Germany's Vanishing Colonies

by Gordon Le Sueur

That these views were not held by Herr von Weber alone in Germany must have been apparent to our Foreign and Colonial Offices, but the only steps taken were to ask the British ambassador in Berlin for a report; and this, when received, assured the Government that the plan had no prospect of success, because the German Government felt more the want of soldiers than of Colonies, and consequently discouraged emigration—while the German Government's disinclination to acquire distant dependencies had been marked in the rejection of the Samoa Bill.

The possibility of a reversal of feeling did not occur to anyone apparently, and the British Government was therefore quite satisfied that "the plan had no prospect of success"; and having intimated the same to Sir Bartle Frere, abandoned interest in the matter.

To the Prussian militarist section in Germany Ernst von Weber's exhortation irresistibly appealed. A glance at the map of South Africa will show how feasible it was for Germany not only to curtail the expansion of British territory from the south, but to secure the dominion of the greater part of the continent for Germany.

It was a great ideal and came near to consummation by insidious working of German Government agents, bountifully assisted in their object by the vacillation and indifference of the British Colonial and Foreign Offices.

In the south-west was a huge area of which no actual annexation had been proclaimed, yet to the mind of our statesmen amply secured by being understood to be within the "sphere of British influence." Between it and the Transvaal Republic lay another unprotected area stretching across the Kalahari so-called "desert" and including Bechuanaland, the happy hunting-ground of missionaries and Matabele raiders. South-east of the Transvaal, stretching to the coast, was another unoccupied region comprising Tongaland and part of Zululand, with an excellent harbour on the east coast at St Lucia Bay.

Give any Power Great Namaqualand and Damaraland on the west coast, add Bechuanaland in the interior and a working agreement with the Transvaal Republic with access to the east coast at St Lucia Bay, then the Cape Colony was shut in by very circumscribed borders for ever from her Hinterland; while a dream of "Africa all Red" was smothered in its genesis, and its record filed away for future reference in the archives of the might have been.

But a belt across the southern portion of the continent did not comprise the sum-total of the Prussian ambition. There was an enormous and fabulously rich extent of country stretching up to and beyond the Zambezi, occupied only by marauding savages under the rule of Lo Bengula, King of the Amandebele—and now known as Rhodesia.

With a distinct vision of the prize offering, the German set out with the mailed fist wrapped in cotton wool to stalk his prey delicately.

In 1883 while German traders were busy establishing a footing in Great Namaqualand and Damaraland, diplomacy and intrigue had been at work in the Transvaal. The Boer Government had concluded an agreement with the Portuguese whereby they obtained an outlet to the east coast by a railway to Delagoa Bay, and the Boers had begun to occupy portions of Bechuanaland, separating the Transvaal and Namaqualand.

Boer Republics were proclaimed over the territories of several Bechuana chiefs, and overtures were made by German emissaries from the Transvaal to Lo Bengula for a concession over the territory under his sway.