In 1891 the Qing government decided to make Qingdao (commonly spelled "Tsingtao") defensible against naval attack and began to improve the existing fortifications of the town. German naval officials observed and reported on this Chinese activity during a formal survey of Jiaozhou Bay in May 1897. In November 1897, the German Navy seized Jiaozhou Bay under the pretext of ensuring that reparations were paid for the murder of two German Catholic missionaries in the province. In the spring of 1898, the German government signed a treaty that allowed the Germans to lease an area of for 99 years (or until 1997, as the British did in Hong Kong's New Territories and the French did in Kouang-Tchéou-Wan), to construct a railway to Jinan, the capital of Shandong province, and to exploit coalfields along the railroad. The Kiautschou Bay concession, as it became known, existed from 1898 to 1914. With an area of , it was located in the imperial province of Shandong (alternatively romanized as Shantung or Shan-tung in English and Schantung in German) on the southern coast of the Shandong Peninsula ("Schantung Halbinsel") in northern China. Tsingtao (Qingdao) was its administrative center. After the farmers and fishermen of the Chinese village sold their buildings and land and resettled in the rural communities further east, the Germans began to develop the area. Wide streets, solid housing areas, government buildings, electrification throughout, a sewer system and a safe drinking water supply were improvements that transformed the impoverished fishing village of Tsingtao into a modern German town. In a short time the area had the highest density of schools and "per capita" student enrollment in all of China; primary, secondary and vocational schools were funded by the Imperial German treasury and Protestant and Roman Catholic missions. The cathedral was built by the Divine Word Missionaries (abbreviated "SVD," from their Latin name: "Societas Verbi Divini"), the first German Catholic missionary society. The order was founded in 1875 "for the propagation of the Catholic religion among pagan nations," at Steyl (today in the Limburg Province of the Netherlands), by German Catholic priests fleeing the Kulturkampf. The society's first mission was established in 1882 in southern Shantung, a district of more than 10 million people, which contained 158 Catholics. At the time, the area was part of the Apostolic Vicariate of Shantung, managed by Italian Franciscans, who were tasked with rebuilding the earlier Catholic mission work.