Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1894 — GERMANY’S AFRICAN POSSESSIONS. [ARTICLE]

GERMANY’S AFRICAN POSSESSIONS.

The nations of Europe have for many years been engaged in planting colonies and gaining a foothold in various parts of the world, either by a conquest of the aboriginal inhabitants, as the English empire in India was obtained, or by a formal planting of a flag in the name of the reigning sovei’eign, as was done in Australia by the same nation in this century, and in our own country at a more remote period of the world’s history. Latterly the attention of these great powers has been turned toward Africa as affording the only practical and promising field for the establishment of colonial enterprise. Germany, being a comparatively new power, has lagged.behind in this species of aggrandizement, but apparently has made up for lost time by a species of blind luck that has given it an empire in the Dark Continent that the-Kaiser’s emissaries supposed was an entirely unimportant acquisition. A German merchant secured a giant of land from native chiefs aud asked his government to protect him in his possesssions. This was done and the German flag was raised on the little bay of Augra Pequena, in southwest Africa. The British Government, controlling the colony at Cape Town, at once gave notice to . Bismarck that his African venture was an infringement upon the rights of Great Britain. This was in 1884. The Cape colony voted to send troops to take possession of the land. But after a protracted diplomatic controversy it was decided that 900 miles of the coast, from the Cunene to the Orange rivers, together with all the interior tributary country, was German soil. Since that time developments have shown that there are thousands of square miles of fertile soil in this great domain, and that in fact Germany has acquired an empire of great and untold value while contending, as was supposed, for a simple foothold and harbor on the African coast, backed by an unknown waste of arid desert and jungle. Recent transactions in AnPequena, however, show that the German government has been premature in. inviting colonists to this region. Life and property is not yet safe. The savage natives make occasional raids, often aided by white marauders, and there is no established law or order that can give the settler* any assurance of safety. Withbool'an unreconstructed native chief, has recently appropriated the entiro possessions of Mr. Herman, who has for several years been the leading colonist and who had become quite wealthy. The German government has invited colonists to the country but oan not protect those already there.