ABSTRACT

The Weltpolitik of Germany was a development of the thirty years of Kaiser Wilhelm II's reign. After the successful war of 1870, united Germany entered upon the greatest era of industrial growth and prosperity that has ever been enjoyed by any nation. Not even the United States, with the help of emigration and of new territories to open up, boast of a development in productive activities and means of communication comparable to that of Germany. Germany began to look to the extra-European world for markets. German trade was confronted by the British occupation of Cyprus in 1878 and of Egypt in 1882, the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881, and Russian, French, and British dealings with China, Siam, Afghanistan, Persia, and the peoples of central Asia. Weltpolitik emphasizes that the colonies acquired between 1883 and 1888 were a deterrent rather than a stimulus in creating and maintaining a current of public opinion for the support of an aggressive foreign policy.