The title of the work under review, Germany's Asia-Pacific Empire, may lead the unsuspecting reader to assume that this is a history of Germany's colonial possessions in East Asia and the Pacific islands. As a military historian, the author's primary concern is, however, naval policy in the context of intense competition and shifting alliances among the international powers. He does not overlook Kaiser Wilhelm II's bombastic interventions, inflammatory utterances – including the infamous references to the “yellow peril” – that contributed to the unravelling by the late 1890s of Bismarck's carefully balanced system of international alliances. In this connection, the German acquisition of colonial territories in China and the Pacific forms the backdrop to the wider discussion of naval strategies and their complications during the two decades or so leading up to the outbreak of the First World War.
In his discussion of issues more directly related to the Asia-Pacific region, Stephenson devotes considerable space to military campaigns and naval issues. One early chapter deals with the acquisition of Kiautschou (the German spelling of the Jiaozhou leased territory, not to be confused with the nearby Chinese administrative town of Jiaozhou) and the construction of naval facilities at the emerging German city of Tsingtau (now Qingdao). Two further chapters are devoted to the Japanese naval and military operations against the German leased territory following the outbreak of war in 1914. The author weaves certain well-known episodes and incidents into his account, such as Günther Plüschow's aerial engagements over Kiautschou, the fate of the Scharnhorst and the exploits of the commerce raiders Emden and Seeadler. Nor does he fail to mention the small British contingent with the Japanese forces at the time of the fall of Qingdao.
In the final chapter Stephenson considers certain developments in the aftermath of the First World War, such as the demise of some empires (Spain, Germany, Austria-Hungary) and the emergence of new Great Powers (Japan and the United States). At the same time, other empires (France and the United Kingdom, including its Dominions) benefited from the absorption of former German colonial possessions. Although Germany's colonial presence in her African colonies had been rather harsh, the author recognizes the “unjust retrospective judgement” of this colonial guilt because “all the colonial powers had, at some point, been guilty of excesses” (p. 184). Indeed, one may ask why Belgium, with her deplorable record in the Congo, should have been awarded the German colonies of Ruanda-Urundi.
The application of double standards is, of course, by no means rare in international affairs. With regard to the Asia-Pacific region, the author observes, for example, that indigenous voices were absent from the deliberations of the Great Powers after the war. He agrees, furthermore, that Japan had been “making hay” not only in the Pacific but also in China. Yet certain aspects of the opportunistic intentions of other nations following the post-war settlements are not mentioned. Britain, for example, was instrumental in the attempt to eliminate all German economic and cultural influences from China. In addition to German commercial competitors, many Catholic and Protestant missionaries were also rounded up and repatriated in 1919.
Although the author has consulted some primary sources, Stephenson's careful reconstruction of events draws heavily on secondary accounts. He has not made use of, for example, the relevant files in the archives of the Reichsmarineamt, the Reichskolonialamt, the German Foreign Office or other major German archives. While writers obviously cannot verify every fact by consulting archival records and have to rely on the expertise as well as the good intentions of other scholars, one cannot always be sure that the authors of such secondary accounts do not have hidden agendas. Certain writers may adopt an opportunistic rather than a common sense approach for ideological or nationalistic reasons in their reconstruction of the past.
Whatever their reasons, some authors have produced an inaccurate image of the German Catholic missionary presence in the Chinese province of Shandong. For one thing, the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) mission was active only in the southern part of the province. Its vicar apostolic, Bishop Johann Baptist Anzer, was, therefore, not in charge of the entire province. The claim that up to 1897 Anzer's policy was designed to engineer German military intervention through provoking an incident with the indigenous population (p. 19) is somewhat exaggerated. As far as the SVD mission in southern Shandong is concerned, a careful examination of the available records reveals that before 1900 there was no sustained explicit “political collaboration” between the Catholic priests and the German government. The SVD priests were not as such concerned with the furtherance of the narrow political and economic aims of the fatherland in China. Theirs was essentially a supra-national enterprise, and their primary loyalties lay with the Vatican, rather than with Berlin. It would be more accurate to say that, after Germany had wrested from France the religious protectorate over the German Catholic mission in Shandong in 1890, Anzer opportunely exploited the existing intense Franco-German rivalries to further his own ambitions as well as the work of the Church and the SVD mission. While it is an undeniable fact that the bishop had demanded more energetic action in connection with the acquisition of mission premises, no documentary evidence has come to light which would suggest that he was consulted by the German authorities with respect to the occupation of Kiautschou. The place was, after all, located outside the SVD mission at that time. Anzer, along with many Catholic and Protestant missionaries in China, was, however, enthusiastically in favour of occupation once it had taken place.
These issues are, however, of little consequence to Stephenson's competent and fair discussion of Great Power rivalries and naval developments. The presentation of material from an impressive collection of secondary and some primary sources, with particular reference to the brief German colonial presence in the Asia-Pacific region, will certainly be of considerable interest to general readers.
