BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

encouragement of such a vile and infamous trade on the part of a nation for which they
entertain sincere esteem, regard, and admiration. 14
British criticism of German colonial policies persisted and increased in severity during
the 1890s. In 1897 the Saturday Review charged that German importation of arms and
ammunition had “renewed and re-inspired” the slave trade and imperiled the lives of
missionaries and traders. In addition, proneness to tyranny and atrocities such as the flogging of
women had allegedly stilted German colonial development. 15 Kenneth Mackenzie has remarked
on the chorus of dissent against German colonial methods in the British press and on the
consensus that blamed such transgressions on Teutonic cruelty. 16 In 1892 Robert Louis
Stevenson published a litany of charges alleging German abuse of Samoan natives and official
attempts to suppress the reporting of native grievances. While Stevenson did not completely
exonerate England’s record of dealing with native populations, he peppered his criticism of
German methods with comments about German “touchiness,” secrecy and other national traits
that clearly marked the Germans as intrinsically ill-suited for colonial rule. 17
A little more than a decade later, native uprisings in Southwest Africa seemed to confirm
German colonial ineptitude. Not only did the treatment of native populations become a
14 Daily Telegraph, 18 September 1890, 5.
15 “German Loyalty and Honesty,” Saturday Review 83 (January 1897): 106.
16 “Some British Reactions to German Colonial Methods, 1885-1907,” Historical Journal
17 (1974): 167, 173-75. Complaints of native unrest in reaction to German rule in Africa were
not unfounded. Robert D. Jackson recounts the results of German brutality in “Resistance to the
German Invasion of the Tanganyikan Coast, 1888-1891,” in Robert I. Rotbury and Ali A.
Mazrui, eds, Protest and Power in Black Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 37-
79.
17 A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (New York: Scribner’s Sons,
1905, first published in 1892), 34, 38, 119, 239, 246.
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