Germany's Vanishing Colonies

by Gordon Le Sueur

The German wedge having been insidiously inserted into South West Africa, the propitious moment seemed to have arrived in 1884 for Germany to acquire territorial possession of South West Africa. Representations were accordingly made by the German to the British Government, pointing out that German subjects had substantial interests in and about Angra Pequena in need of protection, and inquiring whether the British were prepared to extend protection to the German industries and subjects north of the Orange River, which British statesmen seemed to have stubbornly determined should remain the boundary of the Cape Colony.

The Governor of the Cape had, indeed, been clearly and distinctly given to understand that, except as regards Walfisch Bay, the Home Government would lend no encouragement to the establishment of British jurisdiction in Great Namaqualand and Damaraland north of the Orange River.

Bismarck's application to Lord Granville, therefore, placed the latter in an awkward predicament, inasmuch as he intimated that if Great Britain were not agreeable to providing protection for the lives and properties of German subjects, the German Government would do its best to extend to it the same measure of protection which they gave to their subjects in other remote places.

Bismarck took care, however, to impress upon the British Foreign Office that in any action the German Government might take there was no underlying design to establish a territorial footing in South Africa. He disclaimed any intention other than to obtain protection for the property of German subjects; and this assurance was complacently accepted as a complete reply to the representations of the Cape statesmen.

The Home Government seem, at the same time, to have understood at the beginning of 1884 that the choice lay before them of formally annexing South West Africa from the Orange River north to the Portuguese border, or acquiescing in a German annexation.

With almost criminal procrastination, however, they deferred replying to the German inquiry, deeming it necessary to communicate with the Government of the Cape Colony and invite that Government, in the event of South West Africa being declared to be under British jurisdiction, to undertake the responsibility and cost of the administration of the territory.

Lord Granville, moreover, temporised by informing Bismarck that the Cape Colonial Government had certain establishments along the south-western coasts, and that he would obtain a report from the Cape, as it was not possible without more precise information to form any opinion as to whether the British authorities would have it in their power to give the protection asked for in case of need.

This answer Bismarck probably expected and welcomed, as it left him free to proceed with his own arrangements, while the British Foreign Office pigeonholed the subject until the matter might be reopened.

In the beginning of 1883, owing to representations from British firms interested in South West Africa as to German activity in that part, the British Foreign Office obtained a report from their Chargé d'Affaires in Berlin, and were again lulled into complaisant inactivity by being assured that the amount of "protection" intended to be afforded by the German Government to Luderitz's "commercial Colony" was precisely what would be granted to any other subject of the Empire who had settled abroad and acquired property.

It would be a mistake, the Foreign Office was notified, to suppose that the German Government had any intention of establishing crown Colonies or of assuming a Protectorate over a territory acquired by a traveller or explorer.