CHAPTER XIX.
GERMANY'S COLONIAL EMPIRE.
About the year 1880 the rulers of Germany began to think of founding a colonial empire. There were many reasons why it seemed to them advisable that they should extend their dominion overseas. Germany had become a great manufacturing nation, and she needed new markets in which to sell her surplus goods, and tropical lands which would give her large and cheap supplies of the raw material for making them. Further, many of her people, anxious to better themselves, were emigrating to America,[120] where they were lost to Germany. It was thought that, had she possessed colonies, Germans would have settled in them instead of going to America, and thus would not have reduced the strength of the Fatherland. Many patriotic Germans wished to see their country a great naval power, and they knew that colonies could neither be obtained nor maintained without a big navy. They, therefore, were in favour of colonial expansion, because it would force Germany to become powerful on the seas.
About this time the attention of the world was specially directed to Africa. The travels of Livingstone[121] and Stanley[122] and other explorers, British, French, German, and Italian, were revealing the "Dark Continent" as a new sphere for the expansion of the European Powers. Almost immediately they began to "peg out their claims." A number of clever writers in Germany began to point out to their fellow-countrymen that unless they set up a colonial empire they would be left behind in the race. Before long they had persuaded the people that overseas trade, ships of war, and colonies were the three things that Germany must provide herself with, or be content to continue as a second-rate Power. Most of the writers thought that colonies could be obtained in a lawful way, but a historian[123] who had great influence on the ruling classes taught openly that the best method of winning a colonial empire was to defeat and despoil Britain. This teaching suited the German mind exactly, and gradually it gained such ground that it became almost a national policy.
In 1886 what is known as the "great scramble for Africa" began, and Germany played her part in it. In Eastern Africa her explorers had made many important discoveries, and as far back as 1860 one of them said, "I am persuaded that in a short time a colony established in East Africa would be most successful, and after two or three years would become self-supporting." Not, however, until 1884 was an attempt made to set up a German colony in this part of the world. In that year three German political agents, in the disguise of needy travellers, crossed over from Zanzibar to the mainland, and began making treaties by which the local chiefs signed away their country.
Some of these treaties were not worth the paper they were written on, for the chiefs were vassals of the Sultan of Zanzibar, who was under British protection. Nevertheless, a German fleet was sent to Zanzibar, and the Sultan was forced, at a price of £200,000, to yield up his territory on the mainland from Cape Delgado to a line drawn from the mouth of the Umbe River to the Victoria Nyanza. The British afterwards proclaimed a protectorate over the remainder of the Sultan's African dominions.
At the beginning of the present war German East Africa covered an area of 364,000 square miles--that is, it was almost double the size of Germany, and had an estimated population of over 7½ millions, the whites numbering a little over 5,000. From the low-lying coast lands it rises to lofty and irregular mountains, which form the outer buttress of a plateau some 3,000 or 4,000 feet in height. From the middle of this plateau streams are thrown off north to the Victoria Nyanza,[124] west to Lake Tanganyika,[125] and east to the Indian Ocean. Parts of this plateau are mere desert, waterless and scrub-covered, with loose shingle, dried-up water-courses, and bare, fantastic rocks. Other parts are well watered and fertile, and in these favourable regions the Germans have developed agriculture greatly. Prior to the war, rubber, copal, bark, fibre, teak, mahogany, coffee, tobacco, sugar cane, cotton, etc., were largely grown and exported; gold, coal, graphite, iron, salt, and precious stones were mined; and ivory was obtained from the elephants, which still roam the forests in large numbers. When the war began, German East Africa was making good and steady progress.
The Germans did not win the colony without considerable fighting with the natives, and one of the risings which took place in 1904 cost East Africa the lives of about 120,000 men, women, and children. The Germans have no genius for dealing with natives; their brutal, blustering methods are certain to provoke strife wherever they obtain a foothold. They have, however, a genius for organizing, and this is seen in the towns which they have built, and the eight fairly good harbours which they have constructed on the coast. The name of the capital, Dar-es-Salaam, means "the harbour of peace;" it is a good port and a delightful place. German East Africa suffered a great shock when the Uganda railway was built by the British and the trade of the lake region was thus captured. The Germans replied by building two lines which gave the quickest access to British Central Africa and to the Southern Congo.
