Briefe aus Tsingtau (German Edition)

The Siege of Tsingtau: The German-Japanese War 1914

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Admirals Diederichs and Tirpitz were determined that land speculation, which severely afflicted the German colonies in East Africa, not be permitted to take hold in the new protectorate. As a member of the German Land Reformers, he had read the works of Henry George, the American economist who identified land speculation and land price inflation as the main cause of depressions.

Henry George wrote that the public collection of the land rent would eliminate land speculation and maintain land price stability. By getting government revenue from land rent instead of taxing labor and capital, there would be prosperity without the injustice and burdens of taxing labor and enterprise.

Tsingtao: A Microcosm of the First World War

Schramaier claimed not to have been influenced by Georgism directly, but by the practical necessities of administering the territory. He enacted a single tax of six percent of the assessed value of land and subjected each land sale to an increment tax whose rate was one third of the net profit when land was sold.

The government had the prior right of purchase at the price reported, thus discouraging anyone from reporting a lower sales price in order to reduce his increment tax. The land-value increment tax in Kiaochow was the first to be adopted anywhere in the world. Schrameier also refrained from levying any other tax.

City in numbers

That was probably the only time in history that a government collected all its revenue from land rent, and none from the value of buildings or business or from wages. The single tax on land value worked as splendidly in practice as it had in theory. Once it was implemented, there was no more land speculation, and economic growth was very rapid.

Not only did it discourage speculators, it also funded the colonial government without levying any of the usual counterproductive taxes on structures or sales or salaries, just on sites. The price of land is an estimate by the buyer of how much rent the site will yield over the next decade plus; as economists would put it, land price is capitalized land rent.

When government collects all the rent, that leaves none for owners to capitalize into price. Depriving owners of half of rent, a socially generated value, did nothing to inhibit development; on the contrary, it spurred landowners to develop Tsingtao into a splendid city. By then, Tsingtao had become the fourth most important trading port on the China coast.

The area's population had increased to , Economic historians below did not note whether the Japanese abandoned the German taxing system or if the Chinese did upon evicting the Japanese at the end of World War II. Whoever installed a different taxing system, it cost Tsingtao its glory. Its brief yet successful existence did leave a legacy.

The Siege of Tsingtau: The German-Japanese War 1914

After seeing Tsingtao thrive, Sun Yat-sen, who was to become the revolutionary leader of China, studied the policy of taxing only land values when he went to school in Hawaii. At the time, the policy of public recovery of rent was well known, as was its foremost proponent, Henry George. When Sun returned to China, he sought to use land rent for public revenues for all of China; he retained the German Schrameier as his consultant.

Hollywood of the east

Eventually, Sun failed but two decades later, the Nationalists adopted his program for Taiwan. During the next 50 years, the small island developed from a poor province to a modern prosperous economy with one of the most equal distributions of income in the world.

In the decade of the s, mainland China partially utilizes public recovery of ground rent, and Hong Kong has done so from day one in the year after Henry George died on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Another way one can realize the German legacy from Kiaochow today is to taste the German recipe for brewing by drinking the savory Tsingtao beer. There is no greater strength than success.

Tsingtao was an unqualified success by any economic measure of the era. Interestingly, the British were not entirely convinced bringing Japan into the war was a great idea but it seems Winston Churchill as Lord of the Admiralty was a major proponent to his subsequent regret. Most of Germany's colonies were only lightly held, but Tsingtau was the center of German forces, such as they were, in Asia and the Pacific and Japan committed 50, soldiers, accompanied by much smaller British and colonial Indian forces against the 4, German troops in its Chinese possession.

Sale Terms

As a result of its efforts, Japan gained the Marshals, the Marianas and the Carolinas and with them, the ability to project naval and air force in much of the Pacific, to the subsequent regret of the U. The book covers its topic very well, in particular the campaign against Tsingtau.

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It also nicely covers British and Australian concerns that the Germans would use its naval forces to conduct raids against their merchant ships in the region. There's a very nice bit on the voyage of the German ship Emden which did conduct a very successful, if brief, campaign doing just that, to illustrate that the Allies had some reason to fear such a possibility.

If you have want to gain knowledge of the war in this region, this is an excellent book to pick up and won't require a major commitment of your time. Christian Okane rated it liked it Sep 18, John rated it really liked it Apr 29, Jeff rated it did not like it Dec 12, Tom rated it it was ok Oct 20, Jerome marked it as to-read Jan 11, Michael marked it as to-read Feb 01, Joe Collins marked it as to-read Jun 25, Warrick marked it as to-read Aug 18, Jan C marked it as to-read Aug 27, Tim marked it as to-read Sep 01, Alan marked it as to-read Sep 04, Manray9 marked it as to-read Sep 27, Terri added it Dec 26, Len added it Feb 09, Tony Genualdi marked it as to-read Mar 10, Charles Stephenson added it Apr 05, Nathaniel is currently reading it Apr 14, Chris marked it as to-read May 11, Tom Kutt marked it as to-read May 20, Josh Griffiths marked it as to-read May 20, James marked it as to-read May 30, Glenn Webb marked it as to-read Jul 07, Bill V marked it as to-read Jul 21, RoryOMoore marked it as to-read Aug 02, Rocky Farr added it Sep 20, Koit marked it as to-read Oct 12, Nguyen Santiago marked it as to-read Oct 16, Rose Mary marked it as to-read Oct 20, Don LaFountaine marked it as to-read Oct 28, Brian marked it as to-read Nov 03,

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