[OC, royalty-free] All German colonies ever. There is no similar map on the internet anywhere, so I made one. (explanation and translation in the comments)

11 comments

  1. The green territory is Klein-Venedig (1528-1546)

    This land was pledged by Charles V of Habsburg, Emperor of the HRE and King of Spain, to the Welser family (from Augsburg and Nuremberg) in 1528 as payment for his debts.

    It was originally planned to recoup Charles V’s debts mainly through the sale of, for example, gold, salt, slaves or precious woods, but only the slave trade brought the desired profit.

    Thus, the governors relied more on the sale of slaves and were increasingly ruthless against the Indians.
    The Spanish population also felt exploited by the Welser.

    The Spanish missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote: “The Germans are worse than the wildest lions. Acting out of greed, these human devils are far more brutal than any of their predecessors.”

    In addition, several expeditions to the fabled gold country of El Dorado took place. In the absence of Phillip von Hutten, the German enterprise leader in Little Venice, who was searching the gold, Spain appointed a new governor. When von Hutten returned he was beheaded and Charles canceled the treaty with the Welser.

    The blue territories are colonies of Vichy France, a vassal state of Germany from 1940 to 1944.

    The red countries are colonies of the Second German Empire. The colonial empire lasted from 1884 to 1918.

    Neuschwabenland and Neu-Askanien are not shown, as they are in Antarctica and Europe.

    Sources:
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Der_brandenburg_preussian_state_under_the_ultimate_curfuersten_and_first_king.jpg
    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolonien_german_L%C3%A4nder_before_1871
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_German_colonies#/media/File:German_Colonies.svg
    http://geacron.com/home-de/?lang=de
    https://fhzz.de/kanzler-caprivi-oder-die-danneckerstrasse/2/
    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vieques
    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwabenland

    Feel free to reuse the map!

  4. But that’s definitely not true, the vichy colonies stay vichy colonies! They never had been german colonies! The flag of the colonies have been the vichy flag and there were no hunting after jews in a larger, planned and scheduled way.

  5. Very interesting map. Thank you for adding colors for different periods. I would like to add that besides Qingdao there were a lot of concessions in China before. It was like a size of a neighborhood. For example in Shanghai and Wuhan there were these kinds of tiny colonies. [About concessions. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concessions_in_China).

    By the way the subreddit of your original post looks so fun. It must be a treat for whoever is interested in the certain topic.

  7. This is missing a few things. Klein Venedig is an awesome thing to see on the map but you’re missing St. Thomas and Krabbeninsel.

    Thanks for capturing the HRE’s brief foray into American colonization.

  8. Damn, I needed that in my politics classes in school. The topic was reasons for the beginning of world war 1 and my teacher refused to believe me, that Germany even had colonies at all 🙄

  9. Actually German colonial history is mostly only 34 years. Not comparable with others countries centennials.

  10. Depends on your definition of German but teutonic order colonies in the baltikum are usually regarded as german colonies

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