Australia and the World Past and Present

Germany gained her colonies rather late in the game. The main European colonial powers had had a head start.

Bismarck favoured a system of trading firms administering territories with limited state support.

He was far from the enthusiastic coloniser.

He had a feeling that they would become economic quagmires and would consume more funds than they would bring in.

At least if they were run by companies, if the ventures didn’t work out it would be no big loss for the German motherland.

Germany’s colonies were scattered widely around the world. It is as though someone had laid a map on the table and thrown some pebbles down to see where they would land. They were unconnected to each other and far from Germany itself. The closet colony to Germany was Togoland, which is one the reasons that it was one of the more economically viable territories.

Germany only started to acquire overseas territories in the 1880s.

It annexed Cameroon in 1884. Due to the prevalence of tropical diseases there, it was not to be a settler colony. It would develop some characteristics of a plantation colony. Palm oil was a major commodity.

Also in 1884, Togo entered German administrative control. Two rail lines were constructed there after 1904. By 1900 there were only 372 Germans living there.¹

Here too, the production of palm oil was a major industry. German colonialism was often accompanied by European religion and missionaries. However, the German authorities tried to keep missionaries out of the north of the country and away from Muslims there. Local resistance to German occupation was not as strong as it was in some other German territories. Less unrest meant less military spending and this was another factor making Togoland a model territory for the Germans.

South-West Africa would be be Germany’s only settler colony.

Less than 1% of its land was suitable for cultivation.²

By 1904 Herero and Nama fighters were causing real headaches for German military forces. There was much resistance between 1904 and 1907.

German tactics became more fierce and the number of troops increased. What followed was the first genocide of the twentieth century.

Many Herero and Nama were killed. After the Herero and Nama wars, lines continued to be built. Many workers came in from the from Cape Colony.

German East Africa was three times the size of Germany. Here too, there was significant opposition to the German control. There was the “Arab rising” on the Swahili coast (1888-9), the Hehe War (1892-96) and the Maji-Maji War (1905-7).

Germans were trading in the Pacific Islands all the way back to the 1850s. Copra was an important commodity here. Germany annexed west New Guinea in 1899 as well as Samoa’s eastern islands. There were never more than 500 Europeans in Samoa.³

The German territories had an image problem. Germany was experiencing high population growth. Some 90% of the Germans who chose to migrate headed for the United States.⁴

When it came to exports from German colonies, German East Africa, Cameroon and Togoland did the heavy lifting until 1909. Then diamonds were discovered in German South-West Africa and the diamond boom there boosted the territory’s export earnings.

In 1882 East Africa accounted for 43.3% of all exports from German colonies. Cameron stood at 35.3%. Togo contributed a commendable 20%. South-West Africa’s were only a tiny fraction of the whole – 1.5%.

In 1900, Cameroon was now topped the list with 34.1% and East Africa brought in 24.9%.

By 1913 South-West Africa was contributing 45.5% and Togo was on 5.9%

The South Pacific never brought in more than 18%.⁵

To make all this trade possible, a fleets of steamships from the Woerman trading firm plied the open waters.

Despite all this effort in acquiring colonies and developing industries, Germany’s imports from its colonies was never more than 0.6% of the total, which is pretty astounding.

Despite producing palm oil in its own territories, Germany was still sourcing nearly 90% of it palm oil from British West Africa.⁶

Between 1900 and 1905, Samoa’s per capita exports were 450 times greater than the German colonial average.⁷

Palm trees grew there naturally and the place was densely populated. The colonial authorities had a lot of difficultly getting the native population to work for wage labour on plantations.

Palm oil was used to lubricate machine parts. It was also used to make soap.

Rubber came from Cameroon and East Africa. There was high demand for the resource. Rubber was needed for to make tyres for bicycles and an emerging car industry.

Lets look at which commodities dominated over time.

In 1892 Palm oil dominated. By 1905 it was rubber and in 1910 it was diamonds. Most diamonds went to the U.S. where they ended up as engagement rings.

There was economic growth in the German territories. Between 1892 and 1913 the value of imports increased 22 times over.⁸

What did the colonies import? Textiles usually accounted for around 30%.

Most rail construction took place in South-West Africa and East Africa. These were vast territories.

In 1900 less than 20% of revenue came from inside the colonies themselves. Import and export duties were critical in raising revenue and they usually sat between 10 and 15%. In East Africa, the authorities instituted a hut tax which was deeply unpopular and contributed, in part, to the Maji-Maji uprising.

Direct taxes were higher in East Africa while South-West Africa focused more on customs duties.

Togoland was largely self-sufficient.

South-West Africa however needed to be heavily subsidised. There, locally-raised revenue was only about 10% of public expenditure.⁹ At the time of the Herero and Nama wars, the territory was receiving subsidies 43 times greater than those received by Cameroon.¹⁰

By 1907 customs revenue was flatlining in Togoland. Authorities there introduced a herd tax.

In Cameroon a 30-day labour tax was brought in.

So, was Bismarck right – were colonies a liability rather than an asset? Initially they were. Germany’s model colony was Togoland. It was Germany’s closest colony. It was a relatively small area with a large, densely concentrated population. The native population offered very little opposition to the German authorities. As a result, Germany did not have to spend vast amounts of money on soldiers and military equipment there. But this was the best case. The situation in other colonies was much more difficult. Germany’s other African colonies were geographically vast, with scattered populations. They tended to resist German encroachment. It was also difficult to attract German settlers to these places. Germany had to spend vast sums early on to build railway networks in East Africa and South-West Africa. The irony is that just as colonies like South-West Africa were becoming more economically diversified and solvent, World War I meant that Germany would lose her colonies – usually to Britain and France who tended to divide the territories amongst themselves.

1. Felix Meier zu Selhausen, German Colonialsim in Africa and the Pacific, 1884-1914, AEHN African Economic History Network, African Economic History Working Paper No. 80, 2025 ↩︎
2. Ibid, p. 3 ↩︎
3. Ibid, p. 5 ↩︎
4. Ibid, p. 3 ↩︎
5. Ibid, all figures p. 7 ↩︎
6. Ibid, p. 8 ↩︎
7. Ibid, p. 8 ↩︎
8. Ibid, p. 10 ↩︎
9. Ibid, p. 12 ↩︎
10. Ibid, p. 12 ↩︎