University of Virginia Library

FIRST ATTEMPTS AT GERMAN
COLONIZATION.

THE strange confusion of ideas which we owe to
our fluctuating and antiquated party-doings
is nowhere so glaringly obvious as in the widely
spread opinion that the younger generation today
is more conservatively inclined than the older.
Some are glad of this, while others lament it and
attribute it to the seductive arts of reactionary
teachers; but hardly anyone disputes it as a fact.
And yet it is absolutely absurd to think so, for
ever since the beginning of the world the young
have always been more free-thinking than the old,
because they possess the happy privilege of living
more in the future than the present, and nothing
justifies the assumption that this natural law has
ceased to hold good nowadays. For though the
new generation may turn away with indifference
from the catch-words of the older liberalism, this
only shows that a new age with new ideals is
dawning. In these young men, whose childhood
was illuminated by the sun of Sedan, national pride
is not a feeling attained to, as in their fathers'
case, by hard struggles, but it is a strong spontaneous
passion. They sing their "Germany, Germany
above all!" with a joyful confidence, such as only

isolated strong characters of the older generation
could cherish. They regard the struggle for parliamentary
rights, which to their elders was often
an aim in itself, at most as a means to an end.
The object of their ambition is that the young
giant who has just shaken the sleep from his eyelids
should now use his strong arms to advance the
civilization of mankind and to make the German
name both formidable and precious to the world.
Therefore our German youth were thrilled as by
an electric shock when, in August, 1884, the news
came that our flag waved upon the coast of Angra
Pequena and the Cameroons, and that Germany
had taken the first modest but decided step in the
path of independent colonization.

To the ancient political system of Europe, which
was a result of the weakness of its central States,
a new combination of States has succeeded,
founded on the strength of Central Europe. By
means of a pacific policy on a large scale, our Government
has obliged the other continental Powers
to adapt themselves to the new order of things,
while our legislation at the same time labours to
quell the social unrest which threatens the foundations
of all civilization. Thus before our eyes is
being fulfilled the prophecy of the Crown Prince
Frederick, that his country would be one day so
strong as to guard peace by righteous dealing, not
by inspiring fear; and it is only one more necessary
step in the path of this pacific policy if Germany
at last sets herself to take her proper share in the

great work of expansive civilization. Like so
many other happy forecasts of the sixteenth
century which have been first fulfilled in our days,
the proud expression "il mondo e poco," which in
the days of Columbus sounded like an empty
boast, is now being verified. Now that we can
sail round the world in eleven weeks, it is really
small, and its political future is discernible to the
foreseeing eye.

With full confidence we may say to-day that the
democracies of the European nations and their
descendants will one day govern the whole world.
China and Japan may possibly still for centuries
preserve their old peculiar forms of civilization,
together with a strong blending of European culture;
in India—though this is by no means certain
—an independent Indian nationality may be
evolved from the intermingling of countless races
and religions; finally—which is still more improbable—the
old bellicose Islam, when it has
been driven out of Europe, may form a new powerful
State in Asia Minor; but with the exception of
these countries, in the whole world no other nation
is to be found that can in the long run withstand
the immense superiority of European arms and
commerce. The barrier is broken, and the stream
of European colonization must pour unceasingly
over all the world, far and near, and those who
live in the twentieth century will be able for the
first time in all seriousness to speak of a "world-history."
We must at the same time remember

that, "trees are not allowed to grow into the sky."[1]
Nowhere in nature is mere largeness a decisive
factor. Just as our little earth, so far as we can
guess, is the noblest body in the solar system, so
this ancient multiform Europe, on however great
a scale international intercourse may take place,
and in any conceivable future, will always remain
the heart of the world, the home of all creative
culture, and therefore the place where all the
important questions of political power will be
decided. All colonies are like engrafted shoots;
they lack the youthful vigour which results from
natural growth from a root. There is indeed a
wonderful growth of commercial prosperity when
the rich capital and skilled energy of a civilized
nation come in contact with the untouched resources
of a new country; but quiet mental composure,
the source of all enduring works of art and
science, does not find a favourable atmosphere in
the restless hurry of colonial life. How much
more richly furnished by nature were the Greek
colonies in South Italy and Sicily than their little
motherland. There lay luxurious Sybaris; there
Syracuse, the metropolis of the Hellenic world;
there Akragas, "fairest city of mortals" as Pindar
calls it, surpassing Athens herself in splendour and
renown. And yet how small appears the share of
this richly favoured land in everything which
lends value and significance to the history of
Greece.

