This book tells and illustrates the little-known story of Germany's 30-year episode as a colonial power in Africa and the Pacific, and her enclave in China. Under the ambitious young Kaiser Wilhelm II, rivalry with the old colonial powers saw the protectorates originally established by trading companies transformed into crown colonies, garrisoned by the newly raised Schutztruppe with emergency support from the Imperial Navy's Sea Battalions. This book explains their organization and operations, including the horrific 1904-07 Herero campaign in Southwest Africa. It is illustrated with rare photos, and with color plates detailing a wide variety of the uniforms of German and native troops alike.

This book tells and illustrates the little-known story of Germany's 30-year episode as a colonial power in Africa and the Pacific, and her enclave in China. Under the ambitious young Kaiser Wilhelm II, rivalry with the old colonial powers saw the protectorates originally established by trading companies transformed into crown colonies, garrisoned by the newly raised Schutztruppe with emergency support from the Imperial Navy's Sea Battalions. This book explains their organization and operations, including the horrific 1904-07 Herero campaign in Southwest Africa. It is illustrated with rare photos, and with color plates detailing a wide variety of the uniforms of German and native troops alike.

This book offers a global history of civilian, military and gendarmerie-style policing around the First World War. Whilst many aspects of the Great War have been revisited in light of the centenary, and in spite of the recent growth of modern policing history, the role and fate of police forces in the conflict has been largely forgotten. Yet the war affected all European and extra-European police forces. Despite their diversity, all were confronted with transnational factors and forms of disorder, and suffered generally from mass-conscription. During the conflict, societies and states were faced with a crisis situation of unprecedented magnitude with mass mechanised killing on the battle field, and starvation, occupation, destruction, and in some cases even revolution, on the home front. Based on a wide geographical and chronological scope – from the late nineteenth century to the interwar years – this collection of essays explores the policing of European belligerent countries, alongside their empires, and neutral countries. The book’s approach crosses traditional boundaries between neutral and belligerent nations, centres and peripheries, and frontline and rear areas. It focuses on the involvement and wartime transformations of these law-enforcement forces, thus highlighting underlying changes in police organisation, identity and practices across this period.

From the Boxer Rebellion to Tsingtao to German East Africa (Tanzania), and colonies across Africa and the central Pacific, the Kaiser's Second Reich created a worldwide empire, and then lost it. Following Prussia's victory over France in 1871 and German unification, the invigorated Second Reich sought international status alongside the older colonial powers - Britain, France, Spain and Russia. Actual overseas settlement was always sparse, counted in the low tens of thousands only, but by the mid-1880s German trading companies had established footholds in what became German East Africa (Tanzania), German South-West Africa (Namibia), and German West Africa (Cameroon, and Togo). To consolidate their position against native resistance, and to extend their frontiers, the German Imperial government soon took over these enclaves as colonies or 'protectorates'. In the 1890s it established a new branch of the armed forces, the Schutztruppe, composed largely of African askaris with German officers and NCOs, backed up by German artillery and machine guns. In parallel, the Imperial Navy raised marine battalions - eventually, three Seebataillone - to protect its overseas bases and to reinforce the colonies as needed. After German participation in putting down the Boxer Rebellion (1900) their primary responsibility was the German concession territory at Tsingtao in China, where Germany also raised a local East Asia Brigade; but the marines also served in the German Pacific possessions - Samoa, New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, the Northern Solomon Islands, the Marshalls, Marianas and Carolines. Marine companies were also rotated through the African colonies at need. In addition to small-scale 'police' work, the brief German colonial period involved putting down rebellions in East Africa (1888-98) and Cameroon, and crushing - with great ruthlessness - the determined resistance of the Herero and Nama tribes in SW Africa (1890-1907), where there was a degree of German settlement. In World War I, Germany soon lost almost all her colonies to much stronger Allied forces. In China, Tsingtao was captured late in 1914 by a Japanese force with token British assistance. Resistance was minimal in the Pacific; and in 1915 the last defenders of German South-West Africa surrendered to South African forces. However, in East Africa the Schutztruppe, commanded by the very able Col (later MajGen) Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, fought a skillful mobile war against much larger British and Empire forces, and were the very last German troops to surrender in November 1918. Meanwhile, the Navy's marine infantry branch had been enlarged, forming first one, then two Marine Divisions, which fought on the Western Front - including the Ypres and Somme sectors - throughout the war. Featuring specially drawn full-colour artwork, this book tells the story of Imperial Germany's colonial and overseas troops, who fought in a host of environments including China, Africa, and the Western Front of World War I.

Warriors: Fighting men and their uniforms is a journey through the whole span of military history using illustrations of the uniforms of warriors from ancient times to the present day. From ancient times to the present day, the world's finest warriors have been marked out by a stunning variety of dress, tactics and equipment. This splendid collection of artwork and commentaries illustrates famous combatants from all the ages of military history, bringing them to life in incredible colour and detail. From the gleaming plate armour of the medieval knight to the sleek camouflage gear of modern special ops forces, from the distinctive attire of the Japanese samurai to the ballistic armour and modern electronics of Russia's elite Spetsnaz, this is an unmissable tour of history's most impressive fighting men.

At the turn of the twentieth century, European colonial powers scrambled in Africa for trade, land and political advantage. When the First World War broke out, they were forced to contend with one another not just in trenches on the Western Front, but in East Africa's swamps and savannahs. In that unforgiving landscape, General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and a small cadre of hardened German officers fought as equals with their African troops against the Allies, creating the first truly integrated army of the modern age.​'African Kaiser' is the fascinating tale of a forgotten guerrilla campaign: of rhino charges and artillery duels with scavenged naval guns; of hunted German battleships hidden up unmapped river deltas; of a desperate army in the wilderness, cut off from the world, enduring starvation, malaria, and dysentery; and of the remarkable intercontinental voyage of Zeppelin L59, whose improbable 4,000 mile journey to the Equator and back made aviation history. But mostly, it is the incredible true story of General von Lettow-Vorbeck, the only undefeated German commander of the Great War.

This is the story of Germany's commerce raiders of World War I, the surface ships that were supposed to starve the British Isles of the vast cargoes of vital resources being shipped from the furthest reaches of the Empire. To that end pre-war German naval strategists allocated a number of cruisers and armed, fast ocean liners, as well as a complex and globe-spanning supply network to support them – known as the Etappe network. This book, drawing on technical illustrations and the author's exhaustive research, explains the often overlooked role that the commerce raiders played in World War I. Whilst exploring the design and development of the ships, it also describes their operational history, how they tied up a disproportionate amount of the British fleet on lengthy pursuits, and how certain raiders such as the SMS Emden were able to wreak havoc across the oceans.