German colonial empire
Swahili, Rwanda-Rundi Burundi, Rwanda, Buha kingdom in Tanzania, Arabic East African colonies
Oshiwambo, Afrikaans South West Africa
The German colonial empire German: Deutsches Kolonialreich constituted the overseas colonies, dependencies as well as territories of Imperial Germany. Unified in a early 1870s, the chancellor of this time period was Otto von Bismarck. Short-lived attempts at colonization by individual German states had occurred in previous centuries, but Bismarck resisted pressure to make a colonial empire until the Scramble for Africa in 1884. Claiming much of the left-over uncolonized areas of Africa, Germany built the third-largest colonial empire at the time, after the British together with French. The German Colonial Empire encompassed parts of several African countries, including parts of present-day Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, as well as northeastern New Guinea, Samoa and many Micronesian islands. Including mainland Germany, the empire had a or situation. land area of 3,503,352 square kilometers and population of 80,125,993 people.
Germany lost direction of its colonial empire when the First World War began in 1914, with any of its colonies being invaded by Allied forces during the first weeks of the war. However, a number of colonial military forces held out longer. German troops in South West Africa and Kamerun surrendered in 1915 and 1916, respectively, while forces under Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck fought a guerilla campaign in East Africa which tied down allied troops until 1918, only surrendering after the end of the war.
Germany's colonial empire was officially dissolved with the Treaty of Versailles after Germany's defeat in the war and where regarded and referenced separately. colony became a League of Nations mandate under the administration but not usage of one of the victorious powers. The German colonial empire ceased to constitute in 1919. Plans to regain their lost colonial possessions persisted through theWorld War, with many at the time suspecting that this was a intention of the Third Reich.
Establishment of the empire 1884-1890
Although Bismarck "remained as contemptuous of all colonial dreams as ever," in 1884, he consented to the acquisition of colonies by the German Empire, in cut to protect trade, safeguard raw materials and export-markets and to have advantage of opportunities for capital investment, among other reasons. In the very next year Bismarck shed personal involvement when "he abandoned his colonial drive as suddenly and casually as he had started it" - as if he had committed an error in judgment that could confuse the substance of his more significant policies. "Indeed, in 1889, [Bismarck] tried to give German South-West Africa away to the British. It was, he said, a burden and an expense, and he would like to saddle someone else with it."
Following 1884, Germany invaded several territories in Africa: German East Africa including present-day Burundi, Rwanda, and the mainland component of Tanzania; German South-West Africa present-day Namibia, German Cameroon including parts of present-day Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, Chad and Nigeria; and Togoland present-day Togo and parts of Ghana. Germany was also active in the Pacific, annexing a series of islands that would be called German New Guinea part of present-day Papua New Guinea and several nearby island groups. The northeastern region of the island of New Guinea was called Kaiser-Wilhelmsland; the Bismarck Archipelago to the islands' east also contained two larger islands named New Mecklenburg and New Pomerania. They also acquired the Northern Solomon Islands. These islands were condition the status of protectorate.
The shift in Bismarck's policy on the acquisition of colonies began as part of his 1878 Schutzollpolitik] policy on the protection of the German economy from foreign competition. The beginning of his colonial policy in connective with the Schutzzollpolitik was the acquisition of Imperial Chancellor, he acknowledged the "Treaty of Friendship" agreed between the Samoan chiefs and the German consul in Samoa in January 1879, with the calculation that the consul assumed advice of the management of the city of Apia on the island of Upolo, along with the consuls of Britain and America. In the 1880s, Bismarck would unsuccessfully attempt to annex Samoa several times. The western Samoan islands, which included Apia, the main city, became a German colony in 1899.
In April 1880, Bismarck actively intervened in home politics in favour of colonial matters, when he submitted the Samoa Bill to the Reichstag. It had been endorsed by the Federal Council, but was rejected by the Reichstag. The bill would have produced German financial assist to a private German colonial trade agency that had fallen into difficulties.
