Rail Connection with Angola
What Mr. O'Connor says in regard to Germany's attitude towards the African possessions of the smaller Powers gives additional significance to a report published in the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten of May 31, 1914, concerning a project for building a line of railway along the coast of German South-West Africa to connect with Portuguese Angola. This was to be the first of a series of lines which "after lengthy discussions with the Imperial Government," were to be carried out in German South-West Africa by a syndicate of prominent shipping and banking houses in Germany, controlling an initial capital of 50,000,000 marks (£2,500,000). It was further reported that in the early part of 1914 the Governor of German South-West Africa made a tour through the northern part of the Protectorate, going as far as Tiger Bay, in Angola, "in connection with possible railway construction in the near future."
Angola was certainly an item on the German list of desirable acquisitions in Africa. It has been in the occupation of Portugal since the middle of the fifteenth century; but the point of view from which it was regarded by advocates of German expansion may be judged from some remarks made in the Kölnische Zeitung by a traveller who returned to Germany from Angola in June, 1914:—
The game is worth the candle. An enormous market for industrial products, rich and virgin mineral treasures, a fruitful and healthy country equally suitable for agriculture, cattle-breeding and immigration, and the finest harbours on the west coast—that is the prize that awaits us.
A territory offering these advantages, having an area estimated at 484,000 square miles, and extending inland for a distance of 1,500 miles, might be coveted for its own sake; but its possession would have been of still greater value to Germany (1) as a continuation, northwards, of German South-West Africa, and (2) as the starting point for a chain of communications, under German control, extending right across the African continent, from west to east.
The coast-railway spoken of by the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten was to link up German South-West Africa with Angola, in which country, also, the Germans hoped to obtain extensive mining and agricultural concessions, thus forwarding their established policy of peaceful penetration by means of commerce and railways, and establishing economic interests which might be expected to lead to political developments in due course, and so prepare the way for an eventual seizure of "the prize that awaits us."
The Germans had also sought to finance the completion eastwards of the Lobito Bay or Benguela Railway, to which reference will be made later on in connection with the development of the Katanga district of the Belgian Congo; but the condition they advanced, namely that the control of the line should be left in their hands, coupled with their adoption of suspicious lines of policy in other directions,[63] led to their railway proposals being declined by the Portuguese, with thanks.