About the year 1880 the rulers of Germany began to think of founding a colonial empire. There were many reasons why it seemed to them advisable that they should extend their dominion overseas. Germany had become a great manufacturing nation, and she needed new markets in which to sell her surplus goods, and tropical lands which would give her large and cheap supplies of the raw material for making them. Further, many of her people, anxious to better themselves, were emigrating to America,[120] where they were lost to Germany. It was thought that, had she possessed colonies, Germans would have settled in them instead of going to America, and thus would not have reduced the strength of the Fatherland. Many patriotic Germans wished to see their country a great naval power, and they knew that colonies could neither be obtained nor maintained without a big navy. They, therefore, were in favour of colonial expansion, because it would force Germany to become powerful on the seas. About this time the attention of the world was specially directed to Africa. The travels of Livingstone[121] and Stanley[122] and other explorers, British, French, German, and Italian, were revealing the "Dark Continent" as a new sphere for the expansion of the European Powers. Almost immediately they began to "peg out their claims." A number of clever writers in Germany began to point out to their fellow-countrymen that unless they set up a colonial empire they would be left behind in the race. Before long they had persuaded the people that overseas trade, ships of war, and colonies were the three things that Germany must provide herself with, or be content to continue as a second-rate Power. Most of the writers thought that colonies could be obtained in a lawful way, but a historian[123] who had great influence on the ruling classes taught openly that the best method of winning a colonial empire was to defeat and despoil Britain. This teaching suited the German mind exactly, and gradually it gained such ground that it became almost a national policy. In 1886 what is known as the "great scramble for Africa" began, and Germany played her part in it. In Eastern Africa her explorers had made many important discoveries, and as far back as 1860 one of them said, "I am persuaded that in a short time a colony established in East Africa would be most successful, and after two or three years would become self-supporting." Not, however, until 1884 was an attempt made to set up a German colony in this part of the world. In that year three German political agents, in the disguise of needy travellers, crossed over from Zanzibar to the mainland, and began making treaties by which the local chiefs signed away their country.