German East Africa: the Background to The Ngoni Princess

The German appetite for Africa came late, and came hungrily. Bismarck, for years, had dismissed colonial ventures as a luxury the new Reich could ill afford. He preferred the European chessboard, the Concert of Powers, the careful balancing of Vienna and Petersburg and London. But by the early 1880s the pressure from Hamburg merchants and Hanseatic shippers, from the nascent colonial lobbies of Frankfurt and Berlin, had grown too insistent to ignore. The Scramble for Africa was on. The British were everywhere. The French were extending their reach across the Sahel. The Belgians, with King Leopold's private genocidal ambition, were carving out the Congo. To stand apart was, in the language of the day, to forfeit one's place among the great powers.

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Jason Collings
June 2026