Similarly the history of North America, the
greatest of all modern colonies, only confirms
former experience. The economic energy of this
growing nation has already performed miracles
upon miracles; her giant railways, which cast into
the shade all similar works in the old world,
stretch from sea to sea. Still in spite of all auguries
the star of the world's history shows hitherto no
tendency to move westwards. That wealth of
intellectual life which Washington once hoped for
his country, has failed to appear, and many who
weary of Europe, went to America, have come
back, weary of America, because they could not
breathe the exhausted air of the land of the Almighty
Dollar.

How often have the newspapers of both hemispheres
referred to the future New Zealander, who,
according to Macaulay's famous prophecy, is one
day to look from the broken pillars of London
Bridge on the immeasurable ruins of London! But
anyone, who soberly tests this majestic vision, will
arrive at the comforting conclusion that the said
New Zealander is hardly likely ever to be in the
position to undertake his archæological journey to
those ruins. Christian nations cannot perish, and
the earth no longer harbours such countless swarms
of youthful barbarians, such as once destroyed the
Roman Empire. There is a great probability that
the nations of Europe, when the habitable globe
has been covered with their colonies, will not sink
from their height, but attain new vigour by the

emigration of their superfluous populations, and
the fulfilment of their new tasks of civilization.
When the first Spanish explorers landed in America
they bathed eagerly in every spring, because they
hoped there, in the West, to find the legendary
Fountain of Youth. The time seems approaching
when that longing of the early discoverers will find
its fulfilment, and the New World will prove a
"Fountain of Youth" for Europeans in a deeper
sense than they once thought. Through the
colonization of the distant regions of the earth,
the history of Europe also acquires a newer, richer
significance, and Germany, with full right, demands
that she should not be left behind in this great
rivalry of nations. She feels not only mortified
in her political ambition when she considers her
position in the transatlantic world; but she feels
also a kind of moral shamefacedness when obliged
to confess that we Germans have only contributed
a very little to the great cosmopolitan works of
modern international intercourse. The founding
of the International Postal Union and the part we
took in the building of the St. Gothard Railway—
these are almost our only services in this sphere,
and how they shrink into insignificance when
compared with the achievements of English colonial
policy, or even with the works of the Frenchman,
Ferdinand Lesseps.

This feeling of shame is all the more oppressive
because we can assert that Germany yields to no
nation in its capacity for founding colonies. In

the countries on the right of the Elbe, our nation
once carried out the greatest and most fruitful
schemes of colonization which Europe has seen
since the days of the Roman Empire; for here it
succeeded in obliterating the usual distinction
between colony and motherland so completely,
that these colonized lands formed the nucleus of
our new system of States, and since Luther's time
were able to take part in the intellectual progress of
the nation, as equal allies of the older stock. For
more than two hundred years, Germany, solely
by the power of its free citizens, held supremacy
over the northern seas. By means of her commercial
colonies, the slumbering capacities of Scandinavia
for intercourse with other nations were
awakened, and certainly it was not due to our
fathers' fault, but to an unavoidable tragic fate,
that the glory of the Hanseatic League perished.
This was at the same time that the Italians, our
old companions in misfortune, lost command of the
sea in the south. For to every age and every
nation a limit of power is assigned. It was impossible
that the two nations which through the
Renaissance and the Reformation had opened up
the way for modern civilization, should, at the
very time, when the discovery of the New World
had ruined all the usual routes of commerce, be
able to rival the Spaniards and Portuguese in their
foreign conquests.

