Empires Drifting Apart: South Africa and the Emergence of British–German Public Alienation (1894–1907)

Introduction: An ‘Unwritten’ Anglo-German Alignment

In 1890, Britain and Germany signed the Treaty of Heligoland, which regulated their respective colonial claims in sub-Saharan Africa. Members of the British press celebrated it as constituting a colonial marriage between the two nations. The notion of an ‘unwritten’ alliance between them not only informed their policy but was also a commonplace in the context of international diplomacy. The bond between the two empires was based on national and dynastic kinship, cultural and religious ties, and modern historical precedent.

Ideological Shifts in Britain and Germany

The cultural and ideological foundation of this ‘unwritten’ alliance was gradually, though not linearly, eroded during the 1890s and 1900s. In both societies, there was a significant political shift towards perceiving the further development of their own empire as a central condition for securing national prosperity in the twentieth century.

In the British case, this shift took the form of a push for an Imperial Federation between Britain and its white settler colonies. The federal scheme was intended to promote inter-colonial relations, consolidating the vast British Empire into a more unified political entity capable of preserving its global dominance.¹ In Germany, there was a turn to Weltpolitik. This vague term essentially expressed the German drive to pursue policy on a global scale, for it was considered that a policy confined to existing German territory was not adequate to secure the prosperity of the German nation vis-à-vis the other world empires of the twentieth century.

South Africa as a Field of Imperial Collision

I view late nineteenth-century South Africa as the primary field where these two concepts of imperial policy collided. Thus, in my thesis, I analyse how these ideological and cultural shifts fostered a major colonial controversy over South Africa. The region was a central outpost in the colonial imaginary of both nations. For Britain, it was the foundation of a major African empire, extending from the Cape Colony to Egypt. Meanwhile, German South-West Africa was Germany’s most prominent colony, with the potential to extend influence towards the two Boer republics of South Africa, whose partly Germanic origins fed into German cultural and political imaginaries of expansion.²

Discourse and the Nature of Anglo-German Alienation

My central observation is that although there was no major British–German conflict in Southern Africa, the discourse surrounding their colonial relations in the region was disproportionate in both range and resonance. Incidents such as the Kruger Telegram crisis (January 1896) and the South African War (1899–1902) epitomized a broader shift towards increasingly hostile public relations.

The overarching argument of my thesis is that British–German alienation, as it manifested in the South African discourse, was from the outset a public phenomenon rather than a diplomatic one. The main driver of this alienation was not a single statesman or a specific set of policies, but rather the two political nations, with their colliding colonial aspirations and fears. Events in South Africa were closely intertwined with broader cultural and ideological shifts, as well as the rise of public opinion as a defining political force.

Beyond Event-Driven Explanations

Events in Southern Africa were embedded in the wider imperial discourse in both societies, triggering, catalysing, and ultimately shaping key aspects of that discourse. Much work has been conducted on how Britain and Germany’s mutual perceptions changed in the pre-war period, partly due to the South African imperial controversy. However, as Jan Rüger effectively argues, the relationship between changing mutual perceptions and policymaking remains insufficiently articulated.³ On the other hand, diplomatic historians attribute excessive causal weight to the events themselves (such as the Kruger Telegram) rather than to the evolving ideological frameworks and public anxieties that gave such events their explosive resonance.⁴

My thesis argues that the gradual alienation stemming from the South African imperial rivalry was not primarily the result of direct geopolitical confrontation, or changing mutual perceptions, but rather of the more subtle ways in which such confrontations were absorbed into broader debates about the security and prosperity of the respective empires.

The Kruger Telegram and its Aftermath

The Kruger Telegram crisis itself meant relatively little within elite diplomacy, but it catalysed discussions about Germany’s need for a formidable navy capable of protecting and representing German interests worldwide. It also crystallized a conviction among German colonial chauvinists that British imperialism, spearheaded by Cecil Rhodes, was not only a dominant force but also a direct threat to German imperial interests. At the same time, it shook the foundations of British ‘Splendid Isolation’, as it became increasingly apparent that much of Continental Europe held an openly hostile stance towards Britain. It also ignited debates on Imperial Federation, as greater economic and political unity within the empire was seen as a precondition for sustaining global supremacy in such a hostile international environment.

The Rise of the Political Nation

These ideological shifts corresponded with the emergence of the political nation, which became the principal bearer of pro-imperial ideas in both societies. They were expressed through a proliferation of publications and the mushrooming of dedicated pro-imperial organizations, while their mass circulation was sustained through the popular press. The result was an unprecedented politicization of imperial diplomacy, which had previously been largely confined to governing elites. Especially after the Kruger Telegram crisis and during the South African War, the British–German imperial controversy generated mass mobilization and engagement, as evidenced by public demonstrations, fundraising initiatives, and the active boycotting of British or German products. Most importantly, it fostered a broader sense among the middle classes that they should actively participate in what they perceived as an emerging imperial antagonism.

