German New Guinea

German New Guinea (German: Deutsch-Neuguinea) was a German protectorate from 1884 to 1914, consisting of the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea and several nearby island groups. It was the beginning of the German colonial Empire.

The main continental part of the territory was Kaiser-Wilhelmsland ("Land of Emperor William"), which became a German protectorate in 1884. Other island groups were later added: New Pomerania, the Bismarck Archipelago (named after to the Prussian politician and military man Otto von Bismarck, architect of German unification) and the Northern Solomon Islands were declared German protectorates in 1885; the Caroline Islands, Palau and the Marianas were purchased from Spain in 1899; the protectorate of the Marshall Islands was purchased from Spain in 1885 for $4.5 million through the Spanish-German protocol of Rome in 1885; and Nauru was annexed to the Marshall Islands protectorate in 1888.

Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Kaiser-Wilhelmsland and nearby islands fell to Australian forces, while Japan occupied most of the remaining German possessions in the Pacific. The mainland of German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the Northern Solomon Islands are now part of Papua New Guinea. The Micronesian islands of German New Guinea are now the Federated States of Micronesia. The Marshall Islands, Nauru, the Northern Mariana Islands and Palau are independent countries.

The islands east of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland were renamed in the annexation as the Bismarck Archipelago (formerly the New Britain Archipelago) and the two largest islands as Neu-Pommern ("New Pomerania", present-day New Britain) and Neu-Mecklenburg ("New Mecklenburg", present-day New Ireland). However, due Due to their aquatic access, these outlying islands were and have remained the most economically viable part of the territory.

With the exception of German Samoa, the German islands in the western Pacific formed the "Imperial German Protectorates". These were administered as part of German New Guinea and included the German Solomon Islands (Buka, Bougainville and several smaller islands), the Carolinas, Palau, the Marianas (except Guam, which until 1898 belonged to Spain and later to the United States), the Marshall Islands and Nauru. In total, it is estimated that German New Guinea had an area of 249,500 km².

History

Early German presence in the South Pacific

The first Germans in the South Pacific were probably crew navigators of the ships of the Dutch East India Company: during Abel Tasman's first voyage, the captain of the Heemskerck was a Holleman (or Holman), was born in Jever, in northwestern Germany.

The merchant houses of the Hanseatic League were the first to establish footholds in the South Pacific: Johann Cesar Godeffroy & Sohn of Hamburg, based in Samoa from 1857, operated a network of trading stations in the South Seas that dominated the copra trade and transported German immigrants to various settlements in the South Pacific; in 1877 another Hamburg company, Hernsheim and Robertson, established a German community on Matupi Island in Blanche Bay (the northeast coast of New Britain) from which he traded in New Britain, the Carolinas and the Marshalls. In late 1875, a merchant German reported: German trade and German ships are found everywhere, almost to the exclusion of any other nation.

German colonial policy under Bismarck

In the late 1870s and early 1880s, an active minority, drawn mainly from a free national liberal and conservative right wing, had organized several colonial societies throughout Germany to persuade Chancellor Bismarck to embark on a colonial policy. The most important were the Kolonialverein of 1882 and the Society for German Colonization (Gesellschaft für Deutsche Kolonisation) founded in 1884. The reasons for Bismarck's lack of enthusiasm when The issue of Germany's colonial possessions was discussed in his brief response in 1888 to Eugen Wolf's pro-colonial and expansionist comments, reflected in the latter's autobiography. After Bismarck patiently listened to Wolf's enthusiasm and plans that he sought to launch with several illustrative maps, Bismarck finally interrupted his monologue:

Your map of Africa there is very good, I must admit. But you know, my map of Africa is here in Europe. Here is Russia, there is [...] France. And we, we're here, right in the middle between those two. That's my map of Africa.

Despite his personal objections, it was Bismarck himself who ultimately organized the acquisition of much of what would become the German colonial Empire. The first attempts at the new policy came in 1884, when Bismarck had to place German commercial interests in South West Africa under imperial protection. Bismarck told the Reichstag on June 23, 1884 about the change in German colonial policy: The annexations would now proceed, but by granting charters to private companies.

Australian aspiration and British disinterest

The 27 November 1882 edition of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung published an article that the chief secretary of the British colony of New South Wales brought to the attention of the editor of the Sydney Morning Heraldand, on February 7, 1883, the newspaper published a summary of the article under the heading 'German annexation of New Guinea'. The argument taken from the German newspaper began by stating that New Guinea fell into the Australian sphere but which had been neglected; although the Portuguese had explored it in the XVI century, the Dutch in the XVII "they seemed to be more satisfied with the country than other European nations", but they had gone too far and retreated towards Java, Sumatra and Celebes.

The publication of the Sydney Morning Herald article caused a sensation and not only in the colony of New South Wales: in the British colony of Queensland where the sea routes of the Torres Strait and trade routes were of great importance. Queensland Premier Thomas McIlwraith, who led a political party "regarded as representing the interests of plantation owners in Queensland", drew attention of the Governor of Queensland together with the general situation in New Guinea and urged the annexation of the island. He also instructed the agent in London for Queensland to urge the Imperial Colonial Office to an act of annexation.

Impatient with the lack of results from this procedure, Premier McIlwraith, under his own authority, ordered a Queensland police magistrate in March 1883 to proclaim the annexation on behalf of the Queensland government of the portion of New Guinea east of the Dutch border at the 141st meridian east. When the news reached London, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Derby, immediately repudiated the act. When the matter was brought before Parliament, Lord Derby reported that the British imperial government 'was not ready to annex New Guinea because of its large size and unknown interior, the certainty of native objections, and the administrative expense.' This began German interest in the remaining quarter of the island.

