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The Discourse of British and German Colonialism
This volume compares and contrasts British and German colonialist discourses from a variety of angles: philosophical, political, social, economic, legal, and discourse-linguistic. British and German cooperation and competition are presented as complementary forces in the European colonial project from as early as the sixteenth century but especially after the foundation of the German Second Empire in 1871 – the era of the so-called ‘Scramble for Africa’. The authors present the points of view not only of the colonizing nations, but also of former colonies, including Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco, Namibia, Tanzania, India, China, and the Pacific Islands. The title will prove invaluable for students and researchers working on British colonial history, German colonial history and post-colonial studies. Felicity Rash is Professor of German Linguistics at Queen Mary, University of London. Her major publications include: The Language of Violence: Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (2006); German Images of the Self and the Other in German Nationalist, Colonialist and Anti-Semitic Discourse 1871–1918 (2012); and The Strategies of German Imperialist Discourse: The Colonial Idea and Africa, 1848–1948 (2016). Geraldine Horan is Senior Lecturer in German Language at University College London. Her research interests lie in feminist linguistics, discourse analysis, and political discourse. She is co-editor of Doing Politics: Discursivity, Performativity and Mediation in Political Discourse (2018, with Michael Kranert).
Empires in Perspective Series Editor: Jayeeta Sharma, University of Toronto
This important series examines a diverse range of imperial histories from the early modern period to the twentieth century. Drawing on works of political, social, economic and cultural history, the history of science and political theory, the series encourages methodological pluralism and does not impose any particular conception of historical scholarship. While focused on particular aspects of empire, works published also seek to address wider questions on the study of imperial history. British Imperialism and Turkish Nationalism in Cyprus, 1923-1939: Divide, Define and Rule Ilia Xypolia A History of Italian Colonialism, 1860–1907: Europe’s Last Empire Giuseppe Finaldi Liberalism and the British Empire in Southeast Asia Edited by Gareth Knapman, Anthony Milner and Mary Quilty Outskirts of Empire: Studies in British Power Projection John Fisher The First World War, Anticolonialism and Imperial Authority in British India, 1914-1924 Sharmishtha Roy Chowdhury Colonialism, China and the Chinese: Amidst Empires Edited by Matthew P. Fitzpatrick and Peter Monteath The Making of Modern Physics in Colonial India Somaditya Banerjee The Discourse of British and German Colonialism: Convergence and Competition Edited by Felicity Rash and Geraldine Horan
The Discourse of British and German Colonialism Convergence and Competition
Edited by Felicity Rash and Geraldine Horan
First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Felicity Rash and Geraldine Horan; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Felicity Rash and Geraldine Horan to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rash, Felicity J., 1954- editor. | Horan, Geraldine, editor. Title: The discourse of British and German colonialism : convergence and competition / edited by Felicity Rash and Geraldine Horan. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, [2020] | Series: Empires in perspective | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020006614 (print) | LCCN 2020006615 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138333062 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429446214 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Colonies--Great Britain--History. | Colonies--Germany--History. | Colonies--Africa--History. | Political culture--Great Britain--History. | Political culture--Germany--History.| Imperialism. | Discourse analysis. Classification: LCC DA18 .D57 2020 (print) | LCC DA18 (ebook) | DDC 325/.341--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020006614 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020006615 ISBN: 978-1-138-33306-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-44621-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books
Contents
List of illustrations List of contributors
vii ix
PART I
Historical and theoretical perspectives 1 Cutting up the world pie and what happened next
1 3
FELICITY RASH AND GERALDINE HORAN
2 Neither colonies nor colonialism? The early modern semantics of European expansion in German political economics (1700–1800)
26
JONAS HÜBNER
3 Colonialism and diaspora in Imperial Germany
45
STEFAN MANZ
4 How are British and German colonizers positioned in the digital corpus?
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ELISA ERBE, DANIEL SCHMIDT-BRÜCKEN AND INGO H. WARNKE
PART II
The ‘Scramble’ for Africa 5 Lighting the ‘dark’ continent: Metaphors of darkness and light in the writings of British and German explorers and missionaries 1865–1915
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FELICITY RASH
6 German imperialist images of the Other: A Sonderweg? Discursive representations of the imperial self in Wilhelmine Germany (1884–1919) ALBERT GOUAFFO
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7 The continuities of colonial land dispossessions in Namibia under German and South African rule
140
PHANUEL KAAPAMA
8 ‘An inclination towards a policy of extermination’? German and British discourse on colonial wars during High Imperialism
163
ULRIKE LINDNER
9 German- and British-subject settler narratives from German East Africa
182
ELSIE CLOETE
10 Stereotypical labelling of the Moroccan Goumiers in German colonial discourse
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MOULAY LMUSTAPHA MAMAOUI AND OTMAN BYCHOU
PART III
The ‘scramble’ for the wider world
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11 Notes from the margins: The discursive construction of the Self and Other in the German Ostmark and Ireland. Discourses of internal colonialism and gender in the works of Käthe Schirmacher and Maud Gonne
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GERALDINE HORAN
12 Schooling of the tribal peoples of the Chota Nagpur region of India: Contested claims by German missionaries and British colonialists, 1830–70
235
SUTAPA DUTTA
13 Postcolonial discourse analysis: The linguistic fall-out from Imperial Germany’s colonialist past in China
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ANDREAS MUSOLFF
14 British and German scientific exploration in the Asia-Pacific region as an alternative form of colonization
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MARIE GÉRALDINE RADEMACHER
Index
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Illustrations
Figures 1.1 1.2 4.1 4.2
4.3 4.4 5.1 9.1
9.2
9.3
9.4
The ‘Reiterdenkmal’ was erected in 1912 accompanied by the memorial plaque Bust of Queen Victoria at Cape Coast, Ghana Trajectory of publication frequency per year for engl*/brit* titles in DSDK Covers of Die Stimme Deutsch-Ostafrikas (1919, http://brema. suub.uni-bremen.de/dsdk/content/pageview/2045541) and Germany’s right to recover her colonies (1919, http://brema. suub.uni-bremen.de/dsdk/content/pageview/2031888) (Copyright: SuUB Bremen) Publications with title reference to Britain in DSDK according to fields of colonial agency Distribution of positive and negative evaluations over all texts Front cover of the anonymous pamphlet Quer durch den dunklen Kontinent A photograph of Martha Pienaar with her daughter and grandchild probably taken in the 1930s (photographer unknown, published alongside her diary) Antonie and Carl Landgrebe in German East Africa two years after their arrival in 1910 (photo supplied by Landgrebe family) Map of Arusha (26.5 x 20.5 cm) in 1914 drawn by Carl Landgrebe (supplied by the Landgrebe family). The key lists officers’ accommodation, the askari barracks (middle left), the post office, chemist, Bloom’s hotel, a café, a forge, wagon shed, etc. In the lower left-hand corner is the Indian settlement (Inderdorf) close to the shops (lower centre) Mittleres Pfanzungsgebiet [sic] des Süd-Kilimandjaro 1914. A scale map of farms allocated and cultivated around the Neu Moshi area south of Mount Kilimanjaro, 1914 (20.2 x 26.7 cm) (map provided by Landgrebe family)
18 19 65
66 67 68 120
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Illustrations
13.1 13.2 13.3
Carl Röchling, ‘The Germans to the Front’ (1902) Kladderadatsch, ‘Gute Freunde’ (1900) Kikeriki, ‘Die Zukunft Chinas’ (1915)
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Tables 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4
4A.1 4A.2 4A.3 4A.4 4A.5 4A.6 4A.7 4A.8 4A.9 4A.10 4A.11 4A.12 4A.13 4A.14 4A.15 4A.16 4A.17 4A.18 4A.19 4A.20 4A.21 4A.22 5.1 5.2
Publications in DSDK making explicit reference to Great Britain (or England) in their titles German evaluations of Britain: verb phrases German evaluations of Britain: noun phrases German evaluations of the colonized: verb and noun phrases a. TOPOS OF LAW (RECHTS-TOPOS) b. TOPOS OF RESPONSIBILITY (VERANTWORTLICHKEITS-TOPOS) c. TOPOS OF HISTORY (GESCHICHTS-TOPOS) German evaluations of Britain: verb phrases German evaluations of Britain: noun phrases nur (26 examples) aber (21 examples) noch (12 Examples) schon (9 examples) doch (7 examples) wohl (6 examples) ja (5 examples) stets (3 examples) natürlich (2 examples) überhaupt (2 examples) keineswegs (2 examples) tatsächlich (1 example) grundsätzlich (1 example) scheinbar (1 example) sogar (1 example) eigentlich (1 example) vielleicht (1 example) dennoch (1 example) offenbar (1 example) Multipart commentary adverbials (6 examples) Linguistic metaphors and their concepts (Livingstone 1865 and 1874) Linguistic metaphors and their concepts (Henry Morton Stanley, Through the Dark Continent 1890 [1878])
62 70 71 74 86 86 87 91 93 94 96 98 99 100 101 101 102 102 102 102 103 103 103 103 103 103 103 104 104 112 115
Contributors
Otman Bychou is a teacher of English as a foreign language in Morocco. In 2014, he became a PhD candidate in interactions in literature, culture and society at Sultan Moulay Slimane University, Beni Mellal, Morocco. He has published several articles on Morocco’s experience during the Second World War. His research interests centre mainly on memory and Moroccan participation in the Second World War. Elsie Cloete was Professor of English (Education) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg until her retirement in 2018. She is now Honorary Research Fellow at the same institution. She has published extensively on women’s studies, post-colonial studies, ecocriticism, African autobiography, and settler colonialism. Sutapa Dutta teaches in the Department of English at Gargi College, University of Delhi, India. She is currently a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. She received her doctorate degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her areas of research and publications are related to missionary writings, travel writings, women and empire, which include British Women Missionaries in Bengal, 1793–1861 (2017), Mapping India: Transitions and Transformations, 18th–19th century (Routledge, 2019), and British Women Travellers: Empire and Beyond, 1770– 1870 (Routledge, 2019). Elisa Erbe is a research assistant and doctoral candidate in German linguistics at the University of Bremen, Germany. She received her MA from the University of Göttingen in 2011. She is working on a dissertation on German language during German colonialism in Qingdao (China) at the beginning of the 20th century. Albert Gouaffo is Professor of German Literature, Cultural Studies and Intercultural Communication at the University of Dschang, Cameroon. His academic interests include colonial literature and history, post-colonial theory, remembrance theory, and intercultural communication. He is coeditor of the periodical Mont Cameroun: Zeitschrift für interkulturelle Studien zum deutschsprachigen Raum. His recent publications include
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Contributors Wissens- und Kulturtransfer im kolonialen Kontext: Das Beispiel KamerunDeutschland (1884–1919) (2007) and Mémoires et lieux de mémoire: enjeux interculturels et relations médiatiques (2016, with Sylvère Mbondobari).
Geraldine Horan is Senior Lecturer in German Language at University College London. Her research interests lie in feminist linguistics, discourse analysis, and political discourse. She is co-editor of Doing Politics: Discursivity, Performativity and Mediation in Political Discourse (2018, with Michael Kranert). Her current projects include a monograph on the discourses of German anti-feminism (1900–25) and political insults in German and English. Jonas Hübner has been Post-doctoral Research Assistant in the Department of Early Modern History, Historical Institute of the University of Duisburg-Essen since April 2019. In 2018, he completed his PhD thesis on the management and use of rural commons in early modern Germany. Prior to this, he held the post of research assistant at the Historical Institute of the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research interests include the history of rural societies, the history of colonial expansion, social history, as well as intellectual and conceptual history. Phanuel Kaapama is Lecturer for Politics, Governance and Development Studies as well as Head of the Department of Political and Administrative Studies at the University of Namibia. His areas of research interest focus on the interface between politics, transitional justice, property rights, and land questions in post-settler colonial settings. He gives regular media and public commentaries on Namibian, African, and global politics. He is currently on secondment to the Office of the President working as Deputy Chairperson of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Ancestral Land Rights Claims and Restitution. Ulrike Lindner is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cologne. Her research interests lie in imperial, colonial, and global history. She has worked on the comparative history of European empires, particularly on British and German colonies in Africa. She has also addressed post-colonial approaches, issues of knowledge transfer between European empires and questions of colonial labour, and colonial social policy. Her publications include Koloniale Begegnungen: Großbritannien und Deutschland als Imperialmächte in Afrika 1880–1914, [Colonial Encounters: Great Britain and Germany in Africa 1880–1914] (2011); Hybrid Cultures, Nervous States: Germany and Great Britain in a (Post)colonial World (2011, with Maren Möhring, Mark Stein, and Silke Stroh); Bonded Labour: Global and Comparative Perspectives (18th–21st Century) (2016, with Sabine DamirGeilsdorf, Gesine Müller, Oliver Tappe, and Michael Zeuske); and New Perspectives on the History of Gender and Empire: Comparative and Global Approaches (2018, with Dörte Lerp).
Contributors
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Moulay Lmustapha Mamaoui is a teacher of literary and cultural studies in the Department of English, Sultan M. Slimane University, Morocco. He is author of a book on D. H. Lawrence entitled Myth and Ritual in D. H. Lawrence’s Novels. He is also author of a number of articles on this same novelist and on travelogues on Morocco by British writers such as Wyndham Lewis. His research interests focus principally on culture and English literature. Stefan Manz is Professor of German and Global History at Aston University, Birmingham. His elected positions include Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Research Associate at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. His latest monograph publications include Constructing a German Diaspora. The ‘Greater German Empire’, 1871–1914 (2014, CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title) and Enemies in the Empire: Civilian Internment in the British Empire during the First World War (2020, with Panikos Panayi). Manz’s international impact work is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and communicates issues of civilian persecution during wartime to the wider public. Andreas Musolff is Professor of Intercultural Communication at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. His research interests include pragmatics of intercultural and multicultural communication, metaphor studies, and public discourse. His publications include numerous articles and book chapters and edited publications as well as the monographs Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios (2016), Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust (2010), and Metaphor and Political Discourse (2004). He was Chairman of the Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor and Senior Fellow (2017–18) and Marie Curie Fellow of the European Union at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Freiburg. Marie Géraldine Rademacher is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Tokyo. Her current research focuses on travel literature on Japan written by European women such as Marie Stopes, Clärenore Stinnes, and Alexandra David-Néel. She is essentially interested in post-colonial studies, gender studies, and psychoanalysis. Her book Narcissistic Mothers in Modernist Literature has recently been published. Besides her research work, she is also a lecturer in the Department of English at Seikei University, Tokyo. Felicity Rash is Professor of German Linguistics at Queen Mary, University of London. Her major publications include: The Language of Violence: Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (2006); German Images of the Self and the Other in German Nationalist, Colonialist and Anti-Semitic Discourse 1871– 1918 (2012); and The Strategies of German Imperialist Discourse: The Colonial Idea and Africa, 1848–1948 (2016). She also works as a freelance translator and copy-editor. See also her Facebook page with eight albums of photographs of German historical sites in Africa: www.facebook.com/ Germans-in-Africa-1236724799747362/
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Contributors
Daniel Schmidt-Brücken is currently working as a parliamentary editor at the State Parliament of Lower Saxony, Hanover. Until 2019, he was a postdoctoral researcher in German linguistics at the University of Bremen, Germany. He received his MA from the University of Göttingen in 2009 and his PhD at the University of Bremen in 2014 with a dissertation on linguistic genericity in German colonial discourses of the early 20th century. Ingo H. Warnke holds the Chair for German and Interdisciplinary Linguistics at the University of Bremen. His research interests include language in colonial contexts, specifically with reference to German colonialism, discourse analysis, and urban linguistics. He has published widely in those areas. He co-led the creative unit ‘Language in Colonial Contexts’ at the University of Bremen and he is co-speaker of the Bremen collaborative research initiative ‘Worlds of Contradiction’.
Part I
Historical and theoretical perspectives
1
Cutting up the world pie and what happened next Felicity Rash and Geraldine Horan
In an article which appeared in the Kölnische Zeitung on April 22, 1884, three days before it was announced officially that Germany’s first colony in Africa1 had been placed under the protection of the Imperial Government, Africa was compared with a large pie which the English had prepared for themselves at other people’s expense. ‘Let us hope,’ said the writer, ‘that our blue-jackets will put a few peppercorns into it on the Guinea coast, so that our friends on the Thames may not digest it too rapidly.’ It is the purpose of this pamphlet to show how Germany, after some years of careful preparation and in spite of much opposition, finally succeeded in peppering the British pie in Africa by establishing four important colonies upon the African continent. (Lewin 1914: 3)2
1 Introduction This volume explores the various connections and synergies between British and German colonialist discourses from the foundation in 1871 of the Second German Reich onwards, since this was the point in history when Germany and Britain first became serious rivals for world power. It offers contributions relevant to the study of archaeology, geography, literature, political science (the study of empire and geopolitics), sociology (the study of racism), and missionary history. The authors have understood discourse as social practice and human interaction in the broadest sense. We agree with Stuart Hall that ‘discourse’ is ‘a group of statements which provide a language for talking about… a particular type of knowledge about a topic’, in particular within the context of ideological discourses (Hall 1995: 201). We take ‘discourse’ to mean more than linguistic statements, however, and to refer to ‘the practice of producing meaning’ (ibid.) using all forms of communication, including actions. We therefore understand discourse analysis as transcending the study of individual (groups of) ‘statements’, and seek to determine the relationships between texts and developments over time within and between textual genres. Such analysis looks at linguistic manifestations of discourse as well as images and the modes of display of historical artefacts. It also takes account of the human actions, both individual and collective, which lie behind these phenomena.
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There are a number of reasons to compare British and German colonialism during the period of High Imperialism3 and within a global context. Britain and Germany were major players in the ‘Scramble for Africa’ and other, smaller, areas of competition. From the late nineteenth century they were still looking for new opportunities for overseas expansion, while the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch were becoming less active; Belgian interest in the Congo was largely a personal enterprise. Although Germany’s time as a colonial power was brief, its quick and extensive entry into the ‘Scramble’ made the British take an increased interest in the progress not only of Germany but of other colonizing nations in relation to its own ambitions. While Britain saw itself as in danger of losing its position of supremacy within the world and was particularly concerned that German interests would encroach upon India via its ports in East Africa, official policies in relation to this threat changed over time. William Gladstone, who was Liberal prime minister from 1880 to 1885, believed it undesirable for Britain to seek more imperial responsibilities; Robert Salisbury, Conservative prime minister from 1886 to 1892, aimed to expand British overseas territories: his government allowed the greatest naval expansion ever in peacetime in Britain and oversaw the partition of Africa between Britain, Germany, France, Portugal, and Italy. While both Great Britain and Germany were influenced by and had contacts with other colonizing nations during the period of High Imperialism, the fact that they occupied neighbouring territories in South-West Africa (now Namibia) and South Africa and in East Africa (now Kenya and Tanzania) led to a relationship involving both rivalry and cooperation. It became as important to set boundaries, both territorial and political, as it was to interact across those boundaries on the best possible terms. Ulrich Brand and Marcus Wissen (2017) explain the relationship between Britain and Germany as it developed during nineteenth-century liberal capitalism within the context of a wider European globalism. As a dominant power at sea and the most modern European industrial centre, Britain already had a major influence over global financial, communication, and trading structures, and the Berlin Colonial Conference confirmed common interests in global expansion and agreements as to the objectives and methods. The German Reich joined the globalizing nations, and German citizens increasingly participated in intercontinental migration, both transatlantic and to Africa. During the entire ‘long nineteenth century’ there was no getting away from the fact that British rule in India caused an imbalance of global power – this led to a certain amount of cooperation but also to tensions with Germany which grew stronger during the years leading up to the First World War; by 1914 Germany was the fourth largest European empire and ‘one of the major players in the process of globalization’ (Conrad 2011: 282). The truly global nature of British and German colonialism and their discourses is illustrated in the chapters of this volume which offer perspectives on European initiatives – missionary, political, scientific, and cultural – China
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(Musolff), Japan (Rademacher), India (Dutta), Morocco (Lmustapha Mamaoui and Bychou), Cameroon (Gouaffo), German East Africa, now Tanzania and Kenya (Cloete), South Africa (Lindner), South-West Africa, now Namibia (Kaapama and Lindner), southern Africa, Anatolia, Australia, Brazil and Russia (Manz), and Poland and Ireland (Horan). 1.1 A tangle of terminology The term ‘colonialism’ refers in its most general sense to the implanting of settlements by groups of people, a ‘colony’, on a territory which is distant from their home (Said 1993: 9; see Jonas Hübner in this volume).4 When applied to European migrations from the discovery of the New World onwards, a ‘colony’ is increasingly seen as a region which is invaded and then ruled by foreign ‘owners’ after which it becomes a ‘neu geschaffenes politisches Gebilde’ [new political construction] attached to a distant ‘motherland’ (Osterhammel and Jansen 2012: 16). Jonas Hübner’s chapter in this volume traces the gradual change in the conception of a ‘colony’ as a group of people to that of a territory acquired by an organized power, often by force: by ‘colonization’. Osterhammel and Jansen add to this definition the notion that colonizers, who are usually in a numerical minority, dominate colonized peoples and justify their actions by claiming their own cultural superiority over those peoples (ibid.: 20).5 The term ‘imperialism’ refers to the formation of an empire under the control of a national state, often as an extension to an existing empire. Imperialism is different from colonialism in that it belongs to a wider system of Weltpolitik [world politics] according to which colonies are not ends in themselves but ‘Pfänder in globalen Machspielen’ [pawns in global power politics] (ibid.: 27). Eleni Kefala defines ‘colonialism’ as a ‘particular historical manifestation of coloniality, where ‘coloniality’ is seen as founded upon the racial classification of the world’s population and as forming part of the basis of the worldsystem of capitalism’ (Kefala 2011: 1). Coloniality is a ‘thorough and farreaching global pattern of power’ that still persists today, creating vertical relations that lead to domination, conflict, and exploitation; colonialism is, more specifically, a form of political and administrative domination (ibid.). Foucault’s concept of a dispositif, also referred to as an ‘apparatus’, suitably fits colonialism since it incorporates the view that colonialism’s strategic function is always bound to power relations. Combining speech, thought, actions, and behaviours, it is an ensemble of heterogeneous elements, both spoken and unspoken: discourses, institutional and administrative mechanisms, laws, architectural installations, scientific, moral, philosophical, and philanthropic theories. The dispositif is also the mesh which can connect these elements. Significantly, the type of connection made between the elements can function to justify, reinterpret, or mask specific practices (Foucault 1978: 119f.). Giorgio Agamben extends the definition of dispositif or ‘apparatus’ to include ‘literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings’
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(Agamben 2009: 14). Ingo Warnke and Daniel Schmidt-Brücken accept Agamben’s 2009 definition of dispositif as pertinent for colonialism, since it combines multisemioticity, discursivity, materiality, power, and knowledge, in fact ‘eine heterogene Gesamtheit, die potentiell alles Erdenkliche’ [a heterogeneous totality, potentially everything conceivable] (Warnke and Schmidt-Brücken 2017: 944). They rightly assume that it is insufficient to examine colonialism from the point of view of particular themes, such as international trade, or events, such as the foundation of colonial associations, or time frames, such as 1884–1914 for Germany (ibid.: 945): the analysis of political language within its historical context is as important as that of non-linguistic features. Warnke and SchmidtBrücken therefore stress the importance of a future ‘theoretische(r) Erweiterung ereignisorientierter Diskursgeschichte zu einer dispositivorientierten historischen Pragmatik’ [theoretical expansion of event-oriented discourse history toward a dispositif-oriented pragmatics] alongside the collection, safeguarding and digitization of source material (ibid.; see also their chapter in this volume, which describes the methodology for the collection and analysis of corpora). For Homi Bhabha, the discourse of colonialism is also an ‘apparatus of power’ that creates cultural difference in the service of discrimination and authoritarianism while purporting to reflect reality. Colonial discourse has one chief objective, according to Bhabha, and this is to create a fixed and stereotyped image of colonized populations as inferior and ‘degenerate types on the basis of racial origin’ in order to justify conquest. It produces the colonized people ‘as a social reality which is at once an “Other” and yet entirely knowable and visible’ (Bhabha 1994: 70f.). For Michael Schubert, the Other has more to do with how one sees oneself, and so the Self can be described as ‘divided’. This is pertinent to colonialism in that the ability to compare and contrast oneself with an alien or exotic Other can help one (re) discover the Self. This is the type of ‘alterity’ which is seen by post-colonialist theorists as fundamental to the specific way in which racist discourse produces and interprets its subjects; it is also the reason for the Self being both drawn towards and repulsed by the Other (Schubert 2011: 401). Albert Gouaffo’s contribution to this volume shows, with particular reference to German colonialist discourse about Cameroon, that German colonialism was part of a Sonderweg or ‘special path’.6 When speaking of this Sonderweg we tend to mean a thread which many historiographers see as connecting nineteenth- with twentieth-century German history. It is a particular political track which during the German colonial period in particular consisted of Germany’s relative political backwardness, especially vis-àvis the United Kingdom [which] expressed itself in the failed bourgeois revolution, a feudalized bourgeoisie, and the political predominance of an aristocratic caste that controlled key institutions of government, including the army and bureaucracy. (Smith 2011: 24)7
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Even though a latecomer to the European competition for colonies, the German Reich was situated by colonialism within a broader global context from 1871 onwards, the peculiarity of its ‘path’ lying in the different strategies that its lateness caused it to adopt. This ‘secondary colonialism’ was characterized by a desire to catch up with established colonial powers and compete with them while at the same time imitating them (Warnke 2009: 27). Colonial discourse thus played a vital role in the construction of German national identity. The concept of ‘internal colonialism’, as explored in this volume with reference to the Ostmark [Eastern March], formerly German territory, now part of Poland, and to Ireland. ‘Colony’ and ‘colonialism’ are often seen as referring to geographically distant overseas territories, conceived in terms of the ‘core’ power (i.e. the colonial power) and the periphery (the colonized territory) (see Blaut 1992). Michael Hechter’s definition of internal colonialism expands upon this to include territories, such as Ireland, that are closer to the core, yet still suffer some degree of economic dependency, as well as social and political disempowerment (Hechter 1975). These imbalances often lead to inhabitants of these territories perceiving themselves as a distinct entity, politically and culturally, and seeking independence from the core power (ibid.: 10). Historians Moses Finley and Stephen Howe, however, have criticized this expanded view of colonialism as too vague and generalizing, arguing that not all geopolitical relationships that involve political dependency and an imbalance in power can be labelled ‘colonial’ (Finley 1976; Howe 2002). Conceptualizing a territory such as Ireland as colonial is problematic, according to Howe, as this is only one of several competing and conflicting narratives about the political past and present of the country (Howe 2002: 7–10). In a similar vein, the German Ostmark occupies a marginal status, and in colonial terms can be categorized as what historian Kirsten Kopp refers to as a ‘gray zone’ (Kopp 2011). In her chapter, Horan focuses on the concept of the ‘grey zone’ in the discursive construction of the Ostmark and Ireland as colonial territories in the works of the prominent nationalists Käthe Schirmacher and Maud Gonne, and explores the parallels between the portrayal of the colonial Self and Other as both geopolitical and gendered constructs.
2 Historical background The age of European colonialism started in the fifteenth century, with Britain, France, and Spain founding colonies in the Americas. Commencing in the mid-seventeenth century, the economic and political advantages of possessing overseas territories started to influence German nationalist ideology. One reads, for example, in Johann Joachim Becher’s Politischer Discurs of 1669: ‘Wohlan dann, dapffere Teutschen, machet, dass man in der Mapp neben neu Spanien, neu Frankreich, neu Engelland, auch ins künfftige neu Teutschland finde. Es fehlet euch so wenig an Verstand und Resolution solche Sachen zu thun als anderen Nationen’ [Bestir yourselves, then, brave Germans, take care that henceforth there be found on the map,
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besides New Spain, New France, New England, also New Germany. You are no more deficient in understanding or resolve to do such things than other nations] (quoted from Zantop 1997: 216). Before the late nineteenth century, however, the absence of a unified nation from which cultural and political influence might spread meant that Germany could not operate from the same governmental and financial base as other European nations. While Germans were welcome to settle in British and Spanish colonies in particular, they often felt that they were contributing to the successes of the colonies of other nations without reaping the same rewards. German explorers were generally unable to raise funds for their own excursions into uncharted territories and joined British expeditions instead. The British valued German scientific expertise and a largely cooperative relationship developed among explorers, such as that between Johann Reinhold Forster and James Cook on the second Pacific voyage of HMS Resolution between 1772 and 1775 (Forster 1778). Heinrich Barth joined a British expedition led by James Richardson as a scientific officer between 1849 and 1855, the primary aim of which was to end the slave trade, but also to investigate trade routes to Central Africa. During the nineteenth century, the British Empire expanded into the largest in the world and as a result, Germany felt that it had been left behind. Pro-colonialist voices were already making themselves heard in 1848 in Germany at the time of the liberal revolution, when the first calls were made for an overseas expansion assisted by an ocean-going fleet (Rash 2017: 16; see also Roscher 1856: 342). After the foundation of the Second Reich, a popular German ‘Kolonialbewegung’ [colonial movement] commenced. This was an era of both competition and collaboration between Britain and Germany which lasted until the outbreak of the First World War. Great Britain and Germany were the most obvious direct rivals of all European colonial powers during this period of increased globalization. While fostering their individual ambitions to gain and maintain prestige on the international stage, Britain and Germany also recognized the benefits to be gained from sharing expertise. From 1879, however, proponents of German overseas expansion, such as Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden and Friedrich Fabri, both of whom were founder members in 1882 of the Deutscher Kolonialverein [German Colonial Association], wrote of the need for Germany to found overseas colonies as part of a national Existenzkampf [struggle for survival]. Fabri wrote that German travellers had already explored Central Africa and that the fruits of their experience would be wasted if they were not followed up by colonization (Fabri 1879: 97). The solution was to found wellorganized colonies supported by businesses and official institutions, protected by a national navy. Germans should take a lesson from ‘unseren angelsächsischen Vettern’ [their British cousins] who have benefitted spiritually from being a seafaring nation (ibid.: 43). Along with other supporters of the colonial movement, Hübbe-Schleiden was concerned that Germans should cease to be the Völkerdünger [fertilizer of peoples] in other people’s colonies. He intended that ‘Germans would remain Germans’ in overseas diasporas (Conrad 2011: 284):
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Eine Rasse der Welt erzieht die andere, ein Menschenstamm überdauert den anderen, und welches Volk an dieser Fortentwicklung nicht thätig Antheil nimmt, das wird im Kampfe um die Existenz erliegen. Es wird zu Grunde gehen im Schlamme des Menschengeschlechts… Die Welt kann diese Arbeitskräfte unseres Volkes gebrauchen und gebraucht sie überall und alle Tage; nur uns, dem Deutschen Vaterlande, gehen sie verloren. [One world race educates the other, one human tribe survives longer than the other, and the people that does not take an active part in this development will succumb in the fight for its continued existence. It will perish in the mire of the human race… The world can make use of our German workforce and makes use of it every day; it is lost only to our German fatherland.] (Hübbe-Schleiden 1879: 381) The notion of Germany as caught in a ‘fight for survival’ and competition for ‘lebensraum’ against other European nations became a rallying cry for the conservative-nationalist Alldeutscher Verband [Pan-German League], founded in 1891 by Ernst Hasse and examined by Albert Gouaffo in this volume. For Hübbe-Schleiden, Africa was terra nullius, or ‘nobody’s country’8 and open to the European power best suited to cultivating both land and peoples, namely Germany. It lay fallow [‘brach liegen’], both in the literal sense of ‘remaining uncultivated’ and in the figurative sense of needing human civilization: ‘Die schönsten Theile unserer Weltkugel liegen noch brach und überwuchern in unerschöpflicher Ueppigkeit, einer bildenden Menschenhand harrend. Und diese Menschenhand besitzt das deutsche Volk mehr als irgend ein andres’ [The most beautiful parts of our planet lie fallow and are overgrown with infinite opulence, waiting for the care of a human hand. And the German people have such hands] (Hübbe-Schleiden 1879: 385). Needless to say, the British had long since formed an identical self-image. 2.1 Missionary activity Both British and Germans had seen themselves as belonging to the vanguard of Christian proselytizing from before the era when they became colonialist competitors. From the late eighteenth century onwards, British and German missionaries joined French, Dutch, Danish, and Swiss Christians on a largely apolitical, non-competitive basis. Such missionaries shared in the belief in the religious and cultural centrality of Europe in relation to the rest of the world and aimed to spread what they saw as a superior form of civilization to the nonEuropean world, thus increasing the wellbeing of the indigenous populations through improvements in health and education as well as saving souls. The most significant British and German religious organizations were Protestant: the London Missionary Society was active in southern Africa from 1799, likewise the British Methodists from 1816 and the Scottish Presbyterians from 1818; the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft [Rhenish Missionary Society] and the Berliner
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Mission [Berlin Mission], encouraged by British achievements, followed suit in 1829 and 1834, respectively (Latourettte 1967: 394–401). German missionaries also cooperated with the British Church Missionary Society in West Africa. The majority of Catholic overseas missions were led by French societies, but they were joined by some Portuguese, Spanish, Italians, and Germans. From the second half of the nineteenth century there was a surge in European Christian missionary activity throughout the non‘Western’ world, inspired in large part by David Livingstone’s successes in Central Africa. Evangelists from Europe and North America exploited political and economic colonial expansion, particularly into Africa, to bring Christianity to indigenous populations (ibid.: 397). Cooperation between missionaries of various nationalities was common throughout the nineteenth century and became increasingly associated with colonialist endeavours as the century progressed. Many German missionaries trained at British missionary schools and cooperation between nationalities and different Christian denominations was necessary in the target nations. Just as David Livingstone advocated the linking of missionary and trade activities as a route of future prosperity for both colonizers and colonized peoples, missionaries and colonizers shared many interests on the ground, particularly in matters of mutual protection. Missionaries depended upon colonial administrations for the provision of infrastructure; administrators depended upon the missions to educate native interpreters; English or Pidgin were used as a lingua franca in many situations. From a post-colonial perspective, the methods of missionaries can be regarded as having been underhand and dishonourable, indeed some contemporary commentators were also aware of this. To illustrate this, Kwasi Kwarteng selects a quotation from Charles Robinson’s description of the protectorate of Nigeria, acquired by the British in 1898 (Kwarteng 2011: 285). Robinson quotes the words of a lateVictorian schoolboy: Africa is a British colony. I will tell you how England makes her colonies. First she gets a missionary; when the missionary has found a specially beautiful and fertile tract of country, he gets all his people round him and says, ‘Let us pray,’ and when all the eyes are shut, up goes the British flag! (Robinson 1900: 106) Robinson responded to this view with the admonition that the ‘protectors’ should ensure that when the eyes of the ‘protected’ reopen they ‘appreciate the significance of the raising of that flag’ and ‘have reason to be grateful for its presence’ (ibid.: 106). Gert von Paczensky describes a similar state of affairs in German SouthWest Africa, where the Rhenish Mission controlled the population from 1844 onwards, i.e. before it was colonized by Germany and therefore protected by a Schutztruppe [Protection Force], by setting the tribes against one another. The missions traded with native Africans, including in guns, and were as intent
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on political control as on spreading the gospel well into the era of official German colonization; according to Paczensky, missionaries even failed in their Christian duty during the genocide of the Herero-Nama War of 1904–8, behaving more like colonizers than men of God (Paczensky 1994: 267f.). One reads that things were different in German Togoland. From the German point of view, Togoland was a model colony and an example of sympathetic methods of spreading Christianity. In particular, the Bremen and Basel missions are known for having learned and codified African languages, most notably Ewe, not only in order to spread the word of God, but also as a means of respecting native culture. But the missionaries were still a colonizing ‘Other’ and, as Osterhammel and Jansen point out, generally displayed great cultural arrogance towards people whose souls, intellects and physical health they were supposed to improve (Osterhammel and Jansen 2012: 102). Despite the existence of a humanitarian missionary ‘Left’ (ibid.), most missions supported the colonial annexation of land which they wished to Christianize. Germans in particular tended to support the views of their colonial administrations that indigenous Africans should be educated only to elementary level, since they did not have sufficient intellectual capacity to assimilate complex concepts. This view was held even by liberal missionaries, such as Michael Zahn, head of the Bremen mission in Togo from 1862 until 1900, who believed that for a true civilization to be possible, native culture should survive, but did not support the full equality of native peoples (Ahadji 2010: 196–8). Sutapa Dutta’s chapter in this volume describes attempts in the mid-nineteenth century by British administrators and German missionaries to ‘civilize’ the tribal peoples of the Chota Nagpur region in north-eastern India by introducing Western education, thus removing them from a ‘primitive’ stage of development and integrating them into mainstream colonial civilization. The methods used for such civilizatory efforts were comparable with those employed in the colonized world as a whole. 2.2 The ‘Scramble for Africa’: convergence and divergence 1884–1914 If one accepts Thomas Pakenham’s view that the so-called ‘Scramble for Africa’ began with David Livingstone’s mission to Central African and his call, before he died in 1873, for Europeans to ‘help to heal the open sore of the world’ which was the Arab slave trade on the East African coast (Waller 1874, I: 182), then the primary aim of the Scramble was for ‘trade, not the gun’ to liberate Africa (Pakenham 1991, xxiv; see also Latourette 1967: 397). Livingstone hoped that Christianity, civilization, and commerce would put an end to the ‘gloom slave-trade’ (Livingstone and Livingstone 1865: 591). He did not foresee that the initial drive by freelance explorers to bring the European brand of civilization to Sub-Saharan Africa and then to exploit its resources for economic gain would later be expanded into state policies to partition Africa between European powers, and that this would lead to a political power struggle and the eventual involvement of guns.
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For John Scott Keltie, the widespread international interest in Central Africa and the Congo, before the ‘Scramble’ proper, started with Henry Morton Stanley’s Through the Dark Continent of 1878 (Keltie 1972: 10). In the preface to his The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State (1886), Stanley himself quotes from a letter sent to him in July 1878 from the French politician, Léon Gambetta: You have thrown the light of knowledge on what you have well described as the Dark Continent. Not only, sir, have you opened up a new Continent to our view, but you have given an impulse to scientific and philanthropic enterprise which will have a material effect on the progress of the world… What you have done has influenced Governments. (Stanley 1886: vi) This echoes Stanley’s stated aim of opening up the Congo for philanthropy and commerce. In Britain, politicians believed that the French were incapable of colonizing and the Germans were not interested (Louis 1967: 3). Their response to King Leopold II’s Brussels Geographic Conference of 1876 and his invitation to Stanley to help him ‘civilize’ the Congo region was, according to Stanley, half-hearted, and Leopold’s foundation of the International Congo Society in 1879 was largely ignored (Stanley 1886: 36). The German response was more enthusiastic: the Afrikanische Gesellschaft in Deutschland [African Society in Germany] was formed in 1876, and, following a change of heart on the part of Chancellor Bismarck with regard to the desirability of a German colonial expansion, the Berliner Kongokonferenz (referred to in English as the Berlin Conference) was held between 15 November 1884 and 26 February 1885. This led to what Keltie has called Germany’s ‘apparently inexplicable outburst of colonizing zeal’ (Keltie 1972: 17) – at least in the view of the British at the time. In 1884, the first German colony was founded with British approval in South-West Africa and in the same year Gustav Nachtigal, imperial commissioner for West Africa, created the German Protectorate of Cameroon. In February 1885, a Schutzbrief [Charter of Protection] was awarded to Carl Peters’ Deutsche Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft [German East African Society] by Kaiser Wilhelm II (Peters 1906: 93f., where the charter, signed by both the Kaiser and Bismarck, is reproduced in full). According to Ulrike Lindner’s sources, Germany’s joining the Scramble marked an acceleration in a movement towards globalization, the High Imperialism which came to be dominated by Britain and Germany, accompanied by the paradoxes associated with the advantages of global communications on the one hand and the problems of burgeoning nationalisms on the other (Lindner 2011: 15). When Germany first entered the race to possess colonies she was aware of her role as a newcomer and tended to look to Great Britain as a model with which to compare herself and, where appropriate, to emulate. Occasionally, more nationalistically inclined discourse makers made a plea to see Britain as an enemy that threatened Germany’s very existence, and the motif of ‘Sein oder Nichtsein’ [to be or not to be] made an appearance. The
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German perception of British colonial practice was, however, generally positive, at least at first. The British were seen as experienced colonizers; the Germans saw themselves as less experienced but with the ability to catch up. The British, for their part, paid less attention to German colonialist ambitions than the other way round (Lindner 2011: 65). Initially they welcomed ‘the development of the Teuton abroad’ in West Africa, especially in the ‘sterile sand hole’ of South-West Africa, but they were less relaxed about a German presence in East Africa, which could obstruct British access to its valuable Indian territory (Louis 1967: 4). In 1885, the British prime minister William Gladstone told Parliament that as far as Germany’s colonial ambitions were concerned ‘we should meet her with no grudging spirit’; the opinions expressed in various press articles were, however, less accommodating, and concern was also expressed at the speed with which Germany was expanding (Lindner 2011: 67). 2.3 After 1900 From the turn of the twentieth century, British colonial discourse in particular highlighted specific events in the colonies which attracted the attention of interested parties and changed the relationship between Britain and Germany. Most importantly, the view was propagated that there should be a fair partition of Africa between Britain and Germany. The Boer War (1899–1902) posed a particular problem for the British because it became necessary to dissuade Germany from participating on the side of the Dutch. The Germans were appeased with a promise that if the Portuguese colonies were to suffer bankruptcy, Germany and Great Britain would share out the Portuguese territories, with northern Mozambique and northern and southern Angola going to Germany and central Angola and southern Mozambique to Britain (Louis 1967: 26). British views on the German handling of the Herero-Nama uprising (1904–6) were ambivalent. On the one hand, British press reports criticized the Germans for the inability to control their colony and their brutal suppression of the revolt; on the other hand, there were some expressions of sympathy for the Germans’ misfortunes. The British were in any case able to congratulate themselves on their superiority as colonizers and their more humane methods (Lindner 2011: 74). Following this bloody war, German policy underwent reform, with the goal of a more humane approach, embracing ‘cultural-missionary ideals’. Colonial secretary Bernhard Dernburg recommended that the colonies and their people should be exploited for the profit of both colonizing and colonized peoples, albeit in a very unequal exchange of benefits: ‘die Nutzbarmachung des Bodens, seiner Schätze, der Flora, der Fauna und vor allem der Menschen zugunsten der Wirtschaft der kolonisierenden Nation und diese (ist) dafür zu der Gegengabe ihrer höheren Kultur, ihrer sittlichen Begriffe, ihrer besseren Methoden verpflichtet’ [making use of the land, its treasures, its flora and fauna, and above all its people, in the service of the colonizing nation; in return, the colonizers will be obliged to share their higher culture, their moral concepts and their superior methods] (quoted from Rash 2017: 20).
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Right up until the outbreak of the First World War, both British and German Foreign Offices sought to maintain a good relationship. From the Boer War onwards, it was popular daily newspapers, such as the Daily Mail, that fanned public opinion to turn against Germany, and German nationalist propagandists such as Heinrich Claß, head of the Alldeutscher Verband [Pan-German League] from 1908, portrayed Great Britain as a greedy enemy intent on destroying Germany. Claß’s newspaper articles and his Wenn ich der Kaiser wär of 1913 were particularly provocative to the British and, writing at the beginning of the First World War, C.L.R. Fletcher accused the League of causing the war (Fletcher 1914b: 14). Fletcher quotes at length from an article in the League’s Alldeutscher Blätter, written by K.F. Wolff, which claimed that: ‘It is unjust that a rapidly increasing master-race should be struggling for room behind its own frontier while a declining inferior-race can stretch its limbs at ease on the other side of that frontier’ (1914b: 27). Fletcher’s conclusion was: ‘They are coming to get our colonies, which are filled with Germans because no German will go to their own’ (Fletcher 1914a: 23). After the first few months of the First World War, any British views of Germany as a suitable world ruler vanished. By 1916, Germany had lost all of its territories apart from German East Africa, which finally capitulated on 25 November 1918: it was envisaged that at the end of the war former German territories in Africa and the Pacific would be absorbed into South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand (Louis 1967: 41). Germany did not, however, cease to see itself as a global player, and its aspiration to remain in the game did not cease after it lost its colonies at the Treaty of Versailles. A discourse of colonialist desire and also of self-justification continued well into the Second World War (see, for example, von Lettow-Vorbeck 1920, Leutwein 1937, and Diel 1939). In 1940, Margarethe von Eckenbrecher was already looking forward to an end to the South African mandate in South-West Africa and a glorious German return to power. German pro-colonial ideologues saw Britain and the United States, major architects of the Treaty of Versailles, as the chief obstacles to their regaining their lost colonies.