Historiographical Context: Cooperation and Empire

Modern scholarship has rightly emphasized the trans-imperial dimensions of European colonization, both in general and in South Africa in particular.⁵ It has also articulated the fact that imperialism in Africa was essentially a shared European project, not only because it was grounded on a shared set of stereotypes, narratives, and mentalities,⁶ but also because it was sustained through cooperation on the ground. Thus cooperation and antagonism coexisted in constant tension, as Ulrike Lindner perfectly frames it.⁷ This approach has offered nuance to previous monotonous and teleological narratives, which conceptualized the British–German imperial antagonism in South Africa as a major step on the path to the Great War.

Metropolitan Estrangement vs Colonial Cooperation

What I would further propose, then, is to articulate the specific frameworks within which cooperation and estrangement emerged. For instance, British–German cooperation was often substantial in order to ensure effective colonial administration, and especially to shut down indigenous revolutionary movements. This also strengthened European settlers’ conviction of the need for cooperation among Europeans vis-à-vis the significantly larger African population. This helps to explain how British and German actors in South Africa could, at times, set aside tensions that had emerged in connection with events such as the Kruger Telegram or the South African War.

Estrangement, on the other hand, was primarily a metropolitan discursive phenomenon. It was in the metropolitan ideological space that ideas about competing British and German imperial visions developed and were translated into policy arguments. It was also the media, middle-class mobilization, and intellectual debates of the metropole that articulated these perceptions, gradually reshaping what counted as ‘realist’ foreign policy in both countries. This distinction helps explain how, on the one hand, Britain supported Germany in suppressing the Nama and Herero populations during the colonial wars (1904–7), while on the other, both metropolitan publics were increasingly convinced that the other nation represented the primary imperial threat.

Archival Research and Methodological Contribution

My research trip to London, made possible by funding from the GHIL, allowed me to work extensively with British sources and gain a more integrated perspective on both metropolitan and colonial dimensions. Access to material in the British Library, the National Archives, and the Bodleian Libraries provided a detailed framework for understanding the dynamics of British–German alienation as they emerged from the South African context. Studying the press, as well as treatises, pamphlets, and monthly journals from dedicated organizations, helped me to reconstruct the landscape of contemporary metropolitan public discourse. Meanwhile, several archival series from the Foreign, Colonial, and War Offices shed light on the elite/governing perceptions of that public discourse, allowing some hypotheses to be developed on the extent to which governmental policy was influenced by the same discursive environment. Lastly, through access to the South African press, I was able to comprehend the different priorities of the settler colonies, which led to a more reconciliatory rhetoric than that of the metropole.

Conclusion

What emerges from this research is a picture of British–German relations in which alienation was shaped less by confrontation than by evolving ideological frameworks and public anxieties. South Africa functioned not as a site of decisive conflict, but as the setting in which broader concerns about imperial security, prosperity, and global status were articulated and intensified. By foregrounding the role of discourse and public engagement, my project seeks to move beyond static, event-driven explanations to highlight the dynamic interaction between ideology, empire, and an increasingly politicized public sphere.

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Feature image: Rata Langa [Gabriele Galantara; 1865–1937], ‘England and the War in South Africa: War and Capitalism, or the Transmutation of Human Blood into Gold’. Cartoon from Der wahre Jacob, 349 (5 Dec. 1899), 3130. University of Heidelberg Digital Library.

1. Duncan Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 (Princeton, 2007). [↩]
2. Paul Rohrbach, Deutschland unter den Weltvölkern (Berlin, 1903), 3–6. [↩]
3. Jan Rüger, ‘Revisiting the Anglo-German Antagonism’, Journal of Modern History, 83/3 (2011), 579–617, at 589. [↩]
4. Matthew S. Seligmann, Rivalry in Southern Africa, 1893–99: The Transformation of German Colonial Policy (Basingstoke, 1998); Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914 (London, 1980). [↩]
5. Ulrike Lindner, ‘Colonialism as a European Project in Africa before 1914? British and German Concepts of Colonial Rule in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und Vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, 19/1 (2009), 88–106; Mads Bomholt Nielsen, Britain, Germany and Colonial Violence in South-West Africa, 1884–1919: The Herero and Nama Genocide (Cham, 2022). [↩]
6. Christoph Kamissek and Jonas Kreienbaum, ‘An Imperial Cloud? Conceptualizing Interimperial Connections and Transimperial Knowledge,’ Journal of Modern European History, 14/2 (2016), 164–82. [↩]
7. Ulrike Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen: Deutschland und Großbritannien als Imperialmächte in Afrika 1880–1914 (Frankfurt am Main, 2011), 9, 19. [↩]

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