Chapter 666 Carl Peters

Cameroon.

Idenau is a German colony in Cameroon, but this colony has little to do with the German government. It is a German colony developed by a private colonial group.

Douala is Germany's government-led colony in Cameroon. Both are actually small colonial outposts. At present, Idenau is much larger than Douala.

However, due to the Berlin Conference, the German government is pushing for the merger of Idenau and Douala to form a more competitive Cameroon colony and then develop inland.

"After the Berlin Conference, Idenau and its surrounding areas will definitely officially become our Germany's first colony in West Africa. In the future, this place will also represent the first step of the Germans' conquest of the ocean and the starting point for our Germany to become the world's number one power." Karl Peters said excitedly.

The managers of Idenau did not think there was anything wrong with what Karl Peters said. Since Germany defeated France, it has in fact become the new overlord of Europe. However, the overlord of Europe can only represent Europe. The world overlord must control the oceans. If Germany wants to go further, it must have large colonies like Britain as support.

"Chancellor Bismarck is just a little timid. Otherwise, Germany would not have been inferior to Belgium and Italy in colonies for so many years. If it had been ten years earlier, we might have been able to seize a colony even larger than East Africa today." said Karl Peters.

Bismarck was never a cowardly person. He could even be said to be quite crazy. After all, he launched three large-scale wars of unification during his tenure. He maneuvered and defeated the two powerful countries, Austria and France, in succession. Every step he took was extremely bold. If he was not careful, Prussia would be doomed.

However, Ernst believed that Bismarck's strategy was extremely accurate, and Bismarck's reasons were very sufficient. Bismarck believed that Germany should focus on Europe and prevent France from taking revenge, and that colonies were extremely costly and brought very little benefit, so he opposed colonial expansion.

Germany’s biggest problem is to get rid of France first. If France is not solved, no matter how many overseas colonies Germany has, they will be useless.

First of all, from the geographical location of France, it just happens to clamp down on Germany's access to the sea. It can even be said that all Nordic countries can play this role. The Baltic Sea outlet is narrow, and Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands are all stuck nearby.

Further out is the maritime hegemon Britain, and unless Germany goes to North America, it cannot avoid the French on the North Atlantic coast, but now there is no place to colonize in North America.

Even if Germany passed through the Mediterranean via Austria, it could not achieve this goal, because the strongest naval forces in the Mediterranean were still Britain and France.

In peacetime, Germany naturally does not have to worry about this problem, but once a war breaks out, Britain and France have the ability to cut off Germany's maritime trade routes. The colonies will not even be able to provide support to the German mainland, and will directly become a burden. This was the case during the First World War. Germany directly withdrew its overseas forces back to its homeland, and only the East African battlefield relied on Volbeck's genius command ability to deal with the British.

But it was just a maneuver. It would be fine if Germany could focus on developing the Tanganyika colony, just like East Africa today. With its own industrial strength, it could fight against most countries.

However, ordinary colonies are not like East Africa, which has industry. After all, developing industry also means an increased risk of colonial independence. Suppose East Africa is a German colony now, based on East Africa’s size and level of industrial development, there is a risk of independence at any time. It doesn’t even require the enemy to do it, but its own people will rebel.

Bismarck was obviously very clear about this, so Bismarck's decision-making plan was always centered on the European continent and focused on solving the problem of France first.

Bismarck was best at diplomacy. He knew clearly that engaging in overseas colonization at this time would definitely offend the British, and Germany would then have to face the squeeze from both Britain and France at the same time.

However, most Germans did not agree with Bismarck's views, or perhaps the temptation of interests made them turn a blind eye to these risks.

Seeing that Britain was making a lot of money from overseas colonies, the German business community was naturally jealous, so there was always a strong voice in support of overseas colonization. As long as the German monarch did not trust Bismarck, this voice could immediately become Germany's development direction.

In fact, from a geographical point of view, Britain and Germany are natural partners. However, the Germans do not know how to "keep a low profile". After Bismarck stepped down, they were "unable to have two suns in the sky" and insisted on fighting Britain to the death, which eventually led to a rift between Britain and Germany.

There was colonialist motivation behind this, and the administrator of Idenau, Karl Peters, was such a colonialist.

Speaking of Karl Peters, he actually has a connection with East Africa, but that was Ernst's previous life.

In this time and space, Karl Peters was one of the founders of the German West Africa Company. In 1882, his colonial company, the German West Africa Company, landed in Bamosso on the coast of Cameroon and, through the traditional means of the colonists, stealing, cheating and robbing, used the port of Idenau as a base and successfully seized a colony for Germany in the northwest of Spanish Guinea.

In actual history, that is, in 1884 in his previous life, Karl Peters founded the German East Africa Company, and eventually enabled Germany to acquire German East Africa.

Speaking of the establishment of German East Africa in the past, Bismarck himself did not support it, but Karl Peters threatened that if Germany did not accept East Africa as its colony, it would turn to the Belgians who had gained the upper hand in Congo at that time. This obviously led to strong dissatisfaction among domestic colonialists, and they therefore put pressure on the Bismarck government.

Under pressure from domestic public opinion, the Bismarck government was eventually forced to compromise. The German East was informally established and later became Germany's most important colony.

Now that East Africa had been taken over by Ernst, Karl Peters naturally had no way to plan a colony in East Africa.

As for Karl Peters going to West Africa to establish a colony, this was inevitable because Karl Peters was an extreme colonialist.

This has a lot to do with the education he received. In his early years, Karl Peters studied in the UK. During his four years in London, he studied British history, British colonial policy and philosophy. After returning to his country, he joined the German Colonial Association.

Karl Peters was a man of action, so inspired by the success of the Hechingen royal family's colonization of East Africa, he founded the German West Africa Company in 1882 and engaged in private colonial business under the banner of trade.

The supporter behind him is the German Colonial Society, which has considerable power in Germany and many dignitaries are members of it. In other words, overseas colonization is a consensus among "knowledgeable people" in many countries today.

East Africa played the most prominent role in stimulating this organization. The small Principality of Hechingen could become a great country with an area of ​​tens of millions of square kilometers through colonialism. Who wouldn't be jealous? Therefore, East Africa actually accelerated the progress of other European colonists in colonizing Africa.

In fact, even without East Africa, they would also be provoked by Belgium. This is one of the real reasons why the Congo River Basin dispute triggered the Berlin Conference in the previous life.

However, in the past, Belgium only colonized Congo over two million square kilometers, and East Africa obviously has a stronger impact on Germany today than Belgium.

(End of this chapter)