Earlier this year I read Dreadnought, a fascinating history of the Anglo-German naval arms race during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The history is leavened with a host of vivid character sketches and bleakly amusing anecdotes.
My favorite anecdote is about the Agadir Crisis. After the First Moroccan Crisis in 1904, Morocco was supposed to remain more or less equally open to all of the Great Powers. However...
As France moved confidently ahead in the political sphere, assuming that the phrase "special political interests" gave her a free hand to deal with the Sultan, Germans complained that their businesses were not receiving the increased commercial concessions they felt were due. Southern Morocco, for example, was believed in Germany to be "exceedingly fertile" and "highly suitable for European settlement"....Although the region was closed by the Act of Algeciras to all international commerce, the German firms assumed that, with French cooperation, these limitations could be overcome. The French refused to cooperate....Much saber-rattling ensued. Happily, the crisis was resolved peacefully, thus averting a general war that would have slaughtered millions, devastated Europe, and permanently changed the face of Western Civilization.
Meanwhile, Sultan Abdul-Aziz...was overthrown in 1908 by his brother Mulai Hafid in a civil war which bankrupted the state treasury....to pay the debts, Mulai Hafid imposed new taxes; these stirred fresh discontent. In January 1911, a French officer was murdered....The French Consul in Fez reported that the situation was perilous and that the Europeans in the city were threatened with massacre....France informed the other powers that a French military column would be dispatched from Casablanca to Fez.
Always sensitive to any pretext the French might employ to enhance their political control of Morocco, [German Foreign Minister] Kiderlen warned Cambon...that complications would arise from military action....
Germany had commercial interests and treaty rights in Morocco; France clearly intended to alter the basis of her position in the country...Germany was entitled to consideration and compensation based on France's action; yet no offer...had been forthcoming....A solution was proposed in a memorandum...from Baron Langwerth von Simmern, whose...responsibilities included Morocco...France was legitimizing [its] action by claiming that its citizens were in danger in Fez. Why should Germany not use the same argument in southern Morocco? There were no German soldiers in the country, but the same effect could be achieved by sending one or several warships to protect the lives and property of German citizens in southern Morocco. A suitable port, Simmern suggested, was Agadir....
The German move was political, but it had to seem to be a protection of German commercial interests...Dr. Wilhelm Regendanz, the new managing director of…Hamburg-Marokko Gesellschaft, was summoned to the Wilhelmstrasse and told to draw up a petition from German firms active in southern Morocco, appealing to the government for help from marauding natives....His task was particularly delicate and arduous because he was not permitted to show the signers the document they were signing; the Foreign Ministry considered this a necessary precaution against leaks....
There was a snag in working out the scheme: at that moment there were no German citizens or commercial interests in southern Morocco....Dr. Regendanz considered this only a temporary embarrassment. When the warship arrived at Agadir, he promised, endangered Germans would be there to welcome it....
[On June 21] a signal flashed from the German Admiralty to the gunboat Panther, then proceeding north off the West African coast....she entered the historical limelight on July 1, 1911, when she steamed slowly into the Bay of Agadir and dropped her anchor a few hundred yards from the beach....
No Europeans and no sign of European life were present; the port had been closed to international shipping for many years.
One European was on the way. Doing his best, as instructed, to arrive before the warship sent to protect him, Herr Wilburg, subsequently nicknamed the "Endangered German," was a representative of the Hamburg business consortium in Morocco. On June 28, he was in Mogador, seventy-five miles north of Agadir....it was not until the evening of July 1 that Wilburg was able to start. His journey was arduous and miserable. The heat which afflicted Europe that summer was even more intense in Africa....The road was no more than a track, sometimes only a few feet wide, winding through hills strewn with rocks and stones. On corniches along the sea, on one side he touched a cliff and on the other, he looked down on a precipitous drop....
When Wilburg arrived at Agadir on the afternoon of July 4, the Panther had been at anchor for three days. Wilburg saw the warship, but was too exhausted to make contact. The next morning...a second, larger German ship [the Berlin] had entered the bay....Wilburg tried to let his countrymen know that he was present. At first, he had no luck; the men on the Berlin took the man on the beach running up and down, waving his arms and shouting faint cries, for an excited native....Wilburg, seeing the men on the ships staring at him without apparent interest, became dispirited and stood motionless...His posture identified him: suddenly an officer on the Panther was struck by the lonely figure on the beach standing with his hands on his hips. Africans did not employ this stance. A boat was launched and soon Wilburg, the "Endangered German," was taken under the protection of the Imperial Navy.
|