It was not till later that the Germans incurred
the guilt of a grievous sin of omission, in the long,

dreary time of peace which followed the Schmalkaldic
War. Then it was that the German Protestants
had a safe prospect of recovering the last
command of the sea, if they had united with their
kindred co-religionsists in the Netherlands. But
at this most discreditable period of our modern
history, the two national faults, which still now so
often hamper our economic energy, doctrinaire
idealism and easy-going self-indulgence, were
strongly flourishing. The nation degenerated
through theological controversies and the coarse
sensuality of a sluggish peace. She left it to the
Dutch to break the naval power of the Spaniards,
and afterwards to the English to subdue the Dutch
conquerors. Everyone knows how terribly the sins
of those years of peace were punished by the
dire ruin of our ancient civilization. During the
two centuries of struggle which followed, when we
had painfully to recover the rule in our own
country, every attempt at German colonization
was naturally impossible. The ingenious African
schemes of the Great Elector were far in advance
of their time; they were doomed to failure; a
feudal agricultural country without a sea-board
could not possibly maintain control over a remote
colonial possession for any length of time.

But even during this long period of inland
quietude, our nation has shown that she is, according
to her capacity and position in the world, the
most cosmopolitan of all peoples; she lost neither
the old impulse to seek the distant, nor the power

to assert herself valiantly among foreign nations.
On all the battle-fields of the world German blood
flowed in streams; most of the crowns of Europe
fell into the hands of German royal houses; and
it was really through the power of Germany that
Russia was enrolled among the nations of Europe.
It is true that this vast expenditure of overflowing
national forces only ratified anew the lament of
Goethe that the Germans were respectable as individuals,
but despicable as a whole. Again and
again the voice of Fate called to us "sic vos non
vobis." And when in recent times the peoples of
the Anglo-Saxon stock began to divide the transatlantic
world between them, the Germans were
again their unwearied associates. German traders
rivalled the leading firms of the world from Singapore
to Philadelphia. Millions of Germans helped
the North Americans to conquer their part of the
world for civilization.

But the Germans at home, had, so long as the
Federal Diet ruled over them, too heavy domestic
cares to think seriously about the lot of their
emigrants. They made a virtue of necessity, and
in their philosophic way evolved the doctrine that
it was the historic destiny of the German spirit to
blend far out there in the West with the genius of
other nations. It is true that the Americans found
a less obscure description for this mysterious
"blending," though they now vainly seek to disavow
it; they said, "The Germans form an excellent
fertilizer for our people!" When, just

twenty years ago—though I had then no anticipation
of the near fulfilment of German destinies, I
ventured, in my treatise, Federal State and Unified
State, to make the heretical remark that
only those States which possessed naval power
and ruled territories across the sea could rank in
future as great Powers, I was severely taken to
task by various critics. With the immeasurable
superiority, which, as is well-known, the judge
possesses over the culprit, they told me that these
were old-fashioned ideas, and that since the times
of the American War of Independence and the
founding of the Spanish colonies, the period of
colonization has come to an end. Such was the
general opinion in Germany in the days of the
Federal Diet. Meanwhile, England, not troubling
herself about the wisdom of our philosophical
historians, continued to extend her colonial empire
over half the world.

Since then, how strangely public sentiment has
changed! We now look out into the world with
other claims than formerly. Especially is this the
case with those Germans who live abroad, who
have a far livelier appreciation of the blessings of
the new empire than we at home. The uneasy
ferment of the last five years, although accompanied
by the disintegration of ancient parties and
an abundance of wild animosity and ungrateful
fault-finding, has also given rise to some wholesome
self-criticism; we have had our attention drawn to
our weaknesses, and begin to perceive in how many

respects we come short of worthily occupying the
position of a great nation. During these last
years, without any pressure from authority, there
has risen from the people themselves a spontaneous
demand for German colonies with as much emphasis
and confidence in the future as formerly
accompanied the demand for a German fleet.
Since F. Fabri first discussed the subject, a whole
literature on the colonial question has come into
existence. In the course of these discussions, the
Germans discovered, with joyful surprise, that,
outside official circles, we possessed a considerable
number of practical political writers, which can
console us for the increasing dreariness and impoverishment
of our parliamentary life. By the
persistent endeavours of our brave travellers,
missionaries, and merchants, the first attempt at
German colonization has had the way prepared for
it, and been rendered possible. Germany's modest
gains on the African coast only aroused attention
in the world at large, because everyone knew that
they were not due, as in the case of the colonizing
experiments of the Electorate of Brandenburg, to
the bold idea of a great mind, but because a whole
nation greeted them with a joyful cry, "At last!
At last!"

