Heligoland Read online

  Entirely unexpectedly, Germany’s opportunity came in March 1889. A dinner party in London was attended by the Chancellor’s son, Count Herbert von Bismarck, a former diplomat who had been Germany’s Minister of State since 1888. Also present was Joseph Chamberlain, a former senior Liberal minister who had recently returned from the United States where he had been a British plenipotentiary. Chamberlain had been greatly vexed that his former colleagues had missed an opportunity to take over South-West Africa. ‘Why don’t you’, Chamberlain wondered to Bismarck junior at the dinner, ‘exchange Angra Pequena for Heligoland?’ As a Liberal politician Chamberlain had no authority to speak for the Conservative government, and it seems very unlikely that he was acting as a secretly approved agent provocateur. Nevertheless, he was sometimes perceived to be Salisbury’s freelance political ally.5 Confusingly for the Germans, Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, also present at the dinner, said nothing to Bismarck on this subject other than – or so Count Herbert believed – ‘If you wish, we can talk of it another time.’ Count Herbert exultantly reported all this to Berlin, reminding his father that there were many people in Germany who were already anxious to get rid of the disappointing experiment in South-West Africa at any price.

  The proposal excited the new Emperor Wilhelm II to a state of considerable enthusiasm, and for months Count Herbert and the new German ambassador in London, Count Hatzfeldt, waited in hope for the ‘other time’ which might bring a formal overture from the British government – but it never came. Joseph Chamberlain had, it seemed, grossly overreached himself. There was nothing Salisbury wanted from Germany at that moment which could match the importance of Heligoland. From his point of view, the idea of giving up the island in return for the bankrupt wastelands of South-West Africa seemed preposterous. He remained firmly opposed to the cession under any circumstances.

  In that spring of 1889 Salisbury was concerned at the appearance of rumours about a cession in the newspapers in both Britain and Germany, although there was no foreseeable prospect of discussing the constitutional future of Heligoland with Germany. Britain, he believed, needed to uphold the dignity of its sovereignty of the island and he alighted on a fairly trivial incident to make that point. During the summer a German warship omitted to salute the Union Jack as it steamed past Heligoland. Salisbury telegraphed Sir Edward Malet (who had been Ampthill’s successor as ambassador in Berlin since 1884), repudiating the rumours about ceding Heligoland: ‘We are absolutely opposed to such a move, but the ways of the German Navy rather give maintenance to such a rumour.’ Without going so far as to demand a formal remonstrance, he advised Sir Edward to meet with the German Admiralty ‘to suggest to them the expediency of more respectful behaviour in future’.6

  So far there had been little reason for Salisbury to concern himself with East Africa. The most influential key to that quarter of the continent was the historic trading island of Zanzibar, whose sultan had sovereignty over a 10-mile wide strip of coast (and thereby some influence, albeit dwindling, with the mainland beyond it), down to the frontier of Portuguese East Africa. As long ago as 1878 the Foreign Office had been presented with an extraordinarily favourable opportunity which, had it been accepted, would have spared Britain the diplomatic agonising that eventually affected Heligoland. In that year the founder of the Imperial British East Africa Company, the Scottish ship-owner Sir William Mackinnon, had attempted to establish a trading empire between Mombasa and Lake Victoria, taking in a large part of Zanzibar’s inland possessions. Sultan Seyyid Barghash was willing to grant Mackinnon a seventy years’ concession, transferring to Britain the administration of the entire hinterland of thousands of square miles of East Africa as far as the Great Lakes. Astonishingly Lord Beaconsfield, then Prime Minister, declined to accept on behalf of the British Empire an obligation so large. Instead, he opted to continue to have an informal influence in the coastal area, exercised through Sir John Kirk, who since 1868 had been Britain’s trusted consul-general to the Sultan of Zanzibar. A former professional associate of Dr David Livingstone on the Zambezi, Kirk had the Sultan’s complete trust and maintained British confidence upon a dependable foundation.7

