afforded by the rapid and complete defeat of the vast, ill-organised
empire by Japan, the youngest of the great powers. The war gave to
Japan Formosa and the Pescadores Islands, and added her to the list of
imperialist powers. She would have won more still--the Liao-tang
Peninsula and a sort of suzerainty over Korea--but that the European
powers, startled by the signs of China's decay, and perhaps desiring a
share of the plunder, intervened to forbid these annexations, on the
pretext of defending the integrity of China. Russia, France and Germany
combined in this step; Britain stood aloof. Japan, unwillingly giving
way, and regarding Russia as the chief cause of her humiliation, began
to prepare herself for a coming conflict. As for unhappy China, she was
soon to learn how much sincerity there was in the zeal of Europe for
the maintenance of her integrity. In 1896 she was compelled to permit
Russia to build a railway across Manchuria; and to grant to France a
'rectification of frontiers' on the south, and the right of building a
railway through the province of Yunnan, which lies next to Tonking. The
partition of China seemed to be at hand. Britain and America vainly
urged upon the other powers that China should be left free to direct
her own affairs subject to the maintenance of 'the open door' for
European trade. The other powers refused to listen, and in 1897 the
beginning of the end seemed to have come. Germany, seizing on the
pretext afforded by the murder of two German missionaries, stretched
forth her 'mailed fist,' and seized the strong place and admirable
harbour of Kiao-chau, the most valuable strategic position on the
Chinese coast. That she meant to use it as a base for future expansion
was shown by her lavish expenditure upon its equipment and
fortification. Russia responded by seizing the strong place of Port
Arthur and the Liao-Tang Peninsula, while every day her hold upon the
great province of Manchuria was strengthened. Foreseeing a coming
conflict in which her immense trading interests would be imperilled,
Britain acquired a naval base on the Chinese coast by leasing
Wei-hai-Wei. Thus all the European rivals were clustered round the
decaying body of China; and in the last years of the century were
already beginning to claim 'spheres of influence,' despite the protests
of Britain and America. But the outburst of the Boxer Rising in
1900--caused mainly by resentment of foreign intervention--had the
effect of postponing the rush for Chinese territory. And when Britain
and Japan made an alliance in 1902 on the basis of guaranteeing the
status quo in the East, the overwhelming naval strength of the two
allies made a European partition of China impracticable; and China was
once more given a breathing-space. Only Russia could attack the Chinese
Empire by land; and the severe defeat which she suffered at the hands
of Japan in 1904-5 removed that danger also. The Far East was left with
a chance of maintaining its independence, and of voluntarily adapting
itself to the needs of a new age.
The last region in which territories remained available for European
annexation consisted of the innumerable archipelagoes of the Pacific
Ocean. Here the preponderant influence had been in the hands of Britain
ever since the days of Captain Cook. She had made some annexations
during the first three quarters of the century, but had on the whole
steadfastly refused the requests of many of the island peoples to be
taken under her protection. France had, as we have seen, acquired New
Caledonia and the Marquesas Islands during the previous period, but her
activity in this region was never very great. The only other European
power in possession of Pacific territories was Spain, who held the
great archipelago of the Philippines, and claimed also the numerous
minute islands (nearly six hundred in number) which are known as
Micronesia. When the colonial enthusiasm of the 'eighties began,
Germany saw a fruitful field in the Pacific, and annexed the Bismarck
Archipelago and the north-eastern quarter of New Guinea. Under pressure
from Australia, who feared to see so formidable a neighbour established
so near her coastline, Britain annexed the south-eastern quarter of
that huge island. During the 'nineties the partition of the Pacific
Islands was completed; the chief participators being Germany, Britain,
and the United States of America.
