| Karl Peters | |
|---|---|
| Born | 27 September 1856 Neuhaus, Kingdom of Hanover |
| Died | 10 September 1918 (aged 61) Bad Harzburg, Germany |
| Alma mater | University of Göttingen University of Tübingen Frederick William University |
| Occupation | Explorer, author, colonialist, politician |
| Known for | Founder of the German East Africa Company |
Karl Peters (27 September 1856 - 10 September 1918), was a German colonial ruler, explorer, politician and author, the prime mover behind the foundation of the German colony of East Africa (in today's Tanzania). A proponent of Social Darwinism and the Völkisch movement, his attitude towards the indigenous population made him one of the most controversial colonizers already during his lifetime.
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He was born at Neuhaus an der Elbe in the Kingdom of Hanover, the son of a Lutheran clergyman. Peters studied history and philosophy at Göttingen, Tübingen and in Berlin under Heinrich von Treitschke. In 1879 he was awarded a gold medal by the Berlin Frederick William University for his dissertation on the 1177 Treaty of Venice and habilitated with a treatise on Arthur Schopenhauer.
Instead of pursuing a university career, Peters worked with a Dutch family selling sweets in London after his studies, where he became acquainted with British principles of colonization and imperialism. When he returned to Berlin he founded the Society for German Colonization (Gesellschaft für Deutsche Kolonisation) pressure group for the acquisition of colonies. In the autumn of 1884 he proceeded with two companions to East Africa, and concluded in the name of his society treaties with the chiefs of Useguha, Nguru, Ijsagara and Ukami. Returning to Europe early in 1885, he formed the German East Africa Company.
Two new devices for political organization and rule over foreign peoples were discovered during the first decades of imperialism. One was race as a principle of the body politic, and the other bureaucracy as a principle of foreign domination. ... Race was the Boers' answer to the overwhelming monstrosity of Africa -- a whole continent populated and overpopulated by savages -- an explanation of the madness which grasped and illuminated them like 'a flash of lightning in a serene sky: "Exterminate all the brutes."' This answer resulted in the most terrible massacres in recent history, the Boers' extermination of Hottentot tribes, the wild murdering by Carl Peters in German Southeast Africa, the decimation of the peaceful Congo population ..."[1]
What kind of people left their homeland to go to the German colonies in Africa?
"The superfluous men, 'the Bohemians of the four continents' who came rushing down to the Cape, still had much in common with the old adventurers. They too felt 'Ship me somewheres east of Suez where the best is like the worst,/Where there aren't no Ten Commandments, an' a man can raise a thirst.' The difference was not their morality or immorality, but rather that the decision to join this crowd 'of all nations and colors' was no longer up to them; that they had not stepped out of society but had been spat out by it; that they were not enterprising beyond the permitted limits of civilization but simply victims without use or function. [2]
The full impact of the African experience was first realized by leaders of the mob, like Carl Peters, who decided that they too had to belong to a master race. African colonial possessions became the most fertile soil for the flowering of what later was to become the Nazi elite. [3]
The German government under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck fearing the impact on the relations with the British was originally opposed to these plans and had refused any backing when Peters set out. Bismarck refused a second time when Peters returned to Germany in the closing days of the Berlin Congo Conference demanding an imperial charter. Peters, however, blackmailed the Chancellor successfully by threatening to sell his acquisitions to King Léopold II of Belgium who was eager to expand his Congo Empire. As Bismarck's National Liberal allies in the Reichstag parliament were pro-colonial minded anyway, he finally gave in to "the stupid guy" and the charter was made out. This constituted the necessary backing for further expansion on the East African mainland in the following years. In 1888 Peters achieved an agreement with Sultan Khalifah bin Said of Zanzibar who leased his coastal dominions in what was to be Tanganyika to the German East Africa Company.
In the same year Peters undertook an expedition from the east coast of Africa, avowedly for the relief of Emin Pasha, actually to extend the sphere of German influence in Uganda and Equatoria. This expedition was not sanctioned by the German government and was regarded by the British authorities as a filibustering (in the 19th century sense of the word) exploit. Reaching Uganda in early 1890, Peters concluded a treaty with Kabaka Mwanga II of Buganda in favour of Germany.
