Carl Peters and German Imperialism, 1856-1918. A Political Biography.(Book review)

Historian, The, March, 2006 by Smith, Woodruff D.

Carl Peters and German Imperialism 1856-1918. A Political Biography. By Arne Perras. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xii, 286. $35.00.)

Carl Peters was the most famous of the founders of the German colonial empire. His career embodied much of the essence of German colonialism. In the early 1880s, he made himself into a leading propagandist of German nationalism and colonial expansion, becoming the central figure in the network of societies at the core of the German colonial movement. He led an expedition to East Africa in 1885, which returned with the dubious treaties that enabled Bismarck to claim the colony of German East Africa. Thereafter, although he retained his political importance on the German right, his involvement in practical colonial...

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