THE BEGINNINGS OF GERMAN COLONIZATION.

MONG German writers on colonization there exists a

consensus of opinion as to the tardiness of Germany's entrance upon the colonial field. The common cry is “too late,” and it is voiced in all accents from those of the reproachful complainer to those of the belligerent partisan and agitator. Among certain of these parties there is manifested a disposition to hold some person or policy responsible for such national backwardness; others disdain to assail the past, accept the present situation as inevitable, and direct their thoughts and efforts toward the future.

The latter attitude embodies the part of wisdom-the more so because upon reflection it is seen that Germany's past indifference toward organized expansion and colonization has been perfectly natural, and could hardly have been otherwise. During the last few centuries and up to the borders of our own generation Germany has been in no position to devote attention and effort to matters of this kind; internal conditions and external relations have alike impeded the development of colonial activity in distant lands. Periodically through the earlier centuries and during part of the nineteenth, frequent, long-continued and devastating wars reduced the population and destroyed accumulated wealth; industrial development was indefinitely postponed; political centralization and national unity were rendered impossible in a continuous strife of petty local interests. External relations were such as to discourage and cripple the trade of a country whose geographical position was and is most unfavorable to the development of shipping and transoceanic commerce. Everything was narrow, local and self-centred, horizons were limited, and ignorance of the external world was dense. Whatever may have been the intellectual life of the higher classes as exemplified in Humboldt, Goethe and others, the masses of the people had acquired no such cosmopolitan freedom of outlook, nor such enterprise and experience of the outside world, as

distinguished the industrial and commercial population of England and Holland during the same periods.1 Germany was looked down upon by many of her own greatest men as irretrievably provincial and uncultured.

The impracticability, in the earlier periods, of German colonial ventures across the seas is shown by the history of an actual attempt at colonization dating from the end of the seventeenth century.2 Frederick William, the great Elector of Brandenburg, a man of theories, who had picked up many foreign ideas during a period of study in Holland, conceived the scheme of making Prussia prosperous by creating colonies after the manner of the Dutch. He maintained a fleet under the command of a Dutch pirate, Raule, in order to secure his prospective commerce from the depredations and tyranny of the Swedes and Danes. After the peace of St. Germain (1679), finding his hands free from war, he turned his whole attention to colonization; the Guinea coast of Africa was his immediate objective, and there he hoisted his flag in 1683. An African Company with a trade monopoly had been founded in 1682, which for a time made considerable profit by a vigorous participation in the slave-trade. Negotiations were made with the Danes for the establishment of a slavestation or mart on the island of St. Thomas in the West Indies, and a small island between St. Thomas and Porto Rico was actually seized.

For the direction and prosecution of his project Frederick was obliged to have recourse to foreign agents. This was disastrous, for the numerous Dutchmen in his service seem to have jeopardized his undertaking about as much as their professedly hostile countrymen did. The local African management was incompetent and dishonest, and the settlement became a refuge for

This condition lasted far down into the nineteenth century. See Dr. Wohltmann over de Duitsche Koloniale Politiek, Indische Gids, 1897, ii, 1387.

Germans like to recall also the memory of how the famous Augsburg "Welser" undertook to develop and colonize Venezuela. This was a sort of miniature "conquista" after the Spanish model, depending upon warlike methods "without any serious prospects of commercial advantage." It took place about the middle of the sixteenth century, and suffered continually from the enmity of the Spaniards. R. Ehrenberg, Das Zeitalter der Fugger (2 Bde Jena, 1896), i, 200.

smugglers, broken men and outlaws. The company was always hovering on the verge of bankruptcy, and the Elector confessed that every new ducat of Guinea gold cost him double its value. In the midst of complications with Holland, the Prince died; his successor had little sympathy with colonial projects, and after some half-hearted attempt to revive the Africa Company, the heavily involved colony was sold to the Dutch West India Company in 1720. The West India settlements were abandoned.

This ill-starred exploit was a private project, attracting at its best but few supporters; its collapse "was the failure of a strong personal initiative to overcome the tastes and prejudices of a whole people."1 It is in no way to be reckoned as a display of collective activity, but demonstrates rather the utter hopelessness of trying to force a people out of its natural course of development. The German people, as a whole, were under the domination of social forces which were acting along lines of least resistance, and were impelling them, as it were instinctively, in the earlier period toward the East, and from Louis XIV's time toward America. Historically the Eastern movement goes back to the exploits of the Teutonic Knights (thirteenth century), and needs little mention here except as it throws light upon the sometimes questioned capacities of the German people in the field of colonial expansion. It was steady and strong, causing the Slav much apprehension; Russian and Polish novelists have shown how formidable it appeared to their countrymen, even in recent decades. It would have been strange, then as now, if this people had neglected what was at their very doors in order to acquire unknown possessions beyond the seas. In the nature of the case it little mattered to the average German that fellow-countrymen on the opposite side of the globe were compelled to seek protection beneath the British flag, because the fatherland possessed neither colonies, consuls nor navy; the fact that counted was that gradual expansion into Poland and Lithuania demanded little outfit, mental or material, and little adaptation of any kind.