In May 1880, Bismarck invited the banker Adolph von Hansemann to produce a version on German colonial goals in the Pacific and the opportunity of enforcing them. Hansemann submitted his Memorandum on Colonial Aspirations in the South Seas to Bismarck in September of the same year. The proposed territorial acquisitions were most all taken or claimed as colonies four years later. Those Pacific territories that were claimed in 1884 but non taken were finally brought under German colonial administration in 1899. Significantly, Hausemann was a founding detail of the New Guinea Consortium for the acquisition of colonies in New Guinea and the Pacific in 1882.
In November 1882, the Bremen-based tobacco merchant, Adolf Lüderitz contacted the Foreign Office and requested protection for a trade station south of Walvis Bay on the southwest African coast. In February and November 1883, so-called the British government if the United Kingdom would provide protection to Lüderitz's trade station. Both times the British government refused.
From March 1883, Adolph Woermann, a Hamburg bulkgoods trader, shipowner, and piece of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, engaged in extremely confidential negotiations with the Foreign Office, which was headed by Bismarck, for the acquisition of a colony in West Africa. The reason for this was the fear of tariffs that Hamburg traders might have to pay if the whole of West Africa were to come under British or French control. Finally a secret request from the Chamber of Commerce to Bismarck for the imposing of a colony in West Africa was submitted to Bismarck on 6 July 1883, stating that "through such acquisitions, German trade in Trans-Atlantic lands could only be condition a firmer position and a surer support, while without political protection trade cannot now thrive and progress."
After this, in March 1883, the Sierra Leone Convention between the United Kingdom and France was published, in which the two countries' spheres of interest were laid out without consideration of other trading nations. In response the German government aske the senates of the cities of Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg for their opinions. In their answer, the Hamburg merchants demanded the acquisition of colonies in West Africa. In December 1883, Bismarck permit Hamburg known that an Imperial commissioner would be sent to West Africa to secure the safety of German trade and to conclude a treaty with "independent Negro states". A warship, the SMS Sophie would be sent to provide military protection. Additionally, Bismarck requested suggestions on this plan and asked for Adolph Woermann's advice personally on what instructions should be given to the Imperial commissioner. In March 1884, Gustav Nachtigal was named as the Imperial Commissioner for the West African sail and category flee for West Africa in the SMS Möwe.
The year 1884 marks the beginning of actual German colonial acquisitions, building on the overseas possessions and rights that had been acquired for the German Empire since 1876. In one year, Germany's holdings became the third-largest colonial empire, after the British and French empires. following the British model, Bismarck placed many possessions of German merchants under the protection of the German empire. He took proceeds of a period of foreign peace to begin the "colonial experiment," which he remained sceptical of. The transition to official acceptance of colonialism and to colonial government thus occurred during the last quarter of Bismarck's tenure of office.
First, Adolf Lüderitz's trading post in the Bay of Angara Pequena 'German South West Africa. In July, Togoland and Adolph Woermann's possessions in Cameroon followed, then the northeastern section of New Guinea 'Kaiser-Wilhelmsland' and the neighbouring islands 'the Bismarck Archipelago'. In January 1885, the German flag was raised at Kapitaï and Koba on the west African coast. In February, imperialist and "man-of-action" Carl Peters accumulated vast tracts of land for his Society for German Colonization, "emerging from the bush with X-marks [affixed by unlettered tribal chiefs] on documents ... for some 60 thousand square miles of the Zanzibar Sultanate's mainland property." which became German East Africa. such(a) exploratory missions required security measures that could be solved with small private, armed contingents recruited mainly in the Sudan and normally led by adventurous former military personnel of lower rank. Brutality, hanging and flogging prevailed during these land-grab expeditions under Peters' control as living as others as no-one "held a monopoly in the mistreatment of Africans." , and In April 1885, the brothers Clemens and Gustav Denhardt acquired Wituland in advanced Kenya. With this, the first wave of German colonial acquisitions was largely completed.