  This situation stood until November 1884, when a merchant ship arrived off Zanzibar and disembarked three passengers it had brought from Germany under assumed names. They were Dr Karl Peters, the intrepid aristocratic explorer Count Pfeil and Dr Jühlke. Peters and his cronies slipped across to the mainland unnoticed at Dar es Salaam, and in the space of a fortnight audaciously concluded treaties with various tribal chiefs by which they claimed German sovereignty over some 60,000 square miles of territory in the interior. Chancellor Bismarck, who had originally frowned on the German Colonisation Society, accepted the fait accompli, and in 1885 granted a charter to Peters’s German East Africa Company and placed the Society’s territories under imperial protection.8 By October 1886 Britain and Germany had reached an agreement. The Sultan gave up his claim to illimitable empire on the mainland in return for the recognition of his authority over 6,000 miles of the coast to a depth of 10 miles, while Germany and Britain divided the rest of the hinterland between themselves. For a while rivalry with the British East Africa Company abated. Britain’s principal sphere of influence was in the north (Kenya), and Germany’s in the south (Tanganyika), although Germany also retained a hold in the Witu area in the north.9

  So uninterested in clashing were the British and German governments that in July 1887 they drew up a practical Hinterland Agreement, which they hoped would discourage unsanctioned annexations of each other’s areas.10 Even so, they were powerless to limit the activities of their nationals such as Dr Peters and Mackinnon (whose ambition was to construct a Capeto-Cairo railway), who as commercial pioneers were intent on extending their presence westwards towards Uganda. Lord Salisbury, who had hitherto taken a sanguine now-and-then interest in East Africa, now began to consider it more closely. Lady Gwendolen Cecil, his daughter, who many years later wrote a biography of her father, detected the change of emphasis in the physical appearance of his rooms at Hatfield and at the Foreign Office. By 1889 the walls were covered with huge maps of Africa.11

  The key to Lord Salisbury’s entire African strategy was Egypt. In 1882 William Gladstone, then Prime Minister, and Sir Edward Malet, the British Representative in Egypt, had assumed that their invasion of Egypt in that year ‘to restore order’ would provide an opportunity for securing the Suez route to the Indian Dominions, and would allow them to maintain Britain’s superiority in the East. However, Britain’s presence in Egypt became an irritant to European relations in Africa. During 1888 renewed attacks on Egypt’s southern frontier by the Dervishes made it necessary for Salisbury to come to terms with the fact that Britain could not extricate herself from Egypt in terms that would satisfy both national and international interests.12 His decision in favour of a prolonged occupation of Egypt was a momentous one, and recognised the probable necessity to achieve some sort of control of the Nile provinces. Salisbury became increasingly concerned about the headwaters of the Nile, particularly an unclaimed area called Tana-Juba which lay between the great expanses of Lake Nyasa, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria. His worry was that should another power take control of Uganda and the Upper Nile, it could threaten Egypt’s water supply and thereby Britain’s Suez Canal route to India. This fear was expressed to him by Evelyn Baring, the Consul-General of Egypt, and most notably by Sir Percy Anderson, head of the Foreign Office’s Africa department. Anderson had taken on this role in 1883 and had proved to be a most able and influential bureaucrat in shaping the overall view of that continent.

  Salisbury’s fears reached a higher state of alert in June 1889 when he learned that Karl Peters had crossed from Zanzibar to Witu and was heading inland, apparently in search of the German explorer Emin Pasha (Eduard Schnitzer), who was claimed to be lost somewhere in equatorial Sudan. In fact Peters was too late. It fell to the Briton Morton Stanley to find the famous explorer – if indeed he was ever lost. In truth, Dr
Peters’s solicitude was just a pretext for another buccaneering coup. From the first his primary object had been to secure more treaties and more territories. He was hoping to establish a line of German settlements from the coast at Witu, along the Tana River to Victoria Nyanza and Uganda, thus securing for Germany – as Salisbury suspected – a powerful influence in the basin of the Upper Nile.13 In March 1890 it was rumoured that the Imperial Commissioner, Hermann von Wissmann, was about to leave for Uganda, and on the last day of the month Germany announced that Emin Pasha was to lead a large caravan to Buganda. Then, in the first week of May, news was received that Dr Peters had agreed some sort of treaty with the Kabaka. By the following week it was evident that the East African hinterland disputes could no longer remain unsettled without the serious risk of friction with Germany, and of political embarrassment at home.14

