Rethinking German Colonialism in a Global Age

Abstract

Recent years have seen a sudden upsurge of scholarly interests in German colonialism. The German overseas empire, founded in 1884 and defunct in 1915, lasted a mere 30 years, and was thus one of the most short-lived of all modern colonialisms. Consequently, it has not occupied centre-stage in most accounts, either of European imperialism or of German history itself. The colonial experience was deemed marginal and insignificant, compared to the long histories of other empires. But in recent years, there has been a marked upsurge of scholarly interests in German colonialism. While much of the historiography of the German empire remains tied to the national history paradigm, recent developments have begun to move beyond a framework that treats Germany and her colonies as separate entities. This article takes up the issue and explores the ways in which we stand to gain from inserting Germany's colonial past more thoroughly in a global context. Rethinking German colonialism in a global age, it argues, allows us to see more clearly the imperial dimensions of German history. It brings into relief the colonial dimensions of German rule in Eastern Europe, moves the focus beyond the formal protectorates and helps us recognise the way in which Germany was one empire among others. Analytically, a global history perspective emphasises synchronic contexts, beyond the boundaries of formal territorial rule, instead of assuming longstanding continuities within the empire. And inserting the Kaiserreich into the larger global context also moves analysis beyond a strictly internalist framework. Forces and actors within and beyond the empire have contributed to the trajectories of imperial Germany.

Acknowledgements

For comments and suggestions, I am grateful to audiences at the University of California, Irvine, the German Historical Institute in Washington DC, the colloquium run by Stefan Berger and Manuel Borutta at the University of Bochum and the Research Institute of Comparative History and Culture in Seoul, as well as to the anonymous reviewers for the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. This work was supported by the Academy of Korean Studies Grant funded by the Korean Government (MEST) (AKS-2010-DZZ-3103).

Notes

1 See, for example, Bayly, Birth of the Modern World; Osterhammel, Verwandlung der Welt.

2 Ferguson, Empire. Other historians have made similar arguments with much more nuance; see Magee and Thompson, Empire and Globalisation; Belich, Replenishing the Earth.

3 For an overview of German colonialism, see Conrad, German Colonialism; Gründer, Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien; Smith, The German Colonial Empire; Speitkamp, Deutsche Kolonialgeschichte.

4 Good reviews of the older literature on German colonialism can be found in Bade, ‘Imperialismusforschung und Kolonialhistorie’; Dülffer, ‘Deutsche Kolonialherrschaft in Afrika’.

5 For the cultural turn since the late 1990s, see Conrad, ‘Doppelte Marginalisierung’, 145–69; Eckert and Wirz, ‘Wir nicht, die Anderen auch’.

6 This influential plea was formulated by Cooper and Stoler, ‘Between Metropole and Colony’.

7 See, for example, Ames, Klotz and Wildenthal, Germany's Colonial Pasts; Friedrichsmeyer, Lennox and Zantop, The Imperialist Imagination; Grosse on eugenic discourse in his Kolonialismus, Eugenik und bürgerliche Gesellschaft; Kundrus, Moderne Imperialisten; Wildenthal, German Women for Empire.

8 Overviews of the most recent literature can be found in Ciarlo, ‘Globalizing German Colonialism’; Lindner, ‘Plätze an der Sonne?’.

9 Rushdie, Satanic Verses, 343.

10 Bade, Imperialismus; Conrad, ‘Transnational Germany’; Fischer, Expansion; Torp, Herausforderung; van Laak, Über alles in der Welt.

11 Some of the arguments that follow build on my earlier work, in particular Globalisation and the Nation and German Colonialism.

12 Burbank and Cooper, Empires in World History.

13 Cooper, ‘Provincializing France’, 342.

14 Osterhammel, Verwandlung, 615.

15 Ther, ‘Deutsche Geschichte als imperiale Geschichte’.

16 Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation.

17 Lamprecht, Zur jüngsten deutschen Vergangenheit, 536f. On Lamprecht, see Chickering, Karl Lamprecht; Middell, Leipziger Institut für Kultur- und Universalgeschichte.

18 Drews, ‘Neue Wege zur Erhaltung des Deutschtums in Übersee’, 746. On völkisch nationalism, see Chickering, We Men Who Feel Most German; Hering, Konstruierte Nation; Walkenhorst, Nation-Volk-Rasse.

19 Nonini and Ong, ‘Chinese Transnationalism’, 3.

20 See, for example, Fuhrmann, Der Traum vom deutschen Orient.

21 See Walther, Creating Germans Abroad. For East Africa, see Söldenwagner, Spaces of Negotiation.

22 On German migration to Brazil, see Brunn, Deutschland und Brasilien; Delhaes-Guenther, Industrialisierung in Südbrasilien.

23 O'Donnell, Bridenthal and Reagin, The Heimat Abroad.

24 Lamprecht, Zur jüngsten deutschen Vergangenheit, 592.

25 See in particular Baranowski, Nazi Empire; Mazower, Hitler's Empire. See also Furber, ‘Near as Far in the Colonies’; Lower, Nazi Empire-Building.

26 Hitler's Table Talk 1941–44, entry for 17 Oct. 1941.

27 For the terminological argument, see Zimmerer, ‘Birth of the “Ostland” out of the Spirit of Colonialism’.

28 Quoted from Zimmerer, ‘Krieg, KZ und Völkermord in Südwestafrika', 60.

29 See Zimmerer, Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz?; Zimmerer, Zeller and Neather, Genocide in German South-West Africa. For critical perspectives that cast doubt on the construction of long-term continuities, see in particular Gerwarth and Malinowski, ‘The Holocaust as “Colonial Genocide”?’; Kundrus, ‘Continuities, Parallels, Receptions’. A good summary of the debate can be found in Fitzpatrick, ‘The Pre-History of the Holocaust?’. See also Langbehn, German Colonialism.

