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