Author
Abstract
In recent years, German colonialism has received growing public attention - a history long overshadowed by the World Wars. Due to its short-lived character, a long-term comparative view of German colonialism has not featured prominently in most accounts of European imperialism. This chapter traces the 30-year expansion of German colonialism in sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific, with a focus on the development of foreign trade, fiscal capacity, and education. Although one of the motivations for acquiring colonies was the promise of substantial financial rewards, Germany barely profited economically from its colonies, with the exception of the Hanseatic trading firms, thus vindicating von Bismarck’s initial skepticism about colonial ventures. The colonies never fulfilled their hopes serving as German population vent or supplier of tropical agricultural commodities to satisfy German industrial demand. Instead, trade with its own colonies accounted for only a negligible share of German foreign commerce, while colonial expenditures consistently exceeded fiscal revenues. Although Germany was a latecomer to colonialism, it came to possess the third-largest colonial empire in sub-Saharan Africa, with economic potential comparable to that of the British and French. In the final years of Germany’s colonial empire, revenues were increasingly raised locally, and plantations, railroads, and trade were expanding—largely due to diamond discoveries in South-West Africa and the rubber boom. In this sense, German colonialism ended just as the colonies were becoming more self-sustaining and economically viable. The consequences and legacies of German colonialism varied across colonies. German rule transformed local societies through: (i) plantation economies that appropriated fertile land and relied on forced labor to cultivate tropical export crops (Cameroon and partly East Africa); (ii) trading economies in which local farmers produced crops for export with limited German investment (Togo, New Guinea and Samoa); and (iii) settler colonialism, where German settlers—facing strong local resistance—violently dispossessed the population in South-West Africa, culminating in the first genocide of the 20th century.