The entry of America into the race for imperial possessions in its last
phase was too striking an event to pass without comment. America
annexed Hawaii in 1898, and divided the Samoan group with Germany in
1899. But her most notable departure from her traditional policy of
self-imposed isolation from world-politics came when in 1898 she was
drawn by the Cuban question into a war with Spain. Its result was the
disappearance of the last relics of the Spanish Empire in the New World
and in the Pacific. Cuba became an independent republic. Porto Rico was
annexed by America. In the Pacific the Micronesian possessions of Spain
were acquired by Germany. Germany would fain have annexed also the
Philippine Islands. But America resolved herself to assume the task of
organising and governing these rich lands; and in doing so made a grave
breach with her traditions. Her new possession necessarily drew her
into closer relations with the problems of the Far East; it gave her
also some acquaintance with the difficulty of introducing Western
methods among a backward people. During these years of universal
imperialist excitement the spirit of imperialism seemed to have
captured America as it had captured the European states; and this was
expressed in a new interpretation of the Monroe doctrine, put forth by
the Secretary of State during the Venezuela controversy of 1895. 'The
United States,' said Mr. Olney, 'is practically sovereign on this
continent (meaning both North and South America), 'and its fiat is law
upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.' No such
gigantic imperial claim had ever been put forward by any European
state; and it constituted an almost defiant challenge to the
imperialist powers of Europe. It may safely be said that this dictum
did not represent the settled judgment of the American people. But it
did appear, in the last years of the century, as if the great republic
were about to emerge from her self-imposed isolation, and to take her
natural part in the task of planting the civilisation of the West
throughout the world. Had she frankly done so, had she made it plain
that she recognised the indissoluble unity and the common interests of
the whole world, it is possible that her influence might have eased the
troubles of the next period, and exercised a deterrent influence upon
the forces of disturbance which were working towards the great
catastrophe. But her traditions were too strong; and after the brief
imperialist excitement of the 'nineties, she gradually relapsed once
more into something like her old attitude of aloofness.
It is but a cursory and superficial view which we have been able to
take of this extraordinary quarter of a century, during which almost
the whole world was partitioned among a group of mighty empires, and
the political and economic unity of the globe was finally and
irrefragably established. Few regions had escaped the direct political
control of European powers; and most of these few were insensibly
falling under the influence of one or other of the powers: Turkey under
that of Germany, Persia under that of Russia and Britain. No region of
the earth remained exempt from the indirect influence of the European
system. The civilisation of the West had completed the domination of
the globe; and the interests of the great world-states were so
intertwined and intermingled in every corner of the earth that the
balance of power among them had become as precarious as was the
European balance in the eighteenth century. The era of the world-states
had very definitely opened. It remained to be seen in what spirit it
was to be used, and whether it was to be of long duration. These two
questions are one; for no system can last which is based upon injustice
and the denial of right.
At this point we may well stop to survey the new world-states which had
been created by this quarter of a century of eager competition.
First among them, in extent and importance, stood the new empire of
France. It covered a total area of five million square miles, and in
size ranked third in order, coming after the older empires of Russia
and Britain. It had been the result of the strenuous labours of
three-quarters of a century, dating from the first invasion of Algiers;
it included also some surviving fragments of the earlier French Empire.
But overwhelmingly the greater part of this vast dominion had been
acquired during the short period which we have surveyed in this
chapter; and its system of organisation and government had not yet had
time to establish itself. It had been built only at the cost of
strenuous labour, and many wars. Yet the French had shown in its
administration that they still retained to the full that imaginative
tact in the handling of alien peoples which had stood them in good
stead in India and America during the eighteenth century. Once their
rule was established the French had on the whole very little trouble
with their subjects; and it is impossible to praise too highly the
labours of civilisation which French administrators were achieving. So
far as their subjects were concerned, they may justly be said to have
regarded themselves as trustees. So far as the rest of the civilised
world was concerned, the same praise cannot be given; for the French
policy in the economic administration of colonies was definitely one of
monopoly and exclusion. The French Empire fell into three main blocks.
First, and most important, was the empire of Northern Africa, extending
from Algiers to the mouth of the Congo, and from the Atlantic to the
valley of the Nile. Next came the rich island of Madagascar; lastly the
eastern empire of Annam and Tonking, the beginnings of which dated back
to the eighteenth century. A few inconsiderable islands in the Pacific
and the West Indies, acquired long since, a couple of towns in India,
memories of the dreams of Dupleix, and the province of French Guiana in
South America, which dated back to the seventeenth century, completed
the list. For the most part a recent and rapid creation, it
nevertheless had roots in the past, and was the work of a people
experienced in the handling of backward races.
Next may be named the curious dominion of the Congo Free State,
occupying the rich heart of the African continent. Nominally it
belonged to no European power, but was a recognised neutral territory.
In practice it was treated as the personal estate of the Belgian king,
Leopold II. Subject to closer international restrictions than any other
European domain in the non-European world, the Congo was nevertheless
the field of some of the worst iniquities in the exploitation of
defenceless natives that have ever disgraced the record of European
imperialism. International regulations are no safeguard against
misgovernment; the only real sanction is the character and spirit of
the government. For the Congo iniquities Leopold II. must be held
guilty at the bar of posterity. When he went to his judgment in 1908
this rich realm passed under the direct control of the Belgian
government and parliament, and an immediate improvement resulted.
The least successful of the new world-states was that of Italy. Its
story was a story of disaster and disappointment. It included some two
hundred thousand square miles of territory; but they were hot and arid
lands on the inhospitable shores of the Red Sea and in Somaliland.