  Another relevant factor at this time was the fall of Chancellor Bismarck. The death of the aged Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1888 brought to the throne his son Wilhelm II, then just twenty-nine years old. The new Kaiser wished to pursue a policy of social reform and conciliation, and was determined that the Chancellor would obey it, but Bismarck, then aged over seventy and accustomed to both initiating and controlling policy, was uncomfortable in his new role. Bismarck urged upon the new Kaiser a policy of conservative resistance.15 Serious quarrels developed concerning the rights of Cabinet ministers to an audience with the Emperor without the presence of Bismarck, who was not in favour of the social reforms put forward by the new Kaiser. The Chancellor, Wilhelm II later claimed, wished to call out the troops and shoot down the socialists in the streets, but ‘I told Bismarck that I would never incur before the Almighty the responsibility of shooting down my people’.16 Eventually, at the Kaiser’s insistence, on 18 March 1890 Bismarck resigned. Effectively it was the end of a dynasty. His son Herbert von Bismarck followed suit, and was replaced as Foreign Minister by Baron Marschall. Bismarck’s successor was Count Georg von Caprivi, who was even less of a colonial enthusiast than his predecessor had been. One of Caprivi’s earliest utterances – to the annoyance of Germany’s colonial enthusiasts – was to the effect that ‘no greater misfortune could happen to Germany than that the whole of Africa should fall into her hands’.17 For Salisbury these developments in the spring of 1890 created uncertainties but also significant opportunities.

  Precisely when Lord Salisbury took the fateful decision to sacrifice Heligoland to secure the headwaters of the Nile is a mystery. From his daughter’s description of his state of mind on 10 April it is clear that he was still hoping for a rapprochement with Germany, and to that effect was sending Sir Percy Anderson himself to Berlin to settle disagreements deriving from the July 1887 Hinterland Agreement on East African spheres of influence.18 ‘But rarely’, wrote Lady Gwendolen, ‘can a political enterprise of equal importance have left behind so few traces of the process of incubation.’ On 18 April Salisbury returned to London from convalescence at Beaulieu. Did he then, as she suggests, ‘with a brain cleared from the last lingering mists of influenza’, make some reassessment of the East African situation, in particular the problem posed by the Tana-Juba hinterland?19 There might have been domestic political considerations, too. Certainly at this time the celebrated explorer Morton Stanley was busily making rabble-rousing speeches at huge open meetings (such as one held at the Albert Hall on 5 May 1890) at which he condemned what he called British subservience to Germany in East Africa. The fact that Salisbury was simultaneously serving as both Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary meant that there was no need for documents to be exchanged between those offices, and so the decisions he made were shaped within the privacy of his own mind.

  Salisbury prepared to play his diplomatic bargaining cards to best effect. On 13 May he engaged the German ambassador in a seemingly futile discussion in the Secretary of State’s room at the Foreign Office. Count Hatzfeldt expressed concerns about the dangers of a ‘steeplechase’ in East Africa. For a while the irreconcilable claims of ‘hinterland’ and ‘previous settlement’ were spoken of. Then Salisbury broke off the conversation and, after some hesitation, offered to reveal for Hatzfeldt’s personal benefit the ‘sum of his wishes’ with respect to East Africa. The Count, with ready curiosity, welcomed the offer and then listened with dismay to Salisbury’s formidable list of demands. It began with a full statement of the boundary concessions demanded by Mackinnon’s company at the edge of the Germany colony. Germany must recognise Uganda as within the British sphere; she must abandon Witu; and she must accept a British Protectorate over Zanzibar and Pemba Islands. In return Britain would drop her claim to a strip of territory by Lake Tanganyika, and would use her influence to persuade the Sultan to sell outright the coastal leases to Germany.20

  Then, without further ado, and with no hint of an invitation from the wholly unprepared ambassador, Salisbury threw down Heligoland on the table. The British government would, he said, be willing to ‘hand the island of Heligoland to Germany’. Cleverly, Salisbury seemed to take Hatzfeldt into his confidence, by appearing to suggest that the cession of the island would be subject to some elements that were not necessarily within his control. He begged the ambassador to report to Berlin nothing of what had been said because he must ‘first see the Directors of the British Companies’. At the time, of course, Stanley’s rousing speeches were fanning colonial sentiments into a passion and misleading public opinion about the justice of German claims. Furthermore the handing over of Heligoland would need the approval of Parliament.

