Room 12

"TOWARDS NEW SHORES!" - COLONIAL ACQUISITIONS

After the founding of the empire in 1871, an issue arose that had occupied Bismarck even as chancellor of the North German Confederation the question of the necessity of German colonies abroad. In 1868 Bismarck had cited a number of reasons against colonial acquisitions. British and French experience with colonial policy had shown, he said, that "the costs incurred by the support and defense of colonies very often exceed the benefit derived by the mother country." He asserted that it was "difficult to justify ... having the entire nation shoulder considerable tax burdens for the benefit of individual sectors of trade and industry." In 1871 Bismarck rejected the proposal to demand French colonies in the Far East as a war indemnity: "For us Germans, colonies would be exactly like the silks and sables of the Polish nobleman who had no shirts to wear under them."

At that time, the major trading companies of the free cities of Hamburg and Bremen had already built a far-flung network of outposts throughout the world. The firm of C. Woermann (Hamburg) had been represented on the West African coast since 1847; F. M. Vietor & Sons (Bremen), since 1856. German commercial interests on the East African coast were secured by a treaty with the sultan of Zanzibar in 1859. By the late 1840s the Hamburg family enterprise of J. C. Godeffroy & Son already had trading stations in Cuba and on the coasts of California and Chile. Its first base in the South Seas was Hawaii, with Samoa following in 1857. From there, Godeffroy spread throughout the South Seas to Tahiti, the Solomon Islands, and the islands off the coast of New Guinea (later called the Bismarck Archipelago). In 1876 and 1879 friendship treaties were concluded with the Kingdom of Tonga and with Samoa. The plantations on the islands provided copra (dried coconut meat from which fats can be extracted), sugar cane, and other crops.

In the wake of the global economic crisis that had persisted since 1873, the general assessment of the benefit from overseas possessions changed at the end of the 1870s. As in Paris and London, plans in Berlin began to develop around concepts of how the expected potential of unlimited foreign markets and reserves of raw materials could be exploited to surmount the crisis. The colonial idea also appealed to broad sections of the population, especially after the publication of Friedrich Fabri's 1879 memorandum entitled Bedarf Deutschland der Kolonien? (Is Germany in Need of Colonies?). The enthusiasts gathered in the German Colonial League (Deutscher Kolonialverein, founded in 1882) and in the Society for German Colonization (Gesellschaft für deutsche Kolonisation, founded in 1884). They not only anticipated economic successes but also hoped that the flood of people sailing from Bremerhaven and Hamburg to resettle in North America could be diverted to the new German colonies in order to stem this "loss of national strength." Bismarck was not insensitive to this massive shift in opinion. Above all, however, he was aware that colonial issues were assuming an ever greater importance in the policies of the European powers, so he endeavored to make the empire's voice heard in this field as well. With this thought in mind, he addressed the colonial question as of 1880.

In 1880 Bismarck introduced the "Samoa Bill" in the Reichstag, proposed legislation designed to guarantee a fixed rate of interest for the economically strapped trading house of Godeffroy. When the bill was rejected by a slim majority, the indignant chancellor promised naval and consular protection to the German Sea Trading Company, which had been founded to save the possessions in the South seas. Meanwhile, the Hamburg merchants were also calling on the empire to protect German economic interests in West Africa: In addition to C. Woermann, other firms such as Jantzen & Thormählen had also built factories in Cameroons since 1874. In July 1883 Adolf Woermann finally submitted a memorandum on the situation in West Africa and the political desires of the trading houses there. It was approved by the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce and passed on to Berlin. Shortly afterward, Bismarck received a delegation of Hamburg businessmen in order to inform himself of their concerns.

The gunboat Möwe was sent to the West African coast to raise the German flag at places already occupied by German trading posts. On 5 July 1884 Gustav Nachtigal, an experienced researcher on Africa, and the King of Togoland concluded a treaty establishing an imperial protectorate as requested by Bismarck, and on 12 July the "independent kings and chiefs of the land of Cameroons on the Cameroon River" signed a treaty that transferred the sovereignty, legislation, and administration of the country to the representatives of the firm of C. Woermann and Jantzen & Thormählen in Hamburg. The Möwe had just a week's lead on British ships, which also wanted to take possession of Cameroons. Bismarck wished to have West Africa governed by the Syndicate for West Africa, which the Hamburg trading companies had formed. He preferred to have merchants in charge rather than bureaucrats and soldiers. The Syndicate refused, however, and assisted the Imperial Foreign Office only in an advisory capacity.