1 Meinecke, Die Deutschen Kolonien in Wort und Bild (Leipzig, 1900), 1-3; H. A. Perry, The Traditions of German Colonization, Macmillans' Magazine, 62; 113 (1890); J. S. Keltie, The Partition of Africa (London, 1893), 162. Details in Schmidt, Deutschlands Kolonien (see p. 38, note 4) i, x-xxi. The first experience of the Germans with African fever was most disastrous.

As for America, emigration was less easy: conditions were less familiar, some capital was almost indispensable, and a greater effort and decision were demanded. But positive benefits were such as to attract a people noted for its expansive force and not unready to quit its native soil in order to better conditions of life. In America, especially in the English colonies, later the United States, one could live in a congenial climate, acquire land in certain tenure and pursue his labors with the assurance of a livelihood and more. The vexatious and oppressive European system, with its crystallized distinctions and exactions, could not exist where land was plenty, conditions primitive, and cultivators few. In the new States that were rising, an individual might cut loose from his past history and start anew under conditions of virtual equality of opportunity; he might hope to realize, at least for the generations to come, advantages of wealth and position which it had been impossible for preceding generations to secure for him in Europe. This was felt, more or less vaguely at first; evidence was soon accumulated from instances of the phenomenal successes of the first bolder adventurers. However much conditions have changed in America, this primal impulse toward self-betterment is as ever a most powerful element and has regularly neutralized efforts to divert the stream of emigration. The immense importance to both Americas of this desirable inflow is well known.

No more accidental incidents occurred to interrupt the normal course of events. Prussia remained innocent of any serious maritime or colonial policy from the time of the Brandenburg episode till the middle of the nineteenth century.1 The factors which make for industrial development continued to be but feebly represented; wars of all kinds and finally the crushing blows of Napoleon I. kept the Continent in a state of insecurity, ferment and demoralization and allowed England and America to monopolize commercial and industrial progress. Germany suffered with the rest under the blight of war, but when at last the upheavals were over, it was seen that a powerful country and people were emerging; the narrowness of the past was disappear

1 Perry, Traditions, etc.

ing, and under the régime of peace, population, capital and industrial and commercial activity were advancing at an accelerated speed. With the expansion of national interests came a widening of popular horizons, and Germany of the sixties displayed almost all the characteristics usually associated with a “colonizing nation.” A series of judiciously managed wars under the guidance of a great statesman created the indispensable element of national unity, and the state, coherent within, was ready to try its arms in more distant fields and to enter upon a world-activity which should in time include the extension of control over distant territory.1

During the period preceding the culmination of Bismarck's policy of unification, noteworthy omens for the future began to appear in the form of unofficial foreign undertakings in the commercial, missionary and scientific fields. The German trader and missionary became ubiquitous, and the Hamburg and Bremen merchant-houses extended their activity to South America, Africa and Australasia. Emigration of men and capital went along with the growth of a merchant marine and the formation of wide interests in foreign parts. Treaties were made with Eastern nations. German explorers and scientific travelers commenced to publish results of investigations pursued with a method and thoroughness to which the world was not used. Prussian men-of-war began to multiply and to appear on cruises of discovery and survey.2

After the war with France had welded the German nation into a still more coherent whole and had inspired it with the elation of victory and the sense of important individuality, voices began to be heard which demanded the official extension of German

1 P. Leroy-Beaulieu, Colonisation chez les Peuples Modernes (4th edit., Paris, 1898), 304.

Der Deutsche Export nach den Tropen und die Ausrüstung für die Kolonien (Berlin, 1900); 1 ff; Meinecke, 4-5; H. Blum, Neu-Guinea und der BismarckArchipel (Berlin 1900), 8 ff.; J. Graf Pfeil, Studien und Beobachtungen aus der Südsee (Braunschweig, 1899), 10 ff.; H. H. Johnston, The Colonization of Africa by Alien Races (Cambridge, 1899), 206 ff.; Keltie, 169-70; F. C. Philippson, Ueber Colonisation, Volkswirtschaftliche Zeitfragen, Jahrg. 2, Hefte 4, 5 (Berlin 1880), 61 ff. "Colonies are in our present development a natural and inevitable consequence of a vigorous trade across the seas;" T. Fabri, Kolonien als Bedürfnis unserer nationalen Entwickelung (Heidelberg, 1884), 10.