When Germany leased Kiau-Chau, she declared solemnly that the port of Tsing-Tau would be an open port, ein frei Hafen für allen Nationen. But Japanese trade competition soon caused her to go back on her word. She conceived a clever scheme in 1906, by which the Chinese customs duties were allowed to be collected within the Protectorate in return for an annual sum of twenty per cent. upon the entire customs receipts of the Tsing-Tau district. In this way, she is more than recompensed for the generosity displayed in allowing German goods to be subject to the Chinese customs. She reimburses herself at the expense of the Japanese! Berlin could not have been astonished at the ultimatum of August 15th from Tokio.
There has always been much opposition in Germany to the colonization policy of the Government, the dissatisfaction over the poor success of the attempts at African colonization led Chancellor Caprivi to state that the worst blow an enemy could give him was to force upon him more territories in Africa! The Germans never got on well with the negroes. Their colonists, for the most part too poor to finance properly agricultural schemes, lived by trading. Like all whites, they cheated the natives and bullied them into giving up their lands. In South-West Africa, a formidable uprising of the Herreros resulted in the massacre of all the Germans except the missionaries and the colonists who had established themselves there before the German occupation. The suppression of this rebellion took more than a year, and cost Germany an appalling sum in money and many lives. But it cost the natives more. Two thirds of the nation of the Herreros were massacred: while only six or seven thousand were in arms, the German official report stated that forty thousand were killed. The Germans confiscated all the lands of the natives.
In 1906, after twenty-one years of German rule, there were in South-West Africa sixteen thousand prisoners of war out of a total native population of thirty-one thousand. All the natives lived in concentration camps, and were forced to work for the Government. In commenting upon the Herrero campaign, Pastor Frenssen, one of the most brilliant writers of modern Germany, put in the mouth of the hero of his colonial novel the following words: "God has given us the victory because we were the most noble race, and the most filled with initiative. That is not saying much, when we compare ourselves with this race of negroes; but we must act in such a way as to become better and more active than all the other people of the world. It is to the most noble, to the most firm that the world belongs. Such is the justice of God."
German opposition has been bitter also against the occupation of Kiau-Chau. For traders have claimed that the political presence of Germany on the Shantung peninsula and the dealings of the German diplomats with the Pekin court had so prejudiced the Chinese against everything German that it was harder to do business with them than before the leasehold was granted. They actually advocated the withdrawal of the protectorate for the good of German commerce!
But German pride was at stake in Africa after the Herrero rebellion. And in China, Kiau-Chau was too valuable a naval base to give up. In 1907, a ministry of colonies was added to the Imperial Cabinet. Since then the colonial realm has been considered an integral part of the Empire.
At every point of this colonial development, Germany found herself confronted with open opposition and secret intrigue. The principal strategic value of south-west Africa was taken away by the British possession of Walfisch Bay, and of east Africa by the protectorate consented to by the Sultan of Zanzibar to the British Crown. Togoland and Kamerun are hemmed in by French and British possession of the hinterland. The Pacific islands are mostly "left-overs," or of minor importance. In spite of the unpromising character of these colonies, the commerce of Germany with them increased from 1908 to 1912 five hundred per cent., and the commerce with China through Kiau-Chau from 1902 to 1912 nearly a thousand per cent.
And yet, in comparison to her energies and her willingness—let us leave till later the question of ability and fitness—Germany has had little opportunity to exercise a colonial administration on a large scale. She must seek to extend her political influence over new territories. Where and how? That has been the question. Most promising of all appeared the succession to the Portuguese colonies, for the sharing of which Great Britain declared her willingness to meet Germany halfway. An accord was made in 1898, against the eventuality of Portugal selling her colonies. But since the Republic was proclaimed in Portugal, there has been little hope that her new Government would consider itself strong enough to part with the heritage of several centuries.
For the increase of her colonial empire, Germany has felt little hope. So she has tried to secure commercial privileges in various parts of the world, through which political control might eventually come. We have already spoken of her effort in China. Separate chapters treat of her efforts in the three Moslem countries, Morocco, Persia, and Turkey, and show how in each case she has found herself checkmated by the intrigues and accords of the three rich colonial Powers.
Long before the political union of the German States in Europe was accomplished, there were German aspirations in regard to the New World, when Pan-Germanists dreamed of forming states in North and South America.
These enthusiasts did not see that the Civil War had so brought together the various elements of the United States, the most prominent and most loyal of which was the German element, that any hope of a separatist movement in the United States was chimerical. As late as 1885, however, the third edition of Roscher's Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung stated that "it would be a great step forward, if the German immigrants to North America would be willing to concentrate themselves in one of the states, and transform it into a German state." For different reasons Wisconsin would appear to be most particularly indicated.