3 British and German colonialist attitudes and methods 1884–1914 Colonialism is a dispositif which builds and builds upon the self-image of the colonizers and the construction of images of the colonized ‘Other’. During the period of High Imperialism, the building of both British and German selfimages as colonial overlords involved parallel and similar discourses. While British and German colonialists strived for similar identities, they frequently sought to keep these distinct from one another and this led to tensions between what the two sets of colonizers had in common and what separated them. Ulrike Lindner calls this an ‘entangled history’, a mixture of entwinement and rivalry (Lindner 2011: 24). What Britain and Germany had in common was their feeling of superiority toward the colonized peoples and their aim to find the best way to control them. What the colonized people had
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in common was that being colonized was the same whoever was doing it. There were also differences within nationalities as to whether colonial policy was a matter of discussions taking place in the motherland (e.g. about the extent to which colonization was a ‘civilizing mission’, a notion more favoured by the British side than by Germany) or ways of living in the colonies themselves. As far as the latter situation was concerned, British and German colonial administrators and entrepreneurs living in bordering territories inevitably cooperated (ibid.: 100). Whereas the British were an early model for the German latecomers in respect of setting up colonial administrations, trading routes, and businesses, German colonizers gained experience and put their own imprint upon colonized territories. Britain soon became a student as well as a teacher, in particular in matters of infrastructure and science (Lindner 2011: 459). During the decade leading up to the First World War in particular, colonialism became a global concern, with knowledge being shared among colonizers, especially in matters of transport and telecommunication networks, medical, and other scientific advances. Lindner’s thorough documentation of British and German interactions and differences during High Imperialism explains that despite a tendency towards a stereotyping of the British as liberal and the Germans as authoritarian colonizers, this is an overgeneralization. A wide variety of complex factors was involved, both in respect of colonialists in the homelands and of colonizers on the ground (Lindner 2011: 466). A number of common stereotypes were, however, current even before the 1880s: the British saw the typical German as gründlich [thorough], militaristic, and bureaucratic, while the German idea of the British was of their being fundamentally easy-going, tolerant, and slapdash (ibid.: 85). The Germans saw themselves as peaceful and well organized, while the British saw themselves as peaceful and humane (Conrad 2012: 2). Once the British and Germans were in competition as colonizers, the British judged the Germans to be too inflexible to be pragmatic and successful in their colonial rule, while the Germans believed that the ‘laissez-faire’ attitude of the British would inevitably lead to problems in controlling their colonies (Lindner 2011: 86). The British and the Germans shared attitudes towards the colonized ‘Other’ in many respects. It was important for all colonizing Europeans to maintain the prestige associated with being colonial ‘masters’. As latecomers on the colonial scene, German colonizers had access to a set of new theories on race which had not been current when the British first set up their colonies. This led to somewhat different racist practices and laws in the two types of colony. While most Europeans eventually subscribed to the newer view of black people as biologically inferior human beings, the British had more experience than the Germans of such things as racial mixture resulting from mixed-marriage and cohabitation, and some, at least, were inclined to tolerate a variety of inter-racial relationships. The Germans, for their part, were more inclined to accept social Darwinist theories regarding the superiority of the white ‘race’ and practised a ‘rule of colonial difference’ which included strict
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laws against inter-racial marriage (Conrad 2012: 4; see also Albert Gouaffo’s chapter in this volume and El-Tayeb 2001: 92–108 on laws pertaining to racial mixture and German citizenship). The Pan-German League, which was chiefly interested in colonial politics from the point of view of finding lebensraum for German citizens, also decried mixed marriages in the colonies (Hasse 1907: 61). When Ernst Hasse wrote in 1907 ‘Unsere Zukunft liegt im Blute!’ [Our future is in our blood!] (ibid.: 46), he had not only Jews and Poles in mind as ‘races’ whose blood should not be mixed with that of pure-raced Germans, but colonized peoples. The British and Germans to some extent had different ideas on what constituted a danger to the koloniale Ordnung [orderly management of the colonies]. According to Ulrike Lindner, too great a leniency toward the black Other created not only a disruption of a natural racial hierarchy but also of the normal gender hierarchy in European households (Lindner 2011: 321). On the whole it was most convenient for colonizers to accept the view that the ‘civilizing mission’ had its limitations and that colonized peoples were incapable of becoming equal to Europeans in culture or intellect. It was obvious to them that it was right and necessary to control the native peoples and it removed the need to justify subjugation and the limiting of full access to education for indigenous peoples (ibid.: 310). There is little evidence in discourse of the attitudes of the colonized peoples toward their rulers, but we can only imagine that these were not identical with those claimed by the colonizers. Both British and German colonizers liked to imagine that they were ‘good colonizers’, loved and respected by their subjects, and this is what they claimed in much of their discourse. Modern scholars who wish to reconstruct this historical period from the point of view of colonized peoples have a difficult task, since it is not common for history written by the powerful to give a voice to the powerless and less well educated. A few published women’s diaries showed their writers willing to observe and describe Africans as individuals rather than as a unified black Other, and to exhibit more empathy toward them than their male counterparts, possibly due to their own inferior social status. They never, however, conceived of black women as equals (Rash 2017: 134). From 1900 onwards, anti-colonialist sentiments were evident and increasing in both Britain and Germany, especially among socialists and certain religious groups. An increasing number of political crises, wars against indigenous peoples, and scandals involving colonizers and their military defenders caused some misgivings in the homelands as to whether colonies could be justified, and the debate over the political and economic usefulness of colonization took on an increasingly global perspective (Stuchtey 2010: 220–3). The ‘Fall Peters’ [Carl Peters Affair] serves as an example of the damage that could be caused within one nation by the misdemeanours of an individual. Peters fought back against his critics with all his might until his death in 1918, calling anti-colonialists philistines, pedants, Spießbürger [bourgeois], and Krähwinkler [rednecks] (ibid.: 248). On the British side, critics were more interested in larger-
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scale scandals, such as concentration camps in South Africa, which triggered global concern from 1901 onwards. British and American critics claimed that colonialism harmed not only colonized populations but also those at home who had to pay for increased militarism (ibid.: 368f.). Missionaries were among the groups of critics who were particularly vocal on the negative effects of colonialism upon colonized populations. Robert Streit’s memoir Ein, Opfer der Hottentotten (1907), tells of a visit to the missionary Franz Jäger in German South-West Africa shortly after the HereroNama uprising. Jäger tells Streit that greedy and incompetent colonizers have taken over regions of the world named ‘nobody’s country’ by the Europeans who drew the maps, and have brought problems rather than enlightenment to indigenous Africans. Streit told the often unpopular truth about colonized regions which were not terra nullius but already occupied: Da lebte das schwarze Volk. Da – vor ein paar Jahrhunderten – war die Karte noch ein weißes Blatt. Und da kamen die Weißen, und nahmen die Karte zur Hand und legten sie selbstbewußt vor uns hin auf den Tisch, wie ein Professor, der Unterricht geben will.… Und die einen sagten: ‘Das ist mein!’ – Und die anderen sagten: ‘Das ist mein!’ [Black people lived there. A few centuries ago that part of the world was still a white space on the map. And then the white people came along. They took the map and placed it self-importantly on a table like a professor giving a lecture… And some said: ‘That’s mine!’ – and others said: ‘That’s mine!’] (Streit 1907: 80f.) Despite this criticism, Jäger believes that was Europeans who had to help Africa into a state of Christian civilization.
4 Post-colonial matters Anti-colonialism and decoloniality have become issues of increasing importance in recent years. Places and roads in former colonies have been ‘decolonized’, i.e. renamed, and statues of prominent colonialists and symbols of colonial power hidden or destroyed. The movements ‘Decolonize Berlin’ and ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ have, for example, called for the renaming of Petersallee, Nachtigalplatz, and Mohrenstraße in Berlin-Mitte and the removal of statues of Cecil Rhodes from university campuses, starting with the University of Cape Town. The offensive ‘Reiterdenkmal’, listing fallen German ‘heroes’ without any mention of the tens of thousands of slaughtered Herero and Nama people, has been moved from its former very public position in the centre of the Namibian capital, Windhoek. A seemingly abandoned (or at the very least not prominently positioned) bust of Queen Victoria at Cape Coast in Ghana illustrates a general lack of interest in colonial history on the part of residents of the former British colony. A question to
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Figure 1.1 The ‘Reiterdenkmal’ was erected in 1912 accompanied by the memorial plaque
one of the authors of this chapter from a young colleague at the University of Legon, Accra, makes one wonder how many Ghanaians know or care who Victoria was: he asked if it was Queen Victoria who visited Ghana in the 1970s. One might speculate that decoloniality is at play here. The inhabitants of former colonies are increasingly taking charge of their own histories and the processes of decoloniality. One has to understand that decolonization has not yet succeeded in removing coloniality, which is not to be confused with colonialism and survives in the long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of past direct colonization (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013). Decoloniality involves eliminating the post-colonial myth that destroying colonial administrations would decolonize the world. It involves the decolonization of knowledge, power, and identity, and retelling the history of humanity and knowledge generation from a democratized, de-Westernized, de-hegemonized perspective (ibid.: 14). The African experience is especially pertinent:
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Figure 1.2 Bust of Queen Victoria at Cape Coast, Ghana
What Africans must be vigilant against is the trap of ending up normalising and universalising coloniality as a natural state of the world. It must be unmasked, resisted and destroyed because it produced a world order that can be sustained through a combination of violence, deceit, hypocrisy and lies. (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013: 10) Research bodies such as the Africa Decolonial Research Network and the Archie Mafeje Research Institute, both based at the University of South Africa, play a vital role in knowledge generation and the promotion of decolonial thinking. Recent years have seen a welcome but limited movement away from the analysis of colonial history by the descendants of former colonizers toward the mainstream publication of research by the descendants of the colonized peoples, especially where Germany is concerned. A splendid, richly illustrated publication accompanying an exhibition on colonial history at the German Historical Museum in Berlin (2016) contains contributions by Flower Manase Msuya on
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Tanzania, Patrice Nganang on Cameroon, Gilbert Dotsé Yigbe on Togo, Wazi Apoh on German Togoland (now Ghana), Damien Rwegera on Rwanda, Malama Meleisea and Penelope Schoeffel on Samoa, and Yixu Lü on Qingdao. H. Nii-Adziri Wellington’s 2017 history of the Danish settlement of Accra has received international acclaim for its style, which adopts the traditional African tradition of story-telling and employs an omniscient semi-mythical narrator. The Ghanaian archaeologist Wazi Apoh is currently investigating the residues of colonial competition and convergence in the same locations or contexts in former German and later British Togoland, now the Volta, Oti, and North-East regions of present-day Ghana. Many excavation sites, such as the colonized sites of Ho, Kete-Krachi, Kpando, and Amedzofe in the Volta Region, reveal tangible and intangible residues of colonial entanglements within what Apoh terms ‘palimpsest archaeological contexts’. Apoh’s excavations shed light not only on the commercial and missionary activities of the colonizers but on their everyday lives. They also illustrate the effects of European colonization upon indigenous cultural and religious practices, precolonial settlement structures and architecture, and indigenous institutions and technologies (Apoh 2014, 2016: 97). A disturbing matter to be kept in mind, however, is the continued denial of colonial wrong-doing on the part of a small number of ‘researchers’, such as the Namibian farmer Hinrich Schneider-Waterberg. A particular area of contention is the topic of German cruelty toward and intended genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples during the uprising of 1904–7, which Schneider-Waterberg claims to have been greatly exaggerated (Schneider-Waterberg 2005). Research by Olusoga and Erichsen provides historical evidence and photographic material to prove the extent of the genocide (Olusoga and Erichsen 2010). Demands for reparations would appear to be justified – the likes of Schneider-Waterberg claim that reparation payments would demean the recipients (Schneider-Waterberg 2005: 22).
5 Conclusion This chapter has shown the value of examining British and German colonialism in comparative perspective, a perspective which is taken up by the chapters which follow. It will be seen that both Britain and Germany played significant roles in globalization from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries and that, initially at least, cooperation predominated, since mutual recognition and collaboration bore fruit for both parties. The notion of a ‘common goal’ as colonizers weakened and tensions increased until they came to a head at the beginning of the First World War. The present volume as a whole contributes to the ways in which past colonial practices can be reexamined with a view to increasing understanding of the legacy of the past in a modern world which is still experiencing the negative effects of ‘Western’ world hegemony – a hegemony which in many ways is continuing and mutating to cause new global problems.
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Our common goal as post-colonial societies must be to learn from our shared pasts. Repatriation of stolen artefacts is essential but inadequate. It is no more than window-dressing, a way of downplaying the responsibilities of former colonizing nations (Habermas and Lindner 2018). The voices of descendants of formerly colonized peoples must be heard, and their research must be made more widely accessible. Wazi Apoh summarizes this point of view most aptly. He calls for a multidimensional and intercultural dialogue to form a basis for improved academic, political, and economic connections. The Eurocentric perspective that still dominates research into the legacy of colonialism must be rebalanced (Apoh 2016: 98). In order to achieve this, residents of former colonies must be able to travel and participate in the world-wide post-colonial discussion, and more funding must be made available for events to be held in former colonies. This volume has been made more complete through the contributions of two scholars from African countries who were unable to attend the conference: ‘The Discourse of British and German Colonialism: Convergence and Competition’, held in London in September 2018: a key-note speaker who was refused a visa to enter the United Kingdom, and a speaker who was unable to gain financial support. At the end of this chapter we return to the image of the world as a pie to be cut up and portioned out by Europeans. We recognize that the inhabitants of former colonies have ingredients of sufficient quantity and quality to bake their own pie and enough knowledge to cut it up and distribute the portions appropriately.
Notes 1 This was German South-West Africa. 2 The German original reads as follows: ‘Africa wurde kürzlich mit einem großen Pudding verglichen, den sich die Engländer auf Kosten aller andern bereiten und der an seinem Rande schon zur Verspeisung gar wäre. Wir wollen hoffen, daß unsere Blaujacken ihm an der Guineaküste einige Körner Pfeffer hinzuthun, auf daß es unsere Freunde an der Themse mit der Verdauung nicht zu schnell machen’ (Kölnische Zeitung, 22 April 1884: 2). 3 The period following the foundation of the German Second Reich until the outbreak of the First World War is often referred to as ‘High Imperialism’ (German Hochimperialismus). It was characterized by increasing competition between Britain and Germany. 4 The term ‘colony’ (German Kolonie) derives from Latin colere (to cultivate, inhabit) via colonia ‘farm, settlement’ and colonus ‘farmer, settler’. The Oxford English Dictionary documents colony in two major senses. The first is that of ‘farm, landed estate, settlement’, first attested in 1566; the second is colony II, 4a and 4b, in the more modern sense of ‘a settlement in a new country; a body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state’ and ‘the territory peopled by such a community’, attested from 1612 with reference to Ireland as an English colony. For German, the earliest detailed reference to a Colonie is to be found in Adelung’s Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch (1793): Die Colonie: ‘ein Ort, der von Ausländern angebaut worden; eine Pflanzstadt, Pflanzung, dergleichen die Engländischen Colonien in Amerika sind’. Grimm does not document
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Felicity Rash and Geraldine Horan Colonie or Kolonie, but Pflanzung 4 is listed as ansiedelung, colonie, attested from the eighteenth century, and Pflanzvolk ‘planters’: ‘zur gründung einer colonie ausziehendes oder dieselbe bewohnendes volk, die gesamtheit der colonisten’. The Oxford English Dictionary defines colonialism 1 as ‘the practice or manner of things colonial’ as in use from 1864, and colonialism 2 as ‘the colonial system or principle’ from 1886. See also Conrad, who refers to Germany’s ‘peculiar path’ (Conrad 2011: 282); his 2012 monograph further defines ‘Sonderweg’ as a ‘“special path” between east and west’ (Conrad 2012: 184). This view runs counter to that which emphasizes the modernity of the Kaiserreich, the relative strength of the bourgeoisie, and the flourishing of populist politics from the 1890s onward (Smith 2011: 24). On the notion that parts of Africa were terra nullius or ‘land claimed by no state’, therefore free for occupation by colonizers, see Betts (1972: vii). See also Stefan Manz’s definition of vacuum domicilium in this volume.
References Adelung, Johann Christoph (1811 [1793]), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart. Vienna. Agamben, Giorgio (2009), What Is an Apparatus? And Other Essays. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ahadji, Amétépé Yawovi (2010), ‘Colonisation, évangélisation et identité culturelle des Ewes au Sud Togo (1847–1914)’, in Christine de Gemeaux (ed.), Empires et Colonies. L’Allemagne, du Saint-Empire au Deuil Postcolonial. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 185–206. Apoh, Wazi (2014), ‘The Archaeology of German and British Colonial Entanglement’, Journal of Historical Archaeology 17, 351–375. Apoh, Wazi (2016), ‘Ruinen, Relikte und Recherche. Sichtbare Spuren und spürbare Folgen der preussischen und deutschen Kolonialvergangenheit in Ghana’, in Deutscher Kolonialismus. Fragmente seiner Geschichte und Gegenwart. Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 92–99. Betts, Raymond (1972), ‘Introduction’, in Raymond Betts (ed.), The ‘Scramble’ for Africa: Causes and Dimensions of Empire. Lexington: D.C. Heath, vii–xxi. Bhabha, Homi K. (1994), The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Blaut, James Morris (1992), The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New York: Guildford Press. Brand, Ulrich and Markus Wissen (2017), Imperiale Lebensweise. Zur Ausbeutung von Mensch und Natur im globalen Kapitalismus. Munich: oekom verlag. Claß, Heinrich (pseudonym Daniel Frymann) (1913 [1912]), Wenn ich der Kaiser wär’ – Politische Wahrheiten und Notwendigkeiten, 4th edition. Leipzig: Dieterich’sche Buchhandlung. Conrad, Sebastian (2011), ‘Wilhelmine Nationalism in Global Contexts: Mobility, Race, and Global Consciousness’, in Sven Oliver Müller and Cornelius Torp (eds), Imperial Germany Revisited: Continuing Debates and New Perspectives. New York: Berghahn, 281–296. Conrad, Sebastian (2012), German Colonialism: A Short History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diel, Louise (1939), Die Kolonien warten!Leipzig: Reclam.
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Eckenbrecher, Margarethevon (2007 [1940]), Was Afrika mir gab und nahm: Erlebnisse einer deutschen Ansiedlerfrau in Südwestafrika 1902–1936. Swakopmund: Peter’s Antiques. El-Tayeb, Fatima (2001), Schwarze Deutsche. Der Diskurs um ‘Rasse’ und naitanle Identität 1890–1933. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Fabri, Friedrich (1879), Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien? Eine politisch-ökonomische Betrachtung. Gotha: Perthes. Finley, Moses I. (1976), ‘Colonies: An Attempt at a Typology’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 26, 167–188. Fletcher, C.R.L. (1914a), The Germans I: Their Empire. How They Have Made It. London: Oxford University Press. Fletcher, C.R.L. (1914b), The Germans II: What they Covet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forster, Johann Reinhold (1778), Observations Made during a Voyage Round the World, on Physical Geography, Natural History, and Ethic Philosophy. London: G. Robinson. Foucault, Michel (1978), Dispositive der Mach, Über Sexualität, Wissen und Wahrheit. Berlin: Merve Verlag. Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1838–1971), Deutsches Wörterbuch. Leipzig: S. Hirzel. Habermas, Rebekka and Ulrike Lindner (2018), ‘Rückgabe – und mehr!’, Die Zeit: Geschichte 19. Hall, Stuart (1995), ‘The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power’, in Stuart Hall, David Held, Don Hubert and Kenneth Thompson (eds), Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies. Oxford: Polity Press, 185–227. Hasse, Ernst (1907), Deutsche Politik, Vol. 1: Die Zukunft des Deutschen Volkstums. Munich: J.F. Beckmann’s Verlag. Hechter, Michael (1975), Internal Colonialism. The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966. Berkeley: University of California Press. Howe, Stephen (2002), Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hübbe-Schleiden, Wilhelm (1879), Ethiopien. Studien über West-Afrika. Hamburg: L. Friederichsen & Co. Kefala, Eleni (2011), ‘Introduction’, in Eleni Kefala (ed.), Negotiation Difference in the Hispanic World: From Conquest to Globalism. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 1–27. Keltie, John Scott (1972 [1893]), ‘The Scramble after Years of Preliminary Activity’, in Raymond Betts (ed.), The ‘Scramble’ for Africa: Causes and Dimensions of Empire. Lexington: D.C. Heath, 9–19. Kopp, Kirsten (2011), ‘Gray Zones: On the Inclusion of “Poland” in the Study of German Colonialism’, in Michael Perraudin and Jürgen Zimmerer (eds), German Colonialism and National Identity. New York: Routledge, 33–44. Kwarteng, Kwasi (2011), Ghosts of Empire: Britain’s Legacy in the Modern World. London: Bloomsbury. Latourette, Kenneth Scott (1967), ‘The Spread of Christianity: British and German Missions in Africa’, in Gifford Prosser and W.M. Roger Louis (eds), Britain and Germany in Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press, 393–416. Lettow-Vorbeck, Paulvon (1920), Heia Safari! Erinnerungen aus Ostafrika. Leipzig: K. F. Koehler. Leutwein, Paul (1937), Das deutsche Afrika und seine Zukunft. Berlin: Weller.
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Lewin, Evans (1914), The Germans in Africa. London: Oxford University Press. Lindner, Ulrike (2011), Koloniale Begegnungen. Deutschland und Großbritannien als Kolonialmächte in Afrika 1880–1914. Frankfurt: Campus. Livingstone, David and Charles Livingstone (1865), Narratives of an Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries, and of the Discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa 1858–1864. London: John Murray. Louis, W.M. Roger (1967), ‘Great Britain and German Expansion in Africa’, in Prosser Gifford and W.M. Roger Louis (eds), Britain and Germany in Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press, 3–46. Lü, Yixu (2016), ‘Ein Platz an der Sonne. Spuren des deutschen Kolonialismus in Qingdao’, in Deutscher Kolonialismus. Fragmente seiner Geschichte und Gegenwart. Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 110–117. Meleisea, Malama and Penelope Schoeffel (2016), ‘Vor und nach der Kolonisierung. Deutsche Präsenz in Samoa’, in Deutscher Kolonialismus. Fragmente seiner Geschichte und Gegenwart. Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 118–127. Msuya, Flower Manase (2016), ‘Widerstand, Freiheit und Nationenbildung. Erinnerungen an die deutsche koloniale Vergangenheit in Tansania’, in Deutscher Kolonialismus. Fragmente seiner Geschichte und Gegenwart. Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 67–73. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. (2013), ‘Why Decoloniality in the 21st Century?’, The Thinker 48, 10–15. Nganang, Patrice (2016), ‘Erzählungen des Kolonialismus, Nationalismus und des Ichs. Schreiben unter koloniale Herrschaft in Kamerun’, in Deutscher Kolonialismus. Fragmente seiner Geschichte und Gegenwart. Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 84–91. Olusoga, David and Caspar Erichsen (2010), The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide. London: Faber and Faber. Osterhammel, Jürgen and Jan C. Jansen (2012), Kolonialismus. Geschichte, Formen, Folgen, Seventh edition. Munich: C.H. Beck. Paczensky, Gertvon (1994), Teurer Segen, Christliche Mission und Kolonialismus. Was im Namen Christi verbrochen wurde. Munich: Goldmann. Pakenham, Thomas (1991), The Scramble for Africa. London: Abacus. Peters, Carl (1906), Die Gründung von Deutsch-Ostafrika. Kolonialpolitische Erinnerungen und Betrachtungen. Berlin: Schwetschke. Rash, Felicity (2017), The Discourse Strategies of Imperialist Writing. The German Colonial Idea and Africa, 1848–1945. New York: Routledge. Robinson, Charles Henry (1900), Nigeria: Our Latest Protectorate. London: Horace Marshall; reprinted by Negro Universities Press, New York in 1969. Roscher, Wilhelm (1856 [1848]), Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung. Leipzig: C.F. Winter’sche Verlagshandlung. Rwegera, Damien (2016), ‘Ein König im Dienst des Kaiserlichen Residenten und die Versunkene „Bodelschwingh’. Spuren der deutschen Kolonialzeit in Ruanda’, in Deutscher Kolonialismus. Fragmente seiner Geschichte und Gegenwart. Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 100–109. Said, Edward (1993), Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf. Schneider-Waterberg, Hinrich R. (2005), Der Wahrheit eine Gasse. Anmerkungen zum Kolonialkrieg in Deutsch-Südwestafrika 1904. Swakopmund: Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft.
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Schubert, Michael (2011), ‘The “German Nation” and the “Black Other”: Social Darwinism and the Cultural Mission in German Colonial Discourse’, Patterns of Prejudice 45/5, 399–416. Smith, Helmut Walser (2011), ‘When the Sonderweg Debate Left Us’, in Sven Oliver Müller and Cornelius Torp (eds), Imperial Germany Revisited: Continuing Debates and New Perspectives. New York: Berghahn, 21–36. Stanley, Henry Morton (1886 [1885]), The Congo and the Founding of its Free State: A Story of Work and Exploration, Vol. 1. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington. Stanley, Henry Morton (1890 [1878]), Through the Dark Continent or the Sources of the Nile around the Great Lakes of Equatorial Africa and down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic Ocean. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington. Streit, Robert (1907), Ein Opfer der Hottentotten. Dem Volke und der Jugend erzählt. Dülmen i.W.: a. Laumann’sche Buchhandlung. Verleger des heil. Apostol. Stuhles. Stuchtey, Benedikt (2010), Die europäische Expansion und ihre Feinde: Kolonialismuskritik vom 18. in das 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Waller, Horace (1874), The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to his Death, 2 vols. London: John Murray. Warnke, Ingo (2009), ‘Deutsche Sprache und Kolonialismus. Umrisse eines Forschungsfeldes’, in Ingo Warnke (ed.), Deutsche Sprache und Kolonialismus. Aspekte der nationalen Kommunikation 1884–1919. Berlin: de Gruyter, 3–62. Warnke, Ingo and Daniel Schmidt-Brücken (2017), ‘Kolonialismus’, in Thomas Niehr, Jörg Kilian, and Martin Wengeler (eds), Handbuch Sprache und Politik, Vol. 3. Bremen: Hempen Verlag, 935–953. Wellington, Nii-Adziri (2017), Stones Tell Stories at Osu: Memories of a Host Community of the Danish Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Second edition. Beaumont: Amerley Treb Books. Yigbe, Gilbert Dotsé (2016), ‘Erfahrung und Erinnerung. Deutsche Kolonialgeschichte in Togo’, in Deutscher Kolonialismus. Fragmente seiner Geschichte und Gegenwart. Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 128–137. Zantop, Susanne (1997), Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870. Durham: Duke University Press.
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Neither colonies nor colonialism? The early modern semantics of European expansion in German political economics (1700–1800) Jonas Hübner
1 Introduction In his case for a history of concepts of the 20th century, Christian Geulen recently suggested ‘colony’ as one of the influential terms that reached ‘grundbegrifflichen Status’ [basic conceptual status] during that period, because it captured structural change and shaped the political sphere of modernity (Geulen 2010: 95). Semantic studies about the concept of ‘colony’ can, however, still be considered a research desideratum. In the Lexikon zur Überseegeschichte [Encyclopaedia of Overseas History], none of the more than 2,000 articles are dedicated to ‘colony’ as a historical phenomenon (Hiery 2015). Neither ‘colony’ nor ‘colonialism’ rank among the 122 Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe [basic historical concepts] that were chosen for the German standard work of conceptual history edited by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck (1972–92). A general lack of semantic studies that deal with historical notions of ‘colonialism’ was also recognized by Jürgen Osterhammel in his theoretical overview of the topic (Osterhammel 2005: 3). Osterhammel distinguishes between ‘colonization’ as ‘a process of territorial acquisition’, ‘colony’ as ‘a particular type of sociopolitical organization’ and ‘colonialism’ as ‘a system of domination’ (Osterhammel 2005: 4). Based on this distinction the present chapter investigates the reflection of ‘colony’ as a ‘Grundbegriff’ [basic historical concept] in contemporary encyclopaedias as well as in the political and economic literature of the 18th century (Koselleck 1972: xiii–xxvii; White 2002: ix–xiv). Since the term ‘colony’ in an early modern sense denoted first and foremost all kinds of ‘colonization’ in human history, Osterhammel’s distinction allows a concise determination of this ‘phenomenon of colossal vagueness’ (Osterhammel 2005: 4). No ‘colony’ emerged from any territorial acquisition as a distinct sociopolitical organization to become a dependent periphery within a system of domination by the centre of expansion (Osterhammel 2005: 4, 10, 16 f.). Thus, the investigation will focus on those historically changeable relations of convergence or divergence between ‘colonization’ and ‘colonialism’ which were semantically subsumed by the concept of ‘colony’. The question is whether and how far the meaning of ‘colony’ not only comprised processes of territorial acquisition, but also
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relationships of domination. To detect ‘colonialism’ in an age that had not yet formed an explicit concept of this phenomenon, the term ‘colony’ is applied as a semasiological tracer to be interrogated by Osterhammel’s onomasiological criteria for its colonialist meaning. Hence historical sources address ‘colonialism’ when they describe ‘colonies’ as distinct and dependent sociopolitical organizations. Although economic and political scholars of the Holy Roman Empire observed the European expansion mostly in the absence of their own colonial activities, their perception especially of English and French colonialism shaped their conceptual understanding of it within the specific context of German political economy. This understanding shifted significantly in the course of the 18th century: a particular, personal perspective on the colonies of the past as outposts for soldiers, trading places for merchants, bases of subsistence for settlers and destinations for surplus or superfluous portions of the population was increasingly superseded by an objectifying view of the colonies of the present. They came to be perceived as politically controllable promoters of the economic processes of production and consumption. This profound change of perception is interpreted as the emergence of a political economy of colonialism that spawned a modern way of political thinking about how colonial peripheries are brought into and held in a state of dependence on the centres of expansion by economic means. The following investigation of colonial semantics is structured by the assumption that the discourse of European expansion in German political economy turned in the mid-18th century from sustenance and population to dependence and production.
2 Colonial semantics 1700–50: sustenance and population First published in 1668, the Politischer Discurs [Political Discourse] of the Cameralist Johann Joachim Becher (1635–82) shows that the concept of ‘colony’ was already frequently used in some accounts about the scattered and short-lived German colonial projects of the late 17th century (Becher 1972 [1688]: 909–1272). Its etymological and historical reflection in pertinent lexicon entries and typological tracts, however, did not start until the early 18th century. The Cameralist Paul Jacob Marperger (1656–1730) probably modelled the classification of his Historische und politische Anmerckungen [Historical and Political Comments] on similar tracts by English and French authors, such as Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban (1633–1707). Francis Bacon’s essay ‘Of Plantations’ was published in 1625 and first translated from Latin into German in 1654 (Baconus 1654: 254–63). He considered plantations as ‘ancient, primitive, and heroical works’, but allocated ‘new plantations’ to ‘the children of former kingdoms’ (Bacon 1906 [1625]: 104). To make them a profitable project, Bacon gave advice concerning the plantations’ population and government as well as the planters’ means of subsistence and commodities for trade. He did not use the term ‘colony’, however, and only spoke of ‘plantations’.
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Marperger’s tract classified all forms of expansion of societies beyond their original habitat according to 14 types of ‘colony’ (Marperger 1724–30: 4 ff.). His classification already shows a systematic attempt to organize various expansion phenomena under the central concept of ‘colony’. Nevertheless, it was still more about colonization than colonialism, because it addressed processes of territorial acquisition rather than relationships of domination (Osterhammel 2005: 4): ‘Colonies’ predominantly appeared without colonialism. Marperger’s typological tract as well as the pertinent lexicon entries colonia and “colony” in the Universal-Lexicon [Universal Encyclopaedia] by Johann Heinrich Zedler (1706–1763) derived the etymology of these terms from the Latin verb colere [to occupy, to settle, to cultivate] (Zedler 1733: 723–7). Culture and colonization share the same etymology: colo, colui, cultum (Finley 1976: 173). Marperger’s detailed definition supports this finding: Colonien oder Pflanz-Städte heißt man erstlich diejenigen, wo sich eine gute Anzahl von Familien freiwillig oder auch auf Obrigkeitlichen Befehl… häußlich nieder gelassen, daselbst das Feld zu bebauen, von dem Acker-Bau und Viehe-Zucht… sich zu ernehren, dahero ein solcher Land- und Bauers-Mann Colonus, a colendo agrum, von Bau und Pflegung des Ackers genennet wird. [Firstly, colonies or plantations are places where a good number of families voluntarily or by governmental order settle and cultivate the land and subsist by arable and stock farming… therefore such a country-man or peasant is called a colonus, a colendo agrum, terms derived from cultivating and maintaining the land.] (Marperger 1724–30: 3) Zedler accordingly derived colonia from colo and then sparsely defined a colony as ‘eine Anzahl Menschen, welche einen wüsten oder unbewohnten Ort anbauen’ [a number of people who cultivate a desolate or uninhabited place] (Zedler 1733: 723, 726). The etymology of Marperger’s and Zedler’s definitions of ‘colony’ was based on the extensive exploitation of land for human use (Osterhammel 2005: 5). Since the concept of ‘colony’ related to population and sustenance, it always comprised a personal and a spatial dimension of meaning (Finley 1976: 171). In contrast to the modern connotation of ‘colony’ which refers more to a specific place than to people, until the mid-18th century a ‘colony’ was in the first place an association of persons and only in the second place an acquisition of territory. It was thus still more usual to speak of ‘Kolonien senden’ [sending colonies] than of ‘Kolonien besetzen’ [occupying colonies] (Marperger 1724–30: 3–6, 25, 33 f.; Becher 1972 [1688]: 1117, 1136, 1232, 1239; 1682: 1182; 1669: 5, 17). This German conceptual understanding was widely shared by contemporary English scientists and encyclopaedists: Francis Bacon considered ‘plantations’ to be an association of people, while Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) gave a similar definition of ‘colonies’ in his Leviathan, first published in 1651:
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The Procreation, or Children of a Common-wealth, are those we call Plantations, or Colonies; which are numbers of men sent out from the Commonwealth, under a Conductor, or Governour, to inhabit a Forraign Country, either formerly voyd of Inhabitants, or made voyd then, by warre. (Hobbes 1968 [1651]: 301) In the sixth edition of 1750, the Cyclopaedia of Ephraim Chambers (1680–1740), first published in 1728, defined the ‘colony’ in reference to ‘colonia’ and ‘plantation’ as ‘a company of people, of all sexes and conditions, transported into a remote province, in order to cultivate, and inhabit it’ (Chambers 1750). The different motivations for people to leave their original places of settlement constituted the crucial criterion according to which Marperger classified his historical manifestations of the colony. The various examples he adduced for his classification by the observation of domestic processes of internal colonization, from the Bible and ancient historiography, however, often indicate forms of expansion, from which there emerged no colonies as distinct and dependent polities (Finley 1976: 171). Thus the ‘mass individual migration’ (Osterhammel 2005: 5) of French religious refugees into the German states after the repeal of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 gave rise to colonies only in the sense of identitydefining sociocultural enclaves (Marperger 1724–30: 20 ff.; Zedler 1733: 726 f.). The ‘total migration of entire populations and societies’ (Osterhammel 2005: 5) as depicted in the Bible did not create colonies either, because after the biblical exodus no governing centre of expansion remained behind (Marperger 1724–30: 6–12, 17–22, 27 f., 31, 38 ff.). A more complex conceptual problem than the German internal colonization and the biblical exodus was posed by the expansion phenomena of the Phoenician, Greek and Roman world which were extensively described by Marperger and Zedler under the central concept of ‘colony’ or ‘colonia’. Hence these historical descriptions point to different degrees of convergence between colonization and colonialism and these enable one to draw conclusions about the conceptual genesis of the colony. According to Marperger the ‘overseas settlement colonisation’ (Osterhammel 2005: 6) of the Phoenicians since the 14th century and the Greeks from the 8th to the 6th century BCE functioned firstly as a means to expand maritime trade relations; secondly the colonies of the Greek polis aimed at the exclusion of its own surplus population; and thirdly, the overseas settlement colonization of Greek antiquity also resulted from ‘empire-building wars of conquest’ (Osterhammel 2005: 8), in which Athens asserted its rule over another people by the establishment of fortified ‘colonies’ (Marperger 1724–30: 4, 12, 17, 23, 27 ff., 31). Distinct, but independent city-states usually arose from the Phoenician and Greek colonies as newly created polities, nevertheless, due to the insular character of overseas expansion (Finley 1976: 173 f., 185). The processes of expansion were accompanied by, at best, a minor military display of power, and the centre of expansion did not assert any lasting claim to power at the colonial periphery. Marperger’s description of these ancient ‘colonies’ still did not address ‘colonialism’, but referred vaguely to ideas of colonial dependence using the example of the fortified ‘colonies’ of Athens.
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Of the various expansion phenomena of the Roman world described by Marperger and Zedler the ‘empire-building wars of conquest’ as ‘the classic or “Roman” form of establishing the rule of one people over another’ (Osterhammel 2005: 8) deserve particular attention (Marperger 1724–1730: 12 f., 18 ff., 22–7, 35 f.; Zedler 1733: 723–7). Assuming that Romulus was the first to adopt the establishment of ‘colonies’ as ‘Staats-Maxime’ [maxim of state] (Marperger 1724–30: 25) to bring other peoples under Rome’s ‘Bothmäßigkeit’ [sway] and ‘seine Herrschaft auszubreiten’ [spread its rule] (Zedler 1733: 723), both descriptions drew a picture of colonial expansion that showed a certain convergence between colonization and colonialism. Throughout the empire building of Roman antiquity, military conquest was accompanied by the subjugation of existing state and societal institutions which were ‘adapted to the needs of the conquerors but not altogether destroyed in the process’ (Osterhammel 2005: 8). That is why the example of the colonia contained enough potential for Marperger and Zedler to develop a precise idea about colonies as distinct and dependent polities. The decisive feature of distinction in the Republican period consisted in the respective legal status that Rome granted its citizens in the colonies. Even in classical Greek, the designation of a ‘colony’ as apoikia or klerouchia was based upon whether the local inhabitants were granted the civil right of Athens or not (Finley 1976: 168). In the Roman case, Marperger’s distinction between Coloniae Romanae and Coloniae Latinae, supplemented by Zedler’s definition of Coloniae Italicae, fulfilled an analogous function (Marperger 1724–30: 25 f., 35 f.; Zedler 1733: 725). According to both of them, in the Coloniae Romanae all freeborn citizens were granted the same rights as in Rome; the inhabitants of the Coloniae Latinae had the Ius Latii and certain rights of self-government, but did not enjoy the full legal status of a Roman citizen; the inhabitants of the Coloniae Italicae were in a worse position and not granted any rights of selfgovernment at all, but ‘sowohl Gesetze, als Obrigkeitliche Personen von Rom aus empfiengen’ [received laws as well as government officials from Rome] (Zedler 1733: 725); the same threefold distinction of Roman ‘colonies’ was also drawn by Ephraim Chambers in 1750. Zedler established a gradual ending of the distinction between types of colony by referring to the extension of Roman civil rights, initially on all ‘Italics’ (89 BCE) and finally on all freeborn citizens of the Imperium Romanum during the late imperial period (212 CE) (Zedler 1733: 725). This assertion is supported by Moses Finley who observed that the term ‘colony’ lost its Republican meaning in imperial times and since then not only meant something else, but designated something completely detached from its original etymology: the highest status of a civitas within the urban administrative structure of the empire despite its historical background (Finley 1976: 173). Meanwhile Finley’s assumption that the etymological origin of the term ‘colony’ concealed the military aspect of the Roman colonia finds no confirmation in the descriptions of Marperger and Zedler (Finley 1976: 173). Instead both of them invoked the ancient distinction between the Coloniae
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Civiles (Marperger) and the Coloniae Plebejae (Zedler) on the one hand and Coloniae Militares on the other hand (Marperger 1724–30: 25 f., 35 f.; Zedler 1733: 724 f.). Ephraim Chambers likewise distinguished between senatorial and military colonies (Chambers 1750). According to the lexicon entry as well as to the typological tract the latter arose from the planned establishment of fortified frontier settlements, where primarily soldiers withdrawn from service in the Roman army settled down permanently by governmental order and often violently suppressed the local population (Marperger 1724–1730: 23–7, 35 f.; Zedler 1733: 724 f.). That these ‘colonies’ aimed ‘theils die bezwungenen Völcker dadurch in Zaum zu halten, theils das Land zu bebauen’ [partly at controlling the subjugated peoples, partly at cultivating the land] proves the historical knowledge about the military aspect of the Roman colonia, whose conceptual range of meanings at this point not only comprised processes of territorial acquisition, but also relationships of domination (Marperger 1724–30: 25). Marperger’s and Zedler’s descriptions of the expansion phenomena of Greek and Roman antiquity contained a certain convergence between colonization and colonialism. The perception of ancient ‘colonies’ as distinct and dependent polities was facilitated by the fact that the Greek and Roman designations were formulated in a precise legal and administrative concept. In the historical reflection of these examples, however, only the criterion of distinction was clearly fulfilled, while the criterion of dependence stayed undetermined: colonial dependence still received no particular determination that exceeded violent, military exercise of power. This applies to the ancient as well as to the early modern colonies, as Marperger’s short description of the overseas establishment of new countries shows: Diesen also neu erfundenen und vielmahls, ohne blutige Köpffe daran zu setzen, nicht in Besitz genommenen Länder, die anfänglich nur in blossen See-Küsten bestanden, folgten hernach mit der Zeit noch andre weiter ins Land hinein, nachdem man sich nehmlich mit denen wilden und alten Einwohnern des Landes bekannt gemacht, ihnen… Freundschafft abgewonnen, oder sie durch die Waffen… dahin gebracht, daß sie ihre wilde und wüste Wohn-Plätze enger einziehen, den größten Theil davon denen Europäern überlassen, an etlichen Orten als Sclaven ihnen dienen, und worinn ihre beste Schätze und Nahrungs-Mittel… bestanden, anzeigen mußten. [These newly invented countries that frequently were not occupied without bloodshed and which initially consisted only of coastal areas, over time were followed by others further inland, namely after getting to know the savage and old inhabitants of the country, making friends with them or forcing them with arms to reduce their wild and desolate settlements and to leave the larger part of these to the Europeans, to serve them as slaves in some places, and to show them their best treasures and foodstuffs.] (Marperger 1724–30: 35 f.)
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Using the example of colonies established overseas, Marperger had already described a relationship of domination that deprived an entire society of its own historical development by remodelling it according to the chiefly economic needs and interests of colonial rule. What he did not yet recognize was how to instigate and perpetuate that rule beyond the application of ruse or force. Hence his description still failed to consider how a dependency between metropolis and periphery could be permanently implemented, a question which was crucial for the political economy of colonialism.
