BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

naturally implied a sense of ethnic superiority that shaped attitudes at the height of British
imperialism. Peter Firchow wrote:
The consciousness of their innate moral superiority was the cause in the British public
mind of the very natural conviction that any foreigner who opposed himself to the British
will was ipso facto opposing the virtues of gentleness, chivalry, honor, sportsmanship,
democracy and, in a word, civilization. 8
The commingling of imperial status with positive perceptions of British national character
underlay Germanophobic opinion in British reactions to German industrial, trade, colonial and
naval rivalries.
Britain’s transition toward a “conscious policy of Imperialism” entailed a shift from
expansion through commerce to a policy of annexation during the 1880s. 9 Germany’s bid for
colonial power, which began with the proclamation in 1884 of a protectorate over the region
around Angra Pequeña in Southwest Africa, and which was followed by inroads in East Africa,
the Cameroons and elsewhere, provoked an annexationist response from a British government
formerly reluctant to take on unnecessary burdens of empire. 10 Britain, having already annexed
8 Firchow, Death of the German Cousin, 177.
9 The phrase, first coined by John A. Hobson in Imperialism: A Study (London, 1902), is
cited in Robin W. Winks, ed., British Imperialism: Gold, God, Glory (New York: Holt, Rinehart
& Winston, 1963), 14. Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century, 66, 103, notes the misleading
appearance of a break in continuity with earlier “unconscious” imperialism due primarily to
greater publicity, but nevertheless remarks on the new imperative to preempt rivals through
territorial acquisition. Graham D. Goodlad, British Foreign and Imperial Policy, 1865-1919
(London, Routledge, 2000), 29-37, presents a succinct discussion of the concept of a shift in late-
Victorian colonial policy, from Hobson’s theory of a governing economic motive to later
arguments emphasizing colonial rivalry as an extension of European politics (D. K. Fieldhouse,
A. J. P. Taylor) or theorizing a balance of strategic and economic considerations, beginning with
the occupation of Egypt in 1882 (Ronald Robinson and Jack Gallagher).
10 Britain annexed Bechuanaland in order to provide a huge buffer territory to the east of
German Southwest Africa and secured the unclaimed coastal territory between Natal and the
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