Caroline question
The Karolinen Question (also Karolinenstreit ) was a dispute between the German Empire and the Kingdom of Spain over the sovereignty over the Karolinen and Palauinseln in the western Pacific . The dispute took place in 1885. It was then that Germany's colonial expansion had begun; Spain, on the other hand, had been a colonial power since the 16th century .
backgrounds
Around 1875 Germany and Spain agreed not to extend the Spanish customs sovereignty of the Philippines to the Carolines. The reasons were the ineffective exercise of rule in Spain and the protection of German trade. Nevertheless, Spain counted the islands as part of Spanish East India since the time of the discovery and the Treaty of Saragossa (1494) to his sphere of interest .
From 1884, Germany also appeared as a colonial power . In April 1884, the German Empire and Great Britain agreed in a treaty that the northeast of New Guinea and the islands to the north of it were German spheres of interest. At the beginning of November 1884, the German flag was hoisted on the two square kilometer island of Mioko in what would later become the Bismarck Archipelago . At first it remained unclear where Germany wanted to raise claims outside of the British claim zone.
Issue and course of events
On January 23, 1885, the Hamburg company Robertson & Hernsheim asked the German government ( Bismarck cabinet ) to extend Reich protection to the Carolines in order to protect its trade monopoly there. The Colonial Secretary in the Foreign Office , Friedrich Richard Krauel , emphatically endorsed the request and turned to Undersecretary Herbert von Bismarck . His father, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck , shared the view that, in view of the German expansion, Spain was about to annex the Carolines. At the beginning of June 1885 rumors spread that Spain would effectively take possession of the Carolines and had already appointed a governor. On July 21, 1885, Kaiser Wilhelm I approved the German occupation of the Carolines.
Occupation
Bismarck confirmed to the German admiralty that the German flag should also be hoisted on the Caroline Islands. On July 31, 1885, Lieutenant Paul Hofmeier , in command of the Iltis gunboat lying in front of Shanghai , received the order to hoist the German flag on Yap and the Palau Islands . So-called protection contracts should be concluded with local leaders in order to give the seizure of possession additional legitimation.
On August 4, 1885, German authorities informed the Spanish government (Prime Minister was Antonio Cánovas del Castillo at the time ) of the extension of the German protected area to the Carolines. Spain's Foreign Minister José de Elduayen y Gorriti (1823–1898) immediately denied Germany's authorization to take this step. The Spanish government wrote in a note that the Carolines had been part of Spain since 1543. A few days later, however, Spain guaranteed freedom of trade for Germans on the Carolines. In Spain, meanwhile, a press campaign began that resulted in anti-German protests. Demonstrations took place in Madrid and around 80 other places in the country; over 30,000 people demonstrated in Madrid.
For Spain, the Caroline question also had an internal dimension. The unresolved conflict gave rise to the republican opposition, King Alfonso XII. to demonstrate. The Spanish government was therefore keen to resolve the dispute quickly. Bismarck, surprised by the extent of the protests, announced on August 23, 1885 that Germany had no intention of interfering with older rights. For him the question took on increasingly political and therefore disproportionate features. He suggested using a third power as an arbitration board.
A solution dragged on because Spain did not provide any evidence of a historical title to the Carolines and Bismarck was pleased with the weakness of the Spanish kingship in foreign policy. In his opinion, the imperial monarchies of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia could be welded closer together using the negative example of Spain. In addition, the German Foreign Office wanted to wait for the reports from the Navy first.
.jpg&filetimestamp=20100404144527&)
When the German gunboat Iltis entered the port of Yap on the evening of August 25, 1885 , the Spanish warships San Quentin and Manila were already anchored there. The ships had brought the future governor as well as clergymen and soldiers to the island. The construction of a Spanish government station had already begun. Nevertheless, Hofmeier had the German flag hoisted, which also prompted the Spaniards to raise their national flag. When a battle threatened, the Spaniards withdrew and left the island.
Approximation
When the news of the German flag being raised reached Madrid, at the beginning of September 1885 riots broke out around the German embassy there. The German consulate in Valencia was also the target of angry attacks. The Spanish government, from which the situation threatened to slip away, urged Germany to find a solution as soon as possible. Regardless of the tensions, the gunboat Albatross under Corvette Captain Max Plüddemann initially continued to hoist the German flag and ran into numerous islands of the Caroline Islands from September 20 to October 18, 1885. Bismarck, however, feared that in the event of a war with Spain, France could also take its side, and finally gave in.