3 Colonial semantics 1750–1800: dependence and production In the mid-18th century the discourse of European expansion and its effects on the German political economy took a significant turn from sustenance and population to dependence and production. This development is reconstructed below by approaching three aspects of investigation: (1) definitions of the concept of ‘colony’ and corresponding colonial semantics; (2) the criteria for a distinction between the ‘colonies’ of the ancient and early modern period; and (3) the emergence of a political economy of colonialism as a political theory, the economic principles of which would instigate and perpetuate colonial rule. 3.1 Definitions of the concept of ‘colony’ In the mid-18th century, the semantic shift of the concept of ‘colony’ was barely reflected in the pertinent lexicon entries, because they actually adapted the traditional shape and scope of the typological tracts that classified all forms of expansion of societies throughout human history by miscellaneous types of colony. This is exemplified by the exhaustive 13-page lexicon entry Colonie in the Oekonomische Encyklopädie [Economic Encyclopaedia] of Johann Georg Krünitz (1728–96) (Krünitz 1776: 226–38). While Zedler’s Universal-Lexicon had defined the colony as ‘eine Anzahl Menschen, welche einen wüsten oder unbewohnten Ort anbauen’ [a number of people who cultivate a desolate or uninhabited place], Krünitz’s Oekonomische Encyklopädie defined it as ‘einen Ort, der von Ausländern angebauet worden; imgleichen diejenigen fremden Einwohner, welche sich an einem fremden Orte niederlaßen, als ein Ganzes betrachtet’ [a place cultivated by foreigners; equally those foreign inhabitants who settle in a foreign place regarded as a whole] (Zedler 1733: 726; Krünitz 1776: 226). Krünitz’s definition hints at a shift in the etymological range of meanings from the personal to the spatial dimension of ‘colony’ that can be observed more clearly in the political and economic literature: the emerging dominance of the modern connotation of ‘colony’ that refers more to a specific place and less to people indicates an increasing spatialization of the concept of the ‘colony’. This spatialization also found expression in a new conceptual distinction between the centre of expansion and the colonial periphery that the Cameralist Joseph von Sonnenfels (1733–1817) described in his Grundsätze der Polizey, Handlung und
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Finanzwissenschaft [Principles of Policy, Commerce and Finance], first published in 1769: ‘Der Staat, von welchem die Kolonie abhängig ist, heißt Mutterstaat’ [The state which a colony depends on, is called mother-state] (Sonnenfels 1970 [1822]: 302). In his Schriften über Staatswirtschaft und Handlung [Publications about Public Economy and Commerce], the commercial scholar Johann Georg Büsch (1728–1800) derived the term from its foreign equivalents: ‘Das Land, welchem die Kolonie angehört, nennt man das Mutterland, im Englischen Mother-Country, und im Französischen Métropole’ [The land which the colony belongs to is called motherland, in English Mother country, and in French Métropole] (Büsch 1780–4, vol. 1: 146). This previously uncommon concept now facilitated an abstract description of colonial rule. The German adoption of this colonial concept came comparatively late, given the fact that major works of English political theory, such as Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, provide early evidence of its usage. In his description of a ‘Common-wealth’ as a ‘Body Politique’, Hobbes already used the efficacious terms ‘Metropolis’ and ‘Mother’ to distinguish the centre of expansion from the colonial periphery: And when a Colony is setled, they are either a Common-wealth of themselves, discharged of their subjection to their Soveraign that sent them… in which case the Common-wealth from which they went was called their Metropolis, or Mother, and requires no more of them, then Fathers require of the Children, whom they emancipate, and make free from their domestique government… or else they remain united to their Metropolis… and then they are no Common-wealthes themselves, but Provinces, and parts of the Common-wealth that sent them. So that the Right of Colonies… dependeth wholly on their Licence, or Letters, by which their Soveraign authorized them to Plant. (Hobbes 1968 [1651]: 301 f.) A German translation of the Leviathan was not published until the end of the 18th century (Hobbes 1794–5). The extract above was rather loosely translated: Eine solche Colonie wird alsdann einen eignen Staat ausmachen, wenn sie von dem Staate, aus welchem sie stammte, für unabhängig erklärt wurde. In diesem Fall heißt der letztere der Mutterstaat, welcher von der Colonie nichts mehreres fordert, als Väter von ihren erwachsenen Söhnen zu verlangen pflegen… Bleibt die Colonie aber ein Theil des Staats, woraus sie abstammet, so ist sie eine Provinz. Das Recht der Colonie hängt also immer davon ab, wie es der Mutterstaat in den Stiftungsurkunden bestimmte. (Hobbes 1794–5, vol. 1: 237)
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For scholars of political economy, the dependency between motherland and colony essentially rested upon the processes of production and consumption. In his Theoretisch-praktische Darstellung der Handlung in deren mannigfaltigen Geschäften [Theoretical and Practical Account of Trade in Its Manifold Affairs], first published in 1792, Büsch defined the purpose of a colony on the one hand as the ‘Hervorbringung der ihrem Boden eigenthümlichen Producte’ [cultivation of products consistent with its soil], and on the other hand as the ‘Verbrauch eines ungeheuren Vorraths Europäischer Manufactur-Waaren’ [consumption of a tremendous inventory of European manufactured goods] (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 2: 188; Büsch 1824–7, vol. 8: 224 f.). Sonnenfels recognized that these processes at the periphery required governance orientated toward the needs and interests of the metropolis: Die handelnden Staaten… wandten daher ihren Blick nach den Eiländern, suchten sich dieselben zu unterwerfen, und den Besitz durch dahin versetzte Pflanzvölker zu versichern; wovon diese auch den Namen Kolonien (Pflanzörter) haben. Von daher können sie nun einen Theil ihrer Bedürfnisse, unabhängig von andern Staaten, und unter selbst vorgeschriebenen Bedingungen empfangen, dahin den Stoff zur Ausführung unendlich vermehren. [The trading states therefore turned their view to the islands, tried to subjugate them and to secure their possession by sending planters there, hence these places also bear the name colonies (places of plantation). From there they can now receive a part of their needs independently of other states under self-regulated conditions and infinitely increase the material for export.] (Sonnenfels 1970 [1822]: 21) As a result, the idea of productivity found its way into several turn-of-thecentury textbooks on political economics, whose definitions of the ‘colony’ from now on constantly contained terms like Production, Producte and producieren, as the commercial scholar Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740– 1817) showed in his Gemeinnütziges Lehrbuch der Handlungswissenschaft [Useful Textbook for Commercial Studies]: Wenn sich ein Staat in einem fremden Welttheil ein Land zueignet, das noch wilde Einwohner hat, so muss er gesittete dahin schicken, die das Land bauen, und solche Produkte da erzielen, die im Mutterlande mangeln; man nennt dann eine solche neuangebaute Gegend eine Colonie, oder Pflanzstätte, und ihrer Bewohner Colonisten. [When a state acquires a land in a foreign part of the world that still has savage inhabitants, he has to send civilized people there to cultivate the land and yield products that are lacking in the motherland; then you call such a newly cultivated region a colony or ‘plantation site’ and its inhabitants ‘colonists’.] (Jung-Stilling 1799: 257)
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The definition of the ‘colony’ given by Büsch in his Theoretisch-praktische Darstellung der Handlung [Theoretical and Practical Account of Commerce] clearly shows the close relationship between dependence and production: Ein Volk ist im Besitz eines entfernten Landes, dessen Boden ihm Producte giebt, die sein eigener Boden nicht hat. Es besetzt dasselbe mit Einwohnern, die es anbauen, und fortdauernd ihm angehörig und unterwürfig bleiben. Wenn und so lange es dabei erhalten wird, nennt man dies Land eine Colonie, und den Handel mit demselben den Coloniehandel. [A people is in possession of a distant land whose soil provides products that its own soil does not have. It occupies this place with inhabitants to plant it who henceforth remain dependent upon and subject to it. If and so long it is kept at that, you call this land a ‘colony’ and the trade with it ‘colonial trade’.] (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 1: 147) Previously uncommon composite concepts, such as ‘Coloniehandel’ [colonial trade] and ‘Colonien-Politik’ [colonial policy], generated a new colonial semantic (Jung-Stilling 1970 [1788]: 566, 568 f.; 1978 [1792]: 300 f., 598; 1799: 256–61). Büsch even created the concept of a ‘Handlungs-Colonie’ [trading colony] that paradoxically designated those colonies in Africa, America and Asia that not only functioned as places of trade, but predominantly as places of production (Büsch 1780–4, vol. 3: 77; 1800 [1792], vol. 2: 183 f., 187 f., 191, 197; 1824–7, vol. 1: 465 f., 469, 472, 477 f., vol. 8: 228–32, 237). For Büsch ‘eigentliche HandlungsColonien’ [actual trading colonies] had to meet three central conditions: Solche eigentliche Handlungs-Colonien haben… nur unter folgenden Voraussetzungen Statt: (1) Daß sie auf einem Boden angelegt werden, dessen Beschaffenheit ihn zur Hervorbringung solcher Producte tüchtig macht, welche das Mutterland entweder nicht hat, oder nicht in gehöriger Menge hervorbringen kann… (2) Daß die Einwohner der Colonien eine Menge Bedürfnisse haben, und in deren vermeinter oder wahrer Nothwendigkeit erhalten werden, welcher nur durch Zufuhr aus dem Mutterlande ein Genüge geschehen kann… (3)… Daß sie mit Einwohnern aus dem Mutterlande besezt werde, welche auf dem in der Colonie ihnen zugetheilten Eigenthum die Producte anpflanzen. [Such actual trading colonies only occur under the following conditions: (1) That they are established on a soil whose nature makes it efficient to yield those products that the motherland either does not have or cannot produce in a sufficient quantity… (2) That the inhabitants of the colonies have many needs, either genuine or imagined, that can only be met by a supply from the motherland… (3)… That they are occupied with inhabitants from the motherland who cultivate products on the property allotted to them in the colony.] (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 2: 184–7)
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3.2 The distinction between the ‘colonies’ of the ancient and the early modern period The semantic change of the concept of ‘colony’ took on a clearer shape due to the historical comparisons which were now drawn between old and new ‘colonies’. Political and economic scholars no longer assumed a broad resemblance but realized an essential difference between ‘colonies’ of the past and present. They probably adopted similar comparisons of French and English authors such as Victor Gabriel Riqueti de Mirabeau (1715–89) and Adam Smith (1723–90). The third part of Mirabeau’s Der politische und oekonomische Menschenfreund [The Political and Economic Philanthropist] contained an extensive treatise about ‘colonies’ (Mirabeau 1759: 192–260, 365–9). Smith’s Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776, gave detailed consideration to the ‘colonies’ in its fourth volume on the Systems of Political Economy (Smith 1974 [1789]: 465–541). Both authors approached different degrees of colonial dependence as a distinctive feature for ancient and early modern colonies. Moreover, they attributed different expansionist motives to old and new colonies, namely those of obvious necessity in antiquity but of ambiguous intentions in early modern times (Mirabeau 1759: 193, 197, 204, 207 f., 210–14, 231, 234, 259, 365 ff., 369; Smith 1974 [1789]: 465 ff.). Not by chance, intention played a pivotal role in Büsch’s basic definition of colonies, because he was one of the first of the few scholars in late 18th-century Germany to embrace the work of Adam Smith: Colonien, zu Deutsch Pflanzörter, sind in allgemeiner Bedeutung Länder, die ein Volk mit einem Theil seiner Mitbürger absichtlich besetzt. Absichtlich, sage ich, und mit einem Theile seiner Mitbürger, weil sonst alle Länder, welche in den Zeiten der Völkerwanderung neue Einwohner bekamen, als Colonien ihrer Eroberer angesehen werden müßten. [Colonies, in German ‘plantations’, are generally understood to be countries that a people occupies intentionally with some of its fellow citizens. I say ‘intentionally’ and ‘with some of its fellow citizens’, because otherwise all countries which gained new inhabitants in times of migration would have to be considered as the colonies of their conquerors.] (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 2: 180 f.) Apart from the mass migrations of late antiquity, Büsch attributed three main intentions to the colonial expansions of the ancient world. The first intention of the Greek and Roman ‘colonies’ resulted from a fast-growing people which ‘sich des Ueberflusses seiner Menschenzahl durch Versetzung desselben in ein anderes, entweder nicht bewohntes oder… leicht zu überwältigendes Land entledigte’ [removed the superfluity of its people by relocating them to another, either uninhabited or… easily subdued country] (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 2: 181: 1824–7, vol. 1: 463). Thus the ‘overseas settlement colonisation’ (Osterhammel 2005: 6) of the Greeks created ‘neue Staaten, die zwar mit dem
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Mutterlande in freundschaftlicher Verbindung blieben, aber an eine fortdaurende Unterwürfigkeit unter dieses war nicht gedacht’ [new states that remained in friendly contact with the motherland, but without a continuing subservience to it] (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 2, 181; 1824–7, vol. 8: 227). Büsch ascribed the second intention to ‘politische Veränderungen im Staat’ [political changes within the state] which caused an exclusion of those parts of the population that had made themselves ‘gehässig oder verächtlich’ [hateful or despicable] (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 2, 181; 1824–7, vol. 1: 463). The emergent ‘colonies’ likewise did not remain in a relationship of ‘fortdauernder Unterwürfigkeit’ [persistent obsequiousness] to the motherland: ‘Man war zufrieden, wenn man auf sie als getreue Verbündete rechnen konnte, wiewol dieses Band nicht zwischen allen lange Zeit sich fest hielt’ [One was content if one could count them as loyal allies, even though this bond did not hold firm in the long term] (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 2, 181 f.; 1824–7, vol. 1: 464). Büsch explained the third intention of the Roman ‘empire-building wars of conquest’ (Osterhammel 2005: 8) which aimed at ‘Sicherung der gemachten Eroberungen und der erweiterten Grenzen durch Colonien’ [the protection by colonies of lands that had already been conquered and frontiers which had been extended] (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 2, 181 f.; 1824–7, vol. 1: 464). These colonies therefore ‘blieben immer ein Ganzes mit ihrem Mutterlande’ [always remained united with their motherland] until the demise of the Roman Empire (Büsch 1824–7, vol. 8: 227). Sonnenfels ascribed a ‘dreyfache Bedeutung’ [threefold meaning] and ‘dreyfachen Endzweck’ [threefold purpose] to the colonies (Sonnenfels 1970 [1822]: 301). According to the first and second meaning, the Roman colonies attended to the ‘Handhabung der äusseren Sicherheit’ [handling of exterior security] while the Phoenician colonies aimed at the ‘Erleichterung der Handlung’ [facilitation of trade]. According to Sonnenfels, a third meaning of ‘colonies’ emerged with modernity: Eine dritte Art von Pflanzörtern, welche sich auf Gewalt gründet, und die Vergrößerung des Handels in beyden Zweigen, der Ausfuhr sowohl, als der Einfuhr zum Augenmerke hat. Die Seemächte nämlich unterwarfen sich Eiländer, deren natürliche, andern Erdstrichen versagte Erzeugnisse sowohl zur eigenen Verzehrung, als zum Verführen in auswärtigen Handel taugten: wo der Mangel an europäischen Gemächlichkeiten, und die Unwissenheit der Bewohner zugleich neue Wege, Nationalerzeugnisse abzusetzen, eröffnete. [A third kind of plantation based on violence and concerned with the increase of trade in both branches: export and import. The naval powers therefore subjected islands whose natural products were not available in other regions and were suitable for domestic consumption as well as for external trade: where the lack of European comforts and the ignorance of the inhabitants likewise opened up new ways to sell national products.] (Sonnenfels 1970 [1822]: 302)
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Sonnenfels identified the meaning of the modern ‘colonies’ in their purpose to maximize the volume of trade with the motherland both by the export of ‘national products’ and the (re)importation of those products whose consumption became indispensable to European societies. Observing this profound change of consumption in the motherlands, Büsch related his distinction between old and new colonies to the idea of productivity. In his opinion, the novelty of the colonies of early modern times consisted in their ability to yield an ‘ungeheure Masse von Producten, die das Alterthum nicht kannte, oder doch nicht zu seinen Bedürfnissen rechnete’ [tremendous amount of products that antiquity did not know or after all did not class as necessities] (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 1, 147; 1824–7, vol. 1: 145 f., vol. 8: 225). Since not trade but production was the paramount criterion for Büsch to define a ‘Handlungs-Colonie’ [trading colony], the Phoenicians’ colonies were merely ‘Handlungsetablissements oder große Factoreien’ [commercial enterprises or large foreign trading posts] which served as a means of expanding maritime trade relations but did not create actual colonies (Büsch 1824–7, vol. 8: 227 f.; 1800 [1792], vol. 2, 182). To the extent that Büsch linked his conception of ‘colony’ to the idea of productivity, it excluded the ancient ‘colonies’ because, in contrast to the early modern ‘colonies’, they did not yet produce any goods for their motherland: ‘Von den Colonien der Alten hatten nur wenige auf die Handlung und keine derselben auf diesen Zweck Rücksicht, in der Ferne durch einen Theil des Volks Producte anbauen zu lassen, die das Mutterland nicht hatte’ [Of the old colonies only a few intended trade and none of them intended to let a part of the nation cultivate products in far-away places that the motherland did not have] (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 1, 147). Büsch’s conception of ‘colony’ already included ‘colonialism’ in the modern sense of a permanent political authoritarian relationship between collectives based on an economic, productivityorientated dependency, by which peripheries are governed according to the needs and interests of the metropolises. 3.3 The emergence of a political economy of colonialism as a political theory The characteristically colonialist effort of the metropolis to exploit the periphery by means of an all-embracing governance of production and consumption sharpened the scholarly view of the preconditions for colonial rule. This built the foundation of a political theory whose economic principles focused on the instigation and perpetuation of a dependency between the colony and the motherland. In his Grundsätze der Policeywissenschaft [Principles of Political Science], first published in 1756, the Cameralist Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi (1720–71) expressed the view that overseas colonies were extremely useful for a trading nation, so long as the following conditions were met:
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Wenn die Colonien dem Staate nützlich seyn sollen; so müssen sie in einer genauen Abhängigkeit von dem Hauptstaate erhalten werden. Sie müssen keine Schiffarth treiben, ausser von einer Colonie zur andern. Sie müssen keine Manufacturen und andere Waaren verfertigen, die in dem Hauptstaate gearbeitet werden; sondern der Hauptstaat muß sie damit versehen. Sie müßen bloß ihren Endzweck erfüllen, nämlich solche Producte anzubauen, die der Hauptstaat nach seiner natürlichen Beschaffenheit und Himmelsgegend nicht erzeugen kann. [If the colonies are to be useful to the state, they must be kept completely dependent on the mother state. They must not operate ships, except from one colony to another. They must not manufacture any products or produce other goods that are produced in the mother state, which will provide them instead. They only have to serve their own aims, namely to cultivate products which the mother state cannot produce because of its geographical location and climate.] (Justi 1969 [1782]: 183) These conditions became guiding principles of European expansion and were frequently criticized by German scholars of political economics. Sonnenfels derived the principles of colonial dependency from an ambivalent relationship between metropolis and periphery that was characterized by belongingness as well as otherness. Thus the colony was considered as part of the motherland in opposition to alien powers on the one hand, and as a foreign polity outside the motherland itself on the other: Der Mutterstaat wird aus den Kolonien vorzüglich vor jedem anderen Lande diejenigen Bedürfnisse ziehen, die er entweder selbst verbrauchen, oder wieder ausführen will. Und überhaupt, so oft zwischen den Auswärtigen und den Kolonisten zu entscheiden ist, wird er den Vortheil den letztern zuzueignen versuchen. Sobald aber zwischen ihm selbst und den Kolonien die Frage entsteht, eignet er sich den Vortheil einseitig zu, und verfährt mit ihnen vollkommen nach den Grundsätzen der auswärtigen Handlung. [The motherland will chiefly receive those items from the colonies which it either wants to consume itself or to export. And in general, when it comes to deciding between foreigners and colonists, it will try to grant the benefit to the latter. But as soon as the same question arises between itself and the colonies, it will take the benefit for itself and deal with them totally according to the principles of foreign trade.] (Sonnenfels 1970 [1822]: 303) According to Sonnenfels, the motherland forced asymmetrical trade relations onto the colony by dictating the export of goods to the colony ‘in der vollkommensten Gestalt’ [in the most perfect form] at the highest price, but the import of goods ‘in der einfachsten Gestalt’ [in the simplest form] at the lowest price; this was why the
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‘Handelsleute des Mutterstaats gewissermaßen gegen die Kolonisten als Monopolisten anzusehen sind’ [merchants from the motherland are in a sense to be considered as monopolists in relation to the colonists] (Sonnenfels 1970 [1822]: 303 f.). Die Kolonisten müssen sich diesen Zwang gefallen lassen, weil sie, was sie bedürfen, sonst von niemandem empfangen, noch ihren Ueberfluss an jemand andern los werden können. Um diese Abhängigkeit desto dauerhafter zu machen, ist es ein angenommener Grundsatz der Mutterstaaten: den Kolonien alles streng zu untersagen, was sie auf irgendeine Weise von denselben befreyen könnte. [The colonists have to tolerate this constraint because they can receive what they need from nobody else nor dispose of their surplus to anybody else. To make this dependency more lasting, it is an acknowledged principle of motherlands to deny their colonies anything at all that could release them from this constraint.] (Sonnenfels 1970 [1822]: 304) Sonnenfels still referred to Justi’s principles of colonial dependency, but already criticized them as ‘Grundsätze der bewaffneten Macht gegen die wehrlose Schwachheit, über deren Ungerechtigkeit die Erweiterungssucht und der Merkantilgeist alle Nationen blind erhält’ [principles of the armed power against the unarmed weakness: all nations are blinded to the injustice of this by the obsession for expansion and the spirit of commerce] (Sonnenfels 1970 [1822]: 306). In light of the American Revolution as a world-historical precedent of colonial independence that put political and economic scholars of the late 18th century into a pessimistic frame of mind, Sonnenfels made a critical prediction: colonial rule would be transitory in the future, because so viele Vortheile auch aus den Kolonien gezogen werden, so wird ihr Besitz nur so lange bestehen, als die Kolonisten in der Unwissenheit erhalten werden; woraus sie die Zeit, das Bestreben wetteifernder Nationen, und der Zusammenfluss günstiger Umstände früher oder später, aber einst immer gewiß reissen, und ihrer Abhängigkeit ein Ende machen wird. [even though many advantages are drawn from the colonies, their possession will only last as long as the colonists are held in an ignorance out of which they will sooner or later, and one day certainly, be torn by time, the efforts of rival nations and the convergence of favourable conditions; and their dependency will end.] (Sonnenfels 1970 [1822]: 308) The effect of this colonial pessimism about the perception of European expansion on the part of German political economists was an enlightened critique not only by Cameralists like Sonnenfels, but also by commercial scholars such as Jung-Stilling and Büsch. In his two textbooks on state policy
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and commerce respectively, the Lehrbuch der Staats-Polizey-Wissenschaft of 1788 and the Gemeinnütziges Lehrbuch der Handlungswissenschaft of 1799, Jung-Stilling likewise addressed the common principles of colonial dependency (Jung-Stilling 1970 [1788]: 568 f.; 1799: 258). Nevertheless, he criticized this ‘Handlungs-Maxime’ [guiding principle] as an ‘abscheuliche ColonienPolitik’ [abominable colonial policy] which he believed flagrantly contravened humanity and Christianity, and whose history represented to him ‘ein ewiges Denkmal aller unerhörten Greuel’ [an eternal monument to all scandalous abominations] (Jung-Stilling 1970 [1788]: 566 ff.). Hence his comment on the principles of colonial dependency was quite sarcastic: Da… der Besitz der Colonien schwankend ist, so muß man sie auch aus kalten ungefühlten Handlungs-Grundsätzen so gut nutzen, als man kann, dieweil man sie noch hat; man muss das Schäfgen so oft scheeren, als man kann, und ihm endlich die Haut über die Ohren ziehen. [Since the possession of colonies is uncertain, one must exploit them with the cold, unfeeling principles of trade as best one can while one still has them; you have to shear the sheep as often as possible until you finally pull the skin over its ears.] (Jung-Stilling 1799: 258) Based on the assumption that the motherland always ran the risk of losing its colonies once they had gained enough strength themselves for their own political constitution, Jung-Stilling recognized ‘drey politische Kunstgriffe’ [three political devices] to prolong colonial independence (Jung-Stilling 1970 [1788]: 566 ff.): (1) Die entfernte Besitzung so lang schwach, niedrig, arm und unaufgeklärt zu erhalten, als nur immer möglich ist, damit sie nicht zu Kräften kommen, und sich also vom Mutterland losreißen möge; (2) alle ihre Kräfte auszusaugen und zu benuzzen, damit man doch während der ungewissen Zeit des Besizzes noch so viel herausziehen möge, als man kan… und (3) durch Versprechung goldner Berge aus Europa Menschen hinzulocken, um sich ihres Fleißes nach obigen Grundsäzzen bestens zu bedienen. [(1) To keep the distant possessions weak, low, poor and unenlightened for as long as possible so that they do not become strong and break free from the motherland; (2) to extract and use all their strength so that you can obtain as much as possible during the uncertain period of possession; (3) to lure people from Europe there by promising golden mountains and then profit from their hard work in accordance with the above principles.] (Jung-Stilling 1970 [1788]: 567) Considering the enlightened opinion that colonies could not be brought into a permanent dependency upon the motherland, Jung-Stilling’s critique of the principles of colonial dependency radically questioned the political functionality
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and moral legitimacy of colonialism. Meanwhile in his Sämmtliche Schriften über die Handlung, Büsch considered that the zenith of European expansion had finally passed, not only in respect of the American Revolution, but also in retrospect to ‘was uns die Geschichte der Colonien von Alters her gelehrt hat’ [what the history of the colonies has taught us since time immemorial] (Büsch 1824–7, vol. 8: 227). He asked the rhetorical question: ‘Ist es nicht schon wirklich mit dem Colonisiren der handelnden Nationen übertrieben worden? Läßt sich nicht voraussehen, daß eben diejenigen Staaten, welche seit einem Jahrhundert so sehr durch dieselben [Kolonien] gewonnen haben, diesen Gewinn einmal entbehren werden?’ [Has the colonization of the trading nations not yet been overdone? Can it not be foreseen that precisely those states which for one century have profited so greatly from these colonies will one day manage without that profit?] (Büsch 1824–7, vol. 8: 226 f.) Büsch’s conclusion that colonization had gone too far and would soon cease raised the question how many colonies would either completely break free from their motherland or at least take the freedom to trade with other nations directly (Büsch 1824–7, vol. 2: 580, 582). For Büsch it was already too late to talk about colonization as a process in which nations that as yet had no colonies could still take part (Büsch 1824–7, vol. 8: 226). Despite his scepticism about the stability of colonial rule, Büsch developed precise ideas about the conditions of colonial dependency (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 2: 189 f., 273 f., 290; 1824–7, vol 1: 470 f., 549, 564, vol. 8: 225): He claimed that a longlasting dependency between colony and metropolis was essentially based on the circumstance that the colony and the motherland were located in very different climatic zones and thus naturally provided different goods (Büsch 1780–4, vol. 3: 36), because auf dieser Verschiedenheit der Producte beruhet insonderheit die Handelsverbindung eines Mutterlandes mit seinen Colonien. Auch die politische Verbindung hält dabei um so viel fester. Wenn daher ein Europäisches Volk ein Land besitzt, dessen Boden, Klima und Producte dem seinigen zu ähnlich sind, und dann die Handlungs-Verbindung erzwingen will, so wird doch dieselbe auf diese Weise nicht lange festen Bestand haben. [the commercial relationship of a motherland with its colonies particularly depends upon this difference in products. The political relationship is thus so much the stronger. If, therefore, a European people owns a country whose soil, climate and products are too similar to its own and then tries to enforce a commercial relationship, this will not last long.] (Büsch 1800 [1792], vol. 1: 148; 1824–7, vol. 1: 147)
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4 Conclusion This chapter has examined the term ‘colony’ as a basic historical concept, because its potential meaning throughout the history of European expansion encompassed phenomena of acquisition, organization and domination. The conceptual history of this term illustrates the emergence of colonialism as a specific way of thinking about colonization and colonies within the context of 18th-century political economy. Moreover, it reveals diverse semantic similarities and synergies between the German and British colonialist discourses in political and economic theory, which deserve further research in the future. Since a comparing conceptual history of colonial-political-economic theories in early modern Germany and Britain still remains to be told, the author is currently preparing a postdoctoral research project about this topic.
References Primary sources Bacon, Francis (1906 [1625]), The Essayes or Counsels Civill & Morall of Francis Bacon Lord Verulum, with an introduction by Oliphant Smeaton. London: J.M. Dent. Baconus, Franciscus (1654), ‘Von Pflantzung der Völcker’ in Getreue Reden, die Sitten-, Regiments- und Haußlehre betreffend. Nürnberg: Michael Endters, 254–263. Becher, Johann Joachim (1669), Gründlicher Bericht von Beschaffenheit und Eingeschafft, Cultivirung und Bewohnung, Privilegien und Beneficien deß in America zwischen Rio Orinoque und Rio de las Amazones gelegenem an der vesten Küst in der Landschafft Guiana gelegenen, sich dreißig Meil wegs breit an der See und hundert Meil wegs in die Tieffe erstreckenden Strichs Landes…Frankfurt am Main: Johann Kuchenbecker. Becher, Johann Joachim (1682), Närrische Weisheit und weise Narrheit: Oder einhundert so politische alß physicalische, mechanische und mercantilische Concepten und Propositionen…Frankfurt am Main: Johann Peter Zubrodt. Becher, Johann Joachim (1972 [1688]), Politischer Discurs. Von den eigentlichen Ursachen deß Auf- und Abnehmens der Städt, Länder und Republicken…Glashütten: Auvermann. Büsch, Johann Georg (1780–4), Schriften über Staatswirtschaft und Handlung, 3 volumes. Hamburg: Carl Ernst Bohn. Büsch, Johann Georg (1800 [1792]), Theoretisch-praktische Darstellung der Handlung in deren mannigfaltigen Geschäften, 2 volumes, second edition. Hamburg: Benjamin Gottlob Hoffmann. Büsch, Johann Georg (1824–7), Sämmtliche Schriften über die Handlung, 8 volumes. Hamburg: August Campe. Chambers, Ephraim (1750), Cyclopaedia, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 2 volumes, sixth edition. London: printed for W. Innes et al. Hobbes, Thomas (1968 [1651]), Leviathan. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Hobbes, Thomas (1794–5), Leviathan, oder der kirchliche und bürgerliche Staat, 2 volumes. Halle an der Saale: Johann Christian Hendel. Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich (1970 [1788]), Lehrbuch der Staats-Polizey-Wissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Keip.
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Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich (1978 [1792]), Die Grundlehre der Staatswirtschaft. Ein Elementarbuch für Regentensöhne und alle, die sich dem Dienst des Staats und der Gelehrsamkeit widmen wollen. Königstein: Scriptor. Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich (1799), Gemeinnütziges Lehrbuch der Handlungswissenschaft für alle Klassen von Kaufleuten und Handlungsstudirenden. Leipzig: Weygandsche Buchhandlung. Justi, Johann HeinrichGottlob von (1969 [1782]), Grundsätze der Policeywissenschaft, in einen vernünftigen, auf den Endzweck der Policey gegründeten Zusammenhange und zum Gebrauch academischer Vorlesungen abgefasset. Frankfurt am Main: Sauer & Auvermann. Krünitz, Johann Georg (1776), Oekonomische Encyklopädie oder allgemeines System der Staats- Stadt- Haus- und Landwirthschaft, volume 8. Berlin: Joachim Pauli. Marperger, Paul Jacob (1724–30), Historische und politische Anmerckungen über die in denen alten, mittlern und jüngern Zeiten bekannt gewordene Colonien oder Pflanz-Städte unterschiedlicher Völcker, Gesellschafften u. Familien…Dresden: Author’s Edition. Mirabeau, Victor Gabriel Riqueti de (1759), Der politische und oekonomische Menschenfreund oder practische Vorschläge zum Aufnehmen und mehrer Bevölkerung der Staaten und zur Erhaltung und Vermehrung ihrer Reichthümer. Hamburg: Hertelische Handlung. Smith, Adam (1974 [1789]), Der Wohlstand der Nationen: eine Untersuchung seiner Natur und seiner Ursachen, translation of the fifth edition. Munich: C.H. Beck. Sonnenfels, Joseph von (1970 [1822]), Grundsätze der Polizey, Handlung und Finanzwissenschaft, volume 2: Die Handlung, reprint of the eighth edition. Rome: Ed. Bizzarri. Zedler, Johann Heinrich (1733), Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschafften und Künste, volume 6. Halle an der Saale: Johann Heinrich Zedler.
Secondary sources Brunner, Otto, Conze, Werner, Koselleck, Reinhart (eds) (1972–92), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, 7 volumes. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Finley, Moses I. (1976), ‘Colonies: An Attempt at a Typology’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5/26, 167–188. Geulen, Christian (2010), ‘Plädoyer für eine Geschichte der Grundbegriffe des 20. Jahrhunderts’, Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 7, 79–97. Hiery, Hermann Joseph (ed.) (2015), Lexikon zur Überseegeschichte. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Koselleck, Reinhart (1972), ‘Einleitung’, in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck (eds), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politischsozialen Sprache in Deutschland, volume 1. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, xiii–xxvii. Osterhammel, Jürgen (2005), Colonialism. A Theoretical Overview, second edition. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers. White, Hayden (2002), ‘Foreword’, in Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. Stanford: University Press, ix–xiv.
3
Colonialism and diaspora in Imperial Germany Stefan Manz
1 Introduction Die Gartenlaube was the most widely read magazine in Imperial Germany, mainly appealing to a middle-class readership. In 1913 it published an article entitled ‘Die deutschen Kolonien in Transkaukasien’ [The German Colonies in Transcaucasia] (von Rosen 1913). Some years earlier the same magazine had reported on a ‘deutsche Kolonie’ [German colony] in Constantinople (Anon. 1889). And a Protestant church official, after visiting Brazil, reflected upon the ‘geistigen Zusammenhang zwischen Kolonie und Heimat’ [spiritual cohesion between colony and homeland] (Braunschweig 1907: 17). These three world regions were, of course, not formally part of a German colonial empire; rather, they all hosted German-speaking communities, and these were usually referred to as Kolonien. The first part of the chapter will show that this terminological concurrence was no coincidence during a period of mass emigration and High Imperialism. Transcaucasia, Constantinople and Brazil were just three examples for a multitude of other world regions. By the end of the 19th century, emigration was clearly part of the German colonialist discourse and imagination, remapping the world in terms of diasporic locations. The second part of the chapter will show that the discursive appropriation of territory could lead to tensions with host societies, especially within colonial contact zones. The ‘Scramble for Africa’ was an important element of British–German imperialist tensions, and a closer look at southern Africa will explore how the ideological overload of Germans abroad could lead to frictions in situ. The chapter thus argues for a broader understanding of colonialism that is not confined to formal territorial possession but also includes of a complex web of discursive strategies (Rash 2017). How can emigration best be conceptualized within this web? For the process of mental remapping the term ‘diaspora construction’ is suggested (Manz 2014). This is based on constructionist approaches to nation building (Anderson 1983) and transnationalizes these through the lens of emigration. Recent theorizations of diaspora argue for a relatively broad definition which goes beyond exilic victimhood of war and persecution. Robin Cohen’s criteria of what constitutes a ‘diaspora’ include, for example, ‘dispersal from an original homeland, often traumatically; alternatively, the expansion from a homeland in search of work, in
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pursuit of trade or to further colonial ambitions‘. The relationship with the homeland features ‘an idealization of the putative ancestral home and a collective commitment to its maintenance, restoration, safety, and prosperity, even to its creation’ (Cohen 2001: 26). Cohen’s focus is more on diasporic communities rather than the metropole, and this chapter suggests that these have to be discussed in conjunction as one communicative space. This view is supported by Gabriel Sheffer’s concept of ‘trans-state networks’ as a feature of diasporic connectedness. Transnational actors creating communication and transport networks need to be in place at both ends to keep real or imagined transnational bonds alive (Sheffer 2003: 9–10). Tölölyan’s constructivist position, then, allows us to identify similarities between nation building and diaspora construction: ‘Populations are made into nations and dispersions into diasporas’ (Tölölyan 2010: 29). This process of diaspora construction was at work in Germany throughout the 19th century, and then entered into a mutually reinforcing partnership with colonialist ideas. Discourse leaders were hard at work constructing a close-knit imagined community of globally dispersed German speakers, all belonging to the same Volk and inhabiting semi-colonial spaces.
2 Merging discourses of emigration and colonialism The two discursive strands of emigration and colonialism started to coalesce from the early 19th century onward on the back of politicized definitions of Volk. Ernst Moritz Arndt juxtaposed a linguistically and racially ‘pure’ German Volk with the ‘bastardized’ French people. The idea that a people’s spirit [Geist] should remain as undiluted as possible could then be projected onto communities abroad. In the absence of a German nation state, the idea of Germany as a Kulturnation was particularly attractive. This defined itself through a common culture rather than clearly demarcated territoriality (Weidenfeller 1976: 37–40). The deterritorialization of nationality opened the gates to viewing emigrants as integral parts of the nation. The discussion gained momentum during the Vormärz period. In 1846, the leading scholars of their day convened at the first Germanistentag in Frankfurt am Main. A central theme of this volume is the connection between nation and Volk, and there was broad agreement that culture and language constituted the essential binding elements. Jakob Grimm stressed in his key-note lecture: ‘Ein Volk ist der Inbegriff von Menschen, welche dieselbe Sprache reden’ [A Volk is the essence of people who speak the same language]. Another speaker, Georg Heinrich Pertz of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, seconded: ‘Das deutsche Volk bildet auch außer den Grenzen der deutschen Bundesstaaten ein Ganzes mit uns’ [The German Volk outside the borders of the German federal states constitutes a single entity with us]. Pertz found it desirable to establish contact with Germans abroad in order to: ‘einen Einfluß auf ihre Literatur zur Erhaltung deutscher Sprache, deutschen Sinnes und des Andenkens an das Vaterland zu gewinnen’ [to gain influence on their literature for the preservation of the German language, their German spirit, and their memory of the fatherland] (quoted in Münz and Ohliger 2002: 371).
