ABSTRACT
The haste with which Bismarck in 1884–85 created a colonial empire five times the size of the German Reich is one of the most controversial aspects of his chancellorship (see map 3). Up to that point he had always apparently dismissed colonial acquisitions as an expensive luxury comparable to ‘a poverty stricken Polish nobleman providing himself with silks and sables when he needed shirts’ (Townsend, 1930: 160).
