are Croatian and Serbian scripts, in fact, at first they wanted to include Russian as well, then they felt it was unnecessary. But the final decision is still under discussion. We already know that many Germanic people have actually been expelled from Eastern Europe, and these people are supposed to understand Russian.”

“You guys still miss the Germanic people in Eastern Europe?” Alan Wilson burst out laughing in surprise, “It’s not black natives anyway, so anything goes right?”

“In principle, Commissioner Allen, you know us!” Grace said very frankly, “We have to help each other, that’s what you said.”