The failure of the great Hamburg house of Godefroy in 1879 threatened to ruin the growing German industries in the South Seas, which it had helped to build up. Bismarck therefore consented to apply to the Reichstag for a state guarantee to a company which would take over its great plantations in Samoa. This was refused, chiefly owing to the influence of the Liberal party. Bismarck therefore, who took this rebuff much to heart, said he would have nothing more to do with the matter, and warned those interested in colonies that they must depend on self-help; he could do nothing for them. By the support of some of the great financial firms they succeeded in forming a company, which carried on the business and undertook fresh settlements on the islands to the north of New Guinea. This event led also to the foundation of a society, the _Deutscher Kolonial Verein_, under the presidency of the prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, to educate public opinion. Their immediate object was the acquisition of trading stations. The year 1884 brought a complete change. Within a few months Germany acquired extended possessions in several parts both of Africa and the South Seas. This was rendered possible owing to the good understanding which at that time existed between Germany and France. Bismarck therefore no longer feared, as he formerly had, to encounter the difficulties with Great Britain which would be the natural result of a policy of colonial expansion. Africa. His conversion to the views of the colonial party was gradual, as was seen in his attitude to the proposed acquisition of German stations in South-West Africa. In Namaqualand and Damaraland, British influence, exercised from Cape Colony, had long been strong, but the British government had refused to annex the country even when asked so to do by the German missionaries who laboured among the natives. In 1882 F. A. Lüderitz, a Bremen tobacco merchant, approached Bismarck on the question of establishing a trading station on the coast at Angra Pequeña. The chancellor, while not discouraging Lüderitz, acted with perfect fairness to Great Britain, and throughout 1883 that country might have acted had she known her mind. She did not, and in the summer of 1884 Bismarck decided no longer to await her pleasure, and the south-west coast of Africa from the frontier of the Portuguese possessions to the Orange river, with the exception of Walfish Bay, was taken under German protection. During the same year Dr Nachtigal was despatched to the west coast, and stealing a march on his British and French rivals he secured not only Togoland but Cameroon for the Germans. On the east coast Bismarck acted decisively without reference to British interests. A company, the _Gesellschaft für deutsche Kolonization_, was founded early in 1884 by Dr Carl Peters, who with two companions went off to the east coast of Africa and succeeded in November of that year in negotiating