<P> Some Germans, claiming themselves of Friedrich List's thought, advocated expansion in the Philippines and Timor; others proposed to set themselves up in Formosa (modern Taiwan), etc . At the end of the 1870s, these isolated voices began to be relayed by a real imperialist policy, backed by mercantilist thesis . In 1881, Hübbe - Schleiden, a lawyer, published Deutsche Kolonisation, according to which the "development of national consciousness demanded an independent overseas policy". Pan-Germanism was thus linked to the young nation's imperialist drives . In the beginning of the 1880s, the Deutscher Kolonialverein was created, and got its own magazine in 1884, the Kolonialzeitung . This colonial lobby was also relayed by the nationalist Alldeutscher Verband . Generally, Bismarck was opposed to widespread German colonialism, but he had to resign at the insistence of the new German Emperor Wilhelm II on 18 March 1890 . Wilhelm II instead adopted a very aggressive policy of colonisation and colonial expansion . </P> <P> Germany's expansionism would lead to the Tirpitz Plan, implemented by Admiral von Tirpitz, who would also champion the various Fleet Acts starting in 1898, thus engaging in an arms race with Britain . By 1914, they had given Germany the second - largest naval force in the world (roughly three - fifths the size of the Royal Navy). According to von Tirpitz, this aggressive naval policy was supported by the National Liberal Party rather than by the conservatives, implying that imperialism was supported by the rising middle classes . </P> <P> Germany became the third - largest colonial power in Africa . Nearly all of its overall empire of 2.6 million square kilometres and 14 million colonial subjects in 1914 was found in its African possessions of Southwest Africa, Togoland, the Cameroons, and Tanganyika . Following the 1904 Entente cordiale between France and the British Empire, Germany tried to isolate France in 1905 with the First Moroccan Crisis . This led to the 1905 Algeciras Conference, in which France's influence on Morocco was compensated by the exchange of other territories, and then to the Agadir Crisis in 1911 . Along with the 1898 Fashoda Incident between France and Britain, this succession of international crises reveals the bitterness of the struggle between the various imperialist nations, which ultimately led to World War I . </P> <P> Italy took possession of parts of Eritrea in 1870 and 1882 . Following its defeat in the First Italo--Ethiopian War (1895--1896), it acquired Italian Somaliland in 1889--90 and the whole of Eritrea (1899). In 1911, it engaged in a war with the Ottoman Empire, in which it acquired Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (modern Libya). In 1919 Enrico Corradini--who fully supported the war, and later merged his group in the early fascist party (PNF)--developed the concept of Proletarian Nationalism, supposed to legitimize Italy's imperialism by a mixture of socialism with nationalism: </P>

What are the causes of scramble for africa