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This reconceptualization went hand in hand with a terminological shift. In public discourse, the term Auswanderer [emigrants] was increasingly replaced with the neologism Auslandsdeutsche, which can be translated as ‘Germans abroad’ and suggests persisting bonds with the homeland and ethno-cultural homogeneity despite residence abroad. As Bradley Naranch explains for the decades before 1871: ‘Denoting the foreign and the familiar in equal parts, the term Auslandsdeutsche reflected the ambiguous, threshold status of those individuals living beyond the fatherland whom Germans at home wanted to include in their imagined community‘ (Naranch 2005: 26). These discussions were not locked within academic circles but were communicated to a wider middle-class and working-class public. Two important journals were Die Gartenlaube and Globus, both read by the liberal Bürgertum [bourgeoisie]. Matthew Fitzpatrick has shown that imperialist ideas were deeply engrained in the liberal discourse, leading him to coin the term ‘liberal imperialism’ (Fitzpatrick 2008). Publications such as Gartenlaube and Globus, along with the wider press, consistently referred to Auslandsdeutsche as outposts of Deutschtum [Germandom] abroad, leading to a mental remapping of the world in emigrationist terms. In the years before unification in 1871 emigrants constituted an imagined ersatz community for the non-existent nation state. After 1871, the combination of nation building and calls for colonies led to further proliferation and strengthening of the emigration diaspora nexus. A wide range of publications carried stories about specific German-speaking communities and individuals across the world. These stories followed a clear template. The communities were seen as thriving no matter what the geographical, natural or political circumstances. They derived their strength from a common Volkstum [ethno-national characteristic] which endowed them with unique qualities such as industriousness, faithfulness, moral rectitude and superior forms of conviviality. These qualities enabled them to overcome a hostile nature, such as the Brazilian jungle or the Russian steppe, which was ultimately tamed and civilized; or to overcome a hostile political environment such as Pan-Slavism in Eastern Europe or nativism in the United States. In these narratives, the presence of German communities was ultimately considered to be beneficial, and it was assumed that they helped raise cultural, moral and economic standards in their respective host environments. They were keen to preserve their Germanness, and they believed that the Heimat [homeland] had a duty to support them in this task. Where Germanness was in retreat, especially through language attrition, this was seen as a deplorable weakening of national strength (Manz 2014: 50–97; Conrad 2006: 229–78). These patterns can be illustrated through a 1913 article in Die Gartenlaube on southern Russia. The setting is depicted as a rural tabula rasa which is colonized and civilized. Suabian settlers who were invited by Czar Alexander I from 1803 onward had facilitated the Kolonisation and Urbarmachung [making arable] of the Cherson district around Odessa by the Black Sea. After difficult beginnings, the 23 rural Kolonien with names such as Lustdorf, Alexanderhilf and Groß Liebental flourished from the 1840s to the 1860s. Then came adversity, when
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privileges were removed by the Russian state in the 1870s. Through their own skills, hard work and solidarity the colonizers managed to pull themselves out of the crisis and at the time of writing in 1913, everything is moving ‘upward and forward’. The surrounding Russian farming villages are the local backdrop against which alterity and superiority are presented: ‘Was die deutschen Ansiedelungen besonders vorteilhaft von den russischen Bauerndörfern unterscheidet, sind die besser bestellten Felder, die wohlgebauten Dörfer und sauberen Häuser’ [What sets the German settlements apart from the Russian farming villages in a particularly advantageous way are the better cultivated fields, the well-built villages and clean dwellings] (Roß 1913: 233). Russian civilization and productivity also benefited from the German minority in their midst. German artisans who had settled in Odessa had become: ‘ein bedeutender Faktor im Wirtschaftsleben der Stadt. Die von den deutschen Handwerkern angefertigten Wagen und Ackerbaugeräte sind durch ganz Südrußland verbreitet. Ohne den deutschen Lastwagen und Pflug kann heute der russische Bauer nicht mehr auskommen’ [a significant factor in the economic life of the city. The carriages and agricultural equipment manufactured by the German artisans are now in use throughout southern Russia. Without the German cart and plough the Russian farmer would no longer be able to cope] (Roß 1913: 234). The main pillar of the community spirit was the common German roots, which were immune to assimilation: ‘Russische Sitten und Gebräuche haben bisher unter den Kolonisten wenig Eingang gefunden. Sie halten zähe fest am Hergebrachten’ [So far, Russian customs and ways have made few inroads amongst the colonists. The latter hold resolutely and firmly to their traditional ways] (Roß 1913: 233). Another article in the same issue describes the Transcaucasian settlements in southern Russia. The author recreates an idyllic German village scene against the backdrop of an exotic foreign environment with cypresses, fig trees and indigenous people [Eingeborene], also complete with camels and buffaloes. The author stresses the German nature of villages, from dress to farming tools and housing. In the evening, young girls sit on the verandas and sing traditional folk songs, such as Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten, and patriotic songs, such as Die Wacht am Rhein. For the author, the ‘wind of the German Heimat’ blew in these colonies (von Rosen 1913: 164). The construction of diasporic, Germanyoriented connectedness was semantically merged with quasi-colonialist aspirations. Presenting the economic and cultural benefits of German settlement to underdeveloped destinations served the purpose of claiming these territories for Deutschtum. The fact that these regions might lay under a different state authority was no more than a political inconvenience which had only little effect on the enduring, long-distance power of Deutschtum. The two articles from Gartenlaube clearly remake foreign territory into German territory through the lens of diasporization and cultural appropriation. This strategy was strikingly similar to that employed for the colonies from 1884. Jens Jäger has analysed photographic representations of colonial possessions which circulated within Germany through postcards and books. These images had no focus on the spectacularly exotic but rather on the familiar. In the centre
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stood churches and other colonial buildings which could equally be located in Germany itself. Palm trees or indigenous people were merely a backdrop to the otherwise familiar. The audience in Germany was made to see a normality in these photographs which suggested that overseas territories could be part of the German nation, just as the nation itself was composed of territorial states with different cultures and traditions (Jäger 2009). The concept of Heimat, which had served as a powerful bond within Germany to connect the local and the national, was now extended to overseas territories. In the public imagination, the colonies were remoulded into just another German region. The colonial gaze had deeper roots in the German cultural imagination, especially towards the East. It was powerfully popularized through writings such as Gustav Freytag’s novel Soll und Haben, which was first published in 1855 and remained a bestseller for 100 years. Its protagonist, the appropriately named Anton Wohlfahrt, moves to Poland as a self-proclaimed colonist, successfully cultivates a barren piece of land and defends it against the attacks of primitive natives who have ‘bronzefarbene Haut wie die nordamerikanischen Indianer’ [bronze skin like the North American Indians]. He ultimately creates the conditions for future generations of Germans to flourish in this stronghold abroad. Freytag’s novel was one mosaic piece in a wider reinvention of Poland and the East as a potential colonial space, ultimately culminating in the Eastern campaigns during the Second World War (Liulevicius 2009; quoted in Kopp 2009: 24). Strategies of cultural territorial appropriation can be analytically discussed under the umbrella of colonialism. The basic premise of the two articles above on southern Russia is that Germans settled in empty land. This was, of course, a constructed emptiness but served as a powerful legitimizing strategy. It can be brought together with John Locke’s idea of vacuum domicilium, pointing to longterm confluences between British and German discourses on emigration and colonialism. John Locke and others used the idea of the ‘empty land’ to justify British colonialism in North America. Any space that was not cultivated was no one’s property and hence empty space. As soon as more ‘civilized’ human beings start moving in and working on the land, they can legitimately claim it as their property. In a wider sense, this strategy has been applied by a range of expansionary regimes and discourse leaders around the world from antiquity to the present day (Nelson 2009; Asche and Niggemann 2015). It is certainly necessary in an analytical sense to separate different forms of colonialism. Examples include ‘adjacent colonialism’ towards the East, ‘informal’ versus ‘formal colonialism’, and ‘imagined colonialism’, such as that directed towards countries such as Brazil (Zantop 1997; Mitchell 1999). One theme which connects these different forms is the ideological instrumentalization of German speakers who lived in respective settlement regions. This can be tested at a purely terminological level. The semantic field of Kolonie was flexible enough to denote any kind of German settlement or community abroad. The Black Sea Germans had moved out as Kolonisten in order to realize the Kolonisation of the region. Here they lived in Kolonien which carried German names. Their
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allegedly superior culture gave them the right to occupy this territory, claim it by name and defend it against threats to Deutschtum, such as assaults by Tatars or Russification policies. Before 1884 the use of this terminology can at best be described as a proto-colonial activity, but by 1913, when Roß and von Rosen wrote these articles, it had certainly lost its semantic innocence. A clear defining separation was never drawn between the two semantic facets of ‘overseas possessions’ on the one hand and ‘expatriate ethnic communities’ on the other. Germany’s colonies and formal imperialism were widely discussed in public and across social classes. Using the word Kolonie during the period of High Imperialism – even when referring to an ethnic community – inevitably stirred connotations of formal territorial possession. Virtually no world region was exempt from this diasporic colonial gaze. The professor of antiquity, Bernhard Stark, published a best-selling book on Anatolia in 1872, Aus dem Reiche des Tantalus und Croesus. He claimed that German farmers should emigrate into the ‘empty’ hinterland, and German engineers should build the necessary infrastructure in the form of roads and railroads (Stark 1872). In Sydney, the German Consul reported to Berlin in 1905 that although Australia was British, political upheavals were always a possibility. In case parts of Australia were to become German, it would be beneficial to have a good number of emigrants who were loyal to the Kaiser. He thought it would be a good investment for the Reich to put money into German-language schools as main outposts [Hauptstützpunkte] of Germandom in Australia (Kaiserlich Deutsches General-Konsulat 1905). Indeed, financial support from Germany for German-language schools and churches across the world rose exponentially in the decades before 1914 (Manz 2014: 227–60). Dreams of a large-scale New Germany overseas were most pronounced in relation to Brazil. The eminent economist, Gustav Schmoller, asked for southern Brazil to be turned into a Germanic territory, no matter whether it remained part of Brazil, declared independence or just retained a close association with Germany. German settlers were seen as the main tools to achieve this aim (Conrad 2006). The colonization of foreign territories is therefore a wide-ranging activity which goes beyond the act of formal acquisition. It needs to be theoretically separated from imperialism which pursues a state-centred spectrum of expansionary measures and power structures. Colonialism, in contrast to imperialism, comprises a whole set of transnationally oriented cultural practices whose aim it is to construct a hegemonic relationship. This usually contains an element of a civilizing mission. Migrants were thus far more than border-crossing individuals seeking opportunities abroad, rather they were moulded into agents of a national mission. The dissemination of German farming practices in Russia was not just an example of technological dissemination, but an act of claiming hegemony. Describing a woman singing a German folk song was not just an ethnographic observation – it was an assurance of the enduring power of Deutschtum which was able to undertake this civilizing mission. However, as soon as the agents were themselves transformed by the host environment, danger loomed. Assimilation was seen as a weakness of Deutschtum and
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described in derogatory terms such as ‘Verbrasilianerung’ [Brazilianization, becoming like a Brazilian], ‘Verkafferung’ [kaffirization, becoming like a kaffir] or even ‘Verengländerung’ [Anglicization]. These terms imply a disdain for the host cultures and contempt for those who went native and descended to ‘lower’ levels of civilization. Migration, alterity and cultural transformation were squeezed into a paradigm of cultural hierarchy.
3 Emigration and British–German frictions in southern Africa The global patterns outlined above can now be exemplified through a focus on southern Africa. The aggressive colonial stance which had entered into the emigrationist discourse after 1871 had the potential to turn colonial contact zones into British–German friction zones. So far this chapter has mainly quoted from mainstream liberal publications, and southern Africa will now exemplify how the more aggressive side of the Alldeutscher Verband [Pan-German League] conceived of their expansionary ideas. David Blackbourn, however, makes an important observation: ‘These views were not confined to a lunatic fringe. They had support among academics and schoolteachers, and entered the language of political parties, especially the Conservatives and the National Liberals’ (Blackbourn 2003: 334). Around 1900, the radical Pan-German League edited a substantial 20-volume series entitled Der Kampf um das Deutschtum [The Fight for Germandom]. This gave an overview of German settlement abroad, each volume focusing on one world region. The volume on South Africa was published in 1898, just before the South African (or Boer) War. The volume shows that the flexible nature of ethnic belonging could easily be twisted in a Pan-German sense. Its author, the journalist Fritz Bley, argued with crude dialectics that the future of the German race depended upon the creation of new space: ‘Schaffen wir uns nicht eine neue “deutsche Erde”, so wird unser Volk rettungslos verkrüppeln und untergehen’ [If we do not manage to create a new German soil for us, our Volk will be irretrievably crippled and eliminated]. The whole of southern Africa would be a suitable region if Boers and Germans managed to build a united front against colonial encroachment by Britain. Bley redefined the white Afrikaners as being essentially German, their language simply being a Low German dialect: ‘Auch sie sind Deutsche im Blute, wie der Sprache nach. Ihre Mundart, das Afrikaanerplatt, steht dem niedersächsischen Platt weit näher als diesem die oberbayerische Mundart steht’ [They are just as much Germans by blood and by language. Their dialect, the Afrikaanerplatt, is far closer to the Plattdeutsch-dialect spoken in Lower Saxony than to the dialect of Upper Bavaria] (Bley 1898: 69). The fact that the Afrikaners had led a relatively isolated existence for centuries did not shed any doubt on their unalterable Germanness. On the contrary, it was exactly the diasporic situation which enabled essential Germanic traits to be better preserved than in Europe: ‘Im Gegenteil tritt uns in dieser burischen Bärenhäuterei der Grundzug echtesten Germanentums entgegen’ [On the contrary, the Boers do not change readily, and this presents us with the most genuine trait of Germandom] (Bley 1898: 70).
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Southern Africa hosted a mixed society in transition where Germans and Afrikaners could play a crucial role in shifting the power-political balance. For Bley, the fact that the Boer did not actually see himself as German was a surmountable challenge. Local newspapers such as the Südafrikanische Zeitung had the duty: den tüchtigen niederdeutschen Volksstamm unermüdlich an die Stimme des Blutes zu mahnen, ihn täglich und stündlich auf die notwendige Stellung zu dem gesamten Deutschtume hinzuweisen, die er einnehmen muß, wenn er nicht fortgespült werden will von der Hochflut der englischen Weltwirtschaft. [to incessantly remind the hard-working Low German tribe of the voice of their blood, to point out to them daily and hourly their destined position within the entirety of Deutschtum which they must occupy if they do not wish to be washed away by the high tide of the English world economy.] (Bley 1898: 68) The Reich, in turn, had the duty to support Boer schools and other institutions to uphold their Germanness. Bley envisaged a large border-straddling Germanic population from German South-West Africa to the Cape Colony. This would eventually push back English influence in South Africa. Again, it would be misleading to confine these ideas to a lunatic fringe. The Kruger Telegram of 1896, in which Wilhelm II congratulated Ohm Kruger, the president of Transvaal, on a military success against British forces, was indicative of these constructed bonds. When the Boer States surrendered after the South African War in 1902, this was largely deplored in Germany. Theodor Reismann Grone, the influential conservative publisher wrote: ‘Auch Afrika ist dem Deutschtum verloren, auch in Afrika wird das Deutschtum nur Völkerdünger sein’ [Now Africa is also lost for Deutschtum. In Africa Deutschtum will also be nothing more than the cultural fertilizer of other peoples] (quoted in Rosenbach 1993: 305). The latter metaphor had been coined by Heinrich von Treitschke. It was frequently used in discourses about Germans abroad in order to denote the beneficial and ‘civilizing’ effect of their settlement on respective host environments. The example of Cape Town shows that migrant communities themselves could be drawn into the maelstrom of British–German colonial frictions. During the 1880s, the city hosted around 1,000 Germans, most of whom had taken on British nationality. The St Martini Schule was founded in 1883 in connection with the local German Protestant Church. When Germany started to establish its protectorate in neighbouring South-West Africa, the school gained, in the eyes of Berlin, a new strategic importance as German institutional presence in the region and possible educational facility for prospective colonial migrants. In the wake of the Boer War and British–German frictions, the school was asked to introduce English as the language of instruction. This decision was interpreted by the metropolitan press as an act of British ‘imperialist chauvinism’ (Leipziger Tageblatt, 5 October 1903; Hamburger
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Nachrichten, 24 February 1905). The German Foreign Office granted additional funding so that the school could become independent and carry on teaching in German. Inside, the school was decorated with pictures of the German emperor and empress. The church bell was adorned with a cast image of William I (Manz 2014: 253). This symbolism and rhetoric within a British colonial possession led to frictions with the host society. In 1907, during the Kaiser’s birthday celebrations, the German General Consul in Cape Town gave a speech to the local German Club. He first talked about German South-West Africa and the Germanized nature of the territory: ‘Darum muss dieser Boden, mit deutschem Blute bedeckt, besonders in unsere deutschen Herzen eingeschlossen sein’ [That is why this soil, covered with German blood, has to occupy a special place in our German hearts]. He reminded his countrymen that now, during the Herero-Nama War (1904–7), they had the duty to create a ‘centre of Germanism’ in South Africa in the form of the St Martini School. This would be very much in the interest of the Kaiser (Berliner Neueste Nachrichten, 11 March 1907). The introductory chapter to this volume has shown that developments in German South-West Africa were closely watched by British observers. Local reactions to the consul’s speech were indeed touchy, demonstrating that British colonizers felt threatened not only by formal German control of a neighbouring territory, but also by an overconfident diaspora group in their midst. The Cape Times stressed that, after all, South Africa was a British and not a German colony. Oral comments given by the consul were then printed in faulty English in the Cape Times. This aggravated the situation even further. In his report to Berlin, the consul described his words as harmless and the British reaction as ‘übergroße koloniale Empfindlichkeit’ [exaggerated colonial sensitivity] (Kaiserlich Deutsches General-Konsulat Kapstadt 1907). On the one hand this brought the ethnic community together in a defiant way; on the other it led to intra-ethnic frictions. The newspaper Windhuker Nachrichten condemned the consul’s actions as damaging for the standing of the minority. This was sharply refuted by the German newspaper in South Africa, the Deutsche Nachrichten, as well as a mass gathering in the Deutsches Haus in Cape Town, which expressed praise and full trust in the consul’s support for the school (Manz 2014: 253–4). Diasporic nationalism and the ideologization of ethnic life had turned ethnic contact zones into colonial friction zones, in turn both dividing and unifying the ethnic community itself. The ground was now prepared for the Germanophobic violence which was to break out after August 1914, not only in South Africa but also in many other host societies around the world (Panayi 2014). In Britain and throughout its empire, around 50,000 mostly German and Austrian nationals were interned as ‘enemy aliens’. They found themselves incarcerated in a multitude of camps, the global node being Knockaloe on the Isle of Man with up to 23,000 internees (Manz and Panayi 2020). The symbolic appropriation of Germanic space carried on behind barbed wire, as can be shown in South Africa. In a camp near Johannesburg prisoners painted street names on their
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huts, such as Kaiser Straße, Kaiser Franz Joseph Straße, Bismarck Straße and Unter den Linden. Other prisoners were housed in large cowsheds with names such as Kaiserburg. Large-size letters were a conscious provocation directed at the camp authorities. One internee remembered: ‘Die beste Benennung war jedenfalls “Hotel zum Kaiser von Europa”. Da der Kommandant häufig an demselben vorbeiging, befahl er den Namen, der so schön groß und deutlich daran prangte, zu entfernen’ [The best name was ‘Hotel Emperor of Europe’. Since the commandant frequently went past it, he ordered the removal of the name, which adorned the shed in such large and clear letters] (Anon. 1916: 5). There was also acoustic appropriation of space in the form of military parading accompanied by patriotic singing (Anon. 1916: 4–9). These activities continued when the prisoners were removed from Johannesburg to the central permanent camp Fort Napier in Pietermaritzburg, which held 2,500. Symbolism and celebrations were platforms to perform defiant constructions of national traits and identity. Prisoners built spaces of secular worship into the topography of the camps. In the camp Compound III, ‘sind die Büsten Seiner Majestät des Kaisers Wilhelm II. und Seiner Majestät des Kaisers von Österreich modelliert und unter Feierlichkeit enthüllt worden’ [busts of His Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II and His Majesty the Kaiser of Austria were modelled and ceremoniously unveiled] (Bruchausen 1915). Camp II celebrated the birthday of General von Hindenburg on 2 October 1917 with a choir, orchestra and a speaker who ‘zeichnete den grossen Helden und Fuehrer des deutschen Volkes und weckte die Begeisterung der zahlreich erschienenen Lagerinsassen’ [described the great hero and leader and incited the enthusiasm of the camp inmates who had shown up in great numbers] (Der Hunne 1917). In Camp I, prisoners constructed a substantial monument to the Kaiser, adorned with a marble plate and surrounded by a flowerbed with the pattern of the imperial crown. Camp life was largely structured around the patriotic calendar, with the Kaiser’s birthday on 27 January as the most important jour fixe. Celebrations lasted the whole day, with parade marching and a religious service at the Kaiser monument and a torchlight procession in the evening: Der Anblick war sehr schön, wie sich diese Lichterschlange durch das Lager wand. An dem mit großen Fackeln und bunten Glühlampen geschmückten Denkmal wurde halt gemacht, allda hatte sich die Zuschauermenge gesammelt. Musik und Lieder unseres Gesangvereins trugen zur Verschönerung der Feier bei. Die zündende Kaiserrede eines Kameraden wurde mit Begeisterung aufgenommen. [The sight was very beautiful as the procession of lights snaked its way through the camp. It stopped at the monument, which was adorned with large torches and colourful lamps. Here the crowd had gathered. Music and songs performed by our choral society made the celebration even more beautiful. A rousing Kaiser-speech delivered by a comrade was received with enthusiasm.] (Anon. 1916: 31)
Colonialism and diaspora in Imperial Germany
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These festivities were a display of resistance, and the camp commandant was acutely aware that limits had to be set. A conflict around symbols unfolded. For the Kaiser’s birthday celebrations in 1915 the commandant had forbidden national flags during the marches. When this was not obeyed he threatened to destroy the Kaiser monument. The prisoners quickly removed the marble plaque with the Kaiser’s image and replaced it with a caricature of King George crying for help as a German iron fist hit his head (Anon. 1916: 54).
4 Conclusion This chapter has shown that British and German discourses of diaspora and colonialism were clearly linked during the era of High Imperialism, leading to colonial friction zones in a British–German context. Emigration played an important role in remapping the mind-set of Imperial Germany in a colonial sense. In public discourse, emigrant communities were increasingly represented as outposts abroad whose cohesion with each other and with the homeland had to be preserved. In economic terms, they could act as promoters or customers of German industry and trade. In cultural terms, they could disseminate a supposedly superior Germanic culture and elevate the ‘inferior’ cultures of their host societies. In political terms, they could be used to justify territorial claims. Where emigrants accepted this ideological baggage abroad, this could lead to serious frictions with host societies and their sensitivities over sovereignty and colonial status. In the end, however, diaspora construction was a surrogate discourse which developed ex negativo. Both Britain and France were mature nation states with expansive empires spanning the globe. Germany, in contrast, was a latecomer nation, and its actual empire never lived up to its imperial fantasies. The one matter where Germany showed a truly global presence was through its diaspora. Within the British Empire, many Germans were part of multi-ethnic elites. In African territories, European elites had developed a discourse of a ‘white race’ with a joint civilizing mission, rather than one delineated by nationality (Rash 2017; Steinbach 2011). This notion was damaged by the aggressive German diaspora construction before 1914, and then broke down totally after the outbreak of the First World War when proclamations of clear-cut national allegiance were called for. Germans now found themselves as ‘enemy aliens’ in the British Empire. Those who were arrested in front of a black population found this a humiliating experience on a personal level and saw it as an act of betrayal towards the ‘white race’ in general. When Wilhelm Kröpke was arrested in Nigeria he was shocked beyond comprehension that England ‘es wirklich ganz kaltblütig wagte, die “weiße Rasse” vor den unkultivierten Eingeborenen herabzuwürdigen’ [actually dared in cold blood to humiliate the ‘white race’ in front of the uncultivated natives] (Kröpke 1937: 8).
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References Anderson, Benedict (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Anon. (1889), ‘Die Deutschen in Konstantinopel’, Die Gartenlaube 4, 123–124. Anon. (1916), Südafrikas Deutsche in englischer Gewalt. Dresden: Heimat und WeltVerlag. Asche, Matthias and Ulrich Niggemann (eds) (2015), Das leere Land. Historische Narrative von Einwanderergesellschaften. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Blackbourn, David (2003), History of Germany, 1780–1918: The Long Nineteenth Century. Malden: Blackwell. Bley, Fritz (1898), Südafrika niederdeutsch!Munich: Lehmann. Braunschweig, M. (1907), Pastor M. Braunschweig (Leipzig) über seine Reise durch die deutschen evangelischen Gemeinden in Brasilien im Jahre 1907. Evangelisches Zentralarchiv Berlin 5/2173. Bruchhausen (1915), Consular Secretary South Africa, Report, 26 April, Bundesarchiv Berlin R901/83828. Cohen, Robin (2001), Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. Conrad, Sebastian (2006), Globalisierung und Nation im Deutschen Kaiserreich. Munich: Beck. Der Hunne (1917), Camp Newspaper Fort Napier, National Archives of South Africa CES164/ES70/3707/70, October. Fitzpatrick, Matthew P. (2008), Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848–1884. New York: Berghahn. Jäger, Jens (2009), ‘Colony as Heimat? The Formation of Colonial Identity in Germany around 1900’, German History 27/4, 467–489. Kaiserlich Deutsches General-Konsulat Sydney an Auswärtiges Amt (1905), Bundesarchiv Berlin R901/39006, 18 June. Kaiserlich Deutsches General-Konsulat Kapstadt an Auswärtiges Amt (1907), Bundesarchiv Berlin R901/39023, 5 February. Kopp, Kristin (2009), ‘Reinventing Poland as German Colonial Territory in the Nineteenth Century: Gustav Freytag’s Soll und Haben as Colonial Novel’, in Robert L. Nelson (ed.), Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East: 1850 through the Present. New York: Palgrave, 11–38. Kröpke, Wilhelm (1937), Meine Flucht aus englischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1916. Von Afrika über England nach Deutschland zur Flandern-Front. Flensburg: Kommissions-Verlag. Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel (2009), The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manz, Stefan (2014), Constructing a German Diaspora: The ‘Greater German Empire’. New York: Routledge. Manz, Stefan and Panikos Panayi (2020), Enemies in the Empire. Civilian Internment in the British Empire during the First World War, Oxford: Oxford University Press Mitchell, Nancy (1999), The Danger of Dreams: German and American Imperialism in Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Münz, Rainer and Rainer Ohliger (2002), ‘Auslandsdeutsche’, in Etienne François and Hagen Schulze (eds), Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, vol. 1. Munich: Beck, 370–388. Naranch, Bradley D. (2005), ‘Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche: Emigration, Colonial Fantasy, and German National Identity, 1848–1871’, in Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz
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and Lora Wildenthal (eds), Germany’s Colonial Pasts. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 21–40. Nelson, Robert L. (2009), ‘Colonialism in Europe? The Case against Salt Water’, in Robert L. Nelson (ed.), Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East: 1850 through the Present. New York: Palgrave, 1–10. Panayi, Panikos (ed.) (2014), Germans as Minorities during the First World War: A Global Comparative Perspective. Farnham: Ashgate. Rash, Felicity (2017), The Discourse Strategies of Imperialist Writing: The German Colonial Idea and Africa 1848–1945. New York: Routledge. Rosenbach, Harald (1993), Das Deutsche Reich, Großbritannien und der Transvaal 1896– 1902. Anfänge deutsch-britischer Entfremdung. Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht. Roß, W. (1913), ‘Deutsche Siedelungen am Schwarzen Meer’, Die Gartenlaube 11, 233–234. Sheffer, Gabriel (2003), Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stark, Bernhard (1872), Aus dem Reiche des Tantalus und Croesus. Eine Reisestudie. Berlin: Habel. Steinbach, Daniel Rouven (2011), ‘Challenging European Colonial Supremacy: The Internment of “Enemy Aliens” in British and German East Africa during the First World War’, in Alisa Millier (ed.), Other Combatants, Other Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War. Cambridge: Scholars, 153–175. Tölölyan, Khachig (2010), ‘Beyond the Homeland: From Exilic Nationalism to Diasporic Transnationalism’, in Allon Gal, Athena Leoussi and Anthony Smith (eds), The Call of the Homeland: Diaspora Nationalisms, Past and Present. Leiden: Brill, 27–45. Von Rosen, H. (1913), ‘Die Deutschen Kolonien in Transkaukasien’, Die Gartenlaube 11, 163–164. Weidenfeller, Gerhard (1976), VDA. Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland/Allgemeiner Deutscher Schulverein (1881–1918). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Nationalismus und Imperialismus im Kaiserreich. Frankfurt: Lang. Zantop, Susanne (1997), Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870. Durham: Duke University Press.
4
How are British and German colonizers positioned in the digital corpus? Elisa Erbe and Daniel Schmidt-Brücken and Ingo H. Warnke
1 Basic considerations First and foremost, it must be noted that a linguistic treatment of Eurocolonial history becomes problematic for moral reasons if it fails to understand the significance of its confrontation with the colonial past as a learning process for today’s academic practices in a global world.1 This also applies to the United Kingdom–German academic dialogue. It is equally a question of keeping an eye on the consequences of a consolidation of positions that is shaping the current political agenda, not least in Europe. It is certainly no coincidence that Paul Gilroy (2005), whose important book Postcolonial Melancholia today reads like a diagnosis of Brexit avant la lettre, also speaks of ‘Cultures of Melancholia and the Pathology of Greatness’ (Gilroy 2005: 89) – the relevance to the present is obvious. The present-day state of Europe cannot be separated from the history of violence – with colonialism being one of its grave legacies. In this respect, it is also not a neutral undertaking to write today from a German perspective about the German–British colonial competitions of the past. The colonial past and colonial persistences in their various presents are not a neutral object of scholarly interest, such as a sentence structure or a word-formation type. Colonialism is rather a central episteme of global history and worldwide abjection. The reason that there is no neutral place for linguistics is also due to the fact that linguistics as a field has not only inscribed itself into this history of violence, but has also had a considerable share in colonization and the formation of colonial ideology. It is not the place here to go into this in more detail, but we refer to the extensive discussion since the 1970s, and to Calvet (1974) and Errington (2001, 2008). Warnke (2019) also offers an attempt to fundamentally determine the position of a linguistics that is interested in colonial history and does not overlook the legacy of its own responsibility. For this reason we argue in favour of and commit ourselves to understanding the project of Postcolonial Language Studies (cf. Warnke et al. 2016) as a contribution to what Gilroy (2005, xv) calls ‘conviviality’. Put differently, if research on colonialism does not itself want to renew the epistemological foundations of colonialism (Conrad 2012: 7), it should contribute to ‘processes of cohabitation and interaction’ (Gilroy 2005; xv), to what might be called a linguistics of listening.
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But how does one work in a historically interested linguistics of listening that responds to the postcolonial ruination of this world (cf. Storch and Warnke forthcoming)? How does one examine data characterized by confrontation and the contradictions of European arrogance within reciprocal rivalries, such as the confrontation of British and German colonial discourses that manifest their competition on the backs of the colonized and thus make a rhetorical abjection of the colonized world the normal case for intra-European positioning? First of all, it is a scholarly task – in spite of all difficulties – to scrutinize the presumed rivalries between colonial powers, including the colonial competition between Great Britain and Germany, and to examine in detail what these rivalries actually consisted of and where, in which texts and by which actors they were put into practice. However, this cannot and should not be an end in itself, but should contribute, as a data-related analysis, to a linguistics of listening, be it ex negativo, in the documentation of what must be regarded as the reverse side of encounter, dialogue and respect (Arendt 1998: 243). Not least in a digital present marked by cyber violence (Marx 2017), the historical analysis of nationalistic and imperialistic pasts may perhaps explain the aberrations of identitarian thought. Starting from these fundamental and necessary considerations, we want to engage in a historical analysis of convergences and competitions of British and German colonialism from a linguistic perspective. We propose a historical linguistics that understands language use as part of discourses. To deal with convergences and competitions of British and German colonialism as a linguistic project means above all to examine contrastive data. We should therefore take a closer look at the concept of contrast. As far as the objects of contrastive linguistics are concerned, we follow Theisen (2016: 11–16), who names various linguistic contrasts and also different linguistic sub-disciplines interested in contrast, such as historical-comparative linguistics, systemoriented structural analysis, contrastive questions of dialectology, research on spoken and written language, as well as contrastive questions of intercultural communication studies, cultural linguistics, sociolinguistics and variational linguistics and, finally, also language contact research. In addition, one can mention studies of contrastive discourse analysis, such as Czachur (2011), which examines discursive worldviews in contrast. Thus, contrastive analyses involving linguistics are not only related to formal similarities and contrasts, but can also include forms of linguistically coded perception or thematization. In this chapter we will go one step further and also understand contrast as a linguistic practice in which the object of discourse itself is characterized by opposition and thus by the potential of contrast. This is precisely what we are concerned with when dealing with Eurocolonial competition. We are examining, therefore, not only how colonialism was contrasted in Great Britain and Germany – which is undoubtedly an interesting question – but how linguistic acts in one language assert or declare and transmit a colonial contrast between actors. We concentrate on German-language sources that deal with British colonial practices. The contrast shifts from the level of language to the level of
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viewpoint. Especially through the critical evaluation of British colonialism from a German perspective, historical views of German convictions are assessed. In this respect, our chapter is not a contribution to contrastive linguistics or contrastive discourse analysis in the narrower sense, but a contribution primarily to the analysis of some historical phenomena of text-bound stance taking, although language contrasts also play an important role here. Our focus is on acts of evaluation because evaluative practices are, of course, always tied to acts of positioning and, where they are directed at a counterpart, also mean taking a stance. Practices of positioning in particular – and here we can see once again just how current the issue is – are what determine the demarcations between the continent and Great Britain today. Against this backdrop, it can be an important contribution of linguistics to address traditions of speaking about each other from a German perspective. This is not about questions of national identity in the colonial project (cf. Perraudin and Zimmerer 2011), but about practices of identification. Here, too, we refer to Gilroy’s idea of conviviality: I use this to refer to the processes of cohabitation and interaction that have made multiculture an ordinary feature of social life in Britain’s urban areas and in postcolonial cities elsewhere… The radical openness that brings conviviality alive makes a nonsense of closed, fixed, and reified identity and turns attention toward the always unpredictable mechanisms of identification. (Gilroy 2005: xv) What about the possibilities of identification in texts from the colonial period? With which positions do authors identify themselves, and which convergences and competitions of British and German colonialism can be found in the sources? These are the questions we want to explore in detail in our chapter. Notwithstanding our fundamental preliminary considerations, this is an empirical project. We are convinced that data-based analyses can provide answers to our questions and that digital humanities are a particularly useful tool for historical investigation. For our multilevel analysis, which we present and develop in detail in the next sections, we use the database Digitale Sammlung Deutscher Kolonialismus (DSDK; Digital Collection German Colonialism, http://brema.suub. uni-bremen.de/dsdk). DSDK is an open-access archive of more than 1,000 digitized books, pamphlets, etc., published between 1884 and 1919, comprising 243,000 pages, mainly in German. DSDK is based on sources from the State and University Library Bremen and the Frankfurt University Library, reconstructing historical catalogues of works on the topic of colonialism, derived partly from the library of the former Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft [German Colonial Society]. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation and carried out in cooperation with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In technical terms, the documents are available as optical
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character recognition-readable images, as PDF facsimiles and full texts in different formats for corpus-linguistic annotations and analysis. Part of the project is the implementation in a Clarin state-of-the-art digital environment with partof-speech annotations and corpus-linguistic tools in the framework of the Deutsches Textarchiv (www.deutschestextarchiv.de). A special feature of DSDK is that the sources it contains are not collected ex post facto, i.e. from today’s perspective on colonialism, but that historical library holdings on colonialism are digitally reconstructed, so that the selection of texts in DSDK allows an exemplary view of historical collection practice and accurately documents colonial perspectives of the past. This enables access to textual manifestations of the apparatus of European coloniality. The theoretical anchors of our use of these data are a) digital humanities, b) discourse-linguistic approaches, and c) a sociolinguistic theory of stance taking and thus of indexical meaning.
2 Traces of British colonialism in DSDK Against the backdrop for the comparative framework of the present volume, our contribution focuses on the overarching questions posed in Chapter 1. In the following, we regard the apparatus of European coloniality as a macrolevel of phenomena available for research. Against this macro-level, British– German colonial competition, the real-life agency it engendered, as well as the sedimentation of its base epistemes into publications and archives can, for our purposes, be considered a meso-level. We zoom in, so to speak, on the data that allow us to address our specific research questions adequately. The meso-level, i.e. the relationship between Britain and Germany – to the extent it is represented in DSDK – can be sub-divided in at least two analytical parts: 1) the published works in this specific collection that actually deal with British colonialism as a topic among others (or rather an accretion of collections, since, strictly speaking, we are dealing with two library collections: Bremen and Frankfurt), and 2) the content of this (sub-)body of literature that allows us to make assumptions and draw conclusions regarding discursive positions by means of discourse-linguistic methods. Going forward, the first of these aspects will be discussed in this chapter of our contribution, as it concerns the meso-level of the investigation. The second aspect, further zooming in on the micro-level, will be dealt with in the subsequent Section 3. Let us first take a look at the raw numbers. Out of the 1,088 documents in DSDK, 41 make explicit reference to Great Britain in their titles (roughly 3.8 per cent), meaning that the title of a book, or other type of publication, contains some morphological extension of the truncated forms engl* and/or brit*, providing as search results either nouns (England, Großbritannien/Great Britain) or adjectives (englisch/English, britisch/British). These publications are listed in Table 4.1. 2 It is, of course, not realistic to assume that these are the only publications in the DSDK database that make reference to Britain, the British colonies or
Table 4.1 Publications in DSDK making explicit reference to Great Britain (or England) in their titles Author(s)
Berthold, Otto Bischoff, Ernst; Forel, Auguste H. Bongard, Oskar
Booth, William Brandt, Max Busse, Alfred Reinhold Friedrich Dickerson, Oliver Morton
Egerton, Hugh Edward Finsch, Otto
Froude, James Anthony Gördes, Hugo
Greswell, William Parr
Title
Year
Library
Verhalten der englischen und der unter englischem Oberbefehl stehenden französischen Truppen gegen die weiße Bevölkerung der deutschen Schutzgebiete Kamerun und Togo Die Behandlung der einheimischen Bevölkerung in den kolonialen Besitzungen Deutschlands und Englands. Eine Erwiderung auf das englische Blaubuch vom August 1918: Report on the natives of South-West Africa and their treatment by Germany Englische Urteile über die deutsche Kolonisationsarbeit Die britischen Kolonien und der imperialistische Gedanke Les exactions des Anglais et des Français dans les colonies
1916
Bremen
1919
Bremen
1919
Bremen
1909
Bremen
1918
Bremen
Staatssekretär Dernburg in Britisch- und Deutsch-Süd-Afrika. Mit 32 Abbildungen. 2. verb. u. verm. Aufl. In Darkest England and the Way Out Die englische Kolonialpolitik und Kolonialverwaltung Australien und der britische Zollverein
1909
Bremen
1890 1906
Bremen Bremen
1906
Bremen
1912
Bremen
1910
Bremen
1888
Frankfurt
1887
Bremen
1915
Bremen
1898
Bremen
American Colonial Government 1696–1765. A Study of the British Board of Trade in Its Relation to the American Colonies, Political, Industrial, Administrative A Short History of British Colonial Policy Samoafahrten: Reisen in Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land und Englisch-Neu-Guinea in den Jahren 1884 und 1885 an Bord des deutschen Dampfers ‘Samoa’/von Otto Finsch Oceana or England and Her Colonies Die Arbeiterfrage in der deutschen Südsee unter Berücksichtigung der englischen Fidschi-Inseln. Ein Beitrag zur Lehre von der Volkswirtschaft in tropischen Ländern The Growth and Administration of the British Colonies. 1837–1897
Continued
Table 4.1 (Cont.) Author(s)
Title
Year
Library
Gürich, Georg
Während des Krieges in Deutsch-Ostafrika und Südafrika. Meine Erlebnisse bei Ausbruch des Krieges in Deutsch-Ostafrika, im englischen Gefangenenlager in Südafrika und auf der Rückreise nach Europa; mit 2 Karten und 9 Abbildungen Das Recht des deutschen Kolonialbeamten unter Berücksichtigung des englischen, französischen und niederländischen Kolonialbeamtenrechts Unser Vetter Tartuffe oder wie England seine Kolonien ‘erwarb’ Britisch-Ostafrika. Nach seiner Geschichte, Natur und Entwickelung unter englischer Herrschaft Über die Bedeutung Indiens für England. Eine Studie Englands Weltmacht in ihrer Entwicklung vom 17. Jahrhundert bis auf unsere Tage Die Bevölkerungsverhältnisse der Britischen Kolonialstaaten in Australien unter Berücksichtigung der wirtschaftlichen Einflüsse Kolonial- und Reichskonferenzen. Wege und Ziele des britischen Imperialismus Cypern und die Engländer. Ein Beispiel britischer kolonialer Willkür Deutsch-Ostafrika als Siedelungsgebiet für Europäer unter Berücksichtigung Britisch-Ostafrikas und Nyassalands. Bericht der 1908 unter Führung des damaligen Unterstaatssekretärs Dr. von Lindequist nach Ostafrika entsandten Kommission Im Bismarck-Archipel. Erlebnisse und Beobachtungen auf der Insel Neu-Pommern (NeuBritannien)/von Richard Parkinson Die rechtliche Stellung der britischen überseeischen Besitzungen und deren Verwaltung Die Stimme Deutsch-Ostafrikas. Die Engländer im Urteil unserer ostafrikanischen Neger
1916
Bremen
1912
Bremen
1914
Bremen
1909
Bremen
1919
Bremen
1907
Bremen
1912
Bremen
1917
Bremen
1915
Bremen
1912
Bremen
1887
Frankfurt
1908
Bremen
1919
Bremen
The Voice of German East Africa. The English in the Judgment of the Natives
1919
Bremen
Haarhaus, Hans
Hennig, Richard Klingspor, Paul
Konow, Sten Langenbeck, Wilhelm Langenstraßen, Bodo Lejeune-Jung, Paul Lichtenberg, Reinhold von Lindequist, [Friedrich] von
Parkinson, Richard Pfuelf, Carl M. A. Poeschel, Hans; Schnee, Heinrich; LettowVorbeck, Paul Poeschel, Hans; Schnee, Heinrich; LettowVorbeck, Paul
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Author(s)
Title
Year
Library
Powell, Wilfred | Schröter, F. M. [translator] Preyer, Thierry
Unter den Kannibalen von Neu-Britannien: drei Wanderjahre durch ein wildes Land/von Wilfred Powell. Frei übertr. durch F. M. Schröter Ägypten und Indien. Zwei Säulen britischer Weltmacht Wie England die Deutschen Kolonien bewertet Kameruner Kriegserlebnisse in deutscher und englischer Beleuchtung: Antworten der deutschen Baptisten-Missionare Valentin Wolff und Wilhelm Märtens auf das englische Blaubuch von November 1915/hrsg. von A. W. Schreiber Die staats- und völkerrechtliche Stellung der deutschen Schutzgebiete; Nebst Anhang: Über das Kolonialstaatsrecht Englands und Frankreichs In Südwest unter englischer Herrschaft/von Hans Siebold Ein Jahrhundert voller Unrecht. Ein Rückblick auf die südafrikanische Politik Englands. Veröffentlicht auf Veranlassung und unter Mitwirkung von Dr. F. W. Reitz, Staatssecretair der Südafrikanischen Republik. Autorisierte Übersetzung aus dem Holländischen. Germany’s Right to Recover Her Colonies, Irrefutable Facts and Figures. English and American Testimony Britisch-Kaffraria und seine deutschen Siedlungen (= Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik. Bd. 147. Teil 4) Samoa, Ugi (Salomons-Ins.), Neu-Britannien, Admiralitäts-Inseln/Strauch Eine Sommerfahrt in den Tropenwinter: Deutsch- und Britisch-Ostafrika Juni bis August 1908/von W. Woltag Twentieth Century Impressions of British Malaya. Its History, People, Commerce, Industries, and Resources
1884
Frankfurt
1916
Bremen
1918 1917
Bremen Frankfurt
1906
Bremen
1916 1900
Frankfurt Bremen
1919
Bremen
1914
Bremen
1892
Frankfurt Frankfurt
Rein, Kurt Schreiber, August Wilhelm (ed.)
Schwörbel, Heribert
Siebold, Hans Smuts, Jahn Christian
Solf, Wilhelm Heinrich Spanuth, Johannes Strauch, … Woltag, Wilhelm Wright, Arnold
1909
1908
Bremen
the British–German relationship. On the contrary, many more results are found by searching the entire database of actual digitized texts for keywords like England (463 hits), Großbritannien (185 hits), englisch (472 hits) or britisch (346 hits). Within such search results, to give an example, we find titles like Alfred Zimmermann’s five-volume work Die europäischen Kolonien (published 1896–1903) which gives an account of early Portuguese and Spanish ‘exploration’ efforts up to the colonial activities of Britain, France
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and Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Titles like this demonstrate the awareness of contemporary scholars for the ‘internationality’ of the European colonial project which, naturally, also draws upon the competition between Britain and Germany for global influence. For the sake of our investigation, however, we will keep to our list of 41 titles as listed above, as they give us a clear indication of the respective focus of the texts we are dealing with, i.e. British colonialism in the context of a mostly German body of literature. These books alone, published between 1884 and 1919, make up a total of 6,014 pages, comprising approximately 1.9 million word forms, providing a topic-oriented sub-corpus within DSDK available for corpus-based analyses. Figure 4.1, which is based on those 41 books, shows that publications referencing Britain in their titles increased from 1900 onward as international tensions in Europe rose. The majority of publications in DSDK with titles referring to Britain are in German with only eight in English and in French. Notably, two of the English-language publications were authored by Germans contesting British colonial rule by appropriating (or positioning themselves in place of) either African or British voices and positions. Both appeared after the loss of the German colonies in 1919. The first is the case with The Voice of German East Africa: The English in the Judgment of the Natives (a translation of Die Stimme Deutsch-Ostafrikas: Die Engländer im Urteil unserer ostafrikanischen Neger, 1919) by Hans Poeschel (with prefaces by the prominent German colonialists Heinrich Schnee and Paul Lettow-Vorbeck). Another instance of what we might call ‘positional appropriation’ is displayed in Solf ’s treatise Germany’s Right to Recover Her Colonies: Irrefutable Facts and Figures. English and American Testimony (both covers are shown in Figure 4.2). In order to ascertain the sociocultural contexts in which colonial discourses took place, all publications that entered the DSDK database were classified
Number of publications per year
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1880
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Figure 4.1 Trajectory of publication frequency per year for engl*/brit* titles in DSDK
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Figure 4.2 Covers of Die Stimme Deutsch-Ostafrikas (1919, http://brema.suub.unibremen.de/dsdk/content/pageview/2045541) and Germany’s right to recover her colonies (1919, http://brema.suub.uni-bremen.de/dsdk/content/pa geview/2031888) (Copyright: SuUB Bremen)
according to one of 11 ‘fields of colonial agency’ [Handlungsbereiche]. These are conceived as domains of communicative agency which, in the case of DSDK, is written, published communication for a wider audience (wider than, say, personal communication like letters between friends and family). These are ‘Auslanddeutschtum’ [Germans living abroad], emigration, education, colonial associations, politics, popular culture, law, religion, administration, economy and science (for details on the distinction between these categories, cf. SchmidtBrücken 2017: 8–11). The classificatory concept of ‘field of colonial agency’ is of course to be understood as a prototypical category, meaning that publications may be placed in that category as a good example of that category, or they may fit the category only marginally, bearing traits of other agency fields. The latter is true of many cases in DSDK which is not surprising considering the interdependencies of colonialist activity with different fields of social activity in general. Documentation of expeditions, for example, can make scientific observations (simultaneously relevant to different disciplines like geography, biology, anthropology, linguistics, etc.) while, at the same time, commenting on the economic ‘value’ of some region and/or making political statements about the relationship with competing colonial powers. In that sense, the summary of engl*/brit* publications in DSDK given in Figure 4.3 is to be understood as an heuristic attempt at ordering the assemblage of texts.
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Figure 4.3 Publications with title reference to Britain in DSDK according to fields of colonial agency
In the following case study, we zoom in on the micro-level of the DSDK archive, i.e. our research perspective will focus on the details of language use within a specific DSDK sub-sample of texts dealing with the relationship between British and German colonialisms.
