New Guinea Company
The New Guinea Compagnie (also New Guinea Compagnie ) was a company founded in Berlin in 1882 by bankers and major financiers as a New Guinea consortium . Their goal was to acquire colonial property in the South Seas , especially New Guinea , the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands . The founding members include a. the banker Adolph von Hansemann and Gerson von Bleichröder .
Colonial interests
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The representatives of German economic interests in the Pacific had been troubled by British-Australian competition since the summer of 1883. Above all, they were concerned about the poaching of insular workers - but more out of self-interest than out of commitment to the locals. Even at the time, the practice of minimal wages and miserable working conditions resembled a "poorly veiled slave trade " ( P. v. Hatzfeldt ). When Great Britain captured the eastern part of New Guinea for the crown in August 1884, the agent of the New Guinea consortium Otto Finsch claimed the northeast coast of New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago in December of the same year. In this way he prevented Great Britain from taking possession of the area , which was particularly requested by the British colonial administration in Queensland ( Australia ). Great Britain ruled the south-eastern part of New Guinea from 1884 (→ British New Guinea ) and from 1889 the western part became a colony of the Netherlands (→ Dutch New Guinea ) .
Protection letters
In the spring of 1885, Hansemann renamed the New Guinea company , which was supported by other financiers such as Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck , Christian Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Öhringen and Adolph Woermann . After the Hamburg company Robertson & Hernsheim joined the company, the company was given sovereignty for northeast New Guinea (called Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land ) and the Bismarck Archipelago on May 17, 1885 with the imperial “ letter of protection ” . On December 13, 1886, the Northern Solomon Islands ( Bougainville , Choiseul , Isabella and others) were added. The overwriting of sovereign rights meant that the New Guinea company had autonomous self-government rights and was able to take possession of the land granted to it by the German Empire and to conclude land contracts independently with the locals. However, the right to regulate relations with foreign powers was reserved for the imperial government . The governor held the highest administrative authority for the areas .
Due to the threat of insolvency of the New Guinea company, the German Reich was forced to buy back the sovereign rights of the Kaiser Wilhelm Land colony on October 7, 1898. From 1899 the German Empire administered the colonies as part of German New Guinea . The former governor was replaced by the imperial governor , who then had his seat in Herbertshöhe in the Bismarck archipelago, whereby Friedrich-Wilhelm-Hafen lost its position as administrative capital .
Economic goals
The goals of the company lay primarily in the exploration of the area in preparation for land speculation and in the establishment of a German administration. Trade and the plantation economy should be started in the future by German settlers. Administrative costs rose rapidly as the ideologically charged prejudices that hindered cooperation with local residents forced society to temporarily “import” workers from Java and China. In order to create new plantations, Hansemann had founded another company as early as 1891, the Astrolabe Company . Until they were merged with the New Guinea Company in 1896, they operated the plantations in Stephansort and Erima .
Since 1893 there was a regular steamboat connection between the company's area and Singapore via the North German Lloyd . The transport connection was one of the main cost factors of the company. Furthermore, since 1894 the company was responsible for the minting of the New Guinea marks , which are equivalent to imperial coins . It maintained a small police force and published the news for and about Kaiser Wilhelms-Land and the Bismarck Archipelago since 1885 .
Climatic conditions, a strongly formalized administration as well as mismanagement - Hansemann administered the activities from Berlin - left the company with its enterprises in New Guinea with high losses, for which the German Reich had to answer with the assumption of sovereign rights in 1899.
Even after 1899 the company continued to do business in the Pacific colonies. She made extensive experiments with the cultivation of tobacco , cotton and other tropical crops . Later the focus was placed on the cultivation of coconuts and the utilization of the coconut palms, especially on copra . Especially in Konstantinhafen and Herbertshöhe, rice , maize, etc. a. grown for personal use. In the main town of Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen, timber was primarily extracted; there was also a small cattle farm there.
Around 1900, because of the strong expansion of the plantation areas, workers were recruited again. As before, these came from Java and China and the company was able to recruit local people as workers through indirect coercion - a poll tax had been levied on local residents. However, the company never found a way to combine their interests with those of the locals, so that ultimately they were only viewed as “resources” that could be exploited at low cost.
Around 1899, the total area of the protected area was estimated at around 252,000 square kilometers, made up of around 179,000 for the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land, 52,000 for the Bismarck Archipelago and 21,000 for the Solomon Islands. In 1904 the company owned 138,778 hectares of land, 92,046 hectares of which on Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land and 46,732 hectares on the Bismarck Archipelago.
At the beginning of the First World War , the New Guinea Company owned about half of all territories acquired by Europeans. After the First World War lost for Germany, the properties were expropriated on the basis of the Versailles Treaty. With the compensation payments from the German Reich, the El Negrito coffee plantation in Venezuela (south of Caracas) was acquired in 1921. On Fernando Póo the Drumen SA was founded by Spanish law, the plantains grew and cocoa and to which a commercial establishment in the French Mandate of Cameroon was attached. The outcome of World War II again deprived the company of almost all assets. After the company headquarters had meanwhile been relocated to Hamburg (the majority shareholder was the African Fruit Compagnie in Hamburg), an extraordinary general meeting in 1968 decided to dissolve the New Guinea company.
Administrative apparatus
The Finschhafen station was founded on November 5th, 1885 . Until 1891, the seat of the company's colonial administration was located there. After a malaria epidemic, those responsible decided to relocate the administration to a climatically healthier region and initially chose the Stephansort trading post from 1891 to 1892 . The final seat was then Friedrich-Wilhelm-Hafen (today Madang ). Further stations were Konstantinhafen , Hatzfeldhafen , Erima and Herbertshöhe in Neupommern (today Kokopo in New Britain ). Hatzfeldhafen was given up again.
The governors of the New Guinea Company were:
- 1885–1888: Georg von Schleinitz
- 1888–1889: Reinhold Kraetke
- 1892–1895: Georg Schmiele
- 1895–1896: Hugo Rüdiger
- 1896–1897: Curt von Hagen
- 1897–1898: Hugo Skopnik
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Founder: History of the German Colonies. 2004, p. 91.
- ↑ Wehler: Bismarck and Imperialism. 1976, p. 392.
- ^ Founder: History of the German Colonies. 2004, p. 92.
- ↑ Founder (Ed.): "... found a young Germany here and there". 1999, p. 96.
- ^ Founder: History of the German Colonies. 2004, p. 93.
- ^ Stewart G. Frith: The New Guinea Company, 1885-1899: a case of unprofitable imperialism. In: Historical Studies. Vol. 15, No. 59, 1972, ISSN 0728-6023 , pp. 361-377.
- ^ Founder: History of the German Colonies. 2004, p. 178.
- ^ Founder: History of the German Colonies. 2004, p. 94.
- ^ Founder: History of the German Colonies. 2004, p. 178 ff.
- ^ L. Rothschild: L. Rothschild's paperback for merchants. 42nd edition. 1900, p. 631.
- ^ Founder: History of the German Colonies. 2004, p. 179.
literature
- Horst founder : History of the German colonies (= UTB . 1332). 5th edition with a new introduction and updated bibliography. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2004, ISBN 3-8252-1332-3 .
- Horst founder (ed.): "... found a young Germany here and there". Racism, colonies and colonial thought from the 16th to the 20th century (= dtv. 30713). Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-423-30713-7 .
- Louis Rothschild: L. Rothschild's Paperback for Merchants. 42nd edition. GA Gloeckner, Leipzig 1900.
- Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Bismarck and Imperialism (= German 4187). 4th edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-423-04187-0 .