By that time, Adolph Hansemann had seized the initiative in the South Seas. A consortium of banks of which Gerson Bleichröder, Bismarck's financial advisor, was also a member sent the natural scientist Otto Finsch on an expedition to New Guinea in the fall of 1884. The research ship, Samoa, was trailed by two warships in order to raise the German flag over various places of New Britain and New Guinea. But tenacious negotiations with Great Britain over the mutual territorial claims in this region were required before Bismarck and Emperor William I signed the agreements establishing an imperial protectorate over their acquisitions in New Guinea.

Whereas the colonies in the South Seas and on the coast of West Africa were being established by trading companies that had been located there for decades, new colonial dominions in other regions were acquired by adventurers. Adolf Lüderitz and Carl Peters bought tracts of land on the coasts of South West Africa and East Africa in 1883 and 1884 without knowing much about their economic value and applied for the protection of the Reich. Bismarck hesitated at first, then granted the requests. The hinterland of the Bay of Angra Pequena, on the southwestern coast of Africa, and the mainland opposite the island of Zanzibar on the continent's east coast were placed under German protection on 24 April 1884 and 27 February 1885, respectively, with warships being sent to raise the flag in both cases. Initially, there was considerable friction between Germany and England over these and other colonial acquisitions of the German Empire, but Anglo-German negotiations in 1886 clarified the mutual claims to the coast of East Africa.

The first instance of cooperation with France in colonial matters came about in 1884. In February of that year, England and Portugal concluded a treaty whose provisions on the use of the lower Congo discriminated against all other sea-trading nations. In response, Bismarck and the French prime minister, Jules Ferry, jointly convened the Berlin Congo Conference, at which the plenipotentiaries of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States of America met from 15 November 1884 to 26 February 1885. In essence, the Congo Act signed by all delegates defined the international principles of free trade and free navigation in the Congo and Niger regions and established an "independent" Congo state under King Leopold II of Belgium. The document also formalized the claim of European nations to the right to divide Africa among themselves.

Bismarck's colonial policy did not go undisputed in the Reichstag. Whereas the conservative parties, including some of the National Liberals, were infected by "colonial fever," the German Free Thought party, the Center, and the Social Democrats doubted the legality of the territorial acquisitions and their economic benefit. "How did the purchases of land there come about?" asked Wilhelm Liebknecht in a Reichstag debate in March 1885. "Simply through fraud! They got the people drunk and then took 'em for a ride." Bismarck was directly accused of exporting the social issue and of conjuring up "before the eyes of the nation a kind of mirage on the sand and swamps of Africa." Bismarck countered that the economic hopes were indeed well founded, that tropical crops were being harvested from the plantations, and that mineral resources were expected to be found. Conversely, Woermann had presented him with catalogues "of the hundreds of articles that German industry was supplying to those areas."

In the ensuing period, disputes with the natives erupted in nearly all German colonies. In German South West Africa numerous Herero chiefs opposed the German Colonial Company for South West Africa (Deutsche Kolonial Gesellschaft für Südwestafrika, founded in 1885) when it acquired the mining rights for the entire Herero region. Assembled in Germany, the first government colonial troops arrived in "South West" in June 1889 to "pacify" the region, but their presence only worsened the incessant war between the Herero and Hottentot tribes. The military was not highly successful in fighting the illegal trade in weapons and alcohol, either. Windhoek, a forsaken mission station, was expanded by colonial troops and declared the seat of the government on 18 October 1890. In East Africa Captain Herbert Wissmann, a Bismarck appointee, formed a police force and colonial militia consisting mostly of nonwhites - Sudanese who had served in the Egyptian-Turkish army. Armed clashes occurred primarily with Arab merchants, who feared for their lucrative business in the slave trade.

After Bismarck's dismissal in 1890, German colonial policy took on a new dimension under Emperor William II. The commencement of German naval construction in 1894, the appointment of Rear Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz as Secretary of State of the Imperial Naval Office, and the founding of the German Navy League in 1898 created the conditions necessary for the German Empire to assert itself as a sea power. Instead of merchants and diplomats, it was the military that increasingly determined the course of colonial policy.

Leonore Koschnick