  Berlin’s initial response to these proposals was indignation. On 17 May 1890 Baron von Marschall telegraphed Hatzfeldt instructing him not to accept Salisbury’s exorbitant African demands, but ‘do not a priori adopt an attitude of refusal’ towards it. The Heligoland element of the outlined package was never even mentioned. Within a week, in a move of supremely cool brinkmanship, Salisbury hinted that the entire British offer might be withdrawn. On 22 May 1890 Hatzfeldt replied to Berlin with startling news of a confidential discussion he had just had with Salisbury. Now, he wrote: ‘the situation is much complicated by Stanley’s hostile and inflammatory attacks, and Lord Salisbury is inclined to consider that it will be advisable to postpone our negotiations until the excitement is allayed’. Salisbury had so far consented to yield just a few trivial concessions near the Great Lakes, but Hatzfeldt reckoned that if Germany held her nerve ‘even more might be obtained’ after further negotiations.

  But in Berlin there was curiously undiplomatic consternation. Overnight, the very prospect of Salisbury postponing negotiations caused Germany to capitulate almost totally. The following morning, 23 May 1890, a secret telegram from Foreign Minister Marschall arrived on the ambassador’s desk. Its opening line stated ‘Postponement of negotiations most undesirable.’ It went on: ‘I inform you that we are ready in return for the concession and probable further ones mentioned in your telegram, to hand over to England, Witu and Somali Coast with their respective hinterlands, and to concede a British Protectorate over Zanzibar, if England will hand over Heligoland and support us in demanding from the Sultan of Zanzibar the cession of the coast of the mainland.’ On 25 May Hatzfeldt received another telegram from Marschall which provided an inkling of just how fundamental the North Sea island was perceived to be in all of this. ‘The possession of Heligoland is highly important to us for military reasons because of the Kiel Canal, and the possession of the coastal strip leased to us by the Sultan is indispensable for the definite regulation of our position in East Africa.’ If Germany’s concessions were agreed to, including an acknowledgement of Britain’s Protectorate over Zanzibar, Germany was ‘ready for an immediate agreement on this basis’.

  The unseemly haste to secure a deal was caused by the meddling intervention of Wilhelm II. As long ago as 1873, when his father was Crown Prince, he visited Heligoland and was so captivated by the mystique of the place that he vowed to make it part of Germany. Even then his personal characteristics were becoming apparent: he was vain, self-wi
lled, rash in utterance, and alternated between excessive self-confidence and nervous depression. From the moment he came to the throne in 1888 he luxuriated in the public image of himself as der Reisekaiser (‘the travelling emperor’), and was delighted to be perceived by Punch as dashing when that satirical magazine ran its infamous ‘Dropping the pilot’ cartoon of the confident new Kaiser dismissing the elderly Bismarck. His pride knew no bounds in June 1889 when, as the eldest grandson of Queen Victoria, he was given the honorary rank of Admiral of the Fleet in the Royal Navy. In the spring of 1889 he had been crestfallen when the Bismarck/Chamberlain talks on the possible cession of Heligoland in exchange for Angra Pequena came to naught. He had hoped that the transfer of those territories would be completed in time to coincide with his triumphant acceptance of the prestigious – although meaningless – naval rank in June at Osborne. He wanted to wear the famous uniform of St Vincent and Nelson at the reception party at Cowes as the acknowledged new ruler of Heligoland.21

  Hatzfeldt could no longer doubt whose interference was shaping Germany’s negotiating strategy. On 29 May the ambassador received a secret telegram from Marschall, mentioning the Kaiser by name and promoting Heligoland – within a week – from being of ‘high’ to ‘supreme’ importance to Germany: ‘The possession of Heligoland is of supreme importance to us and is by far the most serious matter in the whole negotiation. His Majesty shares the Chancellor’s opinion that without Heligoland the Kiel Canal is useless to our Navy.’ The extent to which Salisbury was aware of the Kaiser’s meddling is unknown, but certainly his tactic of insisting that any agreement would necessarily be subject to the approval of certain forces within the Cabinet and Parliament, which were not necessarily within his control, caused invaluable uncertainty and anxiety in Berlin. Tension was heightened on 30 May when the German Foreign Office informed Hatzfeldt that Salisbury had written to the ambassador from Hatfield, blithely commenting that the British companies concerned were still not in agreement and, even more alarmingly, on 5 June that ‘he wished to discuss it with his colleagues, some of whom were nervous with regards Heligoland on account of Parliament and public opinion’.