See FRA NCE - COLON I ES.
Denmark; United States; Sweden.— Denmark established an East India Com pany in 1618 with a view to enter on the colonial trade; and other companies were after ward formed. In the same year, with the formation of the first company, the colony of Tranquebar was founded on the Coromandel coast. Its success was fluctuating, like that of the companies formed to manage it, and at last, in 184.5, it was sold to the East India Com pany. Saint Thomas in the West Indies was settled by the Danes in 1672; Saint John and some of the smaller islands in the same group (the Virgin Islands) were also occupied by them. The island of Santa Cruz was purchased from France in 1733. By a treaty signed 4 Aug. 1916, the West India islands belong ing to Denmark passed into possession of the United States at the purchase price of $25,000,000. Formal transfer took place on 31 March 1917, and the islands are now called the Virgin Islands of the United States. Sweden established an East India Company in 1741. She acquired the island of Saint Bartholomew from France in 1785, but restored it in 1878, and has now no colonies.
A German historian of the colonial movement dates his story from the end of the Crusades, while another, not to be outdone in the national virtue of thoroughness, seek its origins in pre-Christian annals. For practical purposes, the Gerrnan colonial move ment, as we lcnow it to-day, is barely over 30 years old. There were genuine if tentative efforts at colonization as early as the 17th cen tury, when the Great Elector of Brandenburg established settlements on the west coast of Africa. Earlier still the Hanseatic Towns would have traded with foreign territories had they not been frowned upon at home. Prus sia's and Germany's dreams of world-conquest and colonization were dispelled when Frederick William I of Prussia (1713-40), more concerned to assure his sovereignty at home, abandoned the Great Elector's settlements. The new policy was shared by Fredericic the Great (1740-86), who considered all distant possessions '2a. bur den to the state') and ga village on the frontier worth a principality 250 miles away? Nearly a century and a half was to pass before the colonial question again seriously entered Ger man politics. Germans are in the habit of dating the modern movement from 1874, when Great Britain annexed the Fiji Islands, in which German trade had long flourished. This incident, however, did not create a colonial spirit, but about this time the explorer, Gustav Nachtigal (1834-85), visited various parts of Africa, carrying presents to native chiefs from the German Emperor, though he made no at tempt to acquire territory. At this time while great portions of Africa were being brought into the British sphere of influence there was no appreciation of colonial aims in Germany, and all the nation's effort was directed toward developing at home the advantages which had followed from the successful war with France. It was only in 1883 that the first colonial society, the Kolonial Verein, came upon the scene. Up to.then there was no systematic colonial enter prise and no organized colonial policy in Ger many. It was the Bremen trader, Herr Liideritz, who gave to Germany her earliest colonial possession. In 1882, by treaties with native chiefs, he acquired land in the Bay of Angra Pequena, on the southwest coast of Africa, and he pressed the home government to support his claim. For a time nothing was done, until the claims of Herr Luderitz were disputed by agents of the British Crown. Luderitz's appeal for protection roused Bis marck's interest and he formally annexed Liideritzland. This gave Germany the coast land extending from the Orange River to Cape Frio, exclusive of Walfish Bay. What happened in Southwest Africa happened, too, in the Northwest. German claims to territory on the Cameroon River led likesvise to disputes, and here also Bismarck cut the Gordian knot instead of waiting for it to be unravelled. In the Pacific German settlements had been es tablished since 1880 for trading purposes on the north coast of New Guinea, and over these, as well as the New Britain Islands, the German flag was hoisted in the winter of 1884. These two new acquisitions were promptly renamed, the one being called Kaiser Wilhelm's Land and the other Bismarcic Archipelago. The fol lowing year saw fresh annexations in East Africa, to develop which a wealthy company was formed, and in the Pacific the Marshall Islands and part of the Solomon group were also acquired. The treaties under which Ger many declared a protectorate over the East African regions were concluded by Dr. Karl Peters, an ardent colonial pioneer, who entirely subordinated means to ends. Each of these annexations served as a starting point for large extensions of territory, so that after two years of diligent search and salvage amongst the still unregarded regions of the African continent and the Pacific, Germany found itself in pos session of a colonial empire having an area of 377,000 square miles and an estimated popula tion of 1,750,000. Bismarck never had great
faith in colonies, his policy being consolidation at home, and he only gave his consent to the expansionist policy when he knew the country to be behind him. Caprivi, Bismarck's suc cessor, was hostile to the colonial movement and it was not until he fell that the traditions of colonial expansion were revived under Prince Hohenlohe in the nineties. Thus the Caroline Islands were annexed in 1899, also the Peleis and Marianne groups. In the same year the Samoan Islands were brought under the German flag; already in 1897 Kiau Chau had been wrested from China. The total area of Germany's colonial possessions in 1914 was 1,027,820 square miles, with a white population of 24,389 and a native population of 12,041,603. In the course of the European War one after another of her colonies became lost to Germany. Togo was taken by combined British and French forces on 7 Aug. 1914. Cameroon was conquered by French and English troops on 18 Feb. 1916. South West Africa fell to the South African forces of General Botha on 9 July 1915 and is administered by the Government of the Union of South Africa. East Africa was occupied during the war by British, Belgian and Portuguese forces and was finally con in 1917. Kiau Chau fell to combined apanese and British forces on 7 Nov. 1914. In the north Pacific the German possessions were captured by the Japanese shortly after the outbreak of the war in 1914 and were handed over to the Australian forces. The islands south of the equator are administered by Australia, those north of the equator by Japan, and Samoa by New Zealand. German colonial administration has not been happy in its methods nor yet in its officials. The prin ciple laid down by Bismarck was soon departed from: the trader, having obtained protection, went back to his plantation, his compound, his stores; he certainly was not urged to play any part in the government of his colony; grad ually the whole system of Prussian bureaucracy was introduced in each of the colonies, large and small. The secret of the administrative order that reigns at home is "system? and it was taken for granted that if sufficient "system" were introduced into the government of the colonies the same results would follow. Fur thermore, far too little regard was paid to native customs and traditions of life. Instead of studying native law systematically and regu lating administration in each colony according to its peculiar traditions, all colonies alike were governed according to set Prussian legal maxims interpreted in a bureaucratic spirit by jurists with little experience of human nature, and none at all of native usages. The choice of officials was also unfortunate in a majority of cases; the colonies being regarded as relief institutions for the benefit of men who had failed at home. It was declared from the throne in 1888 that it must be a solemn duty of the Empire to "win the Dark Continent for Christian civilization." Not much Christian civilization, or civilization of any kind, was car ried to the colonies. Stories of slavery, vio lence, cruelty, illegality and lust, committed both by officials and planters, were reported only too frequently by missionaries and clean handed men in the colonial service, who could not see these things and be silent. The use of force as the only method of civilizing the native was constantly advocated with a daring frankness. In South West Africa the Hereros were decimated by the armed forces of Ger many. General von Trotha wrote in his proc v0i. 7.= 20 lamation of 2 Oct. 1904: "The Herero people must leave the land. If it refuses I shall compel it with the gun. Within the German frontier, every Herero, with or without weapon, with or without cattle, will be shot. I shall take charge of no more women and children, but shall drive them back to their people or let them be shot at? The leader of the German People's party in the Reichstag said before that body on 24 March 1906 that "The leg-41 position of the blacks is miserable in the ex treme. The honor of the German name suffers under this absolutely arbitrary system. We have lost the sympathy of the black race? The Great War has brought about the loss to Ger many of its colonial possessions acquired within the memory of the majority of men living. Qn the colonial record of Germany as on many other records of that dation must be written in large letters the word failure.