Italy had as yet no real opportunity of showing how she would deal with
the responsibilities of empire.
The most remarkable, in many respects, of all these suddenly acquired
empires was that of Germany. For it was practically all obtained within
a period of three years, without fighting or even serious friction. It
fell almost wholly within regions where Germany's interests had been
previously negligible, and British trade predominant. Yet its growth
had not been impeded, it had even been welcomed, by its rivals. This
easily-won empire was indeed relatively small, being not much over one
million square miles, little more than one-fifth of the French
dominions. But it was five times as large as Germany itself, and it
included territories which were, on the whole, richer than those of
France. The comparative smallness of its area was due to the fact that
Germany was actually the last to enter the race. She took no steps to
acquire territory, she showed no desire to acquire it, before 1883; if
she had chosen to begin ten years earlier, as she might easily have
done, or if she had shown any marked activity in exploring or
missionary work, without doubt she could have obtained a much larger
share of African soil.
These rich lands afforded to their new masters useful supplies of raw
materials, which were capable of almost indefinite expansion. They
included, in East and South-West Africa, areas well suited for white
settlement; but German emigrants, despite every encouragement, refused
to settle in them. An elaborately scientific system of administration,
such as might be expected from the German bureaucracy, was devised for
the colonies; officials and soldiers have from the beginning formed a
larger proportion of their white population than in any other European
possessions. Undoubtedly the government of the German colonies was in
many respects extremely efficient. But over-administration, which has
its defects even in an old and well-ordered country, is fatal to the
development of a raw and new one. Although Germany has, in order to
increase the prosperity of her colonies, encouraged foreign trade, and
followed a far less exclusive policy than France, not one of her
colonies, except the little West African district of Togoland, has ever
paid its own expenses. In the first generation of its existence the
German colonial empire, small though it is in comparison with the
British or the French, actually cost the home government over
100,000,000 pounds in direct outlay.
The main cause of this was that from the first the Germans showed
neither skill nor sympathy in the handling of their subject
populations. The uniformed official, with his book of rules, only
bewilders primitive folk, and arouses their resentment. But it was not
only official pedantry which caused trouble with the subject peoples;
still more it was the ruthless spirit of mere domination, and the total
disregard of native rights, which were displayed by the German
administration. The idea of trusteeship, which had gradually
established itself among the rulers of the British dominions, and in
the French colonies also, was totally lacking among the Germans. They
ruled their primitive subjects with the brutal intolerance of Zabern,
with the ruthless cruelty since displayed in occupied Belgium. This was
what made the rise of the German dominion a terrible portent in the
history of European imperialism. The spirit of mere domination,
regardless of the rights of the conquered, had often shown itself in
other European empires; but it had always had to struggle against
another and better ideal, the ideal of trusteeship; and, as we have
seen, the better ideal had, during the nineteenth century, definitely
got the upper hand, especially in the British realms, whose experience
had been longest. But the old and bad spirit reigned without check in
the German realms. And even when, in 1907, it began to be seriously
criticised, when its disastrous and unprofitable results began to be
seen, the ground on which it was challenged in discussions in Germany
was mainly the materialist ground that it did not pay.
The justification for these assertions is to be found in the history of
the principal German colonies. In the Cameroons the native tribes, who
had been so ready to receive European government that they had
repeatedly asked for British protection, were driven to such incessant
revolts that the annals of the colony seem to be annals of continuous
bloodshed: forty-six punitive expeditions were chronicled in the
seventeen years from 1891--long after the establishment of the German
supremacy, which took place in 1884. The record of East Africa was even
more terrible for the ferocity with which constant revolts were
suppressed. But worst of all was the story of South-West Africa. There
were endless wars against the various tribes; but they culminated in
the hideous Herero war of 1903-6. The Hereros, driven to desperation by
maltreatment, had revolted and killed some white farmers. They were
punished by an almost complete annihilation. The spirit of this hideous
slaughter is sufficiently expressed by the proclamation of the
governor, General von Trotha, in 1904. 'The Herero people must now
leave the land. 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.' Ten thousand of these unhappy
people, mainly old men, women and children, were driven into the
desert, where they perished. There is no such atrocious episode in the
history of European imperialism since Pizarro's slaughter of the Incas;
if even that can be compared with it.
The causes of these ceaseless and ruinous wars were to be found partly
in the total disregard of native custom, and in the hide-bound pedantry
with which German-made law and the Prussian system of regimentation
were enforced upon the natives; but it was to be found still more in
the assumption that the native had no rights as against his white lord.