For a nation that suffers from continual overproduction,
and sends yearly 200,000 of her children
abroad, the question of colonization is vital.
During the first years which followed the restoration
of the German Empire, well-meaning people

began to hope that the constant draining away
of German forces into foreign countries would
gradually cease, together with the political persecutions,
the discontent, and the petty domestic
coercive laws of the good old times. This hope
was disappointed, and was doomed to be so, for
those political grievances were not the only, nor
even the most important causes of German emigration.
In the short time since the establishment of
the empire, the population has increased by a full
eighth, and this rapid growth, in spite of all the
misery which it involves, is nevertheless the
characteristic of a healthy national life, which, in
its careless consciousness of power, does not trouble
itself with the warnings of the "two-child system."
It is true that Germany is as yet by no means
over-populated, least of all in those north-eastern
districts from which the stream of emigration
flows most strongly. Many of our emigrants, if
they exercised here the same untiring diligence
which inexorable necessity enforces on them in
America, could also prosper in their old fatherland.
But there are periods of domiciliation, and again
periods in which the impulse to wander works like
a dark, elementary power on the national spirit.
Just as the song "Eastwards! Eastwards!" once
rang seductively through the villages of Flanders, so
countless numbers dream now of the land of
marvels across the sea. And just as little as prudential
counsel could restrain the crusaders from
their sacred enterprise, so little can considerations
of reason prevail against the vague longing for the
West. It is also easy to calculate that our population,
provided its growth continues as before, must,
in no distant future, rise to a hundred millions and
more; then their fatherland would be too narrow
for the Germans, even if Prussia resumed the
colonization of its eastern borderlands in the old
Frederician style, and found room in the estates
there for thousands of peasants and long-lease
tenants. According to all appearance, German
emigration will still for a long while remain an
unavoidable necessity, and it becomes a new duty
for the motherland to take care that her wandering
children remain true to their nationality, and open
new channels for her commerce. This is in the
first place more important than our political control
of the lands we colonize. A State, whose
frontiers march with those of three great Powers,
and whose seaboard lies open towards a fourth,
will generally only be able to carry on great national
wars and must keep its chief military forces
carefully collected in Europe. The protection of a
remote, easily threatened colonial empire would
involve it in embarrassments and not strengthen
it.

And just now, after our good nature has striven
all too long not to be forced into the humiliating
confession, we are at last obliged to admit that
the German emigrants in North America are
completely lost to our State, and our nationality.
Set in the midst of a certainly less intellectual but

commercially more energetic people, the nationality
of the German minority must inevitably be
suppressed by that of the majority, just as formerly
the French refugees were absorbed in Germany.
And as the expulsion of the Huguenots was for
France a huge misfortune, the effects of which are
still operative, so the German emigration to North
America is an absolute loss for our nation—a
present given to a foreign country without any
equivalent compensation.

Moreover, for the general cause of civilization,
the Anglicizing of the German-Americans is a
heavy loss. Even the Frenchman, Leroy-Beaulieu,
confesses this with praiseworthy impartiality.
among Germans, there can be no question at all
but that human civilization suffers loss every
time that a German is turned into a Yankee.
All the touching proofs of faithful recollection
which the motherland has received from the
German-Americans since the year 1870, does not
alter the fact that all German emigrants, at latest
in the third generation, become Americans. Although
in certain districts of Pennsylvania, a
corrupt German dialect may survive side by side
with English, although some cultured families
may now, when German national consciousness is
everywhere stronger, perhaps be able to postpone
being completely Anglicized till the fourth generation,
yet the political views of the emigrants are
inevitably coloured by the ideas prevalent in their
new home; in commerce, they even become our

enemies, and, voluntarily or involuntarily, help
to injure German agriculture by a depressing
rivalry. The overpowering force of their new circumstances
compels them to divest themselves of
their nationality, until perhaps at last nothing is
left them but a platonic regard for German literature.