The most valuable colonies of Germany, however, were established in West Africa. Third in order of size, but first in commercial value, is the colony of Kamerun,[126] which forms a rough wedge between British Nigeria and French Congo, with its point at Lake Chad. The colony of Kamerun has an area of 190,000 square miles, and an estimated population of 3½ millions, whites numbering less than 2,000.
The country was going a-begging when the Germans in 1884 sent an expedition which took it over. When the British agent arrived five days later he found the chiefs bound to the German Empire. He, however, declined to agree to this arrangement, and came to terms with the tribes on the British frontier; but the Home Government would not support him, and thus the Germans were allowed to become masters of Kamerun. Many of the natives refused to be taken under the wing of the German eagle, and were only persuaded to acknowledge their new masters by means of rifles and big guns. After thirty years the proud Fula[127] tribes in the hinterland still remained unreconciled to German rule.
Kamerun is a rich and largely unexplored territory, very similar in character to the southern part of our colony of Nigeria. The Germans have spent much time and money in developing the country, and have built excellent towns, good roads, and some railways. Along the coast and in the deep, long valleys between the mountains the oil palm abounds; and in the forests, which are full of elephants, there is a wealth of ebony and other valuable timber. There are great mineral resources, too, but they have not so far been largely worked. Kamerun was very rapidly advancing when the war broke out, because the traders were backed from the Fatherland, and the officials were ready and eager to do everything that would advance its interests. It must be confessed that in the work of colonial development the Germans showed an energy and resource which put Britain in the shade.
In 1883 the only unclaimed strip of West African territory between the Gambia and Nigeria was Togoland, which lies between British Ashanti and French Dahomey, and is in all respects similar in character to these countries. The coast line is but thirty-three miles in length, and the Germans having secured it, laid claim to a huge expanse of hinterland--an area of 33,000 square miles. Britain and France, after much discussion, allowed the claim, and thus Germany became possessed of Togoland, her smallest but by no means her least valuable colony. She has spent much money on roads and railways, and in building the fine town of Lomé, one of the best in all West Africa. For the last twenty years Togoland has been self-supporting. When the war began Togoland possessed one of the greatest of all German wireless stations at Kamina.[128] It could communicate direct with Berlin, and was one of an important chain which linked up the Fatherland not only with Togoland but with Kamerun, East Africa, and South-West Africa.
[Footnote 120: In the nineteenth century more than 3½ million Germans emigrated to America and became citizens of the United States.]
[Footnote 121: The great missionary explorer, discoverer of the Zambesi, the upper course of the Congo, Lake Nyassa and other Central African lakes; also founder of Nyassaland. Born 1813; died 1873, at a village south of Lake Bangweolo. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.]
[Footnote 122: Sir Henry Morton Stanley, who did for the Congo what Livingstone did for the Zambesi, and further verified and added to the great discoveries already made. He made what has been called "the greatest journey in African exploration." He laid the foundations of the Congo Free State. Born 1841, died 1904.]
[Footnote 123: Treitschke (_trysh´ke_), German historian and bitter enemy of Britain. Born 1834, died 1896.]
[Footnote 124: Great lake of equatorial Africa, 26,000 square miles in area, discovered by Captain Speke in 1858, and circumnavigated by Stanley in 1875 and 1889.]
[Footnote 125: Lake lying south-west of Victoria Nyanza, 13,000 square miles in area. Its only outlet is to the Congo.]
[Footnote 126: Spelt in many British maps, Cameroons.]
[Footnote 127: Fulas or Fulahs, the ruling native race in Nigeria, French Sudan, Kamerun, etc.]
[Footnote 128: Near Atakpame, at the head of the railway which runs north from Lomé for a hundred miles.]