7 - Formal and Informal Empire

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.