Ultimately, the decisive factor for the rapprochement was the increasing impairment of German-Spanish trade relations (the volume of trade had increased tenfold since 1879). This seemed to outweigh the Caroline's possession. Bismarck opened the Robertson & Hernsheim company on September 22, 1885, saying he was not afraid of war with Spain, but commercial interests came first. Spanish diplomacy took up this immediately and held out the prospect of extending a trade agreement that would be advantageous for Germany if Germany recognized Spanish sovereignty over the Carolines in return.
arbitration
Despite the preliminary agreement, Bismarck continued to insist on an independent arbitration award. Otherwise, he told confidants, Germany would admit that the Carolines have always been Spanish, and that the assessment of 1875 was therefore wrong. On September 29, 1885, Bismarck proposed Pope Leo XIII. as an arbitrator, whose authority Catholic Spain could hardly deny. At the same time, the relationship with the Vatican , which was burdened by the Kulturkampf, was to be improved. The Pope was secretly informed that Germany was prepared to renounce the Carolines in return for economic concessions.
The Pope announced his judgment on October 22nd, 1885, which turned out as expected: The islands were awarded to Spain with the condition that a functioning administration be set up as quickly as possible. In return, Berlin was granted freedom of trade and the right to settle on the Karolinen as well as a coal and naval station on Yap. Germany did not make use of the latter. The attitude of the islanders was ignored.
When the trade agreement between Germany and Spain was actually extended on December 7, 1885, nothing stood in the way of anchoring the Pope's motto in a corresponding treaty. With the German-Spanish treaty, which was signed in Rome on December 17, 1885, the Caroline dispute was officially settled.
- Persons in the Caroline dispute
Alfonso XII from Spain
Pope Leo XIII.
Chancellor of Bismarck
.jpg)
consequences
.jpg&filetimestamp=20100404144527){kind=link}
The outcome of the Caroline dispute was judged very differently in contemporary perception. The German ratings ranged from annoyance at a second defeat by Bismarck after the Kulturkampf to praise for the peaceful arbitration and the "return" of the Carolines. The left-wing liberal German Liberal Party , which was critical of colonialism, saw the end of German colonialism looming. In Spain there was dissatisfaction with the concessions made to Germany. This found expression in a popular play in which the children Hispania and Germania argued over the doll Carolina until their father came and decided that the doll belonged to Hispania , but Germania was allowed to play with it.
The Caroline question brought the Micronesian island world into the light of international interests. On October 15, 1885, the commander of the German gunboat Nautilus declared the still independent Marshall Islands a German protectorate. Together with Nauru , which was added in 1888, Germany secured the islands east and south of the Caroline Islands. Spain actually began taking possession of the Carolines in 1887, but encountered local resistance.
As a result of the Spanish-American war , Spain sold the Carolines and the Palau Islands and northern Mariana Islands for almost 16.6 million marks to the German Empire in the German-Spanish treaty of 1899 . The islands became part of the German South Sea possessions until they were occupied by Japan in 1914, which received a mandate over them after the First World War .
See also
literature
- Thomas Morlang: Rebellion in the South Seas. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-604-8 , pp. 21-28.
- Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Bismarck and Imperialism. 4th ed., Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-423-04187-0 , pp. 400-407.
Web links
- The Karolineninseln , in: Die Grenzboten , vol. 44, 1885, p. 438ff.
- The dispute over the Carolines , in: Die Grenzboten , vol. 44, 1885, p. 608ff.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Birgitt Beier: The Chronicle of the Germans. Chronik-Verlag, Dortmund 1983, ISBN 3-88379-023-0 , p. 630.
- ↑ Willi A. Boelcke: This is how the sea came to us - The Prussian-German Navy in Übersee 1822 to 1914. Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-550-07951-6 , p. 312ff.
- ↑ Volker Schult: Desire and Reality: German-Filipino Relations in the Context of Global Interdependencies 1860 - 1945 (Diss., HU Berlin), Logos-Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-8325-1898-1 , p. 55 ( online )
- ↑ Willi A. Boelcke: This is how the sea came to us - The Prussian-German Navy in Übersee 1822 to 1914. Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-550-07951-6 , p. 342f.
- ↑ Karl Sapper: Karolinen , in: Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon , Volume II., Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1920, p. 237ff.