Review: Typhoons in Micronesia: the History of Tropical Cyclones and Their Effects Until 1914

Ballendorf, Dirk Anthony (2005). "Review: Typhoons in Micronesia: the History of Tropical Cyclones and Their Effects Until 1914". The Journal of Pacific Studies. 28 (2): 370–373.

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Abstract: The Germans were late-comers to the Pacific. When they first came, during the Spanish administration of the islands, they came flying not the German flag—for Germany was not yet a state until the 1880s when ‘the iron Chancellor’ Otto von Bismarck united the country—but the flag of the mediaeval Hansa city of Hamburg. By the time Germany took her place among the powerful nations of Europe, most of the desirable areas of the colonised world had already been taken up by Great Britain, France, Holland, Italy and others. Consequently, Germany eagerly took what was left and available: in Africa, the Cameroons, Kenya and Tanganyika; in the Pacific, New Guinea, Samoa and Micronesia, ‘der Inselgebiet’. In Micronesia, which had been under Spanish claim since the time of Magellan in 1521 and in which virtually nothing was developed beyond the Marianas, phosphate mining and copra production were seen as a source of profit in European and Asian markets. The Spanish were interested in converting native souls to Christianity in Micronesia; the Germans, in economic development and exploitation of natural resources. They set to work earnestly with surveys and assessments for minerals, and in fact did find bauxite, and even gold, in addition to impressive supplies of phosphate, notably on Angaur in Palau...