China expedition

The Germans to the front by Carl Röchling : Contemporary Glorification of the China Expedition

The term China expedition (in the broader sense also East Asian expedition ) describes a project of colonial policy in the German Empire to establish a German colony in China and to expand its sphere of influence. This was linked to the desire for a permanent naval and trade base on the Chinese coast.

prehistory

A pioneer of the China expedition was the German explorer Ferdinand von Richthofen , who made numerous trips to China between 1868 and 1872. On the basis of geographical and geological research, he assessed the region around Kiautschou as being important for the establishment of a future colony. Mainly volunteer soldiers were part of the expedition, whereby the increased pay played just as much a role as the thirst for adventure.

Occupation of Tsingtau

Map of the former German area around Tsingtau (around 1930)

This project was realized in 1897 when a German fleet under the command of Otto von Diederichs occupied the bay of Kiautschou with the fishing village of Tsingtau ( Qingdao ). The occasion was the murder of two German missionaries in Shandong. The Kiautschou Bay was occupied by the Imperial Navy ( sea ​​battalion ) from 1897 to 1914 and was therefore a German colony . In contrast to the German overseas territories in Africa and the Pacific, Tsingtau was not administered by the Reich Colonial Office , but by the Reichsmarineamt . Officially, Kiautschou was a lease area. Due to the infrastructural and cultural boom since the German occupation, Kiautschou was also referred to as a “ model colony ” in Germany .

Boxer Rebellion

Memorial plaque for the fallen of Telegraph Battalion 3

During the Boxer Rebellion around 1900, Germany in the league of the United Eight States took advantage of domestic political crises and social unrest in Chinese society in order to increase German influence. The occasion was again the murder of the German ambassador in Beijing, Clemens von Ketteler . The German Empire then sent a 15,000-strong contingent of troops, the East Asian Expeditionary Corps , to fight insurgency in China. The corps was bid farewell by Kaiser Wilhelm II with a speech that went down in history as the so-called Huns' speech . The German Count von Waldersee was given supreme command of the international troops in China. The smashing of the Empire of China was already a done deal among the great powers of Europe and the Germans had a claim to the Chinese province of Shandong . However, the conquest plans were never fully realized because the First World War broke out beforehand .

literature

• Rudolf Zabel : The German China Expedition of 1897 . Bremen: eh-Verlag, 2011 (reprint from 1902), ISBN 978-3-86741-638-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Richthofen, Ferdinand , in: Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon , Volume III, Leipzig 1920, p. 171.
2. ^ Roet de Rouet, Henning: Frankfurt am Main as a Prussian garrison from 1866 to 1914. Frankfurt am Main 2016. P. 151.
3. ^ East Asian Expedition , in: Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon , Volume II, Leipzig 1920, p. 689.