3 Case study: evaluative positioning in three DSDK texts The general research interest we pursue is the question: What do the source texts in DSDK tell us about British–German relationships during colonialism? We pose this question with a specific theoretical background in mind which has its roots in sociolinguistics. The linguistic phenomenon of stance taking (Du Bois 2007; Spitzmüller et al. 2017) is, according to Du Bois, ‘(o)ne of the most important things we do with words’: Stance has the power to assign value to objects of interest, to calibrate alignment between stancetakers, and to invoke presupposed systems of sociocultural value’ (Du Bois 2007: 139). Stance taking in discourse (cf. Englebretson 2007) always involves actors positioning themselves in some relation to other discourse actors by evaluative actions (cf. Spitzmüller et al. 2017: 8). This case study operates under the theoretical assumption that language use constitutes such evaluative actions in their respective contexts. In the context of our sample of DSDK texts, the general research interest above can thus be specified with regard to evaluative linguistic actions in colonial discourses as forms of positioning of discourse agents. 3.1 Criteria for data selection The data under examination are taken from three sample texts with comparatively low, medium and high frequencies of engl*/brit*:
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Finsch, O. (1888), Samoafahrten: Reisen ins Kaiser Wilhelms-Land und Englisch-Neu-Guinea. Leipzig: Hirt (engl*/brit* = 0.08 per cent of all tokens). Lichtenberg, R. von (1915), Cypern und die Engländer: Ein Beispiel britischer kolonialer Willkür. Leipzig: Veit (engl*/brit* = 1.3 per cent). Mansfeld, A. and G. Hildebrand (eds) (1919), Englische Urteile über die deutsche Kolonisationsarbeit. Berlin: Reimer (engl*/brit* = 9.6 per cent).
2 3
The texts were examined and categorized using a qualitative approach with reference to British colonialism. The resulting corpus contains 346 sentences containing at least one occurrence of engl*/brit*. Of these, 182 sentences were categorized as (rather) evaluative and 164 as (rather) non-evaluative, i.e. descriptive. Among the 182 evaluative sentences, there are 126 comments that contain opinions on Britain or its colonies from a German perspective. These in turn are divided into 117 negative-rating and 9 positive-rating statements (see the top line of Figure 4.4). In this contribution we analyse only the sub-corpus Germany > Britain (German assertions about Britain) which contains 117 negative evaluations. Within the total corpus, which results from the three sample texts (Finsch 1888; Lichtenberg 1915; Mansfeld and Hildebrand 1919), this subcorpus forms the largest homogeneous group. The analysis focuses on phenomena that explicitly or implicitly deal with the German–British relationship during colonialism and are conspicuously negative in their assessment. Of course, the focus could be broader, because in principle any form of linguistic action can be understood evaluatively. In our analysis, the documents are derived from a predominantly text-hermeneutical reading, which suggests a negative reading as the most plausible and therefore already makes a certain positioning by their selection.
0% eval Germany > Britain eval Britain > Britain eval Third Party > Britain
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Figure 4.4 Distribution of positive and negative evaluations over all texts
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3.2 Linguistic structures of evaluative positioning actions 3.2.1 Conceptual semantics In the negative assessments which refer to Great Britain or to the agency of Great Britain from the German perspective, a variety of negatively connoted lexemes such as reckless, harm or greed are particularly noticeable. For a systematic evaluation, a useful selection of documents must first be made. In the corpus there is the greatest pejorative power in the high number of negatively connoted action attributions, such as extort, ruin or drive to despair, while in the semantic role of the agent, the metonymically used name England or entities attributed as English or British occur, such as with the nouns government, sovereignty or rulers. Because of their valency characteristics, verbs are the formal centre of a sentence, so their category is central to the sentence structure.3 The analysis first focuses on the verbal complexes in the corpus. All verb constructions that suggest a negative reading were collected. They are thus abstracted from their syntactic use and uniformly noted in the infinitive. Strictly speaking, the actual predicate expressions include full verbs (to damage), empty verb constructions (to be considerate) and phraseologisms (fishing in troubled waters). In addition, we also consider the disintegrations of participles (extorted money > to extort money), passive constructions (as claimed > to claim something), deverbal substantivations (the inconsiderate spending of money > spending money inconsiderately) and conversions (the right to criticize others > criticizing others), because they inherit the semantic potency of the full verbs, and thus the attribution of a certain agency claimed by the author can be recognized. Accusative and dative complements will be reduced to the (pro)nominal core if possible (to place less value on us, to undermine wealth, to burden the people). If the accusative object occurs in the form of a subordinate clause, it is replaced by sth. (‘But England… demands that…’ > to demand (sth.)). If positively connoted lexemes or lexeme groups are reinterpreted by negation, this is noted accordingly (not to care, to fail to take into consideration). Due to the reduction of the context, the negative reading does not always become clear through this form of extraction, and so some further elements are listed as part of the verb phrase. These include negatively connoted attributes and adverbials (adverbs, adverbially used adjectives or prepositional phrases) if they reinforce the negative connotation (to enrich themselves ruthlessly) or semantically modify a neutral predicate expression (to do the shameful opposite, to use money selfishly, to apply the law harshly), prepositional objects (to use everything against the population) and particles (to pay only 2,000 pounds). Despite the claim to have captured the pejorative content of an (extended) predicate expression in the notation, it should be noted that a few constructions in the isolated form can be read neutrally or even positively (to support the bishop secretly, to levy a tax, to be very eager), but in the respective sentence contexts they are clearly meant negatively.
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Table 4.2 shows sample sentences that evaluate the actions of the colonial power Britain as negative. They answer the question: how does Britain act in its colonies and in relation to other colonial powers? The semantic role of the agent is filled out by the words and phrases England, the English government, English sovereignty, the Englishman, the English, the English administration, the English colonial politicians, the English press, the English newspapers, the British ministry, the English colonial authority or the British rulers. The next step is to focus on the nominal phrases that rate Great Britain or British-based actions and their consequences as negative. They are also removed from the syntactic context and listed in Table 4.3 in their nominative form. They contain semantic information about Great Britain or provide information about the purpose, motivation, character and consequences of English actions. In the next step, the listed linguistic attributions of colonial action and the characteristics of the British colonial power are clustered according to common semantic features. By relating the examples to each other, it is possible inductively to recognize superordinate semantic concepts. In many cases, Table 4.2 German evaluations of Britain: verb phrases Examples 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
to use everything against the population not to care not to carry out duties to treat all its colonies like that to fail to take into consideration to secretly support the bishop to extend the dispute fishing in troubled waters to ruin peoples to badly damage the world to do the shameful opposite spending money carelessly to squeeze money out of the people to perpetrate barbarism not to pay compensation to cause damage to pride oneself to burden the Cypriots to pay practically nothing to occupy Cyprus
alles gegen die Bevölkerung in Anwendung bringen keine Rücksichten nehmen Pflichten nicht gerecht werden alle seine Kolonien so behandeln Rücksichten nicht üben den Bischof heimlich unterstützen Streit hinziehen im Trüben fischen Völker zugrunde richten die Welt schwer schädigen das beschämende Gegenteil tun Gelder rücksichtslos ausgeben dem Volke Gelder abpreßen Barbarei verüben Entschädigung nicht zahlen Schaden bewirken sich rühmen die Cyprioten belasten so gut wie nichts bezahlen Cypern besetzen
Note: For reasons of clarity, only the first 20 of a total of 87 occurrences are displayed here. The full table is located in the Appendix, Table 4A.1.
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Table 4.3 German evaluations of Britain: noun phrases Examples 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
greedy England the insatiable greed of England the greed of the English the greed of England a most unjust way the English arbitrariness the barbarism of the English idle bluffing the English yoke the selfish English reign a double deception the most inhumane taxes this exorbitant tax this system of sucking dry unaffordable taxes sinecures for the English these grievances tax burdens the unbearable yoke of England this probably intentional error
das habgierige England die unersättliche Habsucht Englands die Habsucht der Engländer die Habsucht Englands eine höchst ungerechte Art die englische Willkür die Barbarei der Engländer eitel Spiegelfechterei das englische Joch die rücksichtslose englische Herrschaft ein doppelter Betrug die unmenschlichsten Steuern diese Wuchersteuer dieses Aussaugesystem unerschwingliche Steuern Sinekuren für Engländer diese Mißstände Steuerschrauben das unerträgliche Joche Englands dieser wohl absichtliche Irrtum
Note: For reasons of clarity, only the first 20 of a total of 35 occurrences are displayed here. The full table is located in the Appendix, Table 4A.2.
this is done via the pejorative lexemes used in the statements, because the lexicon is field-structured and has classes of semantically close elements (cf. Spitzmüller and Warnke 2011: 164). Lexemes such as greedy, greed and to pocket, as well as breach of promise and deception or unjust and arbitrariness show semantic proximity to each other. In the present corpus, the words that have common semantic features form semantic fields. They refer to cross-sentence and textual superordinate concepts by which English colonial behaviour – here exclusively from a German perspective – can be described beyond singular statements. In the following, we postulate the semantic fields that can be gained inductively from the total of 122 sample sentences, a selection of which can be seen in Tables 4A.1 and 4A.2. Overlapping areas of these fields and multiple allocations of the examples are certainly possible. The selection presented here does not claim to be exhaustive, but is a reasonable selection of the results of the qualitative, systematic approach pursued here.
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a
Many of the examples can be assigned to the field GREED. Cf. the following verb and noun phrases: spending money carelessly, to squeeze funds out of the people, not to pay compensation, not paying a penny, to burden the Cypriots, to pay practically nothing, to extort everything, to enrich themselves ruthlessly, to pocket 2 shillings and 4 piasters, to suck the people dry, to levy an additional tax, to use money selfishly, to extort monies, to demand interest, to deduct interest on the tribute, to extort much, to extort taxes, to satisfy greed, greedy England, the insatiable greed of England, the greed of the English, the greed of England, this exorbitant tax, this system of sucking dry, tax burdens, unaffordable taxes, their addiction to enrichment, their enrichment. In semantic proximity to GREED is the field EGOTISM. It finds its expression in phrases such as not to care, to fail to take into consideration, spending money carelessly, to enrich themselves ruthlessly, to set up a steamship service for their own benefit, to use money selfishly, to lease the island for its own benefit, not respecting wishes at all, to hurt feelings, selfish interests. A further central field is CRUELTY, which can be differentiated into sub-fields such as INHUMANITY, UNSCRUPULOUSNESS, RECKLESSNESS, MERCILESSNESS, UNRESTRAINEDNESS and SAVAGERY which are exemplified by expressions such as: to use everything against the population, not considering, to ruin peoples, to perpetrate barbarism, to devise harsh treatments, to impose burdens on the natives, not respecting wishes at all, to rob the people, to drive the people to despair, to give free rein to feelings of hatred, the barbarism of the English, the English yoke, the most inhumane taxes. Furthermore the field of INJUSTICE can be detected. It can be seen in verb phrases such as not to carry out duties, to squeeze funds out of the people, not to pay compensation, to occupy Cyprus, to extort everything, to extort money, to extort taxes, to apply the law harshly, to disenfranchise the people, to rob the people, to declare (sth.) against every law, to consider the island as a colony, and noun phrases such as English arbitrariness, the selfish English reign, a double deception. Via conceptual abstractions such as FRAUD, MANIPULATION, MISLEADING, DISSIMULATION, INSINCERITY and SWINDLING, many of the expressions can be assigned to the field of DECEPTION. Expressions belonging to this field are to secretly support the bishop, to extend the dispute, to devise a seemingly charitable plan, to break a promise, to install the advisory council only for appearances, to complicate the connection, to stir up quarrels, to veil plans, to unearth alleged German colonial atrocities, idle bluffing, a double deception, this probably intentional error, British colonial-moral pharisaic attitude, English Blue Book propaganda. Some expressions refer to actions of DENUNCIATION directed against enemy colonial powers such as Germany. These include to blacken and degrade everything, to speak ill of enemies, to maintain a well-being register, to be morally outraged, to paint everything black, criticizing others, to unearth alleged German colonial atrocities, to exhibit results, English accusations.
b
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d
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Another field is POWER in the sense of DOMINANCE, SUBJUGATION, CONTROL and CLAIM TO POWER. This fits in with expressions such as to ruin peoples, to damage the world, to perpetrate barbarism, to occupy Cyprus, to take the island into administration, to burden the people, to suck the people dry, to hope to grab (sth.), to disenfranchise the people, to satisfy power-seeking and greed, to instigate wars, to confiscate postcards, to ruin the island, to execute divine judgment, to undermine wealth, to forbid viticulture, to make many things impossible, to make (sth.) completely impossible, the English yoke, the selfish English reign and English occupation. Another field is ARROGANCE as a hypernym for HUBRIS, SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS and HAUGHTINESS. The phrases include to pride oneself, to forget the parable of the log and the splinter, British haughtiness, their haughtiness. HUBRIS and HAUGHTINESS are accompanied by UNFITNESS which, from the perspective of the German authors, reveal INCOMPETENCE, NEGLIGENCE, IRRESPONSIBILITY and THOUGHTLESSNESS in the behaviour of the English colonial power. This field includes expressions such as to cause damage, fishing in troubled waters, not to care, not to carry out their duties properly, to turn a deaf ear, to ruin the island, to put no effort into (anything), to stubbornly persist, sinecures for the English, these grievances, the disproportionately expensive English administration and British haughtiness.
The 117 negatively evaluating utterances in the examined corpus demonstrate a distinct set of semantic fields. British colonialism from a German perspective can be summarized as follows: Britain as a colonial power is always intent on its own advantage (GREED, EGOTISM) and for this purpose behaves in an unlawful and untrustworthy manner (INJUSTICE, DECEPTION, DENUNCIATION). The pursuit of self-enhancement is accompanied by the subjugation of others (POWER), predominantly in the form of violence towards others (CRUELTY). At the same time, the behaviour and actions of Britain are perceived as incompetent (ARROGANCE, UNFITNESS). In addition to the focus on Great Britain in its capacity as a colonial power, it should always be kept in mind that evaluating others by means of derogatory language can also be understood as an intention to indirectly revalue one’s own actions: ‘Die lexikalische Pejoration ist ein verbreiteter Mechanismus der diskursiven Fremdbewertung, wobei durch die Abwertung anderer auch eine (implizite) positive Selbstzuschreibung verfolgt werden kann’ [Lexical pejoration is a widespread mechanism of discursive evaluation of the Other, whereby devaluation of others can also pursue an (implicit) positive self-attribution] (Spitzmüller and Warnke 2011: 144). It is therefore necessary to regard the devaluation of Great Britain as an indirect revaluation of German colonial agitation, especially because the authors of the texts are German authors and the corpus also contains 21 explicitly positive evaluations relating to Germany (cf. Table 4.4). This becomes all the more obvious when, in the following step, we turn to the ample evidence with reference to those colonized by Great Britain and their
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Table 4.4 German evaluations of the colonized: verb and noun phrases Examples 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
to cultivate only what is necessary to be cut off to depend upon themselves to be exposed to hope to endure the English yoke to languish cherish hope subjects oppressive burdens to become homeless poverty the poor people to work through everything with difficulty grievances misery the poor island of Cyprus to learn about harm atrocities deepest poverty the betrayed
nur das Notwendige anbauen abgeschnitten sein auf sich selbst angewiesen sein ausgesetzt sein hoffen das englische Joch ertragen schmachten Hoffnung hegen Untertanen drückende Lasten obdachlos werden Armut das arme Volk alles mühsam erarbeiten Mißstände Verelendung die arme Insel Cypern Schaden kennenlernen Greuel tiefste Armut Betrogene
experiences with the British colonial power. The people in the colonies occupied by Great Britain are described from the German perspective as the betrayed, subjects and the poor people. They experience oppressive burdens, deepest poverty, grievances, misery and atrocities. In addition, they learn about harm, endure the English yoke, become homeless, are cut off, depend upon themselves and are exposed. Furthermore, they cultivate only what is necessary, work through everything with difficulty, languish and hope. Clustered, the evidence refers to a semantic field of HARDSHIP that can be sub-divided into DISTRESS, HOPELESSNESS and DESPERATION. The utterances do not give any indication of the self-determined actions of the colonized, but rather construct victims who themselves do not speak and whose perspective is not made accessible: Hinter dem Sprechen-für-andere verbergen sich womöglich auch Funktionen und Strategien des Zitierens und verfälschten Wiedergebens von Positionen anderer, des Nachahmens, des Versteckens hinter sowie des Konstruierens von in aktuellen Debatten oder gar im Wissen nicht
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existenten Akteuren. Zudem sind auch die Fälle dazuzurechnen, in denen jemand den Ausgeschlossenen und Stimmlosen eine Stimme geben möchte und dadurch die Ausgrenzung performativ erneuert. [Speaking for others may also conceal functions and strategies of quoting and distorting the positions of others, of imitating, of the hiding behind as well as the construction of actors who do not exist in current debates or are even known about. In addition, their are cases in which someone wants to give a voice to the excluded and voiceless and thereby performatively renews the exclusion.] (Dreesen 2013: 223f.) In the three texts under examination, the German authors speak for the linguistically constructed victims of British colonialism, and they express sympathy and solidarity. This should also be seen as a positioning, because a strategy of solidarity with a victim’s perspective and at the same time assigning blame to a perpetrator also provides an assessment of the speaker. As a result of the first part of the analysis, the semantic fields identified are assigned to superordinate dimensions at the next level of abstraction, which characterize the discussion of English colonialism from a German perspective. These are: 1 2 3 4
Dimension of self-advantage (Britain controls the colonial world to its advantage). Dimension of violence (Britain’s approach is violent and cruel). Dimension of defectivity (Britain fails as a colonial power). Dimension of victimization (those colonized by Britain are desperate and unable to act).
3.2.2 Pragmatics and attitudes The second part of the analysis focuses on proposition-bound lexical and syntactic means for marking speaker postures which, due to their semantic properties, can modify statements to a high degree: ‘Hierzu gehören Partikeln, die den Redehintergrund kennzeichnen, oder Kommentaradverbien ebenso wie Konnektoren’ [This includes particles that characterize the speech background or commentary adverbs as well as connectors] (Spitzmüller and Warnke 2011: 147). A systematic investigation seems worthwhile, since in the present corpus they occur in high numbers. The Handbuch der deutschen Konnektoren (2003) describes the concept of a ‘connector’ as a purely semantically functional class lying transversely to the word types with ‘Ausdrücke[n] für eine Funktion von Wortschatzeinheiten für den Aufbau komplexer syntaktischer Strukturen und textueller Komplexe’ [expressions for a function of vocabulary units for the construction of complex syntactic structures and textual complexes] (Pasch et al. 2003: 38).
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Connectors are vocabulary units that can link sentences with each other at the highest level of grammatical combinatorics, the syntax, and express specific semantic relations such as causal, adversative, restrictive, etc.4 According to Duden (cf. 2009: 1066) the inventory of connectors includes conjunctions, relative pronouns, some adverbs, modal particles and prepositions. The grammatical information system grammis of the Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache also counts connective particles and sub-sets of focus particles among the connectors.5 Commentary verbs, also called sentence adverbs or modal words, ‘verhalten sich syntaktisch wie Adverbien, entsprechen aber funktional zumindest teilweise eher Abtönungspartikeln, indem sie eine Bewertung bzw. Stellungnahme, den “Kommentar” des Sprechers zum gesamten Sachverhalt, ausdrücken können (leider, bedauerlicherweise, glücklicherweise)’ [behave syntactically like adverbs, but correspond functionally at least partially to modal particles by being able to express an evaluation or commentary, the ‘commentary’ of the speaker on the issue as a whole (unfortunately, regrettably, fortunately)] (Duden 2009: 586). Particles, on the other hand, give ‘ein Signal, das den Kontext darauf absuchen läßt, die Konjunkte unter der spezifischen Deutungsweise für den Fortgang des Diskurses neu zu konstituieren’ [a signal that allows the context to be searched for the purpose of reconstituting the conjuncts under the specific mode of interpretation in order for the discourse to progress] (Eroms 1993: 289). They have various functions depending on use and context: Als Gradpartikeln geben sie Auskunft über die Intensität von Eigenschaften, als Fokuspartikeln heben sie bestimmte Teile eines Satzes hervor, als Negationspartikeln verneinen sie einen Satz oder Teilsatz, als Abtönungspartikeln geben sie Auskunft über die subjektive Einstellung, die Haltung des Sprechers zum geäußerten Sachverhalt, als Gesprächspartikeln steuern sie den Ablauf von Dialogen, als Interjektionen dienen sie dem Ausdruck von Emotionen, und als Onomatopoetika imitieren sie Geräusche. [As particles of degree they provide information about the intensity of characteristics, as focus particles they emphasize certain parts of a sentence, as negation particles they negate a sentence or partial sentence, as modal particles they provide information about the subjective perspective, the attitude of the speaker to the expressed facts, as conversation particles they control the course of dialogues, as interjections they serve the expression of emotions, and as onomatopoetics they imitate sounds.] (Duden 2009: 588) The text-hermeneutic reading focuses in the present corpus on elements which reveal a statement on the sentence by the authors. By means of text-hermeneutic reading all documents can be determined which contain the linguistic means nur, aber, noch, schon, doch, wohl, ja, stets, natürlich, überhaupt, keineswegs, tatsächlich, grundsätzlich, scheinbar, sogar, eigentlich, vielleicht, dennoch and offenbar. In addition, the prepositional phrases in Wirklichkeit, zum Scheine, in
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auffallender Weise, auf grausame Weise and mit voller Absicht are also recorded, since in their use as commenting modal adverbs they express how a speaker judges the validity of a statement (cf. Duden 2009: 782). The methodological challenge for the description of a heterogeneous group such as connectors lies above all in the problems of polysemy and synonymy (cf. Breindl et al. 2014: 81). This is when several meanings are assigned to a form or several forms are assigned to a concept. Ambiguity and diversity of expression require us to check for each individual sample sentence to determine which syntactic and semantic properties are present in the respective context, and determine which semantic relations are expressed and which attitude of the speaker can be derived. For this reason, in the following sections only the occurrences of nur (only) and aber (but) are examined in detail, since they stand out clearly due to their frequency of 26 and 21 items in the corpus. A complete list of all the sample sentences can be found in the Appendix, Tables 4A.3–4A.21. 3.2.2.1 NUR (26 EXAMPLES)
For nur (only) two main types of use can be distinguished: in front-of-field or pre-front-of-field position nur is classified as an adversative adverb connector with focus particle origin, since the entire internal connector belongs to the reference range of the connector (cf. Breindl et al. 2014: 559). In mid-field position, however, an adversative connector function of nur is no longer clearly discernible. The interpretation as a focus particle with a narrower focus is always preferred here, whereby the range of the focus projection depends on the context and the part of the sentence that is in front of the focus particle can be regarded as belonging to the background (cf. Breindl et al. 2014: 560). Together with their constituents, focus particles form the information core of the sentence and thus mark the part of the sentence with the greatest message value. They assume alternatives to their reference word and, depending on their use, include (inclusive or additive) or exclude (exclusive or restrictive) other possibilities (cf. Duden 2009: 589f.). a
In the present corpus, nur occurs primarily as a restrictive focus particle. Its focus word carries the focus accent, alternatives to the focus constituent are excluded. The focus is usually on the English colonial power, Englishmen or misconduct emanating from England: Example 1: Einen Rechtsgrund gibt es dafür überhaupt nicht, der Grund ist nur die unersättliche Habsucht Englands [There is no legal reason at all for it, the reason is only the insatiable greed of England]. Example 2: Alles, was von England aus für die Insel geschieht, und das sind zumeist Dinge, die nur den Engländern zugute kommen, wird stets mit neuen Umlagen bestritten [Everything that happens for the island from England, and these are mostly things that benefit only the English, is always contested with new levies].
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b
There is one example of nur being used as an adversative connector within a parenthesis: Example 6: Eine ähnliche Barbarei, nur noch viel größeren Umfanges, verübten die Engländer in Ägypten mit ihrem großen Nil-Stauwerke [Similar barbarity, only of much greater magnitude, was perpetrated by the English in Egypt with their great Nile dams].
Nur used as a connector can always be replaced by aber (but) because of their functional similarities (cf. Eroms 1993: 288, 297). Aber, on the other hand, can be understood as an ‘Indikator der Korrektur einer Erwartung’ [indicator of the correction of an expectation], which is generated by the preceding information (Eroms 1993: 289). In Example 6, the barbarism perpetrated by Englishmen mentioned above is only similar, but not identical, to a previous case of barbarism in comparison; the difference lies in the fact that in this case it is much greater in scope. This relativization of the expectation generated in the first part of the sentence succeeds through nur. c)
The use of nur in formulaic twists is also interesting. Here it reinforces the negation particle nichts or an adjectival phrase in order to emphasize the intentions or consequences of English action once more: Example 7: Damit aber der englischen Regierung von dieser Wuchersteuer nur ja nichts entgehen kann, ersann man neue Härten [But so that the English Government can lose absolutely nothing of this exorbitant tax, new harsh treatments were devised].
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Example 8: Aber es ist nun einmal geschichtliche Erfahrungstatsache, daß die humanitären und kulturfördernden Bestrebungen der erwähnten Kreise in der Praxis nur all zu oft zum Vorteil der Engländer gedient und zur Vergrößerung des englischen Weltreiches geführt haben [But it is a historical fact of experience that in reality the humanitarian and cultural efforts of the mentioned circles have all too often served in practice to the advantage of the English and led to the expansion of the English Empire]. d
In addition, there are documents in which nur is combined with further focusing, additive and corrective connectors: Example 9: In weiten Kreisen nicht nur Deutschlands, sondern auch des neutralen, ja des heute feindlichen Auslandes, standen die Engländer denn auch schon lange vor dem Kriege in dem Verdacht, daß alle ihre bei den verschiedensten Gelegenheiten kundgegebene moralische Entrüstung über die Un- und Schandtaten fremder Staatsangehöriger in fremdländischen Kolonien keinem anderen Zweck zu dienen hätte als der Verhüllung selbstsüchtiger englischer Pläne [In wide circles not only in Germany, but also in neutral foreign countries, and even those which are now hostile, it was suspected long before the war that the English, with all their moral outrage about the iniquities and atrocities performed by foreign citizens in foreign colonies, and which they expressed on various occasions, had no other purpose than to veil selfish English plans].
In Example 9, the negative nicht focuses the restrictive focus particle nur whose meaning is corrected by the second connect introduced with sondern. The use of an additivity marker, such as auch, makes it clear that the validity of the phrase focused by nur is not removed, but only the restriction itself (cf. Breindl et al. 2014: 476f.). The sentence continues with the addition of ja, in the meaning of still more or even, the inclusive focus of which adds to the information contained in the sentence: the English are distrusted within wide circles of Germany and the neutral foreign countries and even in present-day hostile foreign countries. Another variant with combinations of particles is shown in the following example: Example 10: Was in den Kolonien vorgeht – nicht etwa nur oder vornehmlich in den englischen, nein, gerade auch in den fremdstaatlichen – darüber wird in England gleichsam ein Wohlverhaltungsregister geführt [What happens in the colonies – not only or primarily in the English colonies, no, especially in the foreign ones – is, as it were, in England maintained in a register of good conduct]. Nur is combined with the modal particle etwa and negation particle nicht and supplemented with the alternative vornehmlich. The meaning of the focused connection ‘in den englischen’ [Kolonien] is negated by the particle nein in the
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further course of the sentence and corrected by the part of the sentence with gerade auch: England’s register of good conduct does not only or primarily register the events in the English colonies – as one might expect – no, rather it registers the events in the foreign colonies. In this example, the accumulation of particles shows the speaker’s attitude, characterized by outrage and emotionality, particularly clearly.
3.2.2.2 ABER (21 EXAMPLES)
Aber (but) is the most frequently used adversative connector (cf. Breindl et al. 2014: 516), which is also confirmed in the corpus examined. Syntactically, aber occurs as a conjunction or an associative junctive, as an adverb and as a modal particle (cf. Duden 2009: 1093). Adversativity occurs syntactically in a transition area between symmetry and asymmetry, where aber can fill the entire bandwidth between additivity (and) and concessivity (although), depending on the context (cf. Breindl et al. 2014: 515). The interpretation of adversative connections is strongly context-dependent ‘da der zu rekonstruierende Hintergrund mit der gleichläufigen Verknüpfung, der durch die adversative Verknüpfung korrigiert wird, durch ganz unterschiedliche Entitäten definiert sein kann’ [because the background to be reconstructed with the concurrent connection, which is corrected by the adversative connection, can be defined by very different entities] (Breindl et al. 2014: 518). Adversative cohesion indicates contrariness of facts (cf. Duden 2009: 1093). Eroms (1993: 289) describes the function of aber following Rosengren (1984) als ‘Indikator des Widerspruchs’ [an indicator of contradiction]. This is mainly shown in discursive situations, where speaker B attacks an argument of speaker A. In coherent texts, in particular in argumentative texts in which the distribution of discourse partners is shifted onto the sole speaker, the latter states his own counter-arguments and weakens his previously mentioned ones (cf. Eroms 1993: 290–1). Aber signalisiert einen Widerspruch, der sich auf die im Vorgängersatz aufgebaute Erwartung bezieht… In jedem Fall greift aber Argumente an, indem die aus dem ersten Konjunkt sich ergebenden diskursiv naheliegenden Folgerungen durch gegensätzliche ersetzt werden. Dies ist aber nicht so zu verstehen, als ob das erste Konjunkt generell außer Kraft gesetzt würde. [Aber signals a contradiction that relates to the expectation built up in the previous sentence… In any case, aber contests arguments by replacing the discursively obvious consequences resulting from the first conjunct with opposing ones. But this is not to be understood as if the first conjunct were generally.] (Eroms 1993: 291f.)
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In the corpus, this function of aber can be reconstructed on the basis of the following evidence: Example 11: Auf Jahrtausende blicken diese Denkmäler ägyptischer Kultur herab, Generationen erfreuten sich an diesen durch alle Zeiten wohlerhaltenen Bauten und befriedigten ihren Forschungstrieb, jetzt aber sollen sie um der Habsucht der Engländer willen in wenigen Jahrzehnten verschwinden, als seien sie nie gewesen [These monuments of Egyptian culture have looked down on thousands of years, generations enjoyed these buildings, which have been well-preserved throughout the ages, and satisfied their research instinct, but now, for the sake of the greed of the English, they are to disappear in a few decades, as if they had never been].
The longevity of Egyptian cultural products ‘throughout the ages’ described in the first part of the sentence is confronted with the threat of destruction in the present and in the near future, connected by a strongly contrastive aber. The phrase ‘greed of the English’ is particularly emphasized. Example 12: Die Gerechtigkeit dieser Forderung wird jeder einsehen, denn England hat zu seinem eigenen Vorteil, d. h. um einen Stützpunkt im Orient zu haben, die Insel gepachtet, verlangt aber, daß die Bevölkerung Cyperns, der es unter den Türken viel besser ging, die Kosten für England tragen soll [Everyone will understand the justice of this demand because England has leased the island for its own advantage, i.e. to have a base in the Orient, but demands that the people of Cyprus, who were much better off under the Turks, bear England’s costs]. In Example 12, aber contrasts the actions of lease and desire and emphasizes incompatibility from the speaker’s point of view. From the causal conjunction on, then, the entire utterance serves to justify a ‘demand’ mentioned in the first main clause, which ‘everyone’, generalizing through an indefinite pronoun, ‘will understand’ and which the speaker also advocates. b
In some examples it is not possible to determine the first connection due to the missing context. While the scope of a connection linked by aber on the right is relatively easy to determine, the left context field can be very different in size with ‘Einheiten von syntaktischen Mikro-Strukturen bis zum gesamten Text’ [units from syntactic micro-structures down to the entire text] (Eroms 1993: 292). The adversative reading nevertheless becomes clear, since the information from the missing connection can be reconstructed at least partially: Example 13: Aber es ist nun einmal geschichtliche Erfahrungstatsache, daß die humanitären und kulturfördernden Bestrebungen der erwähnten Kreise in der Praxis nur all zu oft zum Vorteil der Engländer gedient und
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Prior to the connector aber, there is obviously talk of ‘humanitarian and cultural efforts’ by certain ‘circles’, which could suggest a positive assessment by the speaker. The adversative follow-up invalidates this expectation by referring to a purpose which from the speaker’s point of view can be disapproved (‘advantage of the English’) and unpleasant results (‘expansion of the English Empire’) of comparable efforts. a
There are also items in which aber is combined with particles: Example 14: Das war nicht Englands erster Kolonialkrieg, wohl aber vielleicht sein dreißigster [This was not England’s first colonial war, but perhaps its thirtieth].
The two modal particles wohl and vielleicht serve here to confirm and emphasize the important information introduced by aber that the event mentioned in the first connect is already Great Britain’s thirtieth colonial war. Together they also relativize the ordinal number ‘thirtieth’ which exact statement is not important as long as it stands in a clear contrast to ‘first’. 3.2.2.3 OTHER PHENOMENA OF COMMENTARY: MULTIPART COMMENTARY ADVERBIALS
In addition to the large number of particles and adverbs that allow conclusions to be drawn about speaker positions, there are also prepositional phrases in adverbial use that have a commenting and thus strongly regulating effect on the perception of the information expressed in the context. In the corpus, these commentary adverbials are in Wirklichkeit, zum Scheine, in auffallender Weise, auf grausame Weise and mit voller Absicht (in reality, apparently, in conspicuous ways, in cruel ways and with full intent): Example 15: Damit aber nicht durch Mißernten oder infolge dieses Aussaugesystems die reichen Einkünfte aus dem Zehnten ausfallen können, hat England einen Plan erdacht, der scheinbar wohltätig sein soll, in Wirklichkeit aber neue drückende Lasten dem Volke bringt [But so that the rich incomes from the tithe cannot be lost due to failed harvests or as a result of this system of sucking dry, England has devised a plan which is seemingly charitable, but in reality subjects the people to new oppressive burdens]. Example 16: Aus diesen Gründen dürfte es angebracht sein, an dem Beispiele von Zypern, dessen Verhältnisse ich von zwei Bereisungen der Insel (1902 und 1908) gründlich kenne, zu zeigen, wie England seine Kolonien verwaltet, und wie es die dort heimischen Völker mit voller
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Absicht zugrunde richtet und damit auch die ganze übrige Welt schwer schädigt [For these reasons it might be appropriate to use the example of Cyprus, whose conditions I know well from two trips to the island (1902 and 1908), to show how England administers its colonies and how it with full intent destroys the native peoples and thus also badly damages the rest of the world] (for further examples see Appendix, Table 4A.22). Commentary adverbials express ‘wie der Sprecher oder auch andere Personen die Gültigkeit der Aussage beurteilen oder wie sie zur Aussage stehen’ [how the speaker or other person judges the validity of the statement or what their attitude is toward it] (Duden 2009: 782). The mentioned examples are also interesting with regard to the previously determined semantic fields DECEPTION and CRUELTY. They reinforce the impression that the respective speaker is trying to clarify the situation by pointing out English misdeeds or to stress the effect of the cruelties described. In this context, the authors succeed indirectly in presenting a positive self-attribution of honesty, sympathy and compassion. 3.2.3 Argumentation patterns The third part of the analysis examines thematic structures in the corpus and uses the concept of the ‘topos’ to focus on argumentation strategies. To describe text structures, the dominant forms of thematic development can be analysed with reference to Brinker et al. (cf. 2014: 60–80). Even if the corpus contains only individual statements, i.e. the context within the text as a whole is not provided, it can already be seen at the level of individual sentences that the three texts have a predominantly argumentative text structure with strongly explicative parts. The integration of explicative text structures into the complex process of argumentation is one of the usual forms of structural entanglement (cf. Brinker et al. 2014: 73). First of all, explicative topic development will be explained briefly using an example sentence: Example 17: So kommt es, daß der größte Teil der Bevölkerung nur das zum eigenen Leben Notwendige anbaut, denn mehr zu bauen hätte keinen Sinn, weil alle Frucht der Arbeit des Bauern doch nicht ihm, sondern nur der Habsucht Englands Vorteile brächte [It so happens that the majority of the population cultivates only what is necessary for their own lives, for there would be no point in building more, because all the fruit of the farmer’s work would not benefit him, but only England’s greed]. The explicative structure in Example 17 can be explained using Hempel and Oppenheim’s ‘H-O-schema’ adapted by Brinker et al. (2014: 69–73): an issue, the explanandum (E), is derived from certain other issues (explanans). The explanans consists of two parts, namely the initial or boundary conditions (Anfangs- oder Randbedingungen, A) and the general laws (allgemeine Gesetzmäßigkeiten, G). This scheme does not always have to be fully realized:
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Elisa Erbe et al. Ein Erklärungstext liegt aber immer dann vor, wenn die Einteilung in Explanandum (das, was erklärt werden soll) und Explanans (das, was erklärend ist, d. h. die Erklärung) erkennbar (bzw. rekonstruierbar) ist [An explanatory text, however, always exists if the division into explanandum (that which is to be explained) and explanans (that which is explanatory) is recognizable (or reconstructable)] (Brinker et al. 2014: 70). Remarkable in explicative texts is ‘eine gewisse Dominanz von Konjunktionen, Adverbien und Präpositionen… die Kausalbeziehungen im weitesten Sinn (Grund, Ursache, Bedingung, Folge usw.) signalisieren (z. B. weil, denn, wenn; deshalb, folglich; wegen, infolge)’ [a certain dominance of conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions… which signal causal relations in the broadest sense (reason, cause, condition, consequence, etc.) (e.g. because, because, if; therefore, consequently; because of, as a result of)] (Brinker et al. 2014: 72).
Applying to Example 17 the following schematic representation results: A1: Alle Frucht der Arbeit des Bauern brächte ihm keinen Vorteil [Any fruit of the farmer’s work would bring him no advantage]. A2: Alle Frucht der Arbeit brächte nur der Habsucht Englands Vorteile [All the fruit of the work would only benefit the greed of England]. G: Mehr anzubauen hätte keinen Sinn [There would be no point in cultivating more]. E: Der größte Teil der Bevölkerung baut nur das zum eigenen Leben Notwendige an [The majority of the population cultivates only what is necessary for their living]. In the corpus, an argumentative theme development is dominant. An orientation on the argumentation model of the English philosopher St Toulmin is suitable for its presentation (cf. Brinker et al. 2014: 73): An assertion or thesis (‘claim’), which represents the text topic, is justified by arguments (‘data’). The step from the data (D) to the conclusion (C) is justified by a hypothetical statement, namely the final rule (‘warrant’) in the general form: if C, then D. The validity of the final rule can be supported by further references, modified by modal operator (presumably, probably) and overridden by the indication of exceptions. St Toulmin did not apply his model to texts, but to individual sentences (cf. Brinker et al. 2014: 74), so that in general it seems to be suitable for a corpus like this. However, ‘Argumente und Konklusionen sind stark kontext- und einzeltextspezifisch und daher prinzipiell in unendlicher Zahl vorhanden, während Schlussregeln in mehr oder weniger kontextabstrakter Form formuliert und daher in thematisch verschiedenen und sprachlich unterschiedlich realisierten Argumentationen rekonstruiert werden können’
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[Arguments and conclusions are strongly context- and single-text-specific and therefore exist in principle in infinite number, while final rules are formulated in more or less context-abstract form and can therefore be reconstructed in thematically different and linguistically differently realized arguments] (Wengeler 2003: 278). This property makes final rules useful for describing argumentation patterns that go beyond the single-sentence level. The analysis of so-called ‘topoi’ is suitable for this purpose. Topos analyses can uncover argumentation patterns and also make implicit levels of textual networks recognizable (cf. Spitzmüller and Warnke 2011: 191): ‘Unter Topoi werden in der Argumentationstheorie jene zumeist überindividuell gebräuchlichen Bestandteile von Argumentationen verstanden, die zu den obligatorischen, entweder expliziten oder erschließbaren Prämissen gehören’ [In argumentation theory, topoi are understood as those usually supra-individual constituents of arguments that belong to the obligatory, either explicit or explicable, premises] (Reisigl 2007: 41). For the analysis of argumentation, Wengeler (2003, 2007, 2013) has transferred the topos concept of rhetoric into discourse linguistics and operationalized it in such a way that it ‘Aufschlüsse über kollektives, gesellschaftliches Wissen gibt, welches im Rahmen thematisch bestimmter öffentlicher Diskurse entweder explizit zur Sprache kommt oder in sprachlichen Äußerungen in Texten als verstehensrelevantes Hintergrundwissen zugrunde gelegt und evoziert wird’ [provides information about collective, social knowledge which is either explicitly discussed within the framework of thematically defined public discourses or which is used and evoked in linguistic utterances in texts as background knowledge relevant to understanding] (Wengeler 2007: 165). The result of the analysis are topoi with intermediate levels of abstraction, which because of their abstractness can be used both positively or negatively for a position in question (cf. Wengeler 2003: 279, Otremba 2009: 248). These patterns of reasoning are defined by semantic-content relationships such as causeeffect, reason-sequence or means and purposes (cf. Otremba 2009: 247). Thus they can be paraphrased as conditional or causal propositions and substantiate the transition from argument to conclusion (cf. Reisigl 2007: 41). Wengeler (2003: 262) describes topoi ‘as argumentative final rules, as a component of collective knowledge and as contexts of facts established by the speaker’. When assigning concrete utterances to a pattern of argumentation, so-called ‘indicator words’ serve as aids among other things; these can be particles such as schon (already), erst (first), sogar (even), erst recht (more than ever), etc., or nouns such as Ursache (cause), Grund (reason), Effekt (effect), Folge (consequence), Mittel (means), Zweck (purpose), Beispiel (example), etc. (cf. Wengeler 2003: 271). For the presentation of argumentation patterns in our corpus, we draw on a selection of context-specific topoi with their final rules from Wengeler (cf. 2003: 300–31) and transfer them to our corpus, citing corresponding examples.
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final rule
explanation adaption of the final rule examples
Weil wir uns an die Gesetze/das bestehende/kodifizierte Recht halten sollten, ist eine Entscheidung/Handlung zu befürworten/abzulehnen. [Because we should abide by the law/existing/codified law, a decision/ action is to be advocated/rejected.] (Wengeler 2003: 317) This topos refers to such legally arguing statements that generally refer to legal codifications to support a position. (cf. Wengeler 2003: 317) Because we should abide by existing law, Britain’s colonial agitation is to be rejected. Zum Schlusse sei hier noch ein Beispiel angeführt, mit welcher Roheit das Recht von den Engländern gehandhabt wird. [Finally, here is an example of the harshness with which the law is applied by the English.] Zur Türkei gehört ja Cypern völkerrechtlich heute noch, obwohl die Engländer im letzten Balkankriege gegen jedes Recht erklärten, daß sie die Insel nicht mehr als gepachtet, sondern als wirkliche England gehörige Kolonie betrachten. [Cypern still belongs to Turkey under international law, although the English declared in the last Balkan war against every conceivable law that they no longer regarded the island as leased but as a true colony belonging to England.]
b.
TOPOS OF RESPONSIBILITY (VERANTWORTLICHKEITS-TOPOS)
final rule
explanation
adaption of the final rule examples
Weil ein Land/eine Gruppe/(mit)verantwortlich ist für die Entstehung von Problemen, sollte es/sie sich an der Lösung der so entstandenen Probleme beteiligen. [Because a country/group is responsible for causing the problems, it should participate in the solution of the problems that have thus arisen.] (Wengeler 2003: 318) Current actions are to be oriented according to responsibility. For problems whose causes lie in the past or in today’s structures, the current actors are responsible in the form of assuming joint responsibility for the problems that have arisen. (cf. Wengeler 2003: 318) Because Britain is responsible for the problems in its colonies, it should participate in their solutions. Eine Entschuldigung dieser Mißstände gibt es nicht, denn England ist oft und eindringlich darauf aufmerksam gemacht worden, daß diese Maßnahmen die Verelendung des ganzen Volkes zur notwendigen Folge haben. [There is no excuse for these grievances, for England has been made aware frequently and firmly that these measures inevitably cause misery for the whole people.]
