With a PoD after the Congress of Viena, could a European power without any colonies try and use anti-racism and anti-colonialism to undermine its opponents?
Personally I think a likely candidate would be Germany: it was late to the colonial game IOTL, perhaps it never acquired anything Bar a couple of almost uninhabited islands and some port concessions, could such a Germany, say, be more open to blacks or Asians in order to undermine France or Brutain? Maybe offer a select few access to education or universities in Germany, or try and actually help them instead of oppressing them? Now, it wouldn’t be done out of sheeer goodwill, of course, but Berlin could reason that by helping the locals, maybe arming them, educating them, it would be far more difficult for the British and the French, as well as other colonial powers, to keep them pacified and subjugated, thus conjuring up problems etc.; the stumbling block here being that much of German society at the time seems to me to be, well, well within the standards of the time as far as racial beliefs are concerned.
Could something like this be at all plausible? Would GErmany, or any other European country without any colonies try to do something like that?
Personally I think a likely candidate would be Germany: it was late to the colonial game IOTL, perhaps it never acquired anything Bar a couple of almost uninhabited islands and some port concessions, could such a Germany, say, be more open to blacks or Asians in order to undermine France or Brutain? Maybe offer a select few access to education or universities in Germany, or try and actually help them instead of oppressing them? Now, it wouldn’t be done out of sheeer goodwill, of course, but Berlin could reason that by helping the locals, maybe arming them, educating them, it would be far more difficult for the British and the French, as well as other colonial powers, to keep them pacified and subjugated, thus conjuring up problems etc.; the stumbling block here being that much of German society at the time seems to me to be, well, well within the standards of the time as far as racial beliefs are concerned.
Could something like this be at all plausible? Would GErmany, or any other European country without any colonies try to do something like that?