German New Guinea Company

On his return to Germany from his 1879-1882 expedition in the Pacific, Otto Finsch joined a small informal group interested in German colonial expansion in the South Seas led by the banker Adolph von Hansemann. Finsch encouraged them to seek the founding of a colony on the northeast coast of New Guinea and the New Britain archipelago, even providing them with an estimate of the costs of such an undertaking.

On November 3, 1884, under the flag of the newly founded Neuguinea-Kompagnie, the German imperial flag was raised in Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, the Bismarck Archipelago (formerly New Britain) and the islands German Solomon.

Albert Hahl (1868–1945) joined the German Colonial Office in 1895 and until 1914 played an important role in the administration of New Guinea. He was imperial judge at Herbertshoehe (1896-1898), lieutenant-governor of New Guinea (1899-1901) and governor (1902-1914). As a judge he made three reforms: the appointment of luluais (village chiefs), attempts to integrate the Tolais people into the European economy and the protection of village lands, which led him to recommend the end of all alienation of native lands. After 1901, Hahl attempted to apply his system to all of New Guinea, and although his success was limited, exports increased from one million marks in 1902 to eight million in 1914. He was forced to withdraw due to disagreements with officials in Berlin., and became an active writer in New Guinea and was a leader in German colonial societies between the wars.

Imperial German Pacific Protectorates

Through the German-Spanish treaty of 1899, Germany purchased the Caroline Islands and the Mariana Islands from Spain (excluding Guam, which had been ceded to the United States after the Spanish-American War of 1898) for 25 million pesetas. (equivalent to 16,600,000 gold marks). On 1 April 1899 the German colonial Empire formally took possession of these territories, and these islands became a protectorate and were administered from German New Guinea. The Marshall Islands were added in 1906.

Forced labor policy

To expand the highly profitable plantations, the Germans needed more native workers. The government sent military expeditions to take direct control of more areas from 1899 to 1914. Instead of using voluntary conscription, it became a matter of forced mobilization. The government enforced new laws requiring tribes to provide four weeks of work per person per year and the payment of a cash poll tax, forcing reluctant natives to enter the workforce. The government explored choosing voluntary recruitment of workers from China, Japan, and Micronesia, but only a few hundred arrived. After 1910, the government attempted to lessen the impact by ending conscription of women in some areas and closing other areas to conscription entirely. The planters protested vehemently, decided to go to war with the whites, and the government responded by sending 4 warships with 745 soldiers to defeat the Sokeh workers and impose the forced labor policy. They arrived in January 1911 and in February 1911 the leader of Sokeh surrendered.

First World War

Following the outbreak of World War I, Australian troops captured Kaiser-Wilhelmsland and nearby islands in 1914, after a brief resistance led by Captain Carl von Klewitz and Lieutenant Robert von Blumenthal, while Japan occupied the most of the rest of the German possessions in the Pacific. The only significant battle occurred on 11 September 1914, when the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force attacked the low-power wireless station at Bita Paka (near Rabaul) on the island of New Britain, entines Neu Pommern. The Australians suffered six dead and four wounded, the first Australian military casualties of the First World War. The German forces fared much worse, with one German officer and 30 native police officers killed and one German officer and ten native police officers wounded. On September 21, all German forces in the colony surrendered.

However, Lieutenant (later Hauptmann) Hermann Detzner, a German officer, and native police evaded capture in the interior of New Guinea throughout the war. Detzner was on a survey expedition to map the border with the Australian territory of Papua at the beginning of the war, and remained outside the militarized areas. Detzner claimed to have penetrated the interior of the German part (Kaiser-Wilhelmsland) in his book written in the twenties Vier Jahre unter Kannibalen (& # 34; Four years among cannibals & # 34;). These claims were strongly disputed by several German missionaries, and Detzner retracted most of the claims from him in 1932.

After the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, Germany lost all of its colonial possessions, including German New Guinea. In 1923, the League of Nations granted Australia a trusteeship over Nauru, with the United Kingdom and New Zealand as co-trustees. Other lands south of the equator became the Territory of New Guinea, a League of Nations mandate. Nations under Australian administration until 1949 (interrupted by Japanese occupation during the New Guinea campaign) when it merged with the Australian territory of Papua to become the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, which eventually became Papua New Guinea upon independence. The islands north of the equator became the Japanese mandate of the League of Nations of South Sea Islands. After Japan's defeat in World War II, the former Japanese islands were administered by the United States as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, a United Nations territory.

Territories

Territory	Period	Area (approx.)	Current countries
Kaiser-Wilhelmsland	1884-1919	181 650 km2	Papua New GuineaPapua New Guinea
Bismarck Archipelago	1899-1919	49 700 km2	Papua New GuineaPapua New Guinea
Bougainville Island	1899-1919	9318 km2	Papua New GuineaPapua New Guinea
Buka Island	1899-1919	492 km2	Papua New GuineaPapua New Guinea
Carolina Islands	1899-1919	2150 km2	MicronesiaMicronesia PalaesPalaes
Palaes	1899-1919	466 km2	PalaesPalaes
Northern Mariana Islands	1899-1919	461 km2	Northern Mariana IslandsNorthern Mariana Islands
Marshall Islands	1899-1919	181 km2	Marshall IslandsMarshall Islands
Nauru	1899-1919	21 km2	NauruNauru

Symbols planned for German New Guinea

In 1914 a series of drafts were made for the proposal of flags and coats of arms for the German colonies. However, World War I broke out before the designs were completed and implemented. After defeat in the war, Germany lost all its colonies and therefore the symbols were never put into use.

Banner and coat of arms proposed