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TOPOS OF HISTORY (GESCHICHTS-TOPOS)
final rule
explanation
adaption of the final rule examples
Weil die Geschichte lehrt, dass bestimmte Handlungen bestimmte Folgen haben, sollte die anstehende Handlung (von der unterstellt wird, dass sie in relevanter Hinsicht dem aus der Geschichte entnommenen Beispiel gleich ist) ausgeführt/nicht ausgeführt werden. [Because history teaches that certain actions have certain consequences, the present action (which is assumed to be the same in relevant respects as the example taken from history) should be performed/not performed.] (Wengeler 2003: 308) This topos establishes an argumentative connection with reference to the analogy to historical events, actions and states. (cf. Wengeler 2003: 308) Because history teaches that Britain’s humanitarian aspirations primarily serve its own interests in building a world empire and are therefore selfish, they should always be met with mistrust. Durch diese ihre häufige und häufig erfolgreiche Verbindung mit egoistischen Interessen der britischen Politik müssen solche humanitären Bestrebungen notwendig verdächtig werden und den gewiß nicht wertlosesten Teil ihrer Absicht, nämlich ihre moralische und erzieherische Wirkung, vollkommen verfehlen. [By this frequent and often successful combination with the selfish interests of British policy, such humanitarian aspirations must necessarily become suspect and completely miss the certainly not worthless part of their purpose, namely their moral and educational effect.]
In this way, many more topoi can be transferred to the corpus, such as the the TOPOS OF USEFULNESS (NUTZEN-TOPOS), the TOPOS OF EXAMPLE (BEISPIEL-TOPOS), the TOPOS OF THREAT (BEDROHUNGS-TOPOS), the TOPOS OF HUMANITY (HUMANITÄTS-TOPOS), the TOPOS OF HETERONOMY (FREMDBESTIMMUNGS-TOPOS), the TOPOS OF COMPARISON (VERGLEICHS-TOPOS), the TOPOS OF VICTIMHOOD (OPFER-TOPOS), the TOPOS OF EXPLOITATION (AUSBEUTUNGS-TOPOS) and the TOPOS OF ELUCIDATION (AUFKLÄRUNGS-TOPOS). Even new topoi, such as the TOPOS OF HABIT (GEWOHNHEITS-TOPOS), can be inductively developed and proven. It turns out that many statements in the corpus point to traditional patterns of argumentation which, in the context of British colonialism, take on their specific expression from the perspective of our three German authors. Of course, it should be noted that argumentation can unfold across very different entities, which is why an exhaustive topos analysis is only possible with the help of the complete texts. TOPOS OF ARBITRARINESS (WILLKÜR-TOPOS),
4 Conclusion A language-historical analysis of the convergences and competitions of British and German colonialism can address different levels. Our analysis attempts to bridge the gap between the overarching questions regarding the
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purpose of works within postcolonial language studies in general and the micro-level of individual findings within historical data in particular. Our chapter thus aims to show three things. First we argue for a broad analysis on three levels: a) the macro-level, i.e. the British–German colonial competition as a historical situation, b) the meso-level, i.e. the representations of the colonial relationship between Britain and Germany in corpus data, in our case in DSDK, and c) the micro-level as textual data in specific contexts. Second, we seek to facilitate a microanalysis by distinguishing between a) semantic analysis, b) the analysis of syntactic-pragmatic structures with the purpose of looking at pragmatics and attitudes, and c) the analysis of thematic structures with a focus on argumentative patterns. Finally, within the framework of historical sociolinguistics, we are interested in the potential of language forms in their discursive contextualization for stance taking in the apparatus of European coloniality. Such an approach enables dense descriptions that go beyond necessary and meaningful historical works and looks at the everyday convictions of actors in colonialism that converge within the texts. The procedure is elaborate but it brings one close to what could be called the linguistic constitution of the Eurocolonial episteme. Future research should systematically expand upon the comparative aspects in order to further explore competitions as well as convergences in Eurocolonial practices. We conclude by turning to our introductory reflections, pointing out that we are not concerned in any way with research into the formerly colonized, but rather that we see one of the tasks of postcolonial language studies precisely in the critical evaluation of Eurocolonial action itself from the internal perspective of European linguistics. At the same time, we do not rule out a dialogue with the polyphony of descendants of former colonizing and colonized actors, rather we would like to contribute precisely to such a project, which we assign to the ethical principle of the category of conviviality introduced by Paul Gilroy (2005: xv). In this respect, our contribution can also be understood as a building block for a linguistics of listening, and postcolonial language studies can significantly enrich the interdisciplinary discussion in general.
Notes 1 The authors would like to thank Jonas Trochemowitz who helped prepare the data upon which this analysis is based. 2 The inclusion of engl* owes to the fact that, in historical as well as present-day German, the name England is used to refer to the whole of Great Britain metonymically. 3 https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/kontrastive-grammatik/3767#fe 4 https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/terminologie/135 5 https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/terminologie/135
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References Arendt, Hannah (1998 [1958]), The Human Condition. 2nd Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Breindl, Eva, Anna Volodina and Ulrich Hermann Waßner (2014), Handbuch der deutschen Konnektoren 2: Semantik der deutschen Satzverknüpfer. Berlin: de Gruyter. Brinker, Klaus, Hermann Cölfen and Steffen Pappert (2014), Linguistische Textanalyse. Eine Einführung in Grundbegriffe und Methoden. 8th Edition. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag. Calvet, Louis Jean (1974), Linguistique et colonialisme. Petit traité de glottophagie. Paris: Payot. Conrad, Sebastian (2012), ‘Kolonialismus und Postkolonialismus: Schlüsselbegriffe der aktuellen Debatte’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 62, 44–5, 3–9. Czachur, Waldemar (2011), Diskursive Weltbilder im Kontrast. Linguistische Konzeption und Methode der kontrastiven Diskursanalyse deutscher und polnischer Medien. Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza. Digitale Sammlung Deutscher Kolonialismus (DSDK) http://brema.suub.uni-bremen. de/dsdk Dreesen, Philipp (2013), ‘Sprechen-für-andere. Eine Annäherung an den Akteur und seine Stimmen mittels Integration der Konzepte Footing und Polyphonie’, in Kersten Sven von Roth and Carmen Spiegel (eds), Angewandte Diskurslinguistik. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Du Bois, John W. (2007), ‘The Stance Triangle’, in Robert Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, 139–182. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Duden (2009), Die Grammatik – Unentbehrlich für richtiges Deutsch. Volume 4, 8th Edition. Vienna: Dudenverlag. Englebretson, Robert (ed.) (2007), Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Eroms, Hans-Werner (1993), ‘Die Konnektoren aber und nur im Deutschen’, in Werner Roggausch (ed.), Germanistentreffen Bundesrepublik Deutschland – Polen 26.09. –30.09.1993. Dokumentation der Tagungsbeiträge. Bonn: DAAD, 285–303. Errington, Joseph (2001), ‘Colonial Linguistics’, Annual Review of Anthropology 30, 19–39. Errington, Joseph (2008), Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power. Malden: Blackwell. Finsch, O. (1888), Samoafahrten: Reisen ins Kaiser Wilhelms-Land und Englisch-NeuGuinea. Leipzig: Hirt. Gilroy, Paul (2005), Postcolonial Melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press. Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache. Grammis. Grammatisches Informationssystem. http s://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/kontrastive-grammatik/3767#fe (accessed 24 May 2019). Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache. Grammis. Grammatisches Informationssystem. https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/terminologie/135 (accessed 24 May 2019). Lichtenberg, R.von (1915), Cypern und die Engländer: Ein Beispiel britischer kolonialer Willkür. Berlin: Veit. Mansfeld, A. and G. Hildebrand (eds) (1919), Englische Urteile über die deutsche Kolonisationsarbeit. Berlin: Reimer. Marx, Konstanze (2017), Diskursphänomen Cybermobbing. Ein internetlinguistischer Zugang zu [digitaler] Gewalt. Berlin: de Gruyter. Müller, Maria E. and Daniel Schmidt-Brücken (eds) (2017), Der Bremer Bandkatalog ‘Kolonialwesen’: Edition, sprachwissenschaftliche und bibliotheksgeschichtliche Kommentierung. Berlin: de Gruyter.
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Otremba, Katrin (2009), ‘Stimmen der Auflehnung. Antikoloniale Haltungen in afrikanischen Petitionen an das Deutsche Reich’, in Ingo H. Warnke (ed.), Deutsche Sprache und Kolonialismus. Aspekte der nationalen Kommunikation 1884–1919. Berlin: de Gruyter, 203–234. Pasch, Renate, Ursula Brauße, Eva Breindl and Ulrich Hermann Waßner (2003), Handbuch der deutschen Konnektoren. Linguistische Grundlagen der Beschreibung und syntaktischen Merkmale der deutschen Satzverknüpfer (Konjunktionen, Satzadverbien und Partikeln). Berlin: de Gruyter. Perraudin, Michael and Jürgen Zimmerer (eds) with Katy Heady (2011), German Colonialism and National Identity. New York: Routledge. Reisigl, Martin (2007), Nationale Rhetorik in Fest- und Gedenkreden. Eine diskursanalytische Studie zum ‘österreichischen Millennium’ in den Jahren 1946 und 1996. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Aktuell. Rosengren, Inger (1984), ‘Aber als Indikator des Widerspruchs’, in Klaus Werner Hufeland, Volker Schupp and Peter Wiehl (eds), Festschrift für Siegfried Grosse zum 60. Geburtstag. Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 209–232. Schmidt-Brücken, Daniel (2017), ‘Spuren ins koloniale Archiv: Zur Edition des Bremer Bandkatalogs “Kolonialwesen”’, in Maria E. Müller and Daniel Schmidt-Brücken (eds), Der Bremer Bandkatalog ‘Kolonialwesen’: Edition, sprachwissenschaftliche und bibliotheksgeschichtliche Kommentierung. Berlin: de Gruyter, 3–13. Spitzmüller, Jürgen and Ingo H. Warnke (2011), Diskurslinguistik. Eine Einführung in Theorien und Methoden der transtextuellen Sprachanalyse. Berlin: de Gruyter. Spitzmüller, Jürgen, Mi-Cha Flubacher and Christian Bendl (2017), ‘Soziale Positionierung als Praxis und Praktik: Einführung in das Themenheft’, in Jürgen Spitzmüller, MiCha Flubacher and Christian Bendl (eds), Soziale Positionierung als Praxis und Praktik: Theoretische Konzepte und methodische Zugänge. Vienna: Universität Wien, 1–18. Storch, Anne and Ingo H. Warnke (2020), Sanszibarzone. Eine Austreibung aus der neokolonialen Sprachlosigkeit. Bielefeld: transcript. Theisen, Joachim (2016), Kontrastive Linguistik. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto. Warnke, Ingo H. (2019), ‘Three Steps in Chromatic Abysses: On the Necessity of Studying Colonialism in Late Linguistics’, Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 1, 41–59. Warnke, Ingo H., Thomas Stolz and Daniel Schmidt-Brücken (2016), ‘Perspektiven der Postcolonial Language Studies’, in Thomas Stolz, Ingo H. Warnke and Daniel Schmidt-Brücken (eds), Sprache und Kolonialismus. Eine interdisziplinäre Einführung zu Sprache und Kommunikation in kolonialen Kontexten. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1–25. Wengeler, Martin (2003), Topos und Diskurs. Begründung einer argumentationsanalytischen Methode und ihre Anwendung auf den Migrationsdiskurs (1960–1985). Tübingen: Niemeyer. Wengeler, Martin (2007), ‘Topos und Diskurs – Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der topologischen Analyse gesellschaftlicher Debatten’, in Ingo H. Warnke (ed.), Diskurslinguistik nach Foucault. Theorie und Gegenstände. Berlin: de Gruyter. Wengeler, Martin (2013), ‘“Unsere Zukunft und die unserer Kinder steht auf dem Spiel.” Zur Analyse bundesdeutscher Wirtschaftskrisen-Diskurse zwischen deskriptivem Anspruch und diskurskritischer Wirklichkeit’, in Ulrike Hanna Meinhof, Martin Reisigl and Ingo H. Warnke (eds), Diskurslinguistik im Spannungsfeld von Deskription und Kritik. Berlin: de Gruyter, 37–63.
Appendix Table 4A.1 German evaluations of Britain: verb phrases 0
Examples
1
to use everything against the population not to care not to carry out duties to treat all its colonies like that to fail to take into consideration to support the bishop secretly to extend the dispute fishing in troubled waters to destroy peoples to badly damage the world to do the shameful opposite spending money carelessly to squeeze funds out of the people to perpetrate barbarism not to pay compensation to cause damage to pride oneself to burden the Cypriots to pay practically nothing to occupy Cyprus not paying a penny to extort everything to demand interest to deduct interest on the tribute to take the island into administration to enrich themselves ruthlessly to pocket 2 shillings and 4 piasters to levy an additional tax to devise harsh treatments to devise a seemingly charitable plan
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
to burden the people to levy a tax to set up a steamship service for their own benefit to make many things impossible
alles gegen die Bevölkerung in Anwendung bringen keine Rücksichten nehmen Pflichten nicht gerecht werden alle seine Kolonien so behandeln Rücksichten nicht üben den Bischof heimlich unterstützen Streit hinziehen im Trüben fischen Völker zugrunde richten die Welt schwer schädigen das beschämende Gegenteil tun Gelder rücksichtslos ausgeben dem Volke Gelder abpreßen Barbarei verüben Entschädigung nicht zahlen Schaden bewirken sich rühmen die Cyprioten belasten so gut wie nichts bezahlen Cypern besetzen keinen Pfennig zahlen das Ganze erpreßen Zinsen verlangen Zinsen vom Tribut abziehen die Insel in Verwaltung nehmen sich rücksichtslos bereichern 2 Schillinge und 4 Piaster einheimsen eine Zuschlagssteuer legen Härten ersinnen einen scheinbar wohltätigen Plan erdenken dem Volke Lasten bringen eine Steuer nehmen einen Dampferdienst zu ihrem eigenen Nutzen einrichten vieles unmöglich machen (Continued)
Table 4A.1 (Cont.) 0
Examples
35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52
to undermine wealth to suck the people dry to forbid viticulture to impose burdens on the natives to put no effort into (anything) to make (sth.) completely impossible to receive income not to carry out their duties properly to use money selfishly to extort monies to break a promise to install the advisory council only for appearances to turn a deaf ear to extort much to hope to grab (sth.) not to care to extort taxes to lease the island for its own benefit
53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61
to demand (sth.) not respecting wishes at all to complicate the connection to stir up quarrels to apply the law harshly to disenfranchise the people to rob the people to hurt feelings to satisfy lust for power and greed
62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69
to instigate wars to confiscate postcards to declare (sth.) against every law to consider the island as a colony to pay only 2,000 pounds to ruin the island to drive the people to despair to forget the parable of the log and the splinter to blacken and degrade everything
70
Wohlstand untergraben das Volk aussaugen Weinbau verbieten den Eingeborenen Lasten aufbürden keine Mühe auf (etwas) verwenden (etwas) ganz unmöglich machen Einkünfte beziehen ihr Amt nicht richtig ausfüllen Gelder eigennützig verwenden Gelder erpressen Wortbruch begehen den Beirat nur zum Scheine einsetzen taub bleiben vieles erpressen hoffen, (etwas) an sich reißen zu können sich nicht kümmern Steuern erpreßen die Insel zu seinem eigenen Vorteil pachten (etwas) verlangen Wünsche keineswegs achten die Verbindung erschweren Streit schüren das Recht mit Roheit handhaben das Volk entrechten das Volk ausrauben Gefühle verletzen Machtgelüste und Bereicherungsgier befriedigen Kriege anzetteln Ansichtskarten beschlagnahmen (etwas) gegen jedes Recht erklären die Insel als Kolonie betrachten nur 2000 Pfund zahlen die Insel zugrunde richten das Volk zur Verzweiflung treiben das Gleichnis vom Splitter und vom Balken vergessen alles schwärzen und herabsetzen
0
Examples
71 72 73
to speak ill of enemies to execute divine judgement to maintain a register of good conduct to be suspected to be morally outraged to veil selfish English plans to paint everything to stubbornly persist criticizing others to give free rein to feelings of hatred to unearth alleged German colonial atrocities to exhibit results to be to blame for (sth.) to be at a loss to place less value on us to be very eager to state (sth.)
74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87
Feinde schlecht machen ein Gottesgericht vollstrecken ein Wohlverhaltungsregister führen in Verdacht stehen sich moralisch entrüsten selbstsüchtige englische Pläne verhüllen alles schwarz malen eigensinnig verharren andere kritisieren Haßgefühlen freien Lauf lassen angebliche deutsche Kolonialgreuel zu Tage fördern Ergebnisse zur Schau stellen (etwas) verschulden sich in Verlegenheit befinden uns geringer achten eifrigst bemüht sein (etwas) behaupten
Table 4A.2 German evaluations of Britain: noun phrases 0
Examples
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
greedy England the insatiable greed of England the greed of the English the greed of England a most unjust way English arbitrariness the barbarism of the English idle bluffing the English yoke the selfish English reign a double deception the most inhumane taxes this exorbitant tax this system of sucking dry unaffordable taxes sinecures for the English these grievances
das habgierige England die unersättliche Habsucht Englands die Habsucht der Engländer die Habsucht Englands eine höchst ungerechte Art die englische Willkür die Barbarei der Engländer eitel Spiegelfechterei das englische Joch die rücksichtslose englische Herrschaft ein doppelter Betrug die unmenschlichsten Steuern diese Wuchersteuer dieses Aussaugesystem unerschwingliche Steuern Sinekuren für Engländer diese Mißstände (Continued)
Table 4A.2 (Cont.) 0
Examples
18 19 20 21 22
tax burdens the unbearable yoke of England this probably intentional error their addiction to enrichment the disproportionately expensive English administration their enrichment selfish interests British haughtiness a firmly rooted mistake their haughtiness British colonial-moral pharisaic attitude the naive claim an old habit this old-English habit moral guardianship system English accusations English blue book propaganda English occupation
23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35
Steuerschrauben das unerträgliche Joche Englands dieser wohl absichtliche Irrtum ihre Bereicherungssucht die unverhältnismäßige teure englische Verwaltung ihre Bereicherung egoistische Interessen britischer Hochmut ein fest eingewurzelter Fehler ihr Hochmut britischer kolonial-moralischer Pharisäersinn der naive Anspruch eine alte Gewohnheit diese alt-englische Gewohnheit moralisches Vormundschaftssystem englische Anklagen englische Blaubuchpropaganda englische Besitzergreifung
Table 4A.3 nur (26 examples) 0
Examples
1
Einen Rechtsgrund gibt es dafür überhaupt nicht, der Grund ist nur die unersättliche Habsucht Englands. So kommt es, daß der größte Teil der Bevölkerung nur das zum eigenen Leben Notwendige anbaut, denn mehr zu bauen hätte keinen Sinn, weil alle Frucht der Arbeit des Bauern doch nicht ihm, sondern nur der Habsucht Englands Vorteile brächte. Nun verlangt England seine Zinsen und zieht die vom Tribut ab; demnach bietet es der Pforte jedes Jahr nur 9000 Pfund als Tribut an, und da die Türkei auf der vollen Summe von 92680 Pfunden besteht, erhält sie einfach gar nichts, und der ganze Tribut füllt die Kassen der Bank von England. Damit aber der englischen Regierung von dieser Wuchersteuer nur ja nichts entgehen kann, ersann man neue Härten. Die Engländer dagegen nehmen eine Steuer von etwa 8000 Pfund Sterling jährlich, die ursprünglich nur so lange bezahlt werden sollte, bis die aufgewendeten Kosten wieder gedeckt wären. Alles, was von England aus für die Insel geschieht, und das sind zumeist Dinge, die nur den Engländern zugute kommen, wird stets mit neuen Umlagen bestritten. Eine ähnliche Barbarei, nur noch viel größeren Umfanges, verübten die Engländer in Ägypten mit ihrem großen Nil-Stauwerke.
2
3
4 5
6 7
0
Examples
8
In Wirklichkeit werden aber nur einige Teile des Landes, die früher nicht von der Überschwemmung erreicht wurden, nun mit überschwemmt, hauptsächlich die Gegend um Tell el Amarna, und diese Gegenden, die den Ingenieuren der Stauwerke natürlich schon vor der Anlage der Werke bekannt waren, sind rechtzeitig von Engländern angekauft worden, so daß der Nutzen der erweiterten Überschwemmung wieder nur England, nicht aber den Eingeborenen Ägyptens zugute kommt. Diese Mehreinnahme an Zoll ist also nur eine neue Belastung der Cyprioten, von der die wenigen Engländer auf der Insel, im Ganzen etwa 290, so gut wie nichts bezahlen. Schon an den Zöllen sieht man, daß England auf Cypern alle Lasten den Eingeborenen aufbürdet, dagegen Dinge, die nur den Engländern nützen, zollfrei läßt. Die Straßen kommen also wieder nur den englischen Beamten zugute, denn auch die auf das Troodosgebirge ist nur darum angelegt, weil dort oben während des heißen Sommers die Regierung ihren Sitz hat, und das wenige englische Militär ebenfalls dort ein Sommerlager bezieht. Diese beiden können weder Griechisch noch Türkisch sprechen; die Stellen sind also nur Sinekuren für Engländer, denn ohne Kenntnis der Sprachen können sie ihr Amt doch nicht richtig ausfüllen. Der schon oben erwähnte eingeborene Beirat zur Gesetzgebung ist offenbar von den Engländern nur zum Scheine eingesetzt, denn trotz ehrlicher Arbeit, die die Mitglieder zum Wohle ihrer Volksgenossen zu leisten bestrebt sind, blieb England stets taub, wenn es galt, durch neue Maßregeln oder durch milde Handhabung der bestehenden etwas zum Vorteile des Volkes zu erreichen. Bis jetzt kommen alle Fortschritte nur dem britischen Staatsschatze zugute, und roir (sic!) können unter diesen Umständen nicht hoffen, das Land zu seiner früheren Ertragsfähigkeit zu bringen. Dann wäre auch der ganze Boden nur englisches Eigentum, und um das Wohl der ureingesessenen Bevölkerung brauchte man sich nicht zu kümmern, auch der Fortfall der jetzt erpreßten Steuern käme nicht mehr in Betracht, wenn doch der ganze Grund und Boden englisches Eigentum wäre. Um so gerechter wird dieser Wunsch dadurch, daß schon oft in Denkschriften an der Handamtlicher Berechnungen nachgewiesen wurde, daß von den aus der Insel gezogenen Einnahmen nur neun vom Hundert für die Insel verwendet werden, während der Rest nach England fließt. Diese Zustände konnten nur dadurch eintreten, daß das Unbesetztbleiben der Stühle von drei Kirchenfürsten zu gleicher Zeit und die dadurch hervorgerufene Verwirrung den Engländern sehr willkommen war, und sie den Streit heimlich immer wieder neu schürten, so daß die ungeordneten kirchlichen Zustände schließlich zehn Jahre währten, während sie sonst in kurzer Zeit leicht beizulegen gewesen wären. Alles, was nicht englisch ist, wird nur als Mittel, die eigenen Machtgelüste und Bereicherungsgier zu befriedigen, betrachtet. Um den Schaden zu verbessern, zahlte die englische Regierung nur 2000 Pfund, und Zwar aus der Heuschreckensteuer.
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18 19
(Continued)
Table 4A.3 (Cont.) 0
Examples
20
England sagte also freiwillig der Türkei einen viel zu hohen Tribut zu, und dies konnte es leicht tun, da dieser wohl absichtliche Irrtum, wie wir gleichsehen werden, nur England selbst zum Vorteil gereichte, und sowohl die Einwohner Cyperns als die Türkei die Betrogenen dabei waren. Die Engländer dagegen, die die Insel in Pacht nahmen, hätten gar kein Recht, Soldaten dort auszuheben, konnten also auch keine Steuern für Befreiung vom Militärdienst erheben, dies umso weniger, als sie in ihrem eigenen Lande keine militärische Dienstpflicht, sondern nur ein Söldnerheer haben; in der Form einer Kopfsteuer aber bot sich ihrer Bereicherungssucht ein willkommenes Mittel. Die mit allen nur erdenkbaren Steuern von der Bevölkerung erpreßten Gelder werfen demnach für die englischen Beamten höhere Gehälter ab, als diese auf der Insel verzehren können, dienen also zu ihrer Bereicherung; die einheimischen Beamten dagegen, deren Geld doch auch mit in diesen Steuern steckt, und deren Arbeit eine größere ist als die der Engländer, erhalten für das Leben ganz unzureichende Gehälter, und die ganze Bevölkerung muß mit ihrem eigenen Gelde die unverhältnismäßig teure englische Verwaltung bezahlen, die letzten Endes nur dazu dient, die Insel zugrunde zu richten und das Volk zur Verzweiflung zu treiben. Bisher sind alle höheren Beamten nur Engländer; dies bringt aber sowohl bei Gericht als für die Schule Adelstände mit sich; besonders der Schulinspektor müßte ein Cypriote sein. Was in den Kolonien vorgeht – nicht etwa nur oder vornehmlich in den englischen, nein, gerade auch in den fremdstaatlichen –, darüber wird in England gleichsam ein Wohlverhaltungsregister geführt. Aber es ist nun einmal geschichtliche Erfahrungstatsache, daß die humanitären und kulturfördernden Bestrebungen der erwähnten Kreise in der Praxis nur all zu oft zum Vorteil der Engländer gedient und zur Vergrößerung des englischen Weltreiches geführt haben. In weiten Kreisen nicht nur Deutschlands, sondern auch des neutralen, ja des heute feindlichen Auslandes, standen die Engländer denn auch schon lange vor dem Kriege in dem Verdacht, daß alle ihre bei den verschiedensten Gelegenheiten kundgegebene moralische Entrüstung über die Un- und Schandtaten fremder Staatsangehöriger in fremdländischen Kolonien keinem anderen Zweck zu dienen hätte als der Verhüllung selbstsüchtiger englischer Pläne.
21
22
23
24
25
26
Table 4A.4 aber (21 examples) 0
Examples
1
Auf Jahrtausende blicken diese Denkmäler ägyptischer Kultur herab, Generationen erfreuten sich an diesen durch alle Zeiten wohlerhaltenen Bauten und befriedigten ihren Forschungstrieb, jetzt aber sollen sie um der Habsucht der Engländer willen in wenigen Jahrzehnten verschwinden, als seien sie nie gewesen. Gerade das paßt aber England sehr gut, denn dadurch ist die Verbindung der Griechen auf Cypern mit denen des Mutterlandes nicht so rege, die Cyprioten sind weiter als früher von Griechenland abgeschnitten, mehr auf sich selbst angewiesen und damit der englischen Willkür noch mehr ausgesetzt, weil die Fühlung mit dem hellenischen Stammvolke verhindert wird.
2
0
Examples
3
Wie England aber auf Zypern vorgeht, so behandelt es alle seine Kolonien, obwohl es sich selbst gern Befreier der Völker und Bringer der Zivilisation nennt. Damit aber der englischen Regierung von dieser Wuchersteuer nur ja nichts entgehen kann, ersann man neue Härten. Damit aber nicht durch Mißernten oder infolge dieses Aussaugesystems die reichen Einkünfte aus dem Zehnten ausfallen können, hat England einen Plan erdacht, der scheinbar wohltätig sein soll, in Wirklichkeit aber neue drückende Lasten dem Volke bringt. Da diese Umlagen aber in der Armut der Bevölkerung ihre natürlichen Grenzen finden, bleibt vieles, was zum Wohle der Insel dringend nötig wäre und was von England leicht bestritten werden könnte, ungetan. In Wirklichkeit werden aber nur einige Teile des Landes, die früher nicht von der Überschwemmung erreicht wurden, nun mit überschwemmt, hauptsächlich die Gegend um Tell el Amarna, und diese Gegenden, die den Ingenieuren der Stauwerke natürlich schon vor der Anlage der Werke bekannt waren, sind rechtzeitig von Engländern angekauft worden, so daß der Nutzen der erweiterten Überschwemmung wieder nur England, nicht aber den Eingeborenen Ägyptens zugute kommt. Dies ist aber eitel Spiegelfechterei, denn die Einnahmen des Zolles fließen wieder ausschließlich nach England und kommen nicht den Bedürfnissen des Volkes entgegen; dann sind auch Waren aus türkischem Gebiete besteuert, was früher natürlich nicht der Fall war; ferner sind Zuschlagssteuern auf Wein, geistige Getränke, Rosinen und Tabak gelegt; und schließlich lehrt ein Blick auf den Zolltarif, daß ist, während alles, was die Engländer für sich brauchen, zollfrei eingeht. Noch schlimmer wird das aber, wenn man sieht, daß vieles, was die Insel früher selbst erzeugte, was also keinen Zoll kostete, jetzt durch englische Maßnahmen unmöglich gemacht ist und darum mit hohem Zoll von auswärts eingeführt werden muß. Das kümmert aber die Engländer nicht, solange sie noch reiche Einkünfte von der Insel beziehen. Das Eine aber geht aus allen diesen Aussprüchen hervor, daß man in England sehr gut um alle diese Adelstände wußte. Die Gerechtigkeit dieser Forderung wird jeder einsehen, denn England hat zu seinem eigenen Vorteil, d. h. um einen Stützpunkt im Orient zu haben, die Insel gepachtet, verlangt aber, daß die Bevölkerung Cyperns, der es unter den Türken viel besser ging, die Kosten für England tragen soll. Bei der großen Anzahl der Zyprischen Griechen erscheint dieser Wunsch den Engländern aber unbequem, und sie suchen die Verbindung mit Griechenland so viel als möglich zu erschweren. Manche Berichte über diesen Kirchenstreit wollten seine Ursache in der Leidenschaftlichkeit der Bevölkerung sehen; dies ist aber nicht richtig; die Ursachen sind, wie mir in der Hauptstadt Levkosia von mehreren Seiten versichert wurde, bei der englischen Regierung zu suchen. Die Engländer dagegen, die die Insel in Pacht nahmen, hätten gar kein Recht, Soldaten dort auszuheben, konnten also auch keine Steuern für Befreiung vom Militärdienst erheben, dies umso weniger, als sie in ihrem eigenen Lande keine militärische Dienstpflicht, sondern nur ein Söldnerheer haben; in der Form einer Kopfsteuer aber bot sich ihrer Bereicherungssucht ein willkommenes Mittel.
4 5
6
7
8
9
10 11 12
13
14
15
(Continued)
Table 4A.4 (Cont.) 0
Examples
16
Bisher sind alle höheren Beamten nur Engländer; dies bringt aber sowohl bei Gericht als für die Schule Adelstände mit sich; besonders der Schulinspektor müßte ein Cypriote sein. Aber bei den Engländern ist es ein festeingewurzelter Fehler, daß sie das Gleichnis vom Splitter und vom Balken vergessen. Aber es ist nun einmal geschichtliche Erfahrungstatsache, daß die humanitären und kulturfördernden Bestrebungen der erwähnten Kreise in der Praxis nur all zu oft zum Vorteil der Engländer gedient und zur Vergrößerung des englischen Weltreiches geführt haben. Das war nicht Englands erster Kolonialkrieg, wohl aber vielleicht sein dreißigster. Die »Vereinigten Staaten von Europa« würden aber schwerlich zugegeben haben, daß das freihändlerische England sich die ganze afrikanische Küste angeeignet hätte. Wohl aber mögen sich die Engländer daran erinnern lassen, daß ihre eigenen kolonialen Autoritäten vor dem Weltkriege keineswegs geneigt waren, wegen der Vorgänge im südafrikanischen Aufstandskrieg uns geringer zu achten.
17 18
19 20
21
Table 4A.5 noch (12 examples) 0
Examples
1
Gerade das paßt aber England sehr gut, denn dadurch ist die Verbindung der Griechen auf Cypern mit denen des Mutterlandes nicht so rege, die Cyprioten sind weiter als früher von Griechenland abgeschnitten, mehr auf sich selbst angewiesen und damit der englischen Willkür noch mehr ausgesetzt, weil die Fühlung mit dem hellenischen Stammvolke verhindert wird. Darum hat die Regierung, wie jetzt allgemein anerkannt ist, heimlich den Bischof von Larnaka gegen den von dem angerufenen Patriarchenrate gewählten Bischof von Kerynia unterstützt und damit den Streit, der mit der Wahl leicht hätte erledigt sein können, noch um zehn Jahre weiter hingezogen, um, wie es England ja stets gern tut, dabei im Trüben zu fischen. Damit noch nicht genug, haben die Engländer seit 1884 eine weitere Zuschlagssteuer auf Wein, Rosinen, Spiritussen und Tabak von jährlich 4600 Pfund Sterling gelegt. Bei dem Hafen von Ammochosto (Famagusta) zeigt sich außer der rücksichtslosen Ausgabe der Gelder, die dem armen Volke abgepreßt wurden, auch noch die Barbarei der Engländer gegen Denkmäler der Kunst und Kultur. Eine ähnliche Barbarei, nur noch viel größeren Umfanges, verübten die Engländer in Ägypten mit ihrem großen Nil-Stauwerke. Noch schlimmer wird das aber, wenn man sieht, daß vieles, was die Insel früher selbst erzeugte, was also keinen Zoll kostete, jetzt durch englische Maßnahmen unmöglich gemacht ist und darum mit hohem Zoll von auswärts eingeführt werden muß. Das kümmert aber die Engländer nicht, solange sie noch reiche Einkünfte von der Insel beziehen.
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0
Examples
8
Diese beiden können weder Griechisch noch Türkisch sprechen; die Stellen sind also nur Sinekuren für Engländer, denn ohne Kenntnis der Sprachen können sie ihr Amt doch nicht richtig ausfüllen. Durch diese eigennützige Verwendung der vielen aus dem Zyprischen Volke auf grausame Weise erpreßten Gelder begeht England außerdem noch einen Wortbruch der Türkei gegenüber. Mit Gibraltar im Westen, Malta in der Mitte und Cypern im Osten des Mittelmeeres hoffte England, die ganze Seeherrschaft und den Handel an sich reißen zu können, noch dazu, da außer der Südküste Kleinasiens und Syrien auch Ägypten und der Suezkanal leicht von Cypern aus zu beherrschen sind. Zum Schlusse sei hier noch ein Beispiel angeführt, mit welcher Roheit das Recht von den Engländern gehandhabt wird. Zur Türkei gehört ja Cypern völkerrechtlich heute noch, obwohl die Engländer im letzten Balkankriege gegen jedes Recht erklärten, daß sie die Insel nicht mehr als gepachtet, sondern als wirkliche England gehörige Kolonie betrachten.
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11 12
Table 4A.6 schon (9 examples) 0
Examples
1
Schon die Besetzung Cyperns durch England am 12. Juli 1878 barg einen doppelten Betrug in sich. In Wirklichkeit werden aber nur einige Teile des Landes, die früher nicht von der Überschwemmung erreicht wurden, nun mit überschwemmt, hauptsächlich die Gegend um Tell el Amarna, und diese Gegenden, die den Ingenieuren der Stauwerke natürlich schon vor der Anlage der Werke bekannt waren, sind rechtzeitig von Engländern angekauft worden, so daß der Nutzen der erweiterten Überschwemmung wieder nur England, nicht aber den Eingeborenen Ägyptens zugute kommt. Schon an den Zöllen sieht man, daß England auf Cypern alle Lasten den Eingeborenen aufbürdet, dagegen Dinge, die nur den Engländern nützen, zollfrei läßt. Der schon oben erwähnte eingeborene Beirat zur Gesetzgebung ist offenbar von den Engländern nur zum Scheine eingesetzt, denn trotz ehrlicher Arbeit, die die Mitglieder zum Wohle ihrer Volksgenossen zu leisten bestrebt sind, blieb England stets taub, wenn es galt, durch neue Maßregeln oder durch milde Handhabung der bestehenden etwas zum Vorteile des Volkes zu erreichen. Um so gerechter wird dieser Wunsch dadurch, daß schon oft in Denkschriften an der Handamtlicher Berechnungen nachgewiesen wurde, daß von den aus der Insel gezogenen Einnahmen nur neun vom Hundert für die Insel verwendet werden, während der Rest nach England fließt. Die Reise wurde zwar dadurch schon bedeutend verlängert, den Engländern schien dies nicht genug. Diesem Wunsche gaben schon vor etlichen Jahren Ansichtskarten Ausdruck, die sofort von der englischen Regierung beschlagnahmt wurden.
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(Continued)
Table 4A.6 (Cont.) 0 Examples 8
9
In weiten Kreisen nicht nur Deutschlands, sondern auch des neutralen, ja des heute feindlichen Auslandes, standen die Engländer denn auch schon lange vor dem Kriege in dem Verdacht, daß alle ihre bei den verschiedensten Gelegenheiten kundgegebene moralische Entrüstung über die Un- und Schandtaten fremder Staatsangehöriger in fremdländischen Kolonien keinem anderen Zweck zu dienen hätte als der Verhüllung selbstsüchtiger englischer Pläne. Lange Monate ist es nun schon her, daß der Kongostaat und seine Verteidiger Beweis auf Beweis häufen, um die Nichtigkeit der englischen Anklagen darzutun.
Table 4A.7 doch (7 examples) 0
Examples
1
So kommt es, daß der größte Teil der Bevölkerung nur das zum eigenen Leben Notwendige anbaut, denn mehr zu bauen hätte keinen Sinn, weil alle Frucht der Arbeit des Bauern doch nicht ihm, sondern nur der Habsucht Englands Vorteile brächte. Auch Zeitungen, die doch gewiß in England keine Rücksichten auf die Gefühle anderer Völker nehmen, wie die Times, Evening News, Manchester Guardian u. a., betonten mehrfach in Leitaufsätzen und in Berichten, daß die Art, wie Cypern von England behandelt werde, eine höchst ungerechte sei, und daß England seinen bei der Pachtung übernommenen Pflichten nicht gerecht werde. Diese beiden können weder Griechisch noch Türkisch sprechen; die Stellen sind also nur Sinekuren für Engländer, denn ohne Kenntnis der Sprachen können sie ihr Amt doch nicht richtig ausfüllen. Dann wäre auch der ganze Boden nur englisches Eigentum, und um das Wohl der ureingesessenen Bevölkerung brauchte man sich nicht zu kümmern, auch der Fortfall der jetzt erpreßten Steuern käme nicht mehr in Betracht, wenn doch der ganze Grund und Boden englisches Eigentum wäre. Die mit allen nur erdenkbaren Steuern von der Bevölkerung erpreßten Gelder werfen demnach für die englischen Beamten höhere Gehälter ab, als diese auf der Insel verzehren können, dienen also zu ihrer Bereicherung; die einheimischen Beamten dagegen, deren Geld doch auch mit in diesen Steuern steckt, und deren Arbeit eine größere ist als die der Engländer, erhalten für das Leben ganz unzureichende Gehälter, und die ganze Bevölkerung muß mit ihrem eigenen Gelde die unverhältnismäßig teure englische Verwaltung bezahlen, die letzten Endes nur dazu dient, die Insel zugrunde zu richten und das Volk zur Verzweiflung zu treiben. Und doch, wie viele Reformen hätten die Engländer in ihren eigenen Kolonien vorzunehmen, bevor sie das Recht zum Kritisieren anderer hätten! Doch wohl, weil sie in Deutsch-Südwest besser behandelt wurden und als Freie arbeiteten, und in den englischen Minen bei dem dortigen “CompoundSystem” wie in einem Gefängnishof eingesperrt lebten.
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Table 4A.8 wohl (6 examples) 0
Examples
1
Die englische Regierung nährn wohl so viel, als sie mit allen Steuerschrauben aus der Insel erpressen konnte, gerne mit, so lange es geht. England sagte also freiwillig der Türkei einen viel zu hohen Tribut zu, und dies konnte es leicht tun, da dieser wohl absichtliche Irrtum, wie wir gleich sehen werden, nur England selbst zum Vorteil gereichte, und sowohl die Einwohner Cyperns als die Türkei die Betrogenen dabei waren. Was käme wohl dabei heraus, wenn man das in England z. B. oder einer seiner Kolonien tun wollte, oder wenn man aus den Hunderten von zerlumpten und verkommenen Gestalten, die man in Friedenszeiten, wenn man abends aus seinem Hotel am Embankment in London trat, zur Suppenanstalt schleichen sah, auf die Armut und das Elend des englischen Volkes schließen wollte? Das war nicht Englands erster Kolonialkrieg, wohl aber vielleicht sein dreißigster. Wohl aber mögen sich die Engländer daran erinnern lassen, daß ihre eigenen kolonialen Autoritäten vor dem Weltkriege keineswegs geneigt waren, wegen der Vorgänge im südafrikanischen Aufstandskrieg uns geringer zu achten. Doch wohl, weil sie in Deutsch-Südwest besser behandelt wurden und als Freie arbeiteten, und in den englischen Minen bei dem dortigen “CompoundSystem” wie in einem Gefängnishof eingesperrt lebten.
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6
Table 4A.9 ja (5 examples) 0
Examples
1
Darum hat die Regierung, wie jetzt allgemein anerkannt ist, heimlich den Bischof von Larnaka gegen den von dem angerufenen Patriarchenrate gewählten Bischof von Kerynia unterstützt und damit den Streit, der mit der Wahl leicht hätte erledigt sein können, noch um zehn Jahre weiter hingezogen, um, wie es England ja stets gern tut, dabei im Trüben zu fischen. Damit aber der englischen Regierung von dieser Wuchersteuer nur ja nichts entgehen kann, ersann man neue Härten. Eine Entschädigung zahlen die Engländer für solchen durch ihre Stauwerke bewirkten Schaden nicht; die von ihnen gewünschten Ländereien werden ja befruchtet. Zur Türkei gehört ja Cypern völkerrechtlich heute noch, obwohl die Engländer im letzten Balkankriege gegen jedes Recht erklärten, daß sie die Insel nicht mehr als gepachtet, sondern als wirkliche England gehörige Kolonie betrachten. In weiten Kreisen nicht nur Deutschlands, sondern auch des neutralen, ja des heute feindlichen Auslandes, standen die Engländer denn auch schon lange vor dem Kriege in dem Verdacht, daß alle ihre bei den verschiedensten Gelegenheiten kundgegebene moralische Entrüstung über die Un- und Schandtaten fremder Staatsangehöriger in fremdländischen Kolonien keinem anderen Zweck zu dienen hätte als der Verhüllung selbstsüchtiger englischer Pläne.
2 3
4
5
Table 4A.10 stets (3 examples) Darum hat die Regierung, wie jetzt allgemein anerkannt ist, heimlich den Bischof von Larnaka gegen den von dem angerufenen Patriarchenrate gewählten Bischof von Kerynia unterstützt und damit den Streit, der mit der Wahl leicht hätte erledigt sein können, noch um zehn Jahre weiter hingezogen, um, wie es England ja stets gern tut, dabei im Trüben zu fischen. Alles, was von England aus für die Insel geschieht, und das sind zumeist Dinge, die nur den Engländern zugute kommen, wird stets mit neuen Umlagen bestritten. Der schon oben erwähnte eingeborene Beirat zur Gesetzgebung ist offenbar von den Engländern nur zum Scheine eingesetzt, denn trotz ehrlicher Arbeit, die die Mitglieder zum Wohle ihrer Volksgenossen zu leisten bestrebt sind, blieb England stets taub, wenn es galt, durch neue Maßregeln oder durch milde Handhabung der bestehenden etwas zum Vorteile des Volkes zu erreichen.
Table 4A.11 natürlich (2 examples) In Wirklichkeit werden aber nur einige Teile des Landes, die früher nicht von der Überschwemmung erreicht wurden, nun mit überschwemmt, hauptsächlich die Gegend um Tell el Amarna, und diese Gegenden, die den Ingenieuren der Stauwerke natürlich schon vor der Anlage der Werke bekannt waren, sind rechtzeitig von Engländern angekauft worden, so daß der Nutzen der erweiterten Überschwemmung wieder nur England, nicht aber den Eingeborenen Ägyptens zugute kommt. Dies ist aber eitel Spiegelfechterei, denn die Einnahmen des Zolles fließen wieder ausschließlich nach England und kommen nicht den Bedürfnissen des Volkes entgegen; dann sind auch Waren aus türkischem Gebiete besteuert, was früher natürlich nicht der Fall war; ferner sind Zuschlagssteuern auf Wein, geistige Getränke, Rosinen und Tabak gelegt; und schließlich lehrt ein Blick auf den Zolltarif, daß ist, während alles, was die Engländer für sich brauchen, zollfrei eingeht.
