was Trading Colonies possible?

Was trading colonies possible

  • yes

    Votes: 16 94.1%
  • no

    Votes: 1 5.9%

  • Total voters
    17
Were it possible for states to trade their colonies? These colonies could be traded for material or for land(colonies). Could land me traded? What was the idea, the push for trading territories? What was the counter push to trading territories?

British imperialist dreamt of a empire stretching from South Africa to Egypt. Blocking this dream was the German colony of Tanganyika. Could Germany and Britian have switiched colonies similarily to when they traded Heligoland and Zanzibar. What would Germany want from Great Britain for Tanganyika? What would Britian be willing to offer Germany? Maybe Tanganyika could be traded for Nigeria? This would give the British their dream of a empire stretching from Cape Good Hope to the Nile Delta. Germany would also get a colony that would be easier for them to supply and develop due to closer distance. Nigeria would also be possible to integrate with Cameroon. Was the Heligoland-Zanzibar treaty a unlikely event? What do you think?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heligoland–Zanzibar_Treaty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika

Any ideas for other potential trades of territory?
 
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If you count peace treaties, this happened several times. Take swapping New Amsterdam for Suriname, for instance.

If not, there's still France trading parts of French Equatorial Africa to Germany, in exchange for France being able to turn Morocco into a protectorate (but Spain still got some land out of it).

The UK also traded some claims to Togoland to Germany, in exchange for fixing their colonial borders in the Pacific.
 
Colonial territories were most definitely traded (Manhattan to Britain in exchange for Pulau Run to the Netherlands is the first that comes to mind) but I'm not aware of any instances of African colonial exchange that weren't by force, treaties from wars, or under other extenuating circumstances. In a crisis over control of Morocco in the early 1900s the Germans got Cameroon so that France could keep Morocco, but as I said, that was extenuating circumstances.

The UK wasn't so obsessed with the idea of a continuous empire to go to war with Germany, but if some sort of mouth-frothingly colonialist (and yet still not so colonialist as to be unwilling to exchange Nigeria) British administration came to be, then I suppose it could escalate to a crisis in which German East Africa is exchanged for Nigeria. Of course, all this would do would get the Germans to try and squeeze Benin and Gabon out of France and only kick war down the road.

As an interesting aside, the Allies tried to bribe Italy to stay out of the Second World War by ceding French-controlled Tunisia to them, to no avail.
 
Were it possible for states to trade their colonies? These colonies could be traded for material or for land(colonies). Could land me traded? What was the idea, the push for trading territories? What was the counter push to trading territories?

British imperialist dreamt of a empire stretching from South Africa to Egypt. Blocking this dream was the German colony of Tanganyika. Could Germany and Britian have switiched colonies similarily to when they traded Heligoland and Zanzibar. What would Germany want from Great Britain for Tanganyika? What would Britian be willing to offer Germany? Maybe Tanganyika could be traded for Nigeria? This would give the British their dream of a empire stretching from Cape Good Hope to the Nile Delta. Germany would also get a colony that would be easier for them to supply and develop due to closer distance. Nigeria would also be possible to integrate with Cameroon. Was the Heligoland-Zanzibar treaty a unlikely event? What do you think?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heligoland–Zanzibar_Treaty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika

Any ideas for other potential trades of territory?
Colonies were definitely traded back in the day. It was one of the most effective ways of defusing diplomatic crises.
The entire Caribbean was swapped around in the eighteenth century like a big old game of hot potato.
 
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