His land might be confiscated; his cattle driven away; even downright
slavery was not unknown, not merely in the form of forced labour, which
has been common in German colonies, but in the form of the actual sale
and purchase of negroes. Herr Dernburg, who became Colonial Secretary
in 1907, himself recorded that he met in East Africa a young farmer who
told him that he had just bought a hundred and fifty negroes; he also
described the settlers' pleasing practice of sitting beside the wells
with revolvers, in order to prevent the natives from watering their
cattle, and to force them to leave them behind; and he noted that
officials nearly always carried negro whips with them. These practices,
indeed, were condemned by the German Government itself, but only after
many years, and mainly because they were wasteful. Government
representatives have told the Reichstag, as Herr Schleitwein did in
1904, that they must pursue a 'healthy egoism,' and forswear
'humanitarianism and irrational sentimentality.' 'The Hereros must be
forced to work, and to work without compensation and for their food
only. ... The sentiments of Christianity and philanthropy with which
the missionaries work must be repudiated with all energy.' This is what
is called Realpolitik.
Is it too much to say that the appearance of the spirit thus expressed
was a new thing in the history of European imperialism? Is it not plain
that if this spirit should triumph, the ascendancy of Europe over the
non-European world must prove to be, not a blessing, but an unmitigated
curse? Yet the nation which had thus acquitted itself in the rich lands
which it had so easily acquired was not satisfied; it desired a wider
field for the exhibition of its Kultur, its conception of civilisation.
From the beginning it was evident that the colonial enthusiasts of
Germany had no intention of resting satisfied with the considerable
dominions they had won, but regarded them only as a beginning, as bases
for future conquests. The colonies were not ends in themselves, but
means for the acquisition of further power; and it was this, even more
than the ruthlessness with which the subject peoples were treated,
which made the growth of the German dominions a terrible portent. For
since the whole world was now portioned out, new territories could only
be acquired at the cost of Germany's neighbours. This was, indeed, at
first the programme only of extremists; the mass of the German people,
like Bismarck, took little interest in colonies. But the extremists
proved that they could win over the government to their view; the
German people, most docile of nations, could be gradually indoctrinated
with it. And because this was so, because the ugly spirit of domination
and of unbridled aggressiveness was in these years gradually mastering
the ruling forces of a very powerful state, and leading them towards
the catastrophe which was to prove the culmination of European
imperialism, it is necessary to dwell, at what may seem
disproportionate length, upon the development of German policy during
the later years of our period.
Filled with pride in her own achievements, believing herself to be,
beyond all rivalry, the greatest nation in the world, already the
leader, and destined to be the controller, of civilisation, Germany
could not bring herself to accept a second place in the imperial
sphere. She had entered late into the field, by no fault of her own,
and found all the most desirable regions of the earth already occupied.
Now that 'world-power' had become the test of greatness among states,
she could be content with nothing short of the first rank among
world-states; if this rank could not be achieved, she seemed to be
sentenced to the same sort of fate as had befallen Holland or Denmark:
she might be ever so prosperous, as these little states were, but she
would be dwarfed by the vast powers which surrounded her. But the
German world-state was not to be the result of a gradual and natural
growth, like the Russian, the British or the American world-states. The
possibility of gradual growth was excluded by the fact that the whole
world had been partitioned. Greatness in the non-European world must
be, and might be, carved out in a single generation, as supremacy in
Europe had been already attained, by the strong will, efficient
organisation, and military might of the German government.
It was natural, perhaps inevitable, that a nation with the history of
the German nation, with its ruling ideas, and with its apparently
well-tried confidence in the power of its government to achieve its
ends by force, should readily accept such a programme. The date at
which this programme captured the government of Germany, and became the
national policy, can be quite clearly fixed: it was in 1890, when
Bismarck, the 'no colony man,' was driven from power, and the supreme
direction of national affairs fell into the hands of the Emperor
William II. An impressionable, domineering and magniloquent prince,
inflated by the hereditary self-assurance of the Hohenzollerns, and
sharing to the full the modern German belief in German superiority and
in Germany's imperial destiny, William II. became the spokesman and
leader of an almost insanely megalomaniac, but terribly formidable
nation. During the first decade of his government the new ambitions of
Germany were gradually formulated, and became more distinct. They were
not yet very apparent to the rest of the world, in spite of the fact
that they were expounded with vigour and emphasis in a multitude of
pamphlets and books. The world was even ready to believe the Emperor's
assertion that he was the friend of peace: he half believed it himself,
because he would have been very ready to keep the peace if Germany's
'rights' could be attained without war. But many episodes, such as
Kiao-Chau, and the Philippines, and the ceaseless warfare in the German
colonies, and the restless enterprises of Pan-German intrigue, provided
a commentary upon these pretensions which ought to have revealed the
dangerous spirit which was conquering the German people.