Table 4A.12 überhaupt (2 examples) Einen Rechtsgrund gibt es dafür überhaupt nicht, der Grund ist nur die unersättliche Habsucht Englands. Überhaupt scheint es Gewohnheit zu sein, daß der Höchstgehalt eines eingeborenen Beamten hinter dem Anfangsgehalte jedes Engländers weit zurückbleibt.
Table 4A.13 keineswegs (2 examples) Auch die nationalen Wünsche der Einwohner Cyperns werden von England keineswegs geachtet. Wohl aber mögen sich die Engländer daran erinnern lassen, daß ihre eigenen kolonialen Autoritäten vor dem Weltkriege keineswegs geneigt waren, wegen der Vorgänge im südafrikanischen Aufstandskrieg uns geringer zu achten.
Table 4A.14 tatsächlich (1 example) Tatsächlich wäre sie unverständlich, wenn man von einem psychologischen Zuge absähe, der in auffallender Weise bei gewissen englischen Kolonialpolitikern zutage tritt: von der englischen Tendenz, alles, was in fremden Kolonien geschieht, schwarz zu malen.
Table 4A.15 grundsätzlich (1 example) Rücksichten, mit denen einst die Türkei der durch Mißernten bedrängten Bevölkerung ihr Los erleichterte, werden von England grundsätzlich nicht geübt.
Table 4A.16 scheinbar (1 example) Damit aber nicht durch Mißernten oder infolge dieses Aussaugesystems die reichen Einkünfte aus dem Zehnten ausfallen können, hat England einen Plan erdacht, der scheinbar wohltätig sein soll, in Wirklichkeit aber neue drückende Lasten dem Volke bringt.
Table 4A.17 sogar (1 example) Sobald es dann dem englischen Auswärtigem Amt gefällig ist, einem kolonialpolitisch tätigen Staat Schwierigkeiten machen zu wollen, werden sich unfehlbar die Beweise häufen, daß sich in dessen Kolonien Dinge abspielen, die ein Eingreifen der kolonialen Vormundschaftsbehörde in London rechtfertigen und sogar dringend erfordern.
Table 4A.18 eigentlich (1 example) Der naive Anspruch des Engländers, daß eigentlich ihm in ganz Afrika die Herrschaft gebühre, kommt fast überall zum Ausdruck, wo Johnston die Erwerbung der deutschen Kolonien bespricht.
Table 4A.19 vielleicht (1 example) Das war nicht Englands erster Kolonialkrieg, wohl aber vielleicht sein dreißigster.
Table 4A.20 dennoch (1 example) Und dennoch sieht man einen Teil der englischen Presse eigensinnig dabei verharren.
Table 4A.21 offenbar (1 example) Der schon oben erwähnte eingeborene Beirat zur Gesetzgebung ist offenbar von den Engländern nur zum Scheine eingesetzt, denn trotz ehrlicher Arbeit, die die Mitglieder zum Wohle ihrer Volksgenossen zu leisten bestrebt sind, blieb England stets taub, wenn es galt, durch neue Maßregeln oder durch milde Handhabung der bestehenden etwas zum Vorteile des Volkes zu erreichen.
Table 4A.22 Multipart commentary adverbials (6 examples) 0
Examples
1
Damit aber nicht durch Mißernten oder infolge dieses Aussaugesystems die reichen Einkünfte aus dem Zehnten ausfallen können, hat England einen Plan erdacht, der scheinbar wohltätig sein soll, in Wirklichkeit aber neue drückende Lasten dem Volke bringt. In Wirklichkeit werden aber nur einige Teile des Landes, die früher nicht von der Überschwemmung erreicht wurden, nun mit überschwemmt, hauptsächlich die Gegend um Tell el Amarna, und diese Gegenden, die den Ingenieuren der Stauwerke natürlich schon vor der Anlage der Werke bekannt waren, sind rechtzeitig von Engländern angekauft worden, so daß der Nutzen der erweiterten Überschwemmung wieder nur England, nicht aber den Eingeborenen Ägyptens zugute kommt. Der schon oben erwähnte eingeborene Beirat zur Gesetzgebung ist offenbar von den Engländern nur zum Scheine eingesetzt, denn trotz ehrlicher Arbeit, die die Mitglieder zum Wohle ihrer Volksgenossen zu leisten bestrebt sind, blieb England stets taub, wenn es galt, durch neue Maßregeln oder durch milde Handhabung der bestehenden etwas zum Vorteile des Volkes zu erreichen. Tatsächlich wäre sie unverständlich, wenn man von einem psychologischen Zuge absähe, der in auffallender Weise bei gewissen englischen Kolonialpolitikern zutage tritt: von der englischen Tendenz, alles, was in fremden Kolonien geschieht, schwarz zu malen. Aus diesen Gründen dürfte es angebracht sein, an dem Beispiele von Zypern, dessen Verhältnisse ich von zwei Bereisungen der Insel (1902 und 1908) gründlich kenne, zu zeigen, wie England seine Kolonien verwaltet, und wie es die dort heimischen Völker mit voller Absicht zugrunde richtet und damit auch die ganze übrige Welt schwer schädigt. Durch diese eigennützige Verwendung der vielen aus dem Zyprischen Volke auf grausame Weise erpreßten Gelder begeht England außerdem noch einen Wortbruch der Türkei gegenüber.
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Part II
The ‘Scramble’ for Africa
5
Lighting the ‘dark’ continent: Metaphors of darkness and light in the writings of British and German explorers and missionaries 1865–1915 Felicity Rash
Preamble Base grows the heart when love of gain Gets uncontroul’d dominion All other love is weak and vain, In such a knave’s opinion. We blush to see the Savage drag His parents into slavery; With heart as hard as stony crag; We wonder at his knavery. Yet, much the same is often done By many a miss and master; Who waste their parents’ wealth in fun, And break their hearts still faster. If such unnaturals had a mark, Their sin expressed by colour; How many fair would turn quite dark, As negro dark, or duller. (Taylor 1820: 46)
The value judgment attached to darkness expressed in the message above is an early example of a ‘negro’s’ dark skin being linked to a lack of civilized behaviour and Christian virtue. Little was known about the inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa in 1820 and that ignorance bred prejudice and fear. Isaac Taylor’s African Scenes (1820) were described using literary accounts that were not necessarily based on first-hand travel experiences. Taylor (1787–1865) was a historical and philosophical writer and illustrator whose major message about ‘black’ Africa was that the British had abolished the slave trade in West Africa in 1807.
1 Introduction This chapter examines some of the ways in which metaphors of darkness, light and enlightenment functioned as ‘discourse metaphors’ during the era of the so-
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called ‘Scramble for Africa’, when the colonialist competition between Great Britain and Germany was fiercest. The term ‘scramble’ was first used in 1893 with reference to the haste with which the European powers partitioned and shared the continent among themselves. Sir John Keltie described the progress of the partition of Africa between European powers prior to 1875 as ‘comparatively slow and insignificant’ and as later developing into a ‘rush’ and a ‘great struggle’ (Keltie 1972 [1893]: 10). Two colonial conferences, the first in Brussels in 1876 (instigated by King Leopold II of Belgium) and the second in Berlin in 1884 (instigated by Otto von Bismarck), marked the beginning of the ‘scramble’. According to Thomas Pakenham, the ‘Scramble for Africa’ began with David Livingstone’s mission to Central Africa and his call for Europeans to ‘help to heal the open sore of the world’ which was the Arab slave trade on the East Africa coast (Waller 1874, I: 182). The primary aim for Livingstone was for ‘trade, not the gun’ to put an end to the slave trade in Africa (Pakenham 1991, xxiv). As the ‘scramble’ intensified, the use of the gun increased. The ‘scramble’ ended with the outbreak of the First World War. Discourse metaphors may be used deliberately as a framing device within a particular discourse over a particular period because they have ‘a relatively stable metaphorical projection’ (Zinken et al. 2008: 363). The chief purpose of the metaphors of darkness, light and enlightenment was to legitimize the domination of Sub-Saharan Africa by Europeans from the later 19th century in the name of Christianization and civilization and, but less overtly at first, for commercial exploitation and political control. In particular, metaphors of light and darkness helped in the creation of images in European discourse of an educated and civilized (enlightened) Self and a generally inferior, uncivilized African Other, who was in need of and sometimes capable of improvement (enlightenment). The discourse metaphors of darkness and light can be seen as having ‘discourse systematicity’, described by Elena Semino as applicable to situations where certain discourse metaphors are used by particular discourse communities and characterize specific discourse genres. Where a discourse genre has ideological implications, such systematicity is especially significant, since it can reflect ‘the shared beliefs and assumptions of the members of particular social groups’ (Semino 2008: 34). Two literary genres gained wide popularity from the mid-19th century onwards, particularly among the educated bourgeoisie in both Britain and Germany: accounts of exploration, and of missionary activity, or of both together. These made judicious use of metaphors of darkness, light and enlightenment, and this chapter explores the various reasons for their use in the writings of traveller-missionaries from 1865 onwards. Because of the size of the potential literary corpus for examination, the analysis will be limited to the seminal works of David and Charles Livingstone (1865) and Henry Morton Stanley (1878 and 1890b) and reflexes in later German colonialist and anti-colonialist writing.
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2 Metaphorical and linguistic uses of darkness and light The Oxford English Dictionary documents numerous figurative uses of dark (ness), light and enlighten(ment) in English from the times of early medieval Bible translations onwards.1 The Grimms’ Deutsches Wörterbuch does the same for German.2 Metaphors of darkness and light have ancient roots going back at least to the formation of most major world religions and can in large part be explained by the theory that embodied experience gives rise to conceptual metaphors. The present analysis adopts the experientialist-cognitive theory of the process of metaphor as developed by Lakoff, Johnson and Turner in the 1980s, according to which metaphorical structure underlies all modes of human thought and the unconscious mind uses metaphor to conceptualize and reason (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff and Turner 1989). It is the human sensorimotor system which provides the link between conceptual categories and the metaphors which enable human experience to be categorized and expressed in language (Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 12). Darkness and light are pervasive in human experience and well understood as metaphorical sources for the linguistic representation of abstract concepts. The source domain of DARKNESS PREVENTS VISION, for example, is readily mapped onto the target of IGNORANCE IS DANGEROUS. 3 In Lakoffian terms, light is a graded category without the firm boundaries of the CONTAINER type of image schema. If there are boundaries, they are ‘fuzzy’; the position within the interior of the category is graded and the degree of membership of the category varies (Lakoff 1987: 287f.). This type of categorization applies to colours for darkness and light, but it does not always apply to the way in which images of darkness and light are used for ideological purposes. Henry Morton Stanley, for example, conceptualized Africa as a container with solid boundaries filled with absolute darkness in order to exaggerate its dangers. Keeping darkness and light separate, with no shading in between, made them a useful device for the polarization and evaluation by early colonialists of the European Self and the African Other. Working within his Christian beliefs and writing for a Christian audience, Stanley could make use of images of dissimilation to support his discursive message. Images of darkness and light frequently collocate in the Bible to provide a ‘prototype dualism’ for the expression of religious concepts as follows: SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE IS LIGHT / JESUS IS LIGHT / FAITH IS LIGHT /GOODNESS IS LIGHT / HOPE IS LIGHT
(Charteris-Black 2004: 185–9)
SPIRITUAL IGNORANCE IS DARKNESS / SATAN IS DARKNESS / REJECTION OF FAITH 4 IS DARKNESS / EVIL IS DARKNESS (Charteris-Black 2004: 190)
It was Christianity that supported the European quest for world domination. Missionaries could emulate the God of the pre-Christian Bible, who brought light to a dark place and created a division between the original darkness and the new, good light:
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Felicity Rash In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and here was morning, one day. (Genesis 1: 1–5)
The darkness collocated with deep, waste and void. God also made sure that there was a movement from light to darkness and darkness to light: morning and evening. The four elements make up a whole day. The Christian New Testament provided further evidence of an enlightening God whose optimistic message was revealed in a book brought to Africa by missionaries such as Livingstone and Stanley: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not. There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came that he may bear witness of the light. There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world. (John 1: 1–9) It was this light that European colonizers claimed to offer the New World and the ‘dark continent’.
3 The travel accounts of Livingstone and Stanley According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the presentation of Africa as a ‘dark continent’ started in 1878 with Henry Morton Stanley’s Through the Dark Continent. Before that, Sub-Saharan Africa was referred to as Nigritia and Negroland as well as Africa. 5 The explorer and missionary Dr David Livingstone (1813–73), whom Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) ‘found’ in Africa in 1871,6 did not refer to Africa as the ‘dark continent’. Stanley did not, in fact, portray Africa as ‘dark’ in his How I Found Livingstone of 1872: like Livingstone, he wrote optimistically of his departure for Central Africa. In 1872, Stanley only once wrote of Africans as people who ‘live in darkness’, awaiting enlightenment from European missionaries, and this was when he was summarizing Livingstone’s ‘higher’ ambition to create a ‘chain of love’ to join Christian nations (Stanley 1872: 619f.).
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3.1 David Livingstone Livingstone’s journey in 1865 was undertaken principally to spread Christianity and halt the Portuguese and Arab slave trades. He also wanted to find the source of the Nile (which he failed to do) and collect geographical, zoological and ethnographic data (which he did). Livingstone wrote sparingly of Africa as other than light, and mostly in connection with the ‘gloom slavetrade’ (Livingstone and Livingstone 1865: 591). Livingstone referred to LIGHT and ENLIGHTENMENT more than DARKNESS, in line with the optimistic tone which he maintained in the face of all adversity. He praised American missionaries as ‘the source of light for all lands’ (ibid.: 607) and contrasted ‘white men in more enlightened lands’ (ibid.: 30) to native Africans; the spread of Christianity was equated with the arrival of ‘light and liberty’ (ibid.: 458) and ‘the dawn of a better system’ (ibid.: 354). The progress of Christianity, seen as ENLIGHTENMENT, is linked throughout Livingstone’s entire oeuvre with the cessation of slavery. However, Livingstone most commonly metaphorized the negative effects of the slave trade and the disadvantages of being African as OCCUPYING A LOW POSITION, LOWERING and LACK 7 OF MOVEMENT. In the journals which were published after his death (Waller 1874), Livingstone compares indigenous African society with ‘our own dark ages’ (ibid., I: 35), imagining that it might be less wicked. Acknowledgement of any deity at all is regarded as resulting from an improving influence, as in Livingstone’s statement that ‘the origin of the primitive faith in Africans and others seems always to have been divine influence on their dark minds’ (ibid., II: 184). Knowledge is a ‘pure white light’ (ibid., II, 66) and better times are equated with the presence of ‘more light’ (ibid., I: 108). As in 1865, metaphors of darkness are rare (see Table 5.1 for a summary of the linguistic realizations of Livingstone’s metaphors of light and darkness). 3.2 Henry Morton Stanley’s ‘dark continent’ It was in his Through the Dark Continent of 1878, an account of his expedition to Central Africa of 1874–7, that Stanley introduced the public to a variety of African ‘darknesses’. In his How I Found Livingstone he had been inclined to see beauty in ‘the unknown heart of Africa’ (Stanley 1872: 1), and he allowed sunlight to affect his moods more than literal darkness. Before leaving in search of Dr Livingstone, Stanley had read accounts of Africa by the likes of Speke and Burton and gained the impression that he would encounter ‘miasma… thick and sorely depressing as the gloomy and suicidal fog of London’ (ibid.: 93). As he progresses within continental Africa, however, he is inclined to hope for success: ‘before me beamed the sun of promise as he sped towards the Occident. Loveliness glowed around me’ (ibid.: 73).
dark picture (1874, II: 28) sombre accounts (1874, II: 51)
our own dark ages (1874, I: 35) (Europeans) the god of this world having blinded their eyes (1874, II: 142) (Arabs)
gloom slave trade (1865: 591)
effort to keep me in the dark (1874, II:118)
Non-Christian, ignorance
Dishonesty, greed
slavery
The unknown
Darkness
Pessimism
The origin of the primitive faith in Africans and others seems always to have beena divine influence on their dark minds (1874, II: 184)
enlightened and freed from slavery (1874, I: 13). (bringing) light and liberty (several attestations) preparation for better times and more light (1874, I: 108)
to shed light (1874, II: 66) the dawn of a better system (1865: 354) the source of light for all lands (1865: 607) (American missionaries)
pure white light (1874, II: 66) (European) may He permit me to bring it to light (1874, II: 179) (the source of the ile) Stopping the slave trade
light and liberty and Gospel truth (1865: 519) (in Britain)
The light that is in them (1874, I: 298)
knowledge
The possibility of Christianization
Christianity
God
Knowing a deity
Enlightenment
Light
Table 5.1 Linguistic metaphors and their concepts (Livingstone 1865 and 1874)
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In first chapter of Through the Dark Continent, Stanley remembers how Livingstone died ‘on the threshold of the dark region he had wished to explore’ (Stanley 1890a: 1). He vows to finish Livingstone’s work while exploring Africa’s ‘dark interior’, which is ‘still unknown to the world’ (ibid: 2). Stanley claims that Livingstone asked him to complete his work of enlightenment in Africa. He reinforces his description of that task with the language of darkness, light and enlightenment, as in the following metaphorizations: a
b c
DARKNESS:
the unknown, uncertainty, fear, danger, barbarism/lack of Christianity, an uncivilized and underexploited state (from an economic point of view); LIGHT: optimism, improvement, civilization; ENLIGHTENMENT: that which is improvable and to be improved, and to be explored;
there is no DARKENING (WORSENING). When Stanley is planning his departure from the island of Zanzibar for continental Africa he can see the ‘dark edge’ of East Africa (A CONTAINER) – the contents of the container, central Africa, are dark and unknown. The western half of the African continent is still a literal ‘white blank’ on the world map (Stanley 1890a: 2), but the coastline is a defined boundary, mapped and known. When he starts for continental Africa from Zanzibar, Stanley finds a parallel for his fears in nature: The sun sinks fast to the western horizon, and gloomy is the twilight that now deepens and darkens. Thick shadows fall upon the distant land and over the silent sea, and oppress our throbbing, regretful hearts, as we glide away through the dying light towards The Dark Continent. (Stanley 1890a: 44). Stanley’s rare expressions of optimism are always tinged with uncertainty: Dark, indeed, is the gloom of the fast-coming night over the continent, but does he not see that there are still bright flushes of colour, and rosy bars, and crimson tints, amidst what otherwise would be universal blackness? And may he not therefore say – ‘As those colours now brighten the darkening west, so my hopes brighten my dark future’? (Stanley 1890a: 24) Throughout his journey, and through all of its dangers, his aim is to ‘flash a torch of light across the western half of the Dark Continent’ (Stanley 1890a: 406), and when he reaches his goal on the Atlantic coast he looks back upon the ‘old griefs and dark days’ (ibid.: 630) of his difficult journey, its ‘dark years and long months of silence’ (ibid.: 623), and he thanks God for helping him to ‘pierce the Dark Continent from east to west’ (ibid.: 621). But the
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darknesses that Stanley and his retinue encounter in Africa by far outweigh the rare flashes of light, and it is these darknesses which provide a metaphorical framework for later sensationalism in literature about Africa (see Table 5.2 for a summary of the linguistic realizations of Stanley’s metaphors of darkness, light and enlightenment in Through the Dark Continent). 3.2.1 Why did Stanley make so much of ‘dark’ Africa in Through the Dark Continent? In his How I Found Livingstone of 1872, Stanley had not portrayed Central Africa as particularly dark, perhaps because he had not ventured so far into its dangerous central jungles as he did in his later journeys. During his journey, the bright African sun had caused more suffering than the dense, dark jungle, and shade was more frequently seen as something to be welcomed. He described unpleasantness literally as ‘not agreeable’, ‘uninviting’, ‘bleakness’, etc. His low moods were ‘depression’ rather than ‘blackness’. Metaphors, when used, tend to be of LIGHT and BRIGHTNESS, and they represent confidence and hope. In Through the Dark Continent, metaphors of DARKNESS predominated and were used in many more ways. The most obvious answer to the question of why Stanley portrayed Africa as so densely dark was his need to satisfy his sponsors and earn his living.8 This was best accomplished by giving his project a catchy title and making his account as exciting as possible by stressing his own bravery. Stanley was exploring the ‘Dark Unknown’ (Stanley 1890a: 406), and by presenting darkness as a contained and solid substance inside a firm boundary that was Africa, a literal and metaphorical darkness to be pierced or cleaved, Stanley could create a more heroic image for himself. Throughout his entire journey its difficulties are stressed above all else, metaphorized as darkness – not only the African topography and climate, but the ‘blackness’ of the native inhabitants, who more often than not were identified as cannibals. Like most European travellers in Africa, Stanley used metaphors of darkness and light to contrast the (superior) Self to the (inferior) African Other. He frequently exaggerated and homogenized the ‘blackness’ of diverse tribes, their skin colour signifying that they were ignorant and untutored. In Through the Dark Continent he varies his descriptions of their ‘black’ appearance (swarthy, sooty and dusky are all negative evaluations), and he writes of their ‘negroid’ intellect. Although he recognizes that there are many shades and densities of black skin, and indeed a sable complexion is beautiful, Stanley needed to give an overall impression of Africans as primitive, wild and savage, metaphorically black, in order to justify his claim that they were in need of improvement through European intervention. Economic and political colonizers did the same. Europeans were always just white.
We have laboured through the terrible forest, and manfully struggled through the gloom (420), enlightened The possibility of Christianization the light that shall lighten the darkness of this benighted region (124) (= Mtesa)
Optimism, finding the way
… to pierce the Dark Continent (621) … hopes brighten my dark future (24) bright flushes of colour, and rosy bars, and crimson tints among what otherwise would be universal blackness (24) a more friendly and brighter appearance (406), to flash a torch of light (across the DC) (406) a broad watery avenue cleaving the Unknown to some sea, like a path of light (420) the gleaming portal of the Unknown (451) (= the River Congo)
c. the Self
Light/ enlightenment
races so long benighted (31) sitting in darkness or born blind (206) (= Mtesa)
sable, swarthy complexions sooty villain (110), dusky brothers (171) negroid (noses and minds) (401) the dark brother (45) peoples, involved in darkness, savagery, mystery and fable (406)
AND many of those in the columns to the left
benighted region (124)
“Uncivilized”, non-Christian general negativity
“Uncivilized”
cheerless and dismal as the foggy day (450) our prospects are as dark as night (449) those dark days never to be forgotten (630)
Pessimism, sorrow
Other (than white)
Dark Continent (throughout), Dark Unknown (406) my dark future (24) night-black clouds of mystery and fable (420) to dare the region of fable and darkness (451) hideous darkness (421) the dreaded black and chill forest (408) bidding farewell to sunshine and brightness (408)
a. Africa
b. Africans
The unknown,danger, fear
Darkness
Table 5.2 Linguistic metaphors and their concepts (Henry Morton Stanley, Through the Dark Continent 1890 [1878])
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ENLIGHTENMENT, the movement from metaphorical DARKNESS to LIGHT, was a well-known trope in 19th-century missionary discourse. A major purpose of Through the Dark Continent was to make an ideological point about a need to Christianize and civilize the undeveloped world, thus legitimizing some of the adverse consequences of the expedition, such as physical and mental suffering and loss of life. In Stanley’s Africa, metaphorical darkness prevents understanding and salvation and must be pierced, brightened or enlightened. His Christian message is that all humans, whatever their race, are equal in nature (Stanley 1890a: 630) and potentially improvable: and all that is needed is mediation by Europeans to bring the Other up to the level of the Self. The conceptualization/mapping is thus complex: POSSIBILITY FOR IMPROVEMENT IS LIGHT/HIGH POSITION/ABILITY TO MOVE NEED FOR IMPROVEMENT IS DARK/LOW POSITION/INABILITY TO MOVE IMPROVEMENT IS PENETRATING/RAISING/MOVEMENT
Mtesa the Emperor of Uganda, nominally a convert to Islam, is presented by Stanley as someone who might be improved by Christianity: ‘I think I see in him the light that shall lighten the darkness of this benighted region; a prince well worthy of the most hearty sympathies that Europe can give him’ (Stanley 1890a: 124). Mtesa eventually shows an interest in ‘the white man’s book’, but does he really utter the following words: ‘say to the white people, when you write to them, that I am like a man sitting in darkness, or born blind, and that all I ask is that I may be taught to see, and I shall continue a Christian while I live’ (ibid.: 206)?9 3.2.2 Henry Morton Stanley, In Darkest Africa, 1890 The two volumes of Henry Morton Stanley’s In Darkest Africa (Stanley 1890b) make up the explorer’s official report to the Emin Pasha Relief Committee.10 Following Stanley’s invention of ‘Dark’ and ‘Darkest’ Africa, darkness and light came to be part of a convention for the titling of books on Africa in English and German with a variety of messages (missionary, commercial, political), even if darkness and light were only to be found in the titles. It was a good way to sell books.11 When commerce and political strategy did not require him to stress Africa’s darkness, Stanley inclined more toward objectivity, as can be seen in his earlier The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State (1886).12 Remembering his journey of 1874–7, Stanley compares his present experience with those of times when he was figuratively piercing the darkness of previously unexplored territories: We were now on that same road on which we looked with such gloomy eyes in 1877, when all the world seemed to us cold-hearted and unkind,
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and savage nature itself refused us food, water, and even the least kindly hope that some day an end to the dismal time would come. Now that we looked upon the land under kindlier auspices, it did not seem so dull and dreary. (Stanley 1886: 171) Stanley could not have sold the book to Leopold and future commercial enterprises if he had painted the Congo black, but in 1890 he returned to the notion of a ‘dark’ continent and amplified the gloom of Africa to become ‘darkest’. In his Darkest Africa, Stanley’s use of metaphors is similar to that encountered in his Through the Dark Continent and is determined by the purpose of the text. As in his Dark Continent, metaphors of darkness are more common than metaphors of light and are found most frequently when Stanley is describing the hardships encountered en route, the difficulties which are overcome and the bravery exhibited (mostly by himself). Africa is dark when his journey is through dark jungles, when his mood is ‘dark’ and when he encounters difficult or bad, ‘dark’ people. As in his Dark Continent, Stanley presents a native African who is uniformly dark in skin colour and metaphorically black in his or her ignorance and ‘uncivilized’ behaviour. One group of ‘dwarfs’ is not ‘“partial roast coffee”, “chocolate”, “cocoa” and “café au lait”’, but more brick-coloured, and their otherness to Europeans is seen in their ‘small cunning, monkey eyes’ (Stanley 1890b, I: 352). Darkness furthermore metaphorizes the qualities that represent ‘savagery’ and ‘supernatural diablerie’ (ibid., I: 483) to Europeans, most importantly to stress the need to spread Christianity throughout Africa, and for Stanley there is always hope: ‘It may well be imagined what effect this flood of light had upon the crafty natives, who preferred burrowing in dark shadows’ (ibid., I: 337). In Darkest Africa contains plentiful descriptions of literally dark jungle, ‘sullen shades of endless forest’ (II, 209) and ‘sombre depths’ (II, 232), and the real darkness of his physical surroundings often either mirrors or influences his moods. The ‘impervious and umbrageous tropic forest’ (II, 236) can act as a ‘dark barrier’ (II, 264) to literal progress for the traveller as well as to feelings of optimism. This metaphor heightens the reader’s awareness of all types of difficulty faced by the traveller in Africa and, by extension, to reinforce Stanley’s message that metaphorical LIGHT must be brought to that continent. In Darkest Africa uses fewer images of darkness than Through the Dark Continent, making the darkness which is present all the more noticeable and highlighting the need for Europeans to enlighten Africa. Section 4 will look at some evidence of the immediate influence of the writings of Livingstone and Stanley in Germany and the continuing use of metaphors of darkness and light in a variety of British and German colonialist, missionary and general political discourses. The final German work to be examined, Leo Frobenius’ Und Afrika sprach… (1912–13), advanced the unusual view that it was a mistake to describe Africa as dark, in which case the common conceptual metaphors LACK OF HISTORY IS DARKNESS and LACK OF CULTURE IS DARKNESS were misplaced, at least in relation to
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West Africa. With Frobenius, IGNORANCE IS DARKNESS and metaphorize Europeans’ failings.
MISINFORMATION
IS DARKNESS
4 Metaphors of darkness and light in German travel and missionary discourse The travel accounts of Livingstone and Stanley were popular reading in Germany during the second half of the 19th century. Many Germans were inspired to travel to Africa, for many not out of Christian missionary motives but out of recognition of Africa’s economic opportunities – the latter often disguised as civilizatory intentions. Carl Peters (1856–1918), the first economic colonizer of German East Africa, was inspired as a child by the map of Africa: ‘Wohl aber erinnere ich mich aus meiner frühesten Kindheit, daß mein Vater Livingstones Reisen mit leidenschaftlichem Interesse verfolgte. Die Karte Afrikas lag immer offen auf seinem Sofatisch’ [I well remember that when I was a young child my father followed Livingstone’s travels with passionate interest. The map of Africa was always open on the table beside his sofa] (Peters 1906: 2). Peters was just one of many children to be inspired during the decades following the publications of Livingstone and Stanley. An example of a publication in German specifically aimed at young people is given here. 4.1 Durch den dunklen Weltteil Through the Dark Continent was immediately translated into German and quickly went into new editions, initially as a full and accurate translation. Berthold Volz published a one-volume abridged edition in 1885, Henry M. Stanleys Reise durch den dunklen Weltteil. Nach Stanleys Berichten für weitere Kreise bearbeitet [Adapted from Stanley’s Accounts for a Broad Public], and the Deutsche Jugendbücherei published an anonymous and undated summary and adaptation for a young audience, possibly after 1890. This latter work is of particular interest because it would have been affordable and therefore widely read. It takes the form of a 31-page pamphlet making little use of darkness as a metaphor and no use of light or enlightenment. Because the pamphlet is a summary of the German translation of Stanley’s original account, adapted for a particular audience, the author has the freedom to choose what to keep, stress, omit or add. This author chooses to emphasize the wildness of the dark-skinned native inhabitants of Africa: indigenous tribes were portrayed as savages (Wilden), with the German stem wild and its derivatives occurring 46 times in 31 pages in line with the image on the front cover. In the pamphlet (Figure 5.1), as in Stanley’s original Dark Continent, nature metaphors highlight the dangers encountered by the hero. Black clouds metaphorize a sense of foreboding at the beginning of Stanley’s journey: ‘noch immer hing es wie eine schwarze Wolke unheilverkündend über uns’ [it was as though a
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black cloud were hovering above us announcing misfortune] (7) (this example is not in the original English). As in Stanley’s text, darkness metaphorizes the unknown ‘wieviel unglöste Fragen im dunkelsten Afrika nach ihrer Lösung harrten’ [how many unsolved mysteries were awaiting us in darkest Africa] (3). The English has the ‘problems of Central Africa’, not ‘darkest’ Africa, so the author of the children’s version probably knew Stanley’s later book of 1890, In Darkest Africa. In this 31-page German version of Through the Dark Continent, darkness metaphorizes a lack of control: ‘Nächtliche Schatten fallen bereits auf das Festland und die schweigende See, wie wir dem Schicksal entgegengleiten, das unser wartet in dem dunklen Erdteil’ [Night-time shadows are already falling on the mainland and the silent sea as we glide towards the fate awaiting us on the dark continent] (4f.). Stanley’s original English also has the sense of an uncontrollable fate, but he adds a rosy aspect to the sunset to give a sense of optimism: ‘there are still bright flushes of colour, and rosy bars, and crimson tints, amidst what otherwise would be universal blackness?’. Finally, in the German abridged version, as in Stanley’s text, the darkness of the jungle invokes negative emotions: ‘ich haßte ihren Schmutz und Dampf, ihre Monotonie und Düsterkeit aus tiefster Seele’ [I hated its dirt and steam, its monotony and gloom from the bottom of my heart] (24). This exact example is not in the English original of Through the Dark Continent, and it is more reminiscent of In Darkest Africa. The German version for children has no improvable Other: black people are always dangerous and a major problem for the hero Stanley; and there is next to no light, either literal or metaphorical, and there is no enlightenment of native Africans. Compared with Stanley’s original, the polarization of black and white skin colour is increased and more stress is placed on black skin as an embodiment of evil. There are no different shades of dark skin colour – just pure blackness. The image on the front cover of the pamphlet shows an aggressive-looking warrior, brandishing a spear and lunging forwards, with several more warriors lurking in the bushes – black is definitely frightening (DANGER/THREAT/FEAR IS DARKNESS). This image joins the written discourse of the pamphlet to make the story more exciting for young readers. Thus the danger experienced and overcome by the brave hero is emphasized. The stress placed on the apparent total metaphorical darkness of Africa would also have had an educational purpose in that teachers, priests and missionary societies in search of funds could more readily justify the message that European ‘civilization’ and Christianity should be taken to Africa. 4.2 Harry Johnson’ s missionary optimism In his book Night and Morning in Dark Africa, published in 1902, the missionary, the Reverend Harry Johnson (1858–1927) describes the work of the London Missionary Society’s Tanganyika Mission for a youth audience. Johnson used Livingstone’s Last Journals (Waller 1874) as a major source of his presentation of Africa’s supposed lack of enlightenment and adheres to
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Figure 5.1 Front cover of the anonymous pamphlet Quer durch den dunklen Kontinent
Livingstone’s generally optimistic tone. He presents David Livingstone as the source of the image of ‘dark’ Africa and tells of Livingstone having died near Lake Bangweolo ‘in the heart of the Dark Continent’ (Johnson 1902: 15) in a kneeling position while ‘praying for poor Dark Africa’ (ibid.: 16). We read that Livingstone’s heart was buried under a mupunda tree in order that ‘the heart that yearned over Dark Africa remains in the centre of the land he loved’ (ibid.: 17).
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It is from Stanley, however, that Johnson takes his image of a ‘dark continent’, adding a further dimension himself to create ‘poor Dark Africa’ and the ‘poor Dark African’ (ibid.: 76). In line with Livingstone, Johnson presents Africa’s problems as stemming from the slave trade and its consequences on the one hand and the lack of religious and social enlightenment that Christianity would bring on the other. Perhaps the addition of poor to dark is intended to arouse extra sympathy, specifically in younger readers. Johnson describes the ‘night-time’ caused by slaving and warring tribes: ‘How dark indeed is poor “Dark Africa”, and how greatly in need of the messengers of the Prince of Peace’ (ibid.: 54). He wants his readers to think of Africans as their ‘less enlightened brethren’ (ibid.: 206), and as having equal potential in all respects. The term ‘thick-headed as a nigger’, which was said by an English boy in Johnson’s hearing, is not appropriate (ibid.: 95); Johnson, for his parts, portrays his relationship with Africans as friendly, despite commonly referring to them as ‘savages’, ‘heathens’ and ‘natives’ – they are his ‘dusky friends’ (ibid.: 66, 129). Johnson describes Africans as ‘groping in the darkness of superstition, sin, and misery, without knowledge of the Gospel’ (Johnson 1902: 29) and, remembering Livingstone’s words, ‘I go to open the door into Central Africa’, he claims that ‘the door of Dark Africa is open’ (29) and one imagines the light streaming in. The London Mission’s work involves dispelling the ‘social and spiritual darkness that hangs over the land’ (ibid.: 43) and bringing Christianity and European civilization to ‘benighted Africa’ (ibid.: 85) where the ‘vague, dark superstition’ of fetishism holds sway (ibid.: 68). Johnson believes that the ‘light of the Gospel is diminishing the darkness, where it does not altogether dispel it’ (ibid.: 213). Johnson’s optimistic text refers more frequently to ‘dawning light’ and ‘the light growing stronger’ (Johnson’s italics) than to any type of darkness that cannot be illuminated (ibid.: 212). He sees young Africans as holding hope for the future, as ‘bright and sharp’ (ibid.: 206) and receptive to schooling. One of the mission’s aims is to make young girls ‘brighter and happier’ and therefore more useful to its work (ibid.: 191). As with much missionary activity, such usefulness was thought of according to the criteria of the Christian colony and in line with the norms of European rather than African society. 4.3 Continuing the enlightenment of African darknesses Commercial colonialists and Christian philanthropist missionaries continued to publish accounts of their travels to Africa, although as time went on they recognized that there was less cause to define Africa as totally dark. It appears that the South African J. Du Plessis wrote of darkness in his Thrice through the Dark Continent (1917) chiefly to draw in his readers. He took with him a copy of John Harris’ Dawn in Darkest Africa (1912) on his journey, which had little to say about darkness in Africa other than in its title. Much of Du Plessis’ text shows how greatly Africa had been enlightened as a result of European intervention, with native Africans riding bicycles and dressed in printed cottons (Du Plessis 1917: 4). He claims that the Bremen and Basel missions have introduced
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German thoroughness (ibid.: 19) and that the Gold Coast is no longer the ‘White Man’s Grave’ (ibid.: 14). When Du Plessis writes of ‘Darkest Africa’ it is to refer to the jungle rather than to the people (ibid.: 27), and for him the dark continent is the ‘inaccessible interior’ which missionaries still have to penetrate. His own stated aim was to ‘kindle a warmer interest in the continent of Darkness, over which, thank God, the light is now breaking’ (ibid.: 350). 4.4 Leo Frobenius, Und Afrika sprach…, 1912–13 The self-educated anthropologist Leo Frobenius (1873–1938) specifically argued against the notion that Africa was filled with darkness, with no history of civilization. His monograph, Und Afrika sprach… [And Africa spoke…], describes his expedition to West Africa in 1910–12 to collect cultural artefacts for the Hamburg Museum of Anthropology while studying the traditions of the tribes whose ancestors had produced those artefacts. Frobenius identifies the purpose of his book as the enlightenment of its readers in all aspects of African ethnography (Frobenius 1912–13, H) and the provision of useful information for future colonizers and his sponsors, the Reichskolonialamt [Imperial Colonial Office]. He aimed to bring light to the discourse of colonialism and sought to expose faults in the prevailing discourse that portrayed Sub-Saharan Africa as filled with metaphorical darkness. The work challenges the view of Africa as a culturally ‘dark’ continent which he saw as having been established by Stanley and propagated by German travellers, scientists and settlers. He believes Stanley’s descriptions of Africa and dunkel and dunkelst to have been exaggerated (Frobenius 1912–13, I). In his preface, entitled Fiat lux, translated into German as ‘Es werde Licht!’ [Let there be light!], Frobenius presents the intention of his expedition as a journey through dark night to find light on the other side: ‘Wir tasteten uns durch die dunkle Nacht dahin, wo düstere Geister raunen’ [We felt our way through the dark night where shady spirits roam] (ibid., II). At the end of the preface, he announces in biblical language that his quest for truth has been successful: ‘Es werde und es ward Licht!’ [Let there be light and there was light!] (ibid.). This phrase is echoed at the very end of the book: ‘Es ward Licht!’. Although he follows existing discourse in his use of images of enlightenment to metaphorize the delivery of culture to primitive peoples, Frobenius is interested in more than one type of enlightenment: he is concerned with the illumination sought by the reader, the insights pursued by the traveller, the cultural and moral illumination of all indigenous Africans and potential usefulness of Africa and Africans to Europe (‘die Verwendbarkeit der Rassen’ [the usefulness of these races]) (ibid.: 667). In his first chapter and throughout the entire monograph, Frobenius remembers being provoked by an article published in the Berliner Zeitung in 1891 (he does not name its author) which he considers to have been based upon unproven theories and old prejudices. He quotes extensively from that article, the following being a small part: ‘Afrika ist geschichtlich ärmer als irgend eine Phantasie sich vorstellen
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kann. “Neger-Afrika” ist ein rätselloser, geschichtsloser Erdteil! – sic!’ [Africa’s history is more impoverished than anyone can imagine. ‘Negro-Africa’ is a territory with no mysteries and no history! – sic!] (Frobenius 1912–13: 2). Frobenius sought to show that Africa was not ‘geschichtslos’ [without history]. Its history had in some places been buried (both literally and metaphorically) and his aim was to uncover the traces of ancient civilizations. Africans had allowed their cultural history to be obscured: ‘dicht umhüllen und unter schier undurchdringlicher Decke verkleiden’ [tightly envelop and disguise with an impenetrable cover] (Frobenius 1912–13: 14). Frobenius recognized that the covers must be raised and European explorers like himself have much to learn if they are to see the cultural evidence that already exists: ‘Es ist noch nicht die Sonne des Mittags… es ist nur eine leichte Morgendämmerung’ [The midday sun is not yet shining… there is only a gentle dawning] (ibid.: 667). It is usually the native Africans who are portrayed as only being at the dawning of knowledge, not Europeans! Despite his admiration for certain tribes, in particular the Yoruba people, and his recognition of European inadequacies, Frobenius never lost his view of native Africans as ‘dunkle Afrikaner’, ‘(die) dunklen Söhne Afrikas’ [the dark sons of Africa] (Frobenius 1912–13: 46) and ‘dunkle(n) Neger’ (ibid.: 105). He believed that a definable ‘Negerseele’ [negro soul] (ibid.: 105) existed, evident in a mind-set which he termed ‘nigritisch’ (ibid.: 131) and ‘die ganze Oede dieser dunkelhäutigen Psyche’ [the whole desolation of this dark-skinned psyche] (ibid.: 106). Frobenius believed that Africans who had once belonged to an ‘unnegerhaften Edelrasse’ [non-negroid noble race] had sunk into a ‘dämmerigen Negerleben’ [shadowy negro existence] which Europeans could help them escape to daylight (das Tagelicht) from their ‘verniggerten Lebensdämmerung’ [negroid half-light] (ibid.: 94). As always, it is the Europeans who were assumed to understand best how to enlighten Africa.
5 Conclusion David Livingstone portrayed Africa as an open place to be approached with optimism. It was Henry Morton Stanley who later constructed an image of a dark, bounded space, with an ocean on either side, and the need to pierce through the darkness from one ocean to another. Stanley’s choice of metaphors of darkness and light to represent the trials and triumphs of his exploration of Africa had a lasting influence on discourse history and upon the attitudes of the ‘West’ towards both continent and people. From the publication of Through the Dark Continent in 1878, travellers, missionaries and social reformers referred extensively to Stanley’s experiences of battling through darkness in Africa for their own purposes. His descriptions of a wild and dangerous continent were more widely read than many more objective accounts, and were especially popular in Germany, both with the general public and prospective colonizers.
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While the overt intention of colonialism was to bring civilization to Africa, many colonizers were to show the darker side of their own natures while bringing so-called enlightenment to the African ‘savage’, to the extent that they earned themselves a reputation as ‘white savages’, among not only the native populations that they subjugated but also among many Christian missionaries and objective observers (Hochschild 2000: 172). Not only was Africa not an ‘unpeopled country’, as Stanley had claimed (ibid.: 31), but it had its own diverse civilizations beyond the comprehension of those who sought to exploit its people and natural resources. According to Patrick Brantlinger, the ‘Dark Continent’ was a myth created by the Victorian upper and middle classes, shaped by a practice of ‘blaming the victim’ for slavery and ‘savage’ (because not Christian) customs (Brantlinger 1988: 195). Africa’s darkness was in part constructed for economic and political purposes and in part the result of European ignorance: ‘Africa grew dark as Victorian explorers, missionaries, and scientists flooded it with light, because the light was refracted through an imperialist ideology’ (ibid.: 173). The task of correcting the attitude that colonized peoples needed to be ‘enlightened’ according to a European design and that the populations of former colonies still need European guidance, often to overcome problems which were created by colonialism in the first place, is still far from complete.
