ABSTRACT
IN some respects the colonial activities of Germany have been very different from those of Britain, France, Holland and Portugal. The maritime States of Western Europe have been engaged in imperial expansion since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their overseas empires have played an important part in their political, economic and social development. On the other hand, Germanylike Italy and Belgium-did not acquire overseas possessions until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The possession of a colonial empire did not have that profound influence upon the national life of modern Germany that it has long had in this country.