Therefore it is quite justifiable on the ground of
national self-preservation that the new German
Colonial Union should seek for ways and means to
divert the stream of German emigrants into lands
where they run no danger of losing their nationality.
Such a territory has been already found in
the south of Brazil. There, unassisted and sometimes
not even suspected by the motherland, German
nationality remains quite intact for three generations,
and our rapidly increasing export trade with
Porto Allegre shows that the commerce of the old
home profits greatly by the loyalty of her emigrant
children. Other such territories will also be discovered
if our nation enters with prudence and
boldness on the new era now opening to the colonizing
energy of Europeans.

With the crossing of Africa begins the last epoch
of great discoveries. When once the centre of the
Dark Continent lies open, the whole globe, with
the exception of a few regions which will be always
inaccessible to civilization, is also opened before
European eyes. The common interest of all
nations—with the exception of England—demands
that these new acquisitions of modern times should

be dealt with in a more liberal, just, and humane
way than the former ones which only profited the
nations of the Iberian peninsula, in order finally
to ruin them. The summoning of the Congo conference
and our understanding with France show
that our Government knows how to estimate
properly the importance of this crisis. As a sea-power
of the second rank, Germany is in colonial
politics the natural representative of a humane
law of nations, and since England, now fully
occupied with Egyptian affairs, will hardly oppose
the united will of all the other Powers, there is
ground for hope that the conference will have a
happy issue and open the interior of Africa to the
free rivalry of all nations. Then it will be our
turn to show what we can do; in those remote
regions the power of the State can only follow the
free action of the nation and not precede it. In
this new world it must be seen whether the trivial
pedantry of an unfortunate past, after just now
celebrating its orgies in the struggle of the Hansa
towns against the national Customs Union, has at
last been overcome for ever, and whether the
German trader has enough self-confidence to
venture on rivalry with the predominant financial
strength of England.

The future will show whether the founding of
German agricultural colonies is possible in the
interior of Africa; there will certainly be an opportunity
for founding mercantile colonies which will
yield a rich return. After destiny has treated us

badly for so many centuries, we may well count for
once on the favour of fortune. In South Africa
also circumstances are decidedly favourable for us.
English colonial policy, which has been successful
everywhere else, has not been fortunate at the
Cape. The civilization which flourishes there is
Teutonic and Dutch. The attitude of England
wavering between weakness and violence, has
evoked among the brave Dutch Boers a deadly
ineradicable hatred. Moreover since the Dutch
have in the Indo-Chinese islands abundant scope
for their colonizing energy, it would only be a
natural turn of events, if their German kindred
should hereafter in some form or other, undertake
the protectorate of the Teutonic population of
South Africa, and succeed as heirs of the English
in a neglected colony which since the opening of the
Suez Canal has little more value for England.

If our nation dares decidedly to follow the new
path of an independent colonial policy, it will
inevitably become involved in a conflict of interests
with England. It lies in the nature of things
that the new great Power of central Europe must
come to an understanding with all the other great
Powers. We have already made our reckoning
with Austria, with France, and with Russia; our
last reckoning, that with England, will probably
be the most tedious and the most difficult; for
here we are confronted by a line of policy which
for centuries, almost unhindered by the other
Powers, aims directly at maritime supremacy.

How long has Germany in all seriousness believed
this insular race, which among all the nations of
Europe is undoubtedly imbued with the most
marked national selfishness, whose greatness consists
precisely in its hard inaccessible one-sidedness,
to be the magnanimous protector of the
freedom of all nations! Now at last our eyes
begin to be opened, and we recognize, what clearheaded
political thinkers have never doubted,
that England's State policy, since the days of
William III., has never been anything else than a
remarkably shrewd and remarkably conscienceless
commercial policy. The extraordinary successes
of this State-policy have been purchased at a high
price, consisting in the first place of a number of
sins and enormities. The history of the English
East India Company is the most defiled page in
the annals of the modern European nations, for
the shocking vampirism of this merchant-rule
sprang solely from greed; it cannot be excused,
as perhaps the acts of Philip II. or Robespierre
may be, by the fanaticism of a political conviction.

