German Empire (1871–1918)

German Empire Deutsches Kaiserreich
1871–1918
Flag
Capital and largest city	Berlin
Official languages	German
Dominant mode of production	Imperialist Capitalism
Government	Federal parliamentary semi-constitutional monarchy Under a military dictatorship (1916–1918)
Emperor
• 1871–1888	Wilhelm I
• 1888	Friedrich III
• 1888–1918	Wilhelm II
Chancellor
• 1871–1890	Otto von Bismarck
• 1890–1894	Leo von Caprivi
• 1894–1900	Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst
• 1900–1909	Bernhard von Bülow
• 1909–1917	Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg
• 1917	Georg Michaelis
• 1917–1918	Georg von Hertling
• 1918	Max von Baden
Area
• Total	540,858 km²
Population
• 1910 census	64,925,993

The German Empire (German: Deutsches Reich), also referred to as Imperial Germany (German: Deutsches Kaiserreich), the Second Reich (German: Zweites Reich), was a country in Central Europe that existed from the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 until the end of the First World War. In November 1918, the German monarchy was overthrown and the Weimar Republic was established.

Unification

In the mid-19th century, Germany was divided into 39 states. The dominant state, Prussia, was ruled by an aristocracy called the Junkers. Prussia fought against Denmark in 1864 over the status of Schleswig and Holstein and defeated Austria in 1866, becoming the leading force in the German nationalist movement and forming the North German Confederation. Prussia took control of the rest of Germany in 1870 when it went to war against France. Otto von Bismarck, a Prussian Junker, became the first chancellor of Germany.

Economy

Germany rapidly industrialized following its unification, with coal production increasing from 34 to 277 million tons, pig-iron increasing from 1.3 to 14.7 million tons, and steel increasing from 0.3 to 14 million tons between 1870 and 1914. In 1879, Germany introduced a series of tariffs, which rose to 13% by 1914.

Healthcare

Otto von Bismarck introduced state health insurance in 1883 as a concession to weaken the German socialist movement. Workers had to pay two-thirds of health premiums by themselves, and the SPD and KPD organized their own health services, the Workers' Samaritan Federation and the Proletarian Health Service, respectively.

Colonialism

The German Empire colonized parts of Africa and Oceania. Parts of Africa colonized by Germany include what are now Tanzania, Togo, Cameroon, and Namibia. Germany lost control of its colonies after the First World War.

In what is now Namibia, the German colonizers committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples. In what is now Tanzania, Germany adopted famine as a weapon to suppress the 1905-1907 Maji Maji uprising, purposely destroying the crops of suspected Maji Maji supporters.

Writing about German East Africa, historian Walter Rodney notes that from early on in the colonization process, "forced labor was prominent everywhere" and described it as a "typical colonial situation in which taxes were imposed on Africans not so much for the revenue which resulted but as a means of propelling them into the labour market and the money economy, and thereby drawing off the surplus" and explained that plantations were important in the formative period of the colonial political economy under German hegemony, and that though plantation productivity was low, it was a profitable system under colonial conditions because the employer was not responsible for providing a living wage to the laborer. The colonial economy of German East Africa was geared around the exportation of primary agricultural commodities.