The Cameroons

The Cameroons

ALTHOUGH the designs, which German philosophers conceived and German statesmen and strategists spent thirty years in perfecting, for the conquest of our Cape territories and the creation of a Greater Germany extending from the Mediterranean to Table Bay, are best illustrated and exposed by the defiantly defensive policy they pursued in South-West Africa, the rise, development and fall of the German Colonial Empire is more completely epitomised in the chapter dealing with the Cameroons. The establishment of the German East African protectorate forms a story that is intensely interesting, inasmuch as it reveals the duplicity of Teutonic methods in their relations with native races, European rivals and their own agents. Bismarck, the last barbarian of genius, repudiated Dr. Karl Peters when, equipped with private capital and acting on his own initiative, he was acquiring in the hinterland of Zanzibar a well-watered, fertile province equal in extent to South Germany, and obtaining from the Sultan the concession for the ports of{vi} Dar-es-Salaam and Pangani. It was necessary in 1884 for Germany to assure England that the Imperial Government had no intention of securing possessions in a region which was admittedly within Britains sphere of influence, and Bismarck pursued Dr. Peters to Africa with an official intimation that the State would not grant him protection for the lives of his party, or for any possessions he might acquire opposite Zanzibar. But when the intrepid Teuton, as the representative of the German East Africa Company, had accomplished the spade work and returned to Berlin, the Government continued negotiations with the Sultan through their Consul-General at Zanzibar. The formal ratification of the treaties made in the name of the Company, was followed by a revolt of the Arabs, and when the Companys representatives had been allowed to be murdered or put to flight, Bismarck was able to declare that the situation that had arisen was beyond the control of private enterprise, and an expedition, under Major von Wissman, was accordingly despatched to East Africa to suppress the slave traffic which still flourished in that region. For the furtherance of such a humane and civilising purpose, the co-operation of the British fleet was readily{vii} enlisted, and with this support and the energetic measures taken by von Wissmans army of ex-British native soldiers, the disaffected populace was eventually pacified, even if the slave traffic was not suppressed. The Companys claims to the territorial concessions granted under the treaties having been made goodGreat Britain could not, in politeness, protest against the acquisition of Mount Kilimanjaro, since the amiable Kaiser had expressed a sentimental wish that the highest peak in Africa might be within the sphere of German kultur!the Reichstag voted ten and a half million marks for the maintenance and development of these newly acquired territories. Then, and not until then, did England realise that with the connivance of Downing Street and the assistance of British men-of-war, this rich and important territory, with an area of 384,000 square miles, had become a Protectorate of Germany. Having duped England, punished the natives, and established their rule, it was only necessary to recall Dr. Peters and hand him over to the tender mercies of his official and political enemies, to make this chapter of the history of German empire building characteristic in its completeness. What Germany succeeded in doing in East Africa{viii} after years of intrigue and deceit, and the expenditure of much blood and money, she accomplished in the acquisition of Togoland with a minimum of cost or trouble. Dr. Nachtigal, in the capacity of German Trade Commissioner, was sent to West Africa by his Government to enquire into and report upon the progress of German commerce in those latitudes. He was despatched at a time when the English Government had completed their leisurely deliberations upon the appeal of the peoples of Togoland and the Cameroons to be taken under the protection of the British flag, and Mr. Hewitt, a British Consul, was voyaging to the Gulf of Guinea for the purpose of complying with the native request, when Nachtigal arrived there on his commercial mission. The German Commissioner, acting under instructions from the Imperial Chancellor, hastily unfurled the flag of the Fatherland at Lome, in Togoland, and succeeded in reaching Duala, and formally placing the Cameroons under German rule, before Hewitt arrived upon the scene. Lord Granville addressed a reproof to Bismarck for not having divulged the nature of the errand upon which Nachtigal had been sent, and the incident was closed. In the three decades that followed, the German administrators in{ix} Togoland, with the thoroughness with which the Teuton is gifted, taught the natives the sharp lesson considered necessary to prepare them for the reception of Germanys civilising rule, furnished the colony with 200 miles of railway, over 750 miles of excellent roads of native construction, a score of postal and telegraph stations, and a telephone system, and established a wireless stationthe most powerful in the world outside Europewhich was not only in communication with Berlin, 3,450 miles distant, but with East Africa, the Cameroons and South-West Africa. The final installations at Kamina were completed in June, 1914; in August the German operators learnt by wireless that Great Britain had declared war on Germany; and on 26th August the Kamina Station notified Berlin that the colony of Togoland, the smallest, completest, and only financially independent German possession, had capitulated to an Anglo-French force. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 64553
Author: Calvert, Albert Frederick
Release Date: Feb 14, 2021
Format: eBook
Language: English