David Kaiser on the aims of German expansionism

Bulow’s policy excluded either an alliance with Britain or an imminent clash; no evidence suggests that he aimed at an actual diplomatic or military victory over the United Kingdom. His speeches and private remarks during the early years of Weltpolitik do tend to cast England as both the leading world power and the principal obstacle to German world policy, yet they do not in any way deny the legitimacy of the British Empire or imply that its size should be reduced. His principal concern, as expressed in a December 1899 Reichstag speech introducing the Second Navy Law, was that Germany not be left behind in the division of the world’s weaker empires. He frequently referred to the Spanish-American War as the event which had exposed Germany’s weaknesses most clearly; had we been stronger at sea, he seems to imply, we might have profited from the conflict ourselves. The fleet, one might infer from the speech, was not designed to challenge the British Empire directly but to make sure that Germany secured its rightful inheritance when some of Lord Salisbury’s “dying nations”-the Portuguese, Ottoman, and Chinese empires probably figured most prominently in Bulow’s mind-finally expired. In this and other speeches Bulow also tended to place the government midway between those who argued that Berlin had done too much to protect Germany’s overseas interests and those who asked that they be pursued with greater zeal. David E. Kaiser, Germany and the Origins of the First World War. Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Sep., 1983), pp. 442-474