Empire · approximate1884 – 1919 · 35 years
German Colonial Empire
Overview
The German colonial empire constituted the overseas colonies, dependencies, and territories of the German Empire. Unified in 1871, the chancellor of this time period was Otto von Bismarck. Short-lived attempts at colonization by individual German states had occurred in preceding centuries, but Bismarck resisted pressure to construct a colonial empire until the Scramble for Africa in 1884. Claiming much of the remaining uncolonized areas of Africa, Germany built the third-largest colonial empire at the time, after the British and French. The German colonial empire encompassed parts of Africa and Oceania.
Wikipedia: German colonial empire·CC BY-SA 4.0
Borders & accuracy
Dashed borders mark empires whose extent we can date but whose precise frontiers are contested or undocumented.
- SOURCEreconstructed from Natural Earth country boundaries
- DETAILreconstructed-clipped-country
- SNAPSHOT1914
- POLITY TYPEstate
Also during this period
No conflict record yet names this polity as a belligerent; these overlap its dates only.
- World War I1914–18World-changing · 20M dead
- Eastern Front (World War I)1914–18World-changing · 6.0M dead
- Russian Civil War1918–22World-changing · 5.0M dead
- Armenian Genocide1915–23World-changing · 1.5M dead
- Battle of Verdun1916World-changing · 305K dead
- Herero and Nama Genocide1904–08World-changing · 65K dead
Open in the atlas →Seeks the timeline to 1884 and fits the map to these borders.
Cite as: German Colonial Empire (1884 – 1919). War Atlas. https://waratlas.org/e/german-colonial-empire · Sources & methodology