Kamerun was an African colony of the German Empire from 1884 to 1920 in the region of today's Republic of Cameroon. Kamerun also included northern parts of Gabon and the Congo with western parts of the Central African Republic, southwestern parts of Chad and far northeastern parts of Nigeria.
Mount Manengouba
German surveyor in Kamerun, 1884
Policemen at Duala on the Kaiser's birthday, 1901
Bananas being loaded for export to Germany, 1912
The German colonial empire constituted the overseas colonies, dependencies, and territories of the German Empire. Unified in 1871, the chancellor of this time period was Otto von Bismarck. Short-lived attempts at colonization by individual German states had occurred in preceding centuries, but Bismarck resisted pressure to construct a colonial empire until the Scramble for Africa in 1884. Claiming much of the remaining uncolonized areas of Africa, Germany built the third-largest colonial empire at the time, after the British and French. The German colonial empire encompassed parts of several African countries, including parts of present-day Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, as well as northeastern New Guinea, Samoa and numerous Micronesian islands.
An East African Askari soldier holding Germany's colonial flag
Groß-Friedrichsburg, a Brandenburg colony (1683–1717) in the territory of modern Ghana
The Thetis, one of the ships of the East Asia Squadron
Woermann-Linie factory in Cameroon. From the 1830s, German shipping participated in trade with Africa and established factories there. From the 1850s, trade and plantation agriculture were undertakend by German companies in the South Seas. Some of these economic enterprises eventually formed the basis for the regions' conversion into German colonies.