German colonization of Africa

In the 1680s, the Margraviate of Brandenburg, then leading the broader realm of Brandenburg-Prussia, pursued limited imperial efforts in West Africa.

Five years later, a treaty with the king of Arguin in Mauritania established a protectorate over that island, and Brandenburg occupied an abandoned fort originally constructed there by Portugal.

Brandenburg — after 1701, the Kingdom of Prussia — pursued these colonial efforts until 1721, when Arguin was captured by the French and the Gold Coast settlements were sold to the Dutch Republic.

In 1884, pursuant to the Berlin Conference, colonies were officially established on the African west coast, often in areas already inhabited by German missionaries and merchants.

The following year gunboats were dispatched to East Africa to contest the Sultan of Zanzibar's claims of sovereignty over the mainland in what is today Tanzania.

Settlements in modern Guinea and Nigeria's Ondo State failed within a year; those in Burundi, Cameroon, Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Togo quickly grew into lucrative colonies.

They were invaded and largely occupied by the colonial forces of the Allied Powers during World War I, and in 1919 were transferred from German control by the League of Nations and divided between Belgium, France, Portugal, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

The six principal colonies of German Africa, along with native kingdoms and polities, were the legal precedents of the modern states of Burundi, Cameroon, Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Togo.

Germany decided to create a colony in East Africa under the leadership of Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in February 1885.

Moreover, Bismarck was suspicious of France and Great Britain’s true intentions in Africa and this only furthered his desire to create an East African colony.

The company did not waste any time in dispatching eighteen expeditions to make treaties expanding its territories in East Africa, but these moves by the Germans stirred hostility in the region.

[4] Resistance was seen all over German-controlled Africa, but the German soldiers and officers made up one of the best and most highly-trained armies in the world, so the action of rebelling didn’t have much of a long-term impact.

After diplomacy concluded and the conflicts resulted in German victory, their regime used bands of gunmen to maintain authority over local leaders.

[7] Moreover, the imposition of tax in 1898 initiated the transition to the second phase of administration whose chief characteristic was the collapse of the compromises made earlier in the decade.

[8] The old compromises collapsed because the increase in German military strength made them less dependent on local allies and while earlier officers often welcomed their collaborators’ power, later ones suspected it.

For example, Mtinginya of Usongo, a powerful Nyamwezi chief aided the Germans against Isike; but by 1901, he became a potential enemy and when he died a year or two later, his chiefdom was deliberately dismantled.

In German East Africa, this was much harder to pursue, as agriculture was less developed, and farmers were sometimes tortured inhumanely into producing certain crops.

[11] The Germans hoped to exploit the natural resources of the region and provide their country with a new market for manufactured goods; Kamerun was never considered to be a settler colony, as the climate was too hostile.

Nevertheless, the German interest in the interior continued, heightened by favorable reports from travelers such as Heinrich Barth in the 1850s; Gerhard Rohlfs in the 1860s; and Gustav Nachtigal, from 1869 to 1873.

[11] The army in the protectorate remained small because its major task was to suppress scattered African rebellions, not to ward off other Europeans.

However, at the start of the First World War, the combined forces of the British and the French invaded the colony and the Germans capitulated, after only a few skirmishes, on 26 August 1914.

The main goal of the Germans in Namibia was to provide a Lebensraum for its people: more territory that a state believes is needed for its natural development.

It was a mixture of nationalism, militarism, and racism that prompted Kaiser Wilhelm II to send a large army to crush the Herero.

Eventually, with pressures from inside the German government as more people learned about the brutality, the Kaiser was forced to tell his military to accept the surrender of the Herero.

[15] Great Britain and France had made secret arrangements splitting German territory and the Treaty of Versailles only cemented what had already taken place.

[16] After World War I, Germany did not just lose territory but lost commercial footholds, spheres of influence, and imperialistic ambitions of continued expansion.

German frustration from their territories being stolen from them and the extensive amount of reparations they were forced to pay led directly to World War II.