He had to leave Uganda hastily on the approach of an expedition led by Frederick Lugard, the representative of the Imperial British East Africa Company. On reaching Zanzibar he learned that his efforts were useless, as on 1 July 1890 the Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty between Germany and the British Empire had been signed, whereby Uganda was left in the British sphere and Peters' agreement with Mwanga became null and void. Meanwhile the power of his company had collapsed when the coastal population rose in the Abushiri Revolt against the implementation of the lease agreement between the Sultan and the Germans. The German government had to intervene by sending troops under Hermann Wissmann, suppressed the insurrection and took over the company's possessions as a colony.
Nevertheless on his return to Germany Peters was received with great honours, and in 1891 published an account of his expedition entitled Die deutsche Emin Pasha Expedition, which was translated into English. He also endorsed the foundation of the Alldeutscher Verband in protest against the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty.
In 1891 he went out again to East Africa as Reichskommissar (Imperial High Commissioner) for the Kilimanjaro Region in Moshi, however subordinate to Wissmann, and in 1892 was one of the commissioners for delimiting the Anglo-German boundary with the British East Africa Company in that region. In the same time Peters by his brutal behaviour against the local population provoked an uprising which was to cost him his office. He used local girls as concubines and, when he discovered that his lover Jagodja had an affair with his man-servant Mabruk, he had both of them sentenced for theft and treason and hanged by a drumhead court-martial and their home villages destroyed. The incident, at first not reported by Peters, provoked resistance by the local Chaga people and again necessitated costly military action.
Peters was recalled to Berlin and employed in the Imperial Colonial Office from 1893 to 1895, while official accusations were brought against him of excesses in his treatment of the native population. In a sitting of the Reichstag on 13 March 1896 August Bebel, chairman of the Social Democratic Party, finally made the killings public, citing from a self-exculpatory letter by Peters to Bishop Alfred Tucker. Peters denied the authenticity of the letter but had to admit the executions. After three investigations had been held he was, in 1897, dishonorably deprived of his commission for misuse of official power, losing all his pension benefits.
He evaded the final sentence and further criminal prosecution by removing to London, where he occupied himself in schemes for exploiting parts of Rhodesia and Portuguese East Africa. In the interests of a gold mining company he formed, Peters explored the Fura district and Macombes country on the Zambezi river, where in 1899 he discovered ruins of cities and deserted gold mines of the medieval Kingdom of Mutapa, which he identified as the legendary ancient lands of Ophir. He returned in 1901 and gave an account of his explorations in Im Goldland des Altertums (The Eldorado of the Ancients) (1902). In 1905 he again visited the region between the Zambezi and Sabi rivers.
Besides the books already mentioned and some smaller treatises Peters published a philosophical work entitled Willenswelt und Weltwille (1883), and a disquisition on early gold production entitled Das goldene Ophir Salomo's (1895), translated into English in 1898.
Among colonial minded circles he was feted as a national hero. In 1914 he was able to return to Germany, after Emperor Wilhelm II by personal decree had bestowed upon him the right to use the title of an Imperial Commissioner again and had given him a pension from his personal budget, while the sentence by the disciplinary court remained in force. Peters was officially rehabilitated by personal decree of Adolf Hitler 20 years after his death when the Nazis had discovered him as an ideological relative. A propaganda film "Carl Peters" by Herbert Selpin was released in 1941, starring Hans Albers. A number of towns in Germany had streets named after Peters but in recent years some of them received changed names after a debate on his legacy.
Critical voices among Social Democrats, Catholic and Free-minded politicians called Peters a butcher and a national shame. The Austrian Africanist Oscar Baumann referred to him as "half crazy". While the East African indigenous people called him as Mkono Wa Damu (Swahili for "Bloody Hand"), one of his constant nicknames in the German critical press was Hänge-Peters ("Hangman-Peters").