It has an origin in19th century. When Napoleon lost, French colonies and territory which he conquered were divided among victory countries on Congress of Vienna in 1815. But Germany didn't exist in that time (it was unified in 1871), so they didn't get any colonies in Africa and Asia. When they were unified, there didn't left free colonies in Africa and Asia for Germany, because most of them had France, Great Britain, Netherlands, Spain,... They wanted to have some and by their aggresive international politics they caused a WW1
