Germany's Vanishing Colonies

by Gordon Le Sueur

The spice trade attracted adventurers of all the pioneering nations. Spain made extensive voyages of discovery and plunder in the South Seas, and their galleons for many years provided the excitement of the chase as well as profit in "double pieces of eight" for British sea rovers; but the Spanish acquired but a tentative hold upon territory, and this was finally released by the Spanish-American War of 1901.

The legacy of Spain to the South Seas was the romantic occupation of searching for wrecks bearing cargoes of doubloons and the abandoned booty of pirates, which they seem to have collected for the specific purpose of burying in brass-clamped chests on uninhabited islands for the benefit of the adventurous spirit who might in future years display sufficient enterprise and determination to find his way through the maze which surrounded the prizes.

The latter part of the seventeenth century saw one of the greatest periods of British activities in venturing trade abroad, albeit it often-times took the form of preying upon the rich cargoes collected by the Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese marauders. This, however, was then the most approved and recognised form of commerce.

Direct trade in Borneo and Sumatra by the British was commenced in about 1685, and "factories" were established to develop the spice trade which was then the richest of the East, a cargo of pepper-corns being regarded as one of the most valuable that could avoid a meddlesome buccaneer and be safely brought to port.

The voyages of Captain Cook, whose name ranks high amongst the pioneers of our Empire, and who discovered and named many of the island groups as well as the east coast of Australia, where he hoisted the British flag, really firmly established British interests in the South Seas, after strenuous struggles with the Dutch who regarded the area as most particularly their "sphere of influence."

Through the last decades of the eighteenth century British influence and prestige grew, and the apathy of the statesmen at home was not allowed by their sons on the spot to interfere with energetic development and settlement which proceeded apace.

Coming rather late in the day, France was, through private British enterprise, forestalled in her principal designs which were centred on New Zealand, and her "protection" was only extended to some small island groups such as New Caledonia, lying between Australia and Fiji, and for which she found use as penal establishments.

The big prizes of the Pacific—Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand—had fallen to the heritage of Great Britain, and development rather concentrated on these magnificent offshoots of British oak.

There were other important groups of islands, however, which, although locally regarded as natural adjuncts of the Australian Settlements, were not definitely taken possession of. The most important of these were New Guinea and the Samoan group.