| Primary
Source |
| Imperialism |
Colonial Policy | [P|S|M] |
Deutscher
Kolonial-Atlas mit Jahrbuch (Atlas German Colonies, with Yearbook),
edited by the German Colonial Society, 1918, 30
Years of German Colonial Policy
|
30 Years of German Colonial
Policy
The result of 30 years of colonial policy, as far as it can be expressed in
figures, is evident in the statistical tables further below. They refute the
assertion wide-spread in Germany and often uncritically taken for granted, that
the colonial economy so far had not brought us any advantage. Too frequently it
is forgotten that the development of colonial property is an affair which
largely rests on experience. Compared with the scale even of the British
colonies, what has been created in the German colonies justified the best gopes
in regard to the future. It also stikingly refutes the wide-spread assumption
that the German would be incapavle of developing new terrain. A certainly
innocent witness in this aspect, the social democratic Reichstag member
Kraetzig, who, as a trade unionist is close to the textile industry, recently
(p.9) has expressed the following on the German accomplishments in the area of
cotton production : "so far the colonies have contributed little to the raw
materials used by the textile industry. However it has to be stated that over
the last years in the difficult area of cotton cultivation in several of our
colonies pragmatic work has been done and larger harvests would have had to be
expected, if the speculants would not have messed up a lot. We do hope that it
will be possible after the war to continue the production of cotton in the same
pragmatic way, to avoid the danger which threatens to cut off the ozygen of the
German and Austro-Hungarian textile industry any moment."
That the development of our overseas possessions does not only affect the
creation of material values, as indicated by the statistical tables, but that
Germany, according to its fame as the most social of all nations, everywhere,
also toward its coloured subjects, has completely and successfully fulfilled its
obligations, is brilliantly proven by the attitude of the natives in almost all
our colonies during the war. Finally the scale for the colonial feasibility of
an administration and a people will always be, how they adapt to the fight which
will evolve when a European people takes on the development of a country, the
inhabitants of which are completely alien to the new masters, both on the ouside
and on the inside. The conflicts which arise when the ruling race is forced,
even if it treats the ways of the natives in most lenient fashion, in the
interest of the natives to force these upon them against their will and against
theire resistance in order to direct them onto new paths, have not failed to
materialize in our colonies. Only the Arab rising in East Africa, the
difficulties on Samoa, the various rebellions in Sudwestafrika, in Kamerun etc.
are mentioned. Still, when the war broke out, it turned out that German
administration, in the short time, had taken such a root that it seemed natural
to the natives to take the side of the Germans without hesitation. In order to
fully evaluate this fact reference is made to the fact that at the time the war
broke out, in almost all colonies the fight against the Entente was regarded a
dubious, if not hopeless cause, as our colonies were completely separated from
the motherland. The accomplishments of the white population in the protectorates
may be rated highly; their resistance would have long died down, because of
their small numbers, if they would not have been able to recruit the black
natives. The examples set by Kamerun and Ostafrika weigh heavier than the
British claim of atrocities committed under German colonial administration, a
claim used to prove to the world that it is a service to mankind to protect the
natives of the German colonies against the return of German administration.
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Source:
Deutscher Kolonial-Atlas mit Jahrbuch, (Atlas German Colonies, with
Yearbook), edited by P. Sprigade und M. Moisel, Surveys and retrospects
by Dr. Karstedt. Berlin 1918, pp.8ff |
GM
(digitalisation) and AG
(translation)
posted on the web for psm-data;
many thanks to
Staatsbibliothek
zu Berlin / Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Kartenabteilung
Dokument in deutscher
Sprache
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