CHAPTER XVII

THE GERMAN DOCTRINE

AMERICAN COLONIZERS

DURING the century of relations between the United States and Latin America, the problem has been simple because the number of foreign powers that had a right to share in the destinies of America was small. Holland and Denmark, although they still hold small American possessions, have never been a factor in American affairs. Russia withdrew official claim to territory south of 54° 40′ in 1824; and though the posts on the coast of California were troublesome, they had ceased to have any political significance before the annexation of California. In 1867, by the cession of Alaska, Russia withdrew altogether from the American mainland and islands, including the Aleutian group which stretches westward almost to the coast of Kamchatka. The French since their withdrawal from Mexico in 1867 have pushed their investments and their colonial policy in other parts of the world. They have had fewer grievances against Latin-American states than some other great powers, and have been little concerned in the declarations, interventions, and protectorates by which the United States has enlightened the international history of America.

The one great power which since the decline of Spain has had a right to claim a large interest in America is Great Britain. Except for Guiana, that interest has been confined to North America and the adjacent waters. The West Indies have become a less important part of the world's trade and warfare than in the previous centuries; and the English part of the West Indies Jamaica, Trinidad, and part of the Windward and Leeward Islands - have declined considerably in comparison with the larger West India Islands. The principal seat of the

British power has been in the northern lands which are now brought together in the colony of Newfoundland and the Dominion of Canada. The Canadians are exceedingly loyal Britons, and in the Boer war of 1900 and the great European war of 1914, contributed men, money, and energy in profusion. Canada, however, is a semi-independent country, which on various occasions has brought pressure to bear upon the Imperial Government against making agreements with the United States which the Canadians disliked. At no time since the Civil War have the people of the United States felt that Canada was a seat of European power and influence.

GERMANS AS COLONIZERS

To Russia, France, and Great Britain during the last twentyfive years the great fields of colonial activity have not been in the western but in the eastern hemisphere: Africa, Asia, and Australasia. In those fields they have had to confront a new and determined colonizing power which has made itself felt also in America. This power is Germany, which might well be called one of the great colonizing nations of America because of the millions of Germans who have come out to become citizens of other countries. It is only since 1890 that this powerful nation has taken up the idea of colonies which should be owned and governed by Germans and which might include millions of native inhabitants who would not be consulted as to their governmental preferences. Inasmuch as Germany came late into the struggle for colonies, it was impossible to acquire desirable sites except by conquest from other powers. That method naturally seems to England, France, and Russia, with their enormous established colonies, as contrary to good breeding; and the United States is especially concerned lest the Germans should extend their ambition to South America.

That Germany is not included in the list of American colonial powers is almost an accident. The Emperor Charles V made grants of land on the northern and western coasts of South America to two of the great German banking families. As the time came for Spain, England, France, Holland, and Sweden to contend for empires in America, the Germans ought to have taken part, and they probably would have done so but for the calamity of the Thirty Years' War. In the year 1620, while

the English Pilgrims were settling Plymouth, the Protestant Bohemians were overwhelmed at the battle of the White Hill. In 1630, while the Great Emigration was crossing the sea to Massachusetts, Gustavus Adolphus landed in northern Germany to head the northern Protestants. In 1638, while the New Englanders were talking about a Confederation, and the Swedes were planting a colony on the Delaware, the Protestants and Catholics were ravaging the interior of Germany. In 1648, when Rhode Island was striving to enter the New England Confederation, the Peace of Westphalia at last stopped the hostilities in exhausted Germany. Later wars and devastations and persecutions drove thousands of Germans to North America, but not an acre of territory in either western continent has ever owned allegiance to a German sovereign.

This ruin of Germany was a misfortune to America, for the Germans of the seventeenth century had the mental and moral outfit for colonization. They were good farmers, good craftsmen, good churchmen, strong, healthy, and well fitted to meet the hardships of colonization. They included a vigorous educated and literary class. They were good shipbuilders, good sailors, good navigators. Europe contained no better business men than the German merchants. For centuries. previous to the Thirty Years' War they had maintained the German Hansa, the mightiest shipping trust ever known. If they had not spent their best blood on the barren battlefields of Germany, they could have reached the New World, explored it, colonized it, and held their own in naval warfare.

