Book contents
- Learning Empire
- Learning Empire
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Absent-Minded Empire, 1875–1897
- Part II Empire Imagined, 1897–1907
- 4 World Policy
- 5 The High Seas Fleet and Power Politics
- 6 National Efficiency and the New Mercantilism
- 7 Formal and Informal Empire
- 8 Empire in Crisis
- Part III Empire Lost, 1908–1919
- Epilogue
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
7 - Formal and Informal Empire
from Part II - Empire Imagined, 1897–1907
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 September 2019
- Learning Empire
- Learning Empire
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Absent-Minded Empire, 1875–1897
- Part II Empire Imagined, 1897–1907
- 4 World Policy
- 5 The High Seas Fleet and Power Politics
- 6 National Efficiency and the New Mercantilism
- 7 Formal and Informal Empire
- 8 Empire in Crisis
- Part III Empire Lost, 1908–1919
- Epilogue
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter discusses the precarious status of Germany’s formal colonial empire and its tenuous hold in its spheres of interest in the Ottoman Empire, Japan, and Venezuela by 1905. It also explores how tensions during the Second Venezuela crisis, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Tangier crisis solidified British perceptions of German menace in need of containment. Germany’s formal colonies were a bitter disappointment in need of major reforms, while neglect and disengagement defined German relations with Japan. Meanwhile German investment in the Anatolian and Baghdad railroads in the Ottoman Empire generated new points of friction with Britain and Russia. A British-led Anglo-German intervention in Venezuela was perceived in the United States as a German provocation. Similarly, the Russo-Japanese War and Tangier crisis generated much British hostility toward Germany fueled by overblown fears of its navy that worked to bring about an Entente with France and agreement with Russia. Once again, a vast gulf separated the reality of Germany’s meagre capacities and its fragile finances from exaggerated images of menace often drawn from German naval propaganda.
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- Learning EmpireGlobalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875–1919, pp. 290 - 339Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019