Page:The History of The Great European War Vol 1.pdf/83



German fever for colonising : 1880-1890—Very little available territory in world when Empire created—Bismarck not a keen colonist—The Bremen and Hamburg merchants—German Colonial Society, 1882—Its colonial policy—Followed by Bismarck—Colonies of Germany before the war—Colonial objects of Pan-Germanism—Germany's failure to attain them— Extermination of the Hereros—Colonial exports and imports—Togoland—Kiau-Chau— Possessions in the Pacific—South-West Africa—East A frica—Cameroons—Railways— For first ten years of German Empire no effort to obtain colonies—Britain, France, and Russia building up colonial empire—German emigration—Germany beginning to wake up—Peaceful penetration—Venezuela—Africa—Togoland and the Cameroons—South- West Africa—Herr Luderitz—Germany interferes with the Transvaal—Kruger at Pots- dam—Germano-Boer conspiracy—Foiled by Gladstone—Treitschke and South Africa— Zanzibar—Kaiser's move there in 1884—Germany engineers a revolution—Creation of German East Africa—Emin Pasha and Equatoria—Uganda—Bismarck dismissed— Struggle between Britain and Germany ceases—Heligoland—Anglo-German friendship while Bismarck in power—African Conference, 1884—British losses—British good feeling—The Pacific and New Guinea—1890-1900: Britain Germanophile—Anglo- Congo Treaty, 1894—Cecil Rhodes’s policy— Kruger's speechin 1895—Germany in Morocco —Speech of Caprivi in 1890—Egypt—The Far East—Kiau-Chau—Opening year of twentieth century—Pan-Germanism becomes insistent—The Kruger telegram—The Boer War—The Baghdad Railway.

DURING the decade 1880 to 1890 an acute outbreak of colonial fever set Germany for a time in a well-nigh delirious mood on the path of territorial expansion. It was not until after the expiration of that period that national temperature in regard to this subject became anything approaching the normal, and then it broke out again, finally, as an ardent and irrational aspiration, on decided Pan-Germanist lines, in the direction of world-empire.

The German Empire, from the point of view of the acquisition of overseas possessions, was in a very awkward position at the time of its birth. The world was then very extensively settled and occupied. What territory was not already occupied by European nations was inconsiderable in area, unfavourably located, thinly populated, and not possessed of obvious commercial advantages. But such as was available, Germany occupied, not because she deemed it adequate provision for her needs, but because at the moment she saw no other chance of Meeting the exigencies which were certainly soon to arise.