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It gave an impetus to German assertiveness as a world economic and military power, aimed at competing with France and the British Empire for world power. German colonial rule in Africa 1884–1914 was an expression of nationalism and moral superiority that was justified by constructing an image of the natives as "Other".
- 31,025,468 km² (11,979,000 sq mi)
- Colonial empire
- Overview
- Domestic concerns
The German Empire was founded on January 18, 1871, in the aftermath of three successful wars by the North German state of Prussia. Within a seven-year period Denmark, the Habsburg monarchy, and France were vanquished in short, decisive conflicts. The empire was forged not as the result of the outpouring of nationalist feeling from the masses but through traditional cabinet diplomacy and agreement by the leaders of the states in the North German Confederation, led by Prussia, with the hereditary rulers of Bavaria, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Württemberg. Prussia, occupying more than three-fifths of the area of Germany and having approximately three-fifths of the population, remained the dominant force in the nation until the empire’s demise at the end of another war in 1918.
At its birth Germany occupied an area of 208,825 square miles (540,854 square km) and had a population of more than 41 million, which was to grow to 67 million by 1914. The religious makeup was 63 percent Protestant, 36 percent Roman Catholic, and 1 percent Jewish. The nation was ethnically homogeneous apart from a modest-sized Polish minority and smaller Danish, French, and Sorbian populations. Approximately 67 percent lived in villages and the remainder in towns and cities. Literacy was close to universal because of compulsory education laws dating to the 1820s and ’30s.
From its origins in 1871, the empire was governed under the constitution designed four years earlier by Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian prime minister, for the North German Confederation. This constitution reflected the predominantly rural nature of Germany in 1867 and the authoritarian proclivities of Bismarck, who was a member of the Junker landowning elite. There were two houses: the Reichstag, to represent the people, and the Bundesrat, to represent the 25 states. The former comprised 397 members elected by universal manhood suffrage and a secret ballot. The constituencies established in 1867 and 1871 were never altered to reflect population shifts, and rural areas thus retained a vastly disproportionate share of power as urbanization progressed. In theory the Reichstag’s ability to reject any bill seemed to make it an important reservoir of power; in practice, however, the power of the lower house was circumscribed by the government’s reliance on indirect taxes and by the parliament’s willingness to approve the military budget every seven (after 1893, every five) years. Most legislative proposals were submitted to the Bundesrat first and to the Reichstag only if they were approved by the upper house. Although members of the Reichstag could question the chancellor about his policies, the legislative bodies were rarely consulted about the conduct of foreign affairs. Imperial ministers were chosen by and were responsible to the emperor rather than to the legislature.
A problem that was to plague the empire throughout its existence was the disparity between the Prussian and imperial political systems. In Prussia the lower house was elected under a restricted three-class suffrage system, an electoral law that allowed the richest 15 percent of the male population to choose approximately 85 percent of the delegates. A conservative majority was always assured in Prussia, whereas the universal manhood suffrage resulted in increasing majorities for the political centre and left-wing parties in the imperial parliament. William I was both German emperor (1871–88) and king of Prussia (1861–88). Apart from two brief instances the imperial chancellor was simultaneously prime minister of Prussia. Thus, the executives had to seek majorities from two separate legislatures elected by radically different franchises. A further problem was that government ministers were generally selected from the civil service or the military. They often had little experience with parliamentary government or foreign affairs.
The constitution had been designed by Bismarck to give the chancellor and monarch primary decision-making power. Universal manhood suffrage had been proposed because of Bismarck’s belief that the rural population would vote for either the Conservative or Free Conservative parties. (Female suffrage had not been proposed because politics was considered a male preserve at the time.) The Progressives, a left-wing liberal party, were expected to do poorly in the two-thirds of Germany that was rural in 1867. Bismarck had not counted on new parties such as the Centre Party, a Roman Catholic confessional party, or the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands; SPD), both of which began participating in imperial and Prussian elections in the early 1870s. The Centre generally received 20–25 percent of the total vote in all elections. The SPD grew from 2 seats in the first imperial election to 35 by 1890, when the SPD actually gained a plurality of votes. Bismarck termed the Centre and SPD along with the Progressives Reichsfeinde (“enemies of the empire”) because he believed that each sought in its own way to change the fundamental conservative political character of the empire.
Beginning in 1871, he launched the Kulturkampf (“cultural struggle”), a campaign in concert with German liberals against political Catholicism. Bismarck’s aim was clearly to destroy the Centre Party. Liberals saw the Roman Catholic church as politically reactionary and feared the appeal of a clerical party to the more than one-third of Germans who professed Roman Catholicism. Both Bismarck and the liberals doubted the loyalty of the Catholic population to the Prussian-centred and, therefore, primarily Protestant nation. In Prussia the minister of ecclesiastical affairs and education, Adalbert Falk, introduced a series of bills establishing civil marriage, limiting the movement of the clergy, and dissolving religious orders. All church appointments were to be approved by the state. As a result hundreds of parishes and several bishoprics were left without incumbents. Clerical civil servants were purged from the Prussian administration.
A civilian, Matthias Erzberger of the Centre Party, signed the armistice, which took effect November 11, 1918. History of Germany - Germany from 1871 to 1918: The German Empire was founded on January 18, 1871, in the aftermath of three successful wars by the North German state of Prussia. Within a seven-year period Denmark, the Habsburg ...
The German colonial empire was an overseas area formed in the late nineteenth century as part of the Hohenzollern dynasty's German Empire. Short-lived colonial efforts by individual German states had occurred in preceding centuries, but Imperial Germany's colonial efforts began in 1883. The German colonial empire ended with the Treaty of ...
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On the eve of World War I, the German colonial empire consisted of a population of roughly fifteen million people spread over approximately one million square miles of territory. The principal German colonial possessions were its African holdings (German East Africa, Togoland, German Southwest Africa, and Cameroons) and its Far East territories ...
German Empire, historical empire founded on January 18, 1871, in the wake of three short, successful wars by the North German state of Prussia. Within a seven-year span, Denmark, the Habsburg monarchy, and France had been vanquished. The empire had its origin not in an upwelling of nationalist feeling from the masses but through traditional ...