Notes 1 Oxford English Dictionary (OED): darkness under darkness 4a = ‘the want of spiritual or intellectual light: esp. common in biblical imagery’ from c. 1340; darkness 5 = ‘gloom of sorrow, trouble, or distress’ from c. 1645; darkness 6 = ‘a condition or environment which conceals from sight, observation, or knowledge; obscurity, concealment, secrecy’ from 1382; darkness 7 = ‘obscurity of meaning’ from 1553, as in ‘the vaile of darkness’ (1543). Figurative usage of light (noun) and light (verb2) is found under light 6 = ‘with reference to mental illumination or elucidation’ from 1449; light 7 = ‘the illumination of the soul through divine truth’ from 971: light 7c = ‘God as a source of divine light’ from c. 1000. Early figurative senses for the verb enlight = ‘to shed light upon, illuminate’ are attested in Biblical usage from c. 975; the form enlighten is recorded first in Biblical usage, ‘to give light to (persons)’ from 1611, and in legal discourse, ‘to throw light upon, elucidate (a subject)’ from 1587. 2 See also Spalding (1970–2000), which has fuller information on the early figurative usage of dunkel, Dunkelheit and Licht. 3 The conventions of using SMALL CAPS for conceptual metaphors is adopted here. 4 Similar imagery is found in the Koran: light and fire are the most productive source domains for religious concepts as well as the didactic opposition of darkness and light to signify ignorance and wrongdoing on the one hand, knowledge and goodness on the other (Charteris-Black 2004: 230). 5 The OED has Nigritian from 1865; Taylor writes of Nigritia in 1820. The OED has Negrite, ‘Nigrites or blacke Moores’ from 1594 and Negro from 1555 (‘an individual (esp. a male) belonging to the African race of mankind’). The OED has Negroland from 1764. The OED has Nigritude meaning black in colour but not referring to Africa or Africans. The term ‘Ethiop’ (Latin Aethiops from Greek
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Aithiops meaning ‘those with burnt faces’) referred to a dark-skinned African, inhabitant of a large area of Sub-Saharan Africa known as ‘Ethiopia’. Henry Morton Stanley was the American journalist and explorer who found the supposedly lost David Livingstone at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika in 1871. He later led expeditions to Sub-Saharan Africa in 1875–7 and 1886–90 (the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition). As in: ‘inferior races’, ‘depressing influences’, ‘lowering effects of this trade’, ‘debasement’, ‘degradation’, ‘sunk morally to the same low state’, ‘stagnation of mind’ (Livingstone and Livingstone 1865: 595–9). Stanley’s accounts were first published by his sponsors, the London Daily Telegraph and the New York Times. In In Darkest Africa (1890b), Stanley remembers his meeting with Mtesa and that the public was told that ‘he was in darkness and required light’ (II: 395). Emin Pasha, born Isaak Eduard Schnitzer, was a naturalist and physician. He lived much of his adult life in the Ottoman Empire where he took the name Mehemet Emin and was given the title Pasha (an official in an Islamic state; its sense can be transferred to use as a title of respect). G. A. Fischer’s 1885, Mehr Licht im dunklen Weltteil has nothing about darkness and light and is all about the exploitation of East Africa, as shown in the subtitle, Betrachtungen über die Kolonisation des tropischen Afrika unter besonderen Berücksichtigung des Sansibar-Gebiets. Carl Peters’ 1891 German account of his expedition in search of Emin Pasha was translated into English and bore the title: New Light on Dark Africa: Being the Narrative of the German Emin Pascha Expedition… The title of the German original does not include reference to darkness and light, and the book itself contains few metaphors of any type. The British publisher obviously wanted to cash in on the title of Stanley’s In Darkest Africa, also about an expedition in search of the Pasha. This work, dedicated to King Leopold II of Belgium, describes Stanley’s exploration of the Congo region with the aim of opening it up for philanthropy and commerce. He quotes a letter about Through the Dark Continent sent to him by the French politician, Léon Gambetta: ‘You have thrown the light of knowledge on what you have well described as the Dark Continent. Not only, sir, have you opened up a new Continent to our view, but you have given an impulse to scientific and philanthropic enterprise which will have a material effect on the progress of the world… What you have done has influenced Governments’ (Stanley 1886: vi).
References Brantlinger, Patrick (1988), Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism 1830– 1914. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2004), Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Du Plessis, J. (1917), Thrice through the Dark Continent: A Record of Journeyings across Africa during the years 1913–16. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Fischer, G. A. (1885), Mehr Licht im dunklen Weltteil. Betrachtungen über die Kolonisation des tropischen Afrika unter besonderen Berücksichtigung des SansibarGebiets. Hamburg: L. Friedrichsen. Frobenius, Leo (1912–13), Und Afrika Sprach. Bericht über den Verlauf der dritten Reiseperiode der Deutschen innerafrikanischen Forschungsexpedition in den Jahren 1910–1912, 3 vols. Berlin: Vita. Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1838–1971), Deutsches Wörterbuch. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.
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Harris, John H. (1912), Dawn in Darkest Africa. London: Smith, Elder & Co. Hochschild, Adam (2000), King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Basingstoke: Pan Macmillan. Johnson, Harry (n.d. [c. 1902]), Night and Morning in Dark Africa. London: London Mission Society. Keltie, John Scott (1972 [1893]), ‘The Scramble after Years of Preliminary Activity’, in Raymond Betts (ed.), The ‘Scramble’ for Africa: Causes and Dimensions of Empire. Lexington: D.C. Heath, 9–19. Lakoff, George (1987), Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson (1999), Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson (2003 [1980]), Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George and Mark Turner (1989), More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Livingstone, David and Charles Livingstone (1865), Narratives of an Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries, and of the Discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa 1858–1864. London: John Murray. Pakenham, Thomas (1991), The Scramble for Africa. London: Abacus. Peters, Carl (1891), New Light on Dark Africa: Being the Narrative of the German Emin Pascha Expedition, Its Journeyings and Adventures among the Native Tribes of Eastern Equatorial Africa. London: Ward Lock. Peters, Carl (1906), Die Gründung von Deutsch-Ostafrika. Kolonialpolitische Erinnerungen und Betrachtungen. Berlin: Schwetschke. Peters, Carl (1909 [1891]), Die deutsche Emin Pascha-Expedition. Berlin: Hermann Hillger Verlag. Semino, Elena (2008), Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spalding, Keith (1970–2000), An Historical Dictionary of German Figurative Usage. Oxford: Blackwell. Stanley, Henry Morton (1872), How I Found Livingstone: Travels, Adventures, and Discoveries in Central Africa. London: Sampson Low. Stanley, Henry Morton (1881 [1878]), Durch den dunkeln Welttheil oder die Quellen des Nils, Reisen um die grossen Seen des aequatorialen Afrika und den LivingstoneFluss abwärts nach dem atlantischen Ocean, aus dem Englischen von C. Böttger, second edition. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. Stanley, Henry Morton (1886 [1885]), The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State: A Story of Work and Exploration, vol. 1. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington. Stanley, Henry Morton (1890a [1878]), Through the Dark Continent or the Sources of the Nile around the Great Lakes of Equatorial Africa and down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic Ocean. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington. Stanley, Henry Morton (1890b), In Darkest Africa; or, the Quest, Rescue and Retreat of Emin, Governor of Equatoria, 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Stanley, Henry Morton (1891), Im dunkelsten Afrika. Aufsuchung, Rettung und Rückzug Emin Pascha’s, Gouverneurs des Aequatorialprovinz, 2 vols. Leipzig: Brockhaus. Stanley, Henry Morton (n.d.), Quer durch den dunklen Kontinent. Berlin: Hermann Hillger Verlag.
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Taylor, Isaac (1820), African Scenes for the Amusement and Instruction of Little Tarryat-Home Travellers. London: Harris and Son. Volz, Berthold (1885), Henry M. Stanleys Reise durch den dunklen Weltteil. Nach Stanleys Berichten für weitere Kreise bearbeitet von Dr. Berthold Volz, third edition. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. Waller, Horace (1874), The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to his Death, 2 vols. London: John Murray. Zinken, Jörg, Iina Hellsten and Brigitte Nerlich (2008), ‘Discourse Metaphors’, in Body, Language, and Mind, Vol. 2: Sociocultural Situatedness, ed. René Dirven, Roslyn Franck, Tom Ziemke and Jordan Zlatev, 363–385, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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German imperialist images of the Other: A Sonderweg? Discursive representations of the imperial self in Wilhelmine Germany (1884–1919) Albert Gouaffo
1 Introduction Although Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg displayed colonialist ambitions at the end of the 17th century when he founded the colony of Great Friedrichsburg on the Gold Coast, Prussian imperialism appears to have only gained real momentum when the Second Empire was formed in 1871. In contrast to England, France and Holland, with their solid colonial and military infrastructure, their navies in particular, Germany as a latecomer (‘Verspätete Nation’), was only able to assert itself as a colonial power towards the end of the 1880s, (Plessner 1982). The Congo Conference of 1884 (also referred to as the Berlin Conference) marked the official beginning of an offensive and aggressive German imperialism for the new nation and its idea of civilization, a nation that needed to be consolidated and also to establish itself as a competitor, particularly against England and France, for raw materials for its industries at home, for its markets and for living space for its growing population. As a latecomer on the world colonial stage, Germany lacked the experience as a colonizer, which is why it could be seen as having had a special type of mission (Sonderweg). Using examples from popular travel literature, this chapter illustrates the idea that German imperialism was unlike that practiced by other European nations. These are viewed as social discourse with the purpose of projecting enemy images onto the inhabitants of German colonies as a means of strengthening the German self-image.
2 Imperialism as social discourse, perception of the Other as transfer and appropriation of cultural patterns This chapter uses the term ‘imperialism’ rather than ‘colonialism’ as the basis for its conceptual framework, even though the terms overlap in many ways. Colonialism depends on the existence of a colony which is exploited by a foreign power for the benefit of its own people, while ‘imperialism’ signifies the self-definition of a colonial power as a world power which sees itself as well suited to colonization. The self-identity of an imperial power as a potential ruler depends upon concrete facts such as a military infrastructure, technological progress and its level of
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industrialization in relation to competing imperial powers. This is accompanied by the moral conviction that the imperialists are superior to the colonized peoples; that they are capable of ruling over a naturally inferior colonized Other. If one interprets imperialism as an ideological act, one can agree with the BelgianCanadian historian of ideas and discourse theories, Marc Angenot, that imperialism is a social discourse (Angenot 1989). The term ‘social discourse’ (discours social) was coined within the socio-critical approach in the 1970s by Claude Duchet and refers to the totality of oral and written statements produced by a particular society. Adopting and systematizing the term, and taking Bakhtin’s notion of interdiscursivity, according to which social discourse is situated within a discursive context, Angenot understood social discourse as a dynamic sphere within which different discourses compete with one another. A discursive hegemony coordinates the diverse discourses and stresses one dominant discourse from within the totality of discourses, which is then unconsciously consumed and circulated as a global discourse by the members of the social group. This dominant discourse displays certain characteristics, namely regularity and hegemony, the latter linking the discourses and uniting their disparate elements. Imperialist discourse as a discourse of boundary formation and the creation of ‘Fremdbilder’ (images of the other) is based upon perceptions of the ‘Other’. Perception of what is foreign while ‘other’ is an anthropological constant at the interface between self- and other-perception. Anything which exists outside the territory of the Self or which appears strange or different can be classed as foreign. Aspects of place, possession and character differentiate the other from the self (Röseberg 2018: 75). Perceptions of the Other and cultural transfer have something in common, since the perception of the Other also necessarily involves self-perception. Cultural contact always leads to a two-way influence. The concept of ‘cultural transfer’ assists in the investigation of more than one national territory simultaneously on the basis of what one or more nations have in common rather than looking at what makes them different or what makes simple comparisons.1 It foregrounds the various forms of cultural mixture, cultural exchange and cultural influence which are often ignored during a search for identities concealing any forms of mixture, even though those mixtures stem from identities. Not only the desire to ‘export’ but also the willingness to adopt new cultural influences steer the transfer process. Individual and collective experiences, ideas, texts and cultural artefacts take on a completely new function during the process of adoption: the foreign elements are incorporated into the recipient culture (Espagne and Werner 1988). The transfer process depends chiefly upon the efforts made by the receiving culture to investigate the foreign culture. If one takes cultural transfer as a paradigm for the perception of the Other and the analysis of Fremdbilder, imperialism is seen as a discourse of domination which negates a productive appropriation of the Other (which, in fact, feeds it), for the imperialist regime needs an inferior entity against which it can measure its power so as to be able to play its part as the supposedly
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superior power on the world stage. The Second German Reich increased its standing in the world at the expense of its overseas possessions, as seen in the following historical account.
3 ‘Fremdbild’, self-assertion and ‘Platz an der Sonne’: Imperialism in Wilhelmine Germany The German Kaiserreich is characterized not only by economic and political events but also by the personalities who shaped the age. The imperialism of Bismarck’s chancellorship is a controversial topic and there is little consensus over the forces which drove him and the trajectory of his policies as well as their consequences. Bismarck’s motives for entering world politics have been a matter of debate since the 1880s (Wehler 1969: 13). A keen public debate over the necessity for overseas expansion and a colonial policy for Germany started at the end of the 1870s, activated by the connection between economic decline and social unrest (ibid.: 142). It was felt that Germany deserved its ‘Platz an der Sonne’ [place in the sun] as much as other European colonial powers.2 Public opinion held that England, thanks to the supremacy in trade afforded it by its empire, was well equipped to overcome the economic crisis caused by overproduction and that this was to Germany’s detriment (ibid.: 137). Without overseas territories, Germany would not be able to solve its social problems (ibid.: 140). Although Bismarck had initially looked upon colonial expansion with scepticism and had hesitated due to its potential to be a financial burden upon the young Reich, he bowed to pressures from the colonial lobby and businessmen such as Adolph Woermann from Hamburg and bestowed imperial protection upon colonists in Africa in 1884 and 1885. An article on the exploration of Fernando Po,3 published in the Kölnische Zeitung, illustrates a turning point in German attitudes before the Congo Conference of November 1884–February 1885. It reports on a visit by Gustav Nachtigal and Max Buchner to West Africa under government aegis: Wie nun auch die Gedanken unsrer Regierung über die Zukunft von Fernando Po sein mögen, daß sie einen Versuch macht, dort dem deutschen Handel eine Stütze zu bringen, ist wieder als ein Zeichen dafür zu begrüßen, daß der deutsche Hans aus seinem langen Träume jetzt allmählich zu erwachen scheint. Wir Deutschen streiten mit den Engländern besonders in Africa um den Ruhm wissenschaftlicher Entdeckungen, aber wir haben bisher wenig verstanden, die erforschten Teile für Handel und Cultur dem Vaterlande zugänglich zu machen. Ganz gewiß haben wir dadurch, daß unser bescheidener Sinn sich so lange nur mit der Förderung rein idealer Schätze der Wissenschaft begnügt hat, dem praktischen Weltverstande Englands die greifbarsten Vorteile verschafft. Das ist wiederholt von eben den beiden Männern betont worden, die sich jetzt zur neuen Culturarbeit auf dem schwarzen Erdteil anschicken.
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[The way in which our government is now considering the future of Fernando Po and attempting to support German trade there should be welcomed as a sign that the German ‘Hans’ has now begun to awaken from his long period of dreaming. We Germans are in competition with the English, particularly in Africa, for the glory of having made scientific discoveries, but we have so far failed to understand how to open up the areas that we have explored for trade and culture for the fatherland. It is clear that our modest inclinations have thus far been satisfied with promoting the purely ideational rewards of knowledge and we have therefore added tangible advantages to England’s practical understanding of world. This has been stressed by precisely the two men who are on the point of performing bringing new culture to the black continent.] (Kölnische Zeitung, 22 April 1884: 2) On 14 July 1884, Gustav Nachtigal, imperial commissioner for West Africa, created the German Protectorate of Cameroon. At home in Germany, Bismarck was influenced by the radical nationalism present in the Zeitgeist of the Reich during the Wilhelmine era. The younger generation in particular hoped for a solution to current political problems with the replacement of conventional backward-looking patriotic pathos with exhortations for world power and power at sea. Furthermore, the presence of a fleet served to strengthen the imperial consciousness and compensate for those feelings of being latecomers to colonialism, and of being a second-class power. In reaction to the belief that the Reich was undervalued by and under threat from other powers there was a simultaneous militarization of public and private life in Germany and a military mind-set permeated the imaginations of a bourgeoisie who embraced a form of what has been termed ‘militarism’ (Schilling 1968: 3). The interests of radical nationalism were promoted by the Alldeutscher Verband [Pan-German League] in its many publications, in the media and in political statements (Schilling 1968: 4; see also Plessner 1982 and Kruck 1954: 7).4 The Pan-Germans were Social Darwinists and their mottos of ‘Kampf um Dasein’ [fight for survival] and ‘das Recht des Stärkeren’ [might is right] underpinned their activities. They were convinced that the rapidly growing German population needed more Lebensraum if it were to survive (Schilling 1968: 4). The Pan-Germans believed that the Reich’s military forces on land and sea made it a serious future rival to England (ibid.: 6).The League sought a revival of a German national consciousness, in particular in the form of a reawakening and cultivation of an ethic and cultural community of all sections of German society (ibid.: 10; see also Koch 2007 on the particular role of Ernst Moritz Arndt). Although only a small number of Germans belonged to the Alldeutscher Verband, it had great media influence and was able to steer German internal and foreign policy despite criticism, especially from the Social Democrats, since its membership included politicians such as Bernhard von Bülow.
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German imperial discourse à la Alldeutschen also found expression in the German colonies. Helmut Stoecker documents the discovery in Cameroon of a fertile field for German colonialists (colonial officers, merchants and missionaries) to achieve their dreams of hegemony in front of the native population, reflecting on the growing effectiveness of Pan-German racial and racist propaganda within the colony. Africans were portrayed in an expedition in 1895 for the first time in German literature about Cameroon in an almost programmatic way, as seen in the report by Siegfried Passarge, professor of geography at the Hamburg Institute: Auf keinen Fall dürfte man dem Beispiel der Engländer folgen, die einige (wenngleich nur sehr wenige) Afrikaner zum Studium an englischen Universitäten und später als Anwälte an Gerichte in Nigeria und an der Goldküste zugelassen hätten. Die Afrikaner seien außerstande, sich die höhere Bildung wirklich anzueignen, und ein derartiger Liberalismus könne den Interessen der deutschen Kolonialmacht nur schaden. [On no account should one follow the English example of admitting Africans (albeit very few) to study at English universities in order to later become lawyers at courts in Nigeria or the Gold Coast. Such liberalism can only damage the interests of the German colonial regime.] (Stoecker 1968: 8f.) This quotation shows that the German colonial power sought to implement a regime along Pan-German lines in its colonies – a system of apartheid. The boundaries were not only to be mental but physical. Does this allow us to hypothesize that the German colonial venture was particularist or a special case? How was the Cameroonian Other represented in the media and in literature? It was necessary for German citizens to be introduced to their own colonies in order for them to understand the need for colonial expansion.
4 The Fremdbilder of German imperialism and discursive representations of the imperial Self in the literature of the colonial era in Cameroon During the colonial era, German Fremdbilder commonly represented as a displaced Self were used to describe the colonies and their inhabitants, or to praise the level of civilization of the colonized peoples, be it in travel or youth literature, in the media or in colonial exhibitions and live displays of native Africans (Völkerschauen) in Germany. Colonial literature was seen as educational for the growing reading public, particularly the youth and adults of the educated middle classes. Three examples will exemplify the main types of protagonist in the German imperial venture: publicists, missionaries and researchers. Each text elucidates in its own way the dominant social discourse about the Self and the Other of Imperial Germany.
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The first text is Carl Falkenhorst’s In Kamerun. Zugvogels Reise- und Jagdabenteuer (1897), which recounts the adventures of a protagonist with the metaphorical name ‘Zugvogel’ [migratory bird] from the perspective of an omniscient narrator. The 19-year-old Zugvogel is inexperienced but hungry for knowledge. He has already passed his Abitur and plans to start a commercial apprenticeship in the factory of a large Hamburg firm in Cameroon. Once in Cameroon, he joins a research expedition led by the naturalist Dr Reinhold; he is introduced to the secrets of the flora and fauna of Cameroon and also to the customs and traditions of the people. On his way back from this expedition he succumbs to fever and has to leave Cameroon on the next mail steamer. The second text is a novel Das Duallamädchen (1908) by the Berlin publicist and author Jesco von Puttkamer, who probably only knew Cameroon from secondary sources. The protagonist Sven Beckmanns, a new factory manager for another Hamburg company, arrives from Germany to replace his dead predecessor. He soon ascertains that Kowa, a factory employee, has been stealing money since the death of his superior. Kowa’s work involved acquiring raw materials (ivory and rubber) for the factory from the Bakwiri and Bali people. When it becomes obvious that Kowa cannot replace the stolen capital with raw materials, he allows his daughter, Nyámya, to work as an administrator for Beckmanns as a means of repaying his debt. Beckmanns’ lack of experience for living in Cameroon leads to Kowa’s daughter becoming simultaneously Beckmanns’ mother, colleague, cook, friend and, eventually, his wife. This is where Beckmanns’ inner conflicts start. As a German, his marriage to Nyámya contravenes the norms of the colonial order, which tolerate neither racial equality nor racial mixture. He is ostracized socially and finally loses his job. The unemployed Beckmanns attempts to return to his homeland in order to settle the matter directly with his employer, but his mixed marriage comes to a sudden end when his wife and daughter attempt to reach his departing steamer by canoe and drown. The third text under examination is Heinrich Norden’s travel account, Der Neffe des Zauberers (1913), which is told from the perspective of a missionary to Cameroon. It tells of the conversion of the protagonist, Nsia, from paganism to Christianity. Nsia’s family breaks up because his father is accused of eating a child’s soul and is forced to drink from a poisoned chalice. Nsia’s despairing mother dies and her children are entrusted to family members. Nsia comes to live with his uncle, Ekoki, a ‘magician’ who, having no children of his own, wants to make the boy his successor. Nsia does not like the idea of becoming a magician and with the help of a Christian merchant flees to a mission where he receives an education. Nsia is then kidnapped by his uncle’s assistants and sold by Ekoki into slavery in a remote region. Nsia is later on freed by a white missionary and after the death of his uncle is able to return to his village with his childhood friend Malobe. Here he founds a mission and this turns a new page in the history of the village. At the mission’s opening ceremony he is baptized as ‘Johannes Nsia’ and trained as a Christian teacher: Christianity thus wins the ‘Kulturkampf’ between Christianity and paganism.
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The separation of the colonizers from the colonized was regularly expressed in texts such as the three under examination here, each of which can be seen as a hothouse for the imperial education of the German people while the native peoples of Cameroon are treated as educational projects by the German protagonists, using the social discourse practices of the Wilhelmine Empire. Imperial stereotypes such as a collective German egocentrism, militarism and hard work are valued, while images of laziness, cowardice, lack of self-awareness and paganism are projected onto the Cameroonian Other. The three narrators operate with national and ethnic stereotypes and a direct connection is made between the positive characteristics which they claim for themselves (as supposedly superior beings), and the deficiencies that they find in the Cameroonian characters (which prove their inferiority and justify the German point of view). The language used in descriptions of the physical attributes of individuals underscores the moral judgements in the three texts. A characteristically stereotypical portrait of an African man is found in Der Neffe des Zauberers in the person of the magician Ekoki, who combines several of the ethnic features which made up the contemporary German image of the typical African: Sein tiefschwarzes Gesicht mit der breitgedrückten Nase und den weiten Nüstern verriet den Sturm in seinem Inneren.Knirschend biß er von Zeit zu Zeit seine weißen Zähne aufeinander. Seine Augen, die von buschigen, schon ergrauten Augenbrauen beschattet waren, funkelten unheimlich, wenn er daran dachte, was ihm in den letzten Tagen von dem Knaben Nsia zugefügt worden war; denn daß er und kein anderer der Verräter in dem Handel mit Bwele gewesen war, stand ihm fest. [His deep black face with its broad nose and wide nostrils betrayed the storm within him. Every so often he ground his white teeth together. His eyes, which were shaded by greying eyebrows, glinted eerily when he thought of what the boy Nsia had done to him in the last few days. He was certain that he and no other had been the traitor in league with Bwele.] (Norden 1913: 67) This portrait makes use of the colour symbolism of white versus black. The body as a whole is reduced metonymically to the character’s head: nose, nostrils, eyes and eyebrows, reminding one of a stone-age statue. The eyebrows are so powerful that they overshadow the face. The white teeth stand out in contrast to the black skin. Animal metaphors are also present in the word Nüstern for nostrils, commonly applied to animals, and in the glinting eyes, which can be interpreted as belonging to wild animals roaming in the night. The novel Das Duallamädchen contains a similar portrait, almost as though it originates with the same author. The merchant Kowa is introduced as follows: ‘Der dicke Händler faltete plötzlich die Hände über der Brust zusammen und sah Sven mit einer Miene an, in der die ganze Heuchelei der Dualla deutlich geschrieben stand’ [The fat merchant suddenly folded his hands over his chest and looked at Sven Beckmanns, the manager of the German factory,
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with an expression that reflected the entire hypocrisy of the Doualas] (Puttkamer 1908: 229). Sven, in turn, calls him a rogue: ‘Du bist ein dreifacher Schurke!’ [You are a scoundrel three-times over!] (ibid.: 106), referring to Kowa’s power as a native middleman – a power which could damage the Hamburg business. Sven’s feelings of powerlessness turn to rage and the Douala native is accused of laziness and dismissed. Rather than his work being recognized as necessary to the colony, he is portrayed as less diligent than the German manager and the German readers thus see their own self-image confirmed. The natives of Cameroon are portrayed only negatively, in order to establish their inferiority and support the image of a German political utopia and social model. Sven Beckmanns demonstrates this discourse of power to Nbop, his factotum from Douala: ‘Hier ist Haus von Kowa, Massa!’ Damit dachte er sich vorläufig seines Auftrages entledigt zu haben und wollte sich vor der Tür einer Siesta hingeben. ‘Nbop! fauler Bursche! Gleich stehst du auf und holst mir den Honorable Kowa hierher!’, sagte Sven Beckmanns. [‘Here is Kowa’s house, Massa!’, and he thought that he had discharged his duty and could now take his siesta in front of the door. ‘Nbop! you lazy rascal! Get up at once and fetch me the honourable Mr. Kowa!’] (Puttkamer 1908: 7) The Cameroonian is constructed as fat and he needs to sleep because he is less athletic than his master. The form of address ‘Massa’, a native form of English ‘Master’, underlines his subservience. In Falkenhorst’s travel account, the narrator takes the misuse of ethnic stereotypes a step further in his portrayal of the ‘Kruneger’ [kru negroes] from Freetown as a people who are created by nature to carry Europeans’ burdens in the tropics: ‘In Sierraleone nehmen sämtliche europäischen Schiffe eine Anzahl Neger an Bord, um ihnen schwere Arbeiten zu übertragen und die weiße Mannschaft zu entlasten, die in dem tropischen Klima vor größeren Anstrengungen bewahrt bleiben muß’ [In Sierra Leone all European ships take a number of negroes on board to do the heavy work and relieve the white crew who have to be spared from over-exertion in the tropical climate] (Falkenhorst 1897: 4). A hierarchy is established between ‘black’ and ‘white’, where ‘white’ connotes superiority and power and ‘black’ stands for the inferior being who is ready to satisfy the European’s every wish. A normative rule is constructed on the basis of natural physical qualities. The literary texts become a vehicle for the reinforcement and perpetuation of Other images which help the German people cement their own feelings of solidarity during the colonial era. Discrimination reveals itself as a superficial discourse which is generally used to preserve self-interest during times of social and political difficulty. The following description of a West African, most particularly a Cameroonian, would have been very disturbing for a reader who had little idea about African reality:
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Albert Gouaffo Leider muß man den Bewohnern der westafrikanischen Küste nachsagen, daß sie für die Dichtung nicht geboren wurden. Die Ausbeute, die hier einem Märchensammler zuteil werden würde, müßte sehr dürftig ausfallen. Namentlich die Kamerunneger sind recht prosaische Naturen, die weiter nichts als an Handel, Gewinn und rohen Lebensgenuß denken und selbst auf religiöser Stufe tief unter allen benachbarten Völkern stehen. [Unfortunately one has to agree with the inhabitants of the West African coast that they are not born poets. The yield which a collector of fables can hope to glean is likely to be very sparse. The Cameroon negroes are very prosaic by nature and think only of trade, profit and enjoying life; they are even inferior to neighbouring peoples in religious matters.] (Falkenhorst 1897: 111)
The ‘Cameroon negro’ refers here to the Douala and Bakwiri people, the coastal peoples portrayed in the novel Das Duallamädchen. They are unlike the good ‘Jaundevolk’ [people of Yaoundé]. One cannot assume that this passage is based upon a cultural misunderstanding; rather it exemplifies a belief in a right to subjugate and to occupy: it is a discourse of power which operates with narrative techniques. The character Dr Reinhold narrates from the point of view of an outsider in order to give the reader the impression that the native Africans are painting their own self-image. The use of the verb nachsagen [to repeat what someone else has said] gives the impression that this is a commonly accepted fact: the reader does not need to know its source. The Cameroon negro’s ‘prosaic’ nature is not questioned, but immediately accepted as pejorative and indicating a lack of imagination and creativity. The German self-portrayal is sometimes gender-specific, as in the example of Sister Helene, who refers to race laws (Rassenklausel) when Sven Beckmanns marries a native Cameroon woman according to local custom (he pays Kowa a dowry), German law and in a Church ceremony: Die ist – eine Schwarze, und ich halte es für den größten Fehler, den ein deutscher Mann begeht, sich von einem tieferstehenden Weibe fesseln zu lassen. – Er ist dann für uns verloren und degeneriert, ganz abgesehen von den Folgen, die bei stärkerer Verschmelzung der Weißen mit den Negern für die Kolonie entstehen. [She is – a black woman, and I think that a German man is making a great mistake if he allows himself to be bound to an inferior woman. – He is then lost to us and degenerate, quite apart from the consequences for the colony of an increased mixture of whites and negroes.] (Falkenhorst 1897: 249f.) Here we have an example of a discriminatory discourse which uses biological arguments as a means of maintaining group identity; a discourse of feelings and emotions. It is for this reason that Nyámya is prevented from visiting Sven in hospital.
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As with Sister Helene, German men are subject to ethnically based thought patterns. When Sven Beckmanns is ambushed in the factory on the river Kam by a group of rebels from Lóng in the Bali region, his people organize a successful resistance before the Schutztruppe officer, Lionel Grottel, comes to his aid: ‘Das war Hilfe in höchster Not, Lionel!’ rief Sven diesem herzlich entgegen, als sich das Tor öffnete und die Schutztruppe einzog. ‘Hast tapfer Stand gehalten, mein Söhnchen’, erwiderte der Offizier und schüttelte ihm kräftig die Hand, ‘ist kein leichtes Stück gewesen. Steckt doch in dir wie in jedem Germanen ein kleiner Feldherr drin! – Aber wenn eine nicht gewesen wäre, die mit von Dornen und Gestrüpp zerrissenem Körper und blutenden Füßen auf der Station bei uns eintraf, um deinen Brief abzugeben, – Sven, ich glaube, dann hätte deine gesamte Tapferkeit dieser Bestie gegenüber keinen Erfolg gehabt’. [‘It was assistance at a time of urgent need, Lionel!’, cried Sven with gusto, when he opened the door and the Schutztruppe entered. ‘You resisted with great courage, my boy,’ replied the officer, shaking him firmly by the hand, ‘it wasn’t easy. There is a little commander in you, as in every German! – But if I had not arrived at the station with your letter, to find your body and feet bloody and wounded with thorns, – Sven I think that your bravery would have had little effect against that beast’.] (Falkenhorst 1897: 210) We are reminded here of the Pan-German slogan: ‘bedenke, dass du ein Deutscher bist!’ [remember that you are a German]. Military virtues are portrayed as innate German qualities. The protagonist Sven has this quality in his blood and only has to activate it when required. The myth of the Germanic race as the soldiers and heroic fighters of German history is offered to the reader as a stereotype and marker of identity.
5 Conclusion Particular events between 1871 and 1919 in German cultural history, such as the world economic crisis of 1873–96, the so-called ‘Great Depression’, the newly formed and yet to be consolidated German Empire, and the necessity to compete with old imperial nations like England, France and Holland, caused the German Empire to produce effective Fremdbilder as a means of influencing the general public. The dominant discourse of ethnic superiority indicates a German insecurity relative to England and France, and a special approach to imperialism (Sonderweg) was adopted in order that Germany assure for itself a ‘Place in the Sun’ (Platz an der Sonne). The dreamed-of power of the contrived ‘Herrenmenschen’ [master race] met with opposition among the colonized peoples and this caused brutal reactions on the part of the German colonial masters. Germany’s colonialist methods can be characterized as a system which we would nowadays be classed as apartheid
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(Lüsebrink 2002: 77). Political events of the German colonial methods include the exchange rate introduced by the last colonial chancellor, Bernhard von Bülow, and the equally influential agitation practised by organizations such as the Alldeutsche Verband and the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft [German Colonial Society]. Despite the short duration of the German colonial experience, the German Reich was able to create a discursive place for itself in the competition for colonies. Colonial literature as a space for the construction of mental images was used to deliver knowledge. The projection of Fremdbilder onto the native people of Cameroon as ‘inferior’ and ‘worthless’ enabled German colonialists to overcome their own sense of inferiority vis-à-vis other imperial powers and the prevailing world order.
Notes 1 See Lüsebrink and Reichardt 1997: the notion of ‘cultural transfer’ is more helpful than the competing terms ‘influence’, ‘reception’‚ ‘effect’, ‘cultural contact’ and ‘interference’ because it expresses more clearly the process involved alongside an actual transfer of goods: cultural goods are wares which are produced by certain representative groups, are transported by ‘mediators’, then sold and consumed by recipients: the notion of ‘transfer’ recognizes the fact that this ‘transfer of goods’ is more than a purely mechanical turnover of goods. 2 It is not possible to understand the strong economic growth during the Industrial Revolution if one merely looks at the development of mechanical manufacture in certain industries. According to Hans-Ulrich Wehler, growth was spasmodic and occurred in three sectors of the national economy: agriculture, foreign trade, and transport and communications (Wehler 1969: 18). 3 A former Portuguese colony, the island of Fernando Po, now Bioko, is situated off the coast of Cameroon. 4 The statutes of the Alldeutscher Verband professed ‘wir sind bereit, den Ruf unseres Kaisers in Reih’ und Glied zu treten und uns stumm und gehorsam den feindlichen Geschossen entgegenführen zu lassen; aber wir können dafür auch verlangen, daß uns ein Preis zufalle, der des Opfers wert ist, und dieser Preis ist: einem Herrenvolk anzugehören, das seinen Anteil an der Welt sich selber nimmt und nicht von der Gnade und dem Wohlwollen eines anderen Volkes zu empfangen sucht. Deutschland, wach’ auf!’.
References Angenot, Marc (1989), Mille huit cent quatre-vingt-neuf: un état du discours social. Montréal: Éditions du Préambule. Espagne, Michel and Michael Werner (1988), ‘Deutsch-französischerKulturtransferals Forschungsgegenstand.Eine Problemskizze’, in Michel Espagne and Michael Werner (eds), Transferts. Les relations interculturelles dans l’espace franco-allemand (XVIIe et XIXe siècle). Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 11–34. Falkenhorst, Carl (1897), In Kamerun. Zugvogels Reise- und Jagdabenteuer. Leipzig: Brockhaus. Koch, Arne (ed.) (2007), Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769–1860). Deutscher Nationalismus – Europa – transatlantische Perspektiven. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
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Kruck, Alfred (1954), Geschichte des alldeutschen Verbandes (1890–1939). Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen (2002), ‘L’Allemagne, une métropole sans empires?’, Migrations Société, 14/31–2, 73–82. Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen and Rolf Reichardt (1997), ‘Kulturtransfer im Epochenumbruch. Fragestellungen, methodische Konzepte, Forschungsperspektiven’, in HansJürgen Lüsebrink and Rolf Reichardt (eds), Kulturtransfer im Epochenumbruch Frankreich-Deutschland 1770 bis 1815. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 9–26. Norden, Heinrich (1913), Der Neffe des Zauberers, Eine Erzählung aus Kamerun. Basel: Evangelische Missionsverlag. Plessner, Helmuth (1982), Die verspätete Nation. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Puttkamer, Jescovon (1908), Das Duallamädchen: Roman. Leipzig: G. Müller-Mann’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Röseberg, Dorothee (2018), ‘Interkulturelle Kommunikation und Fremderfahrung: Forschungsansätze auf dem Prüfstand’, in Dotsé Ygbe, Amatso Assemboni and Kuassi Akakpo (eds), L’Afrique post/coloniale. Das Post/koloniale Afrika. Münster: Lit, 65–84. Schilling, Konrad (1968), Beiträge zu einer Geschichte des radikalen Nationalismus in der wilhelminischen Ära 1890–1909. Dissertation, Universität Köln. Stoecker, Helmut (1968), ‘Einleitung’, in Helmut Stoecker (ed.), Kamerun unter deutscher Kolonialmacht. Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 7–10. Wehler, Hans-Ulrich (1969), Bismarck und der Imperialismus. Köln: Kiepenheuer and Witsch.
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The continuities of colonial land dispossessions in Namibia under German and South African rule Phanuel Kaapama
1 Introduction Jean François Bayart describes the concept of colonization as a generic term that subsumes a vast variety of historical situations, in which various European colonial powers invaded, conquered and directly administered the territories, peoples and communities in the Global South (Bayart 2000: 221, 242). These incursions were presumed justifiable for a variety of reasons, including the enhancement of the colonizer’s imperial prestige; the exploitation of the natural wealth of the colonized territories; and the export of colonial powers’ excess populations (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013: 13). Regardless of whether they were colonized by the same power, colonies and their colonial experiences differed from one another in a number of different respects, not only in terms of their respective climatic conditions and natural resources, but also according to whether or not they were settler colonies (Markovitz 1970: 16–17; Bayart 2000: 221; Klerman et al. 2011: 382). African colonial historiographers have for many years been intrigued by the ways in which the various colonial authorities used their power in relation to the positions and powers accorded to chiefs of indigenous colonized communities as conduits within the colonial systems. The dominant school of thought has tended to suggest and/or advocate clear-cut differentiations between the socalled systems of direct and indirect colonial rule. Although generally acknowledging the fact that the various colonial powers may have had few alternatives to the reliance upon the pre-existing system of traditional political authorities as conduits in their respective colonial governance systems, Michael Crowder maintains that the direct and indirect systems of colonial rule cannot be equated with one another. Doing so may, in his view, seriously underestimate the nature of the differences between the two systems, and this may impair not only the proper understanding of African colonial history, but also the appreciation of the differences between the colonial blocks (Crowder 1964: 197, 202). The significance of such differences has, however, been dismissed as exaggerated by the likes of Semakula Kiwanuka, since such typological distinctions were not strictly adhered to (Kiwanuka 1970: 295, 300). Governor Hubert Deschamps, a historian of the French system of colonial rule in Africa, confirmed this view in his
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1963 Lugard Memorial Lecture (reproduced in the Africa Journal of the International African Institute, 1963). He admitted that ‘far from what is generally supposed, the two [systems] were in practice very similar, since they both reposed on indigenous chiefs’ (cited in Crowder 1964: 197). He pointed out that within the specific context of French colonial rule, the system of indirect rule has been practised by local governors at least since the Second French Empire, and from the end of the 19th century the official policy was that of Association, which resembled the ideas of Fredrick John Lugard, the pioneer of the British colonial system of indirect rule. Notwithstanding the above-detailed complexities, Catherine Boone suggests that almost all colonial projects were oriented towards the realization of mercantilist colonial accumulation, based on monetized and revenue-seeking governance frameworks, which were founded on peculiar rationalities of not only exchange and administration, but also Westernized legal notions of property rights (Boone 1994: 111). It is therefore posited in this chapter that despite the variation between the models of colonial governance imposed by the different colonial metropolises on their colonies, the overarching ideological outlooks and policy underpinnings of the various colonial powers as well as their implanted apparatuses of power and domination bore a number of striking resemblances. This chapter illustrates this by examining Namibia’s colonial experience before it gained relative political independence in 1990. The case of Namibia is particularly instructive, considering the fact that the colonial modernities of property rights as well as the legacies of colonial land dispossessions bequeathed by German colonial rule seems not only to have been transmuted, to the extent that remained self-evidently influential beyond the era of direct colonialism. Thus through a comparative juxtaposition of German and South African colonial rule models, this chapter explores the role of the colonial legal discourses of property rights in both the historical processes as well as presently enduring legacies for the dispossession of the colonized Namibian indigenous communities of their ancestral land rights.
2 The Scramble for Africa and General Act of the 1884/5 Berlin Conference Following its 1866 wars of unification, Germany developed an urge to fulfil her nationalist ambitions for matching other great nations of Western Europe. Pakenham (2011: 202) has described the unification as a single gargantuan ego at the heart of the Reich, whose imperialist inclinations were widely shared within the ranks of the ruling political and economic elites. He cites the ‘real fever of colonizing mania’ that grabbed the German public and media, which led to the establishment in 1882 of the Deutscher Kolonialverein (German Colonial Union) in Frankfurt, whose membership ran into several thousand. Such imperialist inclinations were widely shared within the ranks of the ruling political and economic elites, and were a response to the neo-mercantilist sentiments which affected continental Europe and which caused the imposition of
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high duties on German goods in territories controlled by other European powers. These political and economic considerations gave Germany an appetite for imperial expansionism, as a vehicle for enhancing her global trading activities. Friedrich Hayek observes, furthermore, that ‘what actually started this economic push… was not so much an overproduction of factory goods in Europe, but an undersupply of raw materials, such as cotton, palm oil, rubber, peanuts, gold copper, coal, coffee, tea, etc.’ (cited in Boahen 1987: 28–30). In 1881, the German Imperial Home Office financed an expedition led by the engineer Hoepfner to prospect for ores in Africa. This was followed by the acquisition of valuable colonial possessions overseas, of which German South-West Africa (GSWA), as Namibia was then known, was one (Mbuende 1986: 44). Wolfe Schmokel characterizes this annexation as having been considered an important milestone in securing the much sought-after ‘place in the sun’ and was significant for the German colonialists’ ‘dream of empire’ (cited in Melber 2000: 28). These included Adolph Woermann,1 who served as the vice president of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce and was head of the Woermann Corporation, one of the largest German companies involved in trading in Africa. Although the potential spoils were not clearly quantifiable, Pakenham attributes Germany’s colonial ambitions to what he termed ‘Torschlusspanik – the door to Africa was closing, unless Germany, the most powerful nation in Europe, grabbed itself something now, the chance would be lost forever’ (Pakenham 2011: 204–6). The proclamation of Germany’s colonial sovereignty in South-West Africa (SWA) coincided with the hosting by Otto von Bismarck of the Berlin Conference, which lasted 78 days from 15 November 1884 to 13 January 1885. The conference aimed to construct an international legal framework for the partitioning and occupation of Africa, and to prevent armed conflict over overseas colonial possessions. This landmark conference culminated in the General Act of the Berlin Conference on Africa (Boahen 1987: 33). Although the actual processes for the colonial occupation of the various African territories may have preceded the staging of this conference, it nevertheless provided a vital platform to give greater clarity to the basis upon which specific colonial powers should proceed with their occupation of specific territories on the African continent (Sarkin 2004: 78).
3 The colonial administration of German South-West Africa In his address in June 1884 to the Reichstag, Bismarck expressed his preference for a colonial administrative system based on the British-style charter companies rather than a system of state-run colonies. This was because the German metropolitan state was not prepared to bear the excessive cost of acquiring and administering colonial possessions. The administration