What is Anglo-American culture? By Anglo-American culture, we understand the kind of culture that emerged in North-Western Europe, especially England, in the post-Renaissance and post-Reformation period and eventually spread to the United States. The most distinctive institutions of Anglo-American culture are individual autonomy, the rule of law, a republican form of government, and a market economy....

Bismarck's ironclad indifference towards the colonies cracked in 1883 when a failed tobacco merchant from Bremen named Adolf Lüderitz wired to say that he had run up the German flag on a thin strip of land on the Atlantic coast of southern Africa. Lüderitz had bought the land from natives of the Nama tribe for two hundred loaded rifles and a box of gold. The Nama needed the rifles for their ongoing wars against their historic enemies, the Herero. Bismarck at last gave in. Following his recognition of Lüderitzland (population twenty), Bismarck told the Reichstag that henceforth he would fly the flag whenever established German merchants requested the protection of the state. "We do not want to install colonies artificially," Bismarck sighed. "When they emerge, however, we will try to protect them." His hope was for empire on the cheap: "Clerks from the trading houses, not German generals," would handle the functions of government. ...