Germany In Asia

Would it be possible for Germany to have colonies in what is today's Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and/or Burma? How would these colonies be governed and other effects?

POD is 1875.
 
If Germany gets colonies there, they'd have to take them from another power, because most all of it there was already in one country or another's sphere of influence. I don't see mainland South Asia as particularly likely, since Germany never really had much interest there, but an extension of the New Guinean colonies is not outside the realm of possibility. To be honest though, if Germany badly wanted colonies as part of a peace settlement from a war, she would probably look to Africa.
 
The sole way to achieve that would be for France to transfer (parts of) Indochina (France controled Cambodia, Cochinchina and a few treaty ports in Tonkin and Annam) to Germany following the Franco-Prussian War instead of Alsace-Lorraine, which IIRC was proposed IOTL. Now if Wilhelm I reluctantly accepts (Bismarck would probably have accepted that in order to maintain good relations with France, which he originally wanted, and to appease those guys screaming for annexations), then... You'd have Germany doing a similiarly bad job in the region just like France did IOTL. Though maybe they wouldn't expand THAT much, resulting in an independent Empire of Vietnam (maybe allied with Germany and a rival of Siam and China).

They could use that as a way to "jump" to the Philippines though, which could be appealing to Germany if they were more prominent in (South) East Asia. German rule wouldn't be kind to the Filipinos though.
 

Beer

Banned
The sole way to achieve that would be for France to transfer (parts of) Indochina (France controled Cambodia, Cochinchina and a few treaty ports in Tonkin and Annam) to Germany following the Franco-Prussian War instead of Alsace-Lorraine, which IIRC was proposed IOTL. Now if Wilhelm I reluctantly accepts (Bismarck would probably have accepted that in order to maintain good relations with France, which he originally wanted, and to appease those guys screaming for annexations), then... You'd have Germany doing a similiarly bad job in the region just like France did IOTL. Though maybe they wouldn't expand THAT much, resulting in an independent Empire of Vietnam (maybe allied with Germany and a rival of Siam and China).

They could use that as a way to "jump" to the Philippines though, which could be appealing to Germany if they were more prominent in (South) East Asia. German rule wouldn't be kind to the Filipinos though.
While the idea of an exchange Indochina instead of A-L has merit, I think you think about german colonial rule worse than it was. No colonial power was kind in the modern sense, but Germany was not worse than others. Belgian rule was the absolute low point in colonialism.
With the exception of that idiot Trotha in DSWA, Germany had no major atrocity unlike some others, esp. Belgium in Kongo.
After WW1 an American delegation to the now Entente ruled german colonies even gathered that there the level of education, medicine distribution and infrastructure was significantly lower than under German Empire rule.
 
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