The Germans in this period founded some colonies. Bohemia was partly filled with Germans. Far down in Transylvania at various times German colonies were planted which still maintain their language, religious faith, and customs. Hundreds of thousands of Germans settled in northern Russia, and the great Catherine settled some of them in southern Russia, which was perhaps the original cradle of the Teutonic race. They could have set up a desirable community in any part of America where they found a footing. In the seventeenth century a footing was available in unsettled and disputed parts of North America. Yet with the exception of the unsuccessful venture of the Great Elector on the West Coast of Africa, the German flag previous to about 1890 never floated over any territory outside Europe.

GERMANS IN NORTH AMERICA

Nevertheless Germans took considerable part in the English colonies. A few of them drifted into all the English settlements, and when William Penn published a tract in German, in which he set forth the attractions of "Quackerthal" in America, thousands of Germans heard the summons and came to Pennsylvania.

Other settlements were made by the Palatines in New York, and by the Salzburgers in Georgia, where Salzburg, Augusta, and Brunswick still recall the origin of those towns. German Swiss made a settlement at New Bern, North Carolina. Germans pushed out to the frontier, followed the valleys southwestward and spread into the Tennessee valley. Watauga, the pioneer European community on the headwaters of the Tennessee, was partly peopled by Germans. The stream of German immigration continued at intervals till the American Revolution. So far as can be judged from the census rolls of 1790, 275,000, or about one fourteenth of the total population of the United States as it then stood, were of German origin.

A second stream of Germans began to come into the country about 1820, including some exiles of the highest intellectual power, and thousands of honest, hard-working citizens. The troubles of 1848 stimulated the exodus, and when the Civil War came on, many thousands of Germans born and their sons took up arms, especially on the Northern side. Some great cities, such as Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Cleveland, have for years had a numerous and active German element.

The number of Germans in America is hard to estimate, because "German" may mean only men and women born in Germany; or it may mean individuals who consider themselves still Germans though for the time being living out of their country; or it may mean everybody who is descended, however remotely, from an original German. The native Germans, in the United States in 1910, were about 2,500,000. They and the children of born Germans made up 8,300,000. The total number of persons who come of German stock, however remote, including the descendants of the Pennsylvania and other colonial Germans is about 15,000,000.

GERMANS IN SOUTH AMERICA

In other parts of America, German colonists, except in the Argentine and Brazil, are hardly known. German business men, however, have been steadily coming in during the last twenty-five years. In most of the Latin-American countries, especially in Mexico, Venezuela, and Brazil they have set up banks, factories, mines, and import and export houses. German goods, German travelling men, German owners, and German experts are known throughout America; and their care to learn the language and the business methods of their customers has given them a great advantage. These business Germans in America carry with them their home distinctions of social classes and rank, and are not beloved by the people among whom they live. Through their energy in business and their ability to make money, many Germans have acquired property in American countries and have thus become objects of those unwelcome attentions from the heads of the state and their subordinates which lead to claims, protests, threats, and reprisals. Both in the Venezuela troubles of 1902 and the Mexican troubles of 1911, Germans suffered heavily. In Latin America there are supposed to be 600,000 Germans of whom 100,000 are in the Argentine and 500,000 in Brazil.

These last are the only ones that can lay claim to be something like a German colony in America. In the Argentine they are balanced by 1,000,000 Italians, and as many of other European races. In Brazil most of the Germans are settled in the southern provinces of Sao Paulo, Santa Catherina and Rio Grande Do Sul, where they are the dominant element. They live together, keep up their language, and think of themselves as German-Brazilians and different from the Portuguese-Brazilians.

From the point of view of the present German imperial government, these people, like the Germans in the United States, are practically lost to their country. Many of them came away to get rid of military service and of a government which looked after them too faithfully. As a part of Brazil, they are persons of distinction, and they have as near local self-government as is possible in a country with the traditions of centralization. They are prosperous, increasing, and happy - so happy that they have never felt the need of calling upon their former home authorities to protect them against the Brazilian government.