Germany's Place in the Sun
Germany had long been firmly established as an African power, with as good title as the neighbors. Several Germans were among the early explorers of the interior. Until the 1880s Germany was concerned chiefly with protecting the interests of German traders in Zanzibar. Meanwhile some sentiment for colonization had developed in German intellectual and economic circles, and the German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, interested not so much in colonies as in the enhancement of the position of Germany vis a vis other European powers, especially Great Britain, gave his support to the ventures of the Society for German Colonization led by Karl Peters.
Peters and his associates landed secretly in Zanzibar in late 1884 and made their way to the mainland where they held conversations with local chiefs who they claimed signed treaties accepting Germ au protection. Bismarck approved the treaties in early 1885. The society, given a charter to administer the area on behalf of Germany, ceded its rights to the German East Africa Company, also headed by Peters.
Because of the British need for German cooperation elsewhere and because British missionaries and traders were to he allowed to work in the German area, Great Britain, despite the sultan's protests, acceded to the establishment of the German protectorate. Giving way to threats of force, the sultan gave up whatever claim he had to the interior and granted the right to the passage of goods across the coastal areas that he did control.
In 1885 the Berlin Conference, called especially to settle the Congo questions, also recognized the division of Africa into "spheres of influence" and by a series of later treaties between the nations concerned, the whole interior of Africa except the native states of Liberia and Abyssinia was definitely assigned to five European colonizers, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Belgium. Germany not only came late but had to fight some of her newly created subjects.
In late 1885 a joint Anglo-German commission met, without the sultan, to determine the exact extent of his domains. The resulting Anglo-German Agreement of 1886 allotted to the sultan the islands of Zanzibar, Pemba, Mafia, and a six-kilometer-deep strip along the coast from Tungi Bay (in Mozambique) north to the Tana River (in Kenya), and a number of towns in southern Somalia, up to and including Mogadishu. The interior was divided between the British who acquired much of present-day Kenya and the Germans whose territory ran south to the Ruvuma River. In 1888 the Germans obtained a fifty-year lease of the coastal strip adjoining its territory.
For the first few years after it had been granted an imperial charter in 1887, the German East Africa Company exercised both commercial and administrative rights. The company's ruthless exploitation of the area and the opposition of the coastal traders to their collection of taxes, led to rebellion in the coastal towns in August 1888, and German reinforcements and the aid of British warships were required to put it down. The German East Africa Company's financial difficulties and the unrest it had engendered led to the German government's taking over the administration of German East Africa in April 1891.
On June 18, 1901, the German Emperor in reply to a speech of the Burgomaster of Hamburg, conveying congratulations on the success of the recent expedition to China, expressed the German policy in these memorable words: "In spite of the fact that we have no such fleet as we should have, we have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun. It will now be my task to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession, in order that the sun's rays may fall promptly upon our activity and trade in foreign parts, that our industry and agriculture may develop within the state and our sailing sports upon the water, for our future lies upon the water."
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