Thus the political situation in Europe had a very direct influence upon the colonising activity of this period.  The dominant fact of European politics during this generation was the supreme prestige and influence of Germany, who, not content with an unquestioned military superiority to any other power, had buttressed herself by the formation (1879 and 1882) of the most formidable standing alliance that has ever existed in European history, and completely dominated European politics.  France, having been hurled from the leadership of Europe in 1870, dreaded nothing so much as the outbreak of a new European war, in which she must he inevitably involved, and in which she might be utterly ruined.  She strove to find a compensation for her wounded pride in colonial adventures, and therefore became, during the first part of the period, the most active of the powers in this field.  She was encouraged to adopt this policy by Bismarck, partly in the hope that she might thus forget Alsace, partly in order that she might be kept on bad terms with Britain, whose interests seemed to be continually threatened by her colonising activity.  But she hesitated to take a very definite line in regard to territories that lay close to Europe and might involve European complications.

Bismarck himself took little interest in colonial questions, except in so far as they could be used as a means of alienating the other powers from one another, and so securing the European supremacy of Germany.  He therefore at first made no attempt to use the dominant position of Germany as a means of acquiring extra-European dominions.  But the younger generation in Germany was far from sharing this view.  It was determined to win for Germany a world-empire, and in 1884 and the following years—­rather late in the day, when most of the more desirable territories were already occupied—­it forced Bismarck to annex large areas.  After Bismarck’s fall, in 1890, this party got the upper hand in German politics, and the creation of a great world-empire became, as we shall see, the supreme aim of William II. and his advisers.  The formidable and threatening power of Germany began to be systematically employed not merely for the maintenance of supremacy in Europe, which could be secured by peaceful means, but for the acquisition of a commanding position in the outer world; and since this could only be attained by violence, the world being now almost completely partitioned, the new policy made Germany the source of unrest and apprehension, as she had earlier been, and still continued to be, the main cause of the burden of military preparation in Europe.