Not long after this, evidence was forthcoming that something far more than the settling of German colonists in Africa and the securing of a "footing" on African soil by Germany was really being kept in view.
In 1880 Sir Bartle Frere, at that time Governor of the Cape and High Commissioner for South Africa, forwarded to Lord Kimberley a translation of an article which had just been contributed to the Geographische Nachrichten by Ernst von Weber; and, in doing so he informed the Colonial Secretary that the article contained "a clear and well-argued statement in favour of the plan for a German colony in South Africa which was much discussed in German commercial and political circles even before the Franco-German War, and is said to have been one of the immediate motives of the German mission of scientific inquiry which visited southern and eastern Africa in 1870-71."
Von Weber's proposals[56] pointed, however, to the creation, not simply of "a German colony" in South Africa, but of a German Empire in Africa. "A new Empire," he wrote, "possibly more valuable and more brilliant than even the Indian Empire, awaits in the newly-discovered Central Africa that Power which shall possess sufficient courage, strength and intelligence to acquire it"; and he proceeded to show (1) why Germany should be this Power, and (2) the means by which she might eventually secure control of the whole country.
The establishment of trading settlements was to ensure for the Germans a footing in the districts north of the Transvaal, and this was to be followed by the flooding of South Africa generally with German immigrants. The Boers spread throughout South Africa were already allied to the Germans by speech and habits, and they would, he thought, be sure to emigrate to the north and place themselves under the protection of the German colonies there, rather than remain subject to the hated British. In any case, "a constant mass-immigration of Germans would gradually bring about a decided numerical preponderance of Germans over the Dutch population, and of itself would effect the Germanisation of the country in a peaceful manner. It was," he continued, "this free, unlimited room for annexation in the north, this open access to the heart of Africa, which principally inspired me with the idea, now more than four years ago, that Germany should try, by the acquisition of Delagoa Bay and the subsequent continued influx of German immigrants into the Transvaal, to secure future dominion over the country, and so pave the way for the foundation of a German-African Empire of the future."
The procedure to be followed was (1) the acquiring of territory in Africa by Germany wherever she could get it, whether in the central or in the coastal districts; (2) co-operation with the Boers as a step towards bringing them and their Republics under German suzerainty; and (3) the overthrow of British influence, with the substitution for it of German supremacy.
These ideas gained wide acceptance in Germany; they became a leading factor in the colonial policy of the Imperial Government, and they reconciled the German people, more or less, to the heavy burdens which the developments of that policy were to involve.
German South-West Africa
The first steps towards the attainment of the aspirations entertained were taken by Herr Adolf Lüderitz, a Bremen merchant who, acting under the auspices of the German Colonial Society, and having received from the Imperial Foreign Office assurances of its protection, established a trading settlement, in April, 1883, in the bay of Angra Pequeña, situate between Namaqualand and Damaraland on the west coast of Africa, and about 150 miles north of Orange River, the northern boundary of Cape Colony. Acquiring from a Hottentot chief a stretch of territory 215 miles in extent in the Hinterland of Angra Pequeña, Lüderitz raised the German flag in the settlement, which thus became Germany's first colony. Further concessions of territory were obtained, and in September, 1884, Germany announced that the west coast of Africa, from 26 degrees S. latitude to Cape Frio, excepting Walfisch Bay (declared British in 1878), had been placed under the protection of the German Emperor. A treaty made between England and Germany in 1890 defined the limits of the German South-West African Protectorate as bounded on the south by the Orange River and Cape Colony, on the north by Portuguese Angola, on the west by the Atlantic, and on the east by British Bechuanaland, with the so-called "Caprivi Strip," giving Germany access from the north-east corner of her Protectorate to a point on the Zambezi River north of Victoria Falls.[57] The total area comprised within these boundaries was about 322,200 square miles.
At the outset, the new Protectorate aroused little enthusiasm in Germany as a colony where her surplus population could hope to settle and prosper under the German flag instead of going to foreign countries, as so many thousands of Germans were then doing. On a coast-line of 900 miles there was no good natural harbour except the one at Walfisch Bay, owned by the British. Swakopmund and Lüderitzbucht, on which the German colonists would have to rely, were then little better than open roadsteads. Considerable expanses of the territory itself consist of drought-stricken desert. The rainfall in Damaraland and Namaqualand averages only about three inches a year. In certain districts a period of five or six years has been known to pass without any rain at all. A record of rainfall on some parts of the coast has shown a total of one-fifth of an inch in the course of twelve months. At Walfisch Bay the British settlement imports its fresh water from Capetown. On the higher of the series of plateaux rising gradually to the Kalahari desert the climatic conditions are more favourable, and the better rainfall in the north-east allows of good crops being grown, while various sections are favourable for stock-raising. In later years, also, various deposits of copper were found in the district of Otavi, some 400 miles from Swakopmund, and diamond fields, which yielded nearly £1,000,000 worth of stones in the first year, were discovered east of Lüderitzbucht in 1908. But in Germany the Protectorate was regarded as a desirable acquisition mainly, if not exclusively, because of the advantages it was expected to afford as a base for the eventual creation of a German-African Empire.