30 Duara, ‘The Imperialism of “Free Nations”’. See also Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity.

31 In this section, I am not concerned with the general issue of cultures of imperialism and the way in which disciplinary knowledge was implicated in the colonial project. Examples of this kind of literature include Marchand, German Orientalism; Penny, Objects of Culture; Zimmerman, Anthropology and Antihumanism.

32 Osterhammel, ‘Forschungsreise und Kolonialprogramm'.

33 Naranch, Beyond the Fatherland.

34 Some interesting transnational perspectives can be found in Grant, Trentmann and Levine, Beyond Sovereignty. Lambert and Lester, Colonial Lives across the British Empire, remains limited to the British Empire.

35 Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen.

36 Stoler and McGranahan, ‘Introduction’, 13. See also Bassin, Imperial Visions. For the US, see Stoler, ‘Tense and Tender Ties’.

37 van Laak, Imperiale Infrastruktur; Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa.

38 Lee, Paul Georg von Möllendorff.

39 Peattie, ‘Introduction’, 49; Lo, Doctors within Borders, 36; Norisane, ‘Shokuminchi chōsa to Gotō Shinpei’.

40 See, for example, Fischer-Tiné, ‘Indian Nationalism and the “World Forces”’. For an overview, see also Young, Postcolonialism.

41 See Adole Langley, ‘Pan-Africanism in Paris 1924–1936’; Eckert, ‘Afrikanische Intellektuelle und Aktivisten’; Karl, ‘Creating Asia’; Liauzu, Aux Origines du Tiers-Mondisme; Schneer, London 1900.

42 Metropolitan authorities were well aware of this. See Brückenhaus, ‘“Every Stranger Must Be Suspected”’.

43 Aguinaldo, Philippine Revolution; Anderson, Under Three Flags.

44 See Jones, The League Against Imperialism; McMeekin, The Red Millionaire.

45 See Höpp, ‘“Die ägyptische Frage ist in Wirklichkeit eine internationale”’.

46 See Manjapra, ‘The Illusions of Encounter’; Manjapra, M. N. Roy. For these networks, see also the forthcoming dissertation by Nathanael Kuck (Leipzig).

47 Bose, His Majesty's Opponent.

48 See Manjapra, The Age of Entanglement. Aydin uses the term ‘alternative universalisms’; see Aydin, Politics of Anti-Westernism.

49 On Riess, see Kentarō, ‘Ludwig Riess’.

50 Stoler and McGranahan, ‘Introduction’.

51 For a different attempt to move beyond the confines of Germany and the German Empire, see Penny, ‘German Polycentrism’.

52 See Evans, ‘The “Dangerous Classes” in Germany’, 1–28. For an overview on migration in Imperial Germany, see Grant, Migration and Inequality; Hoerder and Nagel, People in Transit.

53 See Scheffler, ‘Die Gründungsjahre 1883–1913’, 23–35.

54 G. von Bodelschwingh, Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, 273.

55 F. von Bodelschwingh, Ausgewählte Schriften, 193. This double thrust of philanthropic strategies was no German peculiarity. For the British case, see Marriott, The Other Empire.

56 Paul, Die Mission in unseren Kolonien, 193.

57 Buchner, Die Mission und ihre Kritiker, 10–12.

58 Cited in Menzel, Die Bethel-Mission, 114.

59 See Sachse and Tennstedt, Geschichte der Armenfürsorge, 244–56.

60 Bruck, Die Gegner der Deportation, 60; Bruck, Die gesetzliche Einführung der Deportation, v.

61 See Meyer zu Hoberge, Strafkolonien.

62 Quoted from Wettstein, Brasilien und die deutsch-brasilianische Kolonie Blumenau, 1.

63 On the politics of settlement, see Balzer, Die preußische Polenpolitik; Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre deutsche Polenpolitik, 142–72.

64 Hugenberg, Streiflichter, 280.

65 Alldeutsche Blätter 9 (1899): 86.

66 Wehler, Sozialdemokratie und Nationalstaat, 165–82.

67 Cited in Geiss, Der polnische Grenzstreifen, 78.

68 Wehler, ‘Polenpolitik im Deutschen Kaiserreich’, 184–203. On the Ostmarkenverein, see Galos, Gentzen and Jakóbczyk, Die Hatakisten; Grabowski, Deutscher und polnischer Nationalismus.

69 See Mühlhahn, Herrschaft und Widerstand, 185–284; Zimmerer, Deutsche Herrschaft über Afrikaner, 42–55.

70 Smith, Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism, 83–111.

71 McKeown, ‘Global Migration, 1846–1940’; Northrup, Indentured Labor.

72 On the impact of globalisation on economic strategies in Germany, see Torp, Die Herausforderung der Globalisierung.

73 Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa.

74 Weber, ‘Die nationalen Grundlagen der Volkswirtschaft’.

75 See Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line. For more on the German debate about Chinese workers, see Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation, 203–74.

76 See Nagl, Grenzfälle, 249–72.

77 Steinmetz, The Devil's Handwriting, 19.

78 Stoler, ‘On Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty’.

79 See Dirlik, Global Modernity.