This project analyzes how German tropical doctors [Tropenärzte} influenced German colonialism from 1901 to 1914, with their peak influence occurring during the period of crisis and transition during the Reichstag colonial budget crisis of 1905-1906 and the following 1907 Dernburg reforms. This period of crisis and transition, coupled with the Dernburg concept of "scientific colonialism," a repackaging of Max Weber’s scientific management, modified and "modernized" the concepts and functions of German colonialism in the German colonies of Togo, Cameroon, and East Africa. The tropical doctors and their sleeping sickness campaigns catalyzed this change through their engagements with sleeping sickness to make the German colonies and German colonialism practical as an economic and public health project.