A Deterritorialized History: Investigating German Colonialism ...

metropole and economic exploitation in the colony hold true for all of the three decades
of expansion? 1 Were the colonies nothing more than a “marginal appendage to the
German economy” as Woodruff Smith contends? 2 Or does Baumgart’s argument for the
importance of the economic motive, while simultaneously rejecting Marxist conspiracy
ideas, appear more helpful? 3 But all of these arguments must not obscure the fact that the
colonies, originally predicated upon free trade capitalism and the profit motive, were
certainly woeful failures, accounting for only 49.8 million marks of the 10 billion marks
aggregate German foreign trade in 1910. 4 Yet the dogma of free trade remained
dominant in the colonies, for although it did not work in the European context, it was
expected to apply to the colonial situation. How is this tension between expectations and
reality to be explained? Additionally, what can account for the fact that some sectors of
German society such as the DKG complained that businesses made “keine
beachtenswerte Opfer” (no noteworthy sacrifice) for the betterment of Germany’s
colonies? 5 For all of these reasons, it is vital to ascertain what role commerce had in the
context of German colonial expansion.
From the very beginning the colonies were founded in expectations of economic
benefit to Germany. All of the colonies were lacklustre performers economically and yet
businesses continued to embark upon the money-losing enterprise of supporting German
expansion overseas. 6 The continued investment of these enterprises despite the lack of
financial success indicates the possibility of an idée fixe explanation for colonial
commerce as companies continued to invest in hopes of finally capturing profits from the
colonies. The commercial explanation for colonialism thus must account for the
prospective rationales for expansion in which territory was acquired in hopes of potential
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