A still more serious factor in the situation is, that
owing to her transatlantic successes England has
lost her position as a European Great Power; in
negotiations on the continent her voice counts no
longer, and all the great changes which have
recently occurred in Central Europe took place
without England's participation, though for the
most part accompanied by impotent cries of rage
from the London press. The worst consequence,

however, of British commercial policy is the immense
and well-justified hatred which all nations
have gradually been conceiving towards England.
From the point of view of international law England
is to day the place where barbarism reigns;
it is England's fault alone that naval war is to day
only an organized piracy, and a humane maritime
international law cannot be established in the
world till a balance of power exists at sea as it
long has on land, and no State can dare any longer
to permit itself everything. English politicians
were never at a loss for philanthropic phrases
with which to cloak their commercial calculations;
at one time they alleged the necessity of maintaining
the balance of power in Europe, at another the
abolition of slavery, at another constitutional
freedom; and yet their national policy, like every
policy which aims at the unreasonable goal of
world supremacy always reckoned, as its foundation
principle, on the misfortunes of all other
nations.

England's commercial supremacy had its origin
in the discords on the continent, and owing to her
brilliant successes, which were often gained without
a struggle, there has grown up in the English
people a spirit of arrogance, for which "Chauvinism"
is too mild an expression. Sir Charles
Dilke, the well-known Radical member of Mr.
Gladstone's Cabinet, in his book, Greater Britain,
which is often mentioned, but, alas, too little read
here, claims as necessary acquisitions for "Greater

Britain," China, Japan, Chili, Peru, the La Plata
States, the tablelands of Africa—in short, the
whole world. In spite of the outrageous ill-usage
of Ireland, and the bestial coarseness of the London
mob, he calls Great Britain the land which from
the earliest time exhibits the greatest amount of
culture and insight, together with the least intermixture
of ignorance and crime. He looks confidently
forward to the time when Russia and
France will only be pigmies by the side of England.
In only three passages does he deign to make a
cursory mention of the Germans. One of them
is when he asks indignantly whether we really wish
to be so selfish as to decline to support with German
money the Euphrates Railway which is
indispensable to Greater Britain? Thus, then,
the manifold glories of the world's history, which
commenced with the empire of the monosyllabic
Chinese, are to conclude their melancholy cycle
with the empire of the monosyllabic British!

In opposition to such claims—and the impetuous
politician only gives incautious utterance to what
all England thinks—all the nations of Europe are
united together by a common interest. Since the
growing industries of the Continent have outgrown
the possibility of being exploited by England,
and the mutual understanding of the three
Emperors has ensured peace on the Continent,
and even France has begun to accustom herself
to the new and more sustainable balance of power,
the foundations of English maritime supremacy

have begun to be shaken. It is neither necessary
nor probable that the further development of these
tendencies should lead to a European war; Holland,
for example, lost her commercial supremacy not
through war, but through the tender embraces
of her English ally. The Power which is strongest
on land cannot cherish the wish to attain maritime
supremacy also. German policy is national and
cosmopolitan at the same time; it counts, otherwise
than British policy does, on the peaceful
prosperity of her neighbours. We can rejoice
without reserve at each advance of the Russians
in Central Asia, and each French success in Tonking.
Our ambition only reaches thus far, that in
the still uncolonized quarters of the earth, wind
and sun should be fairly divided between the
civilized nations. If the Congo Conference
succeeds in checking the high-handed arbitrariness
of England in Central Africa, the first united
repulse of English encroachments will not be the
last, since, outside Europe, there is no need for
the interests of the continental Powers to collide.
The great German seaport towns, at present imbued
with a half-mutinous spirit toward the
Government, have the prospect of a new period
of revival; it is from the Hansa towns that the
bold pioneers of our nation in Africa come. What
Schiller at the commencement of the nineteenth
century wrote about the greedy polyp-like arms
of England is not out of date to day; but we hope
that when the twentieth century dawns the transatlantic
world will have already learned that the
Germans to day no longer, as in Schiller's day,
escape from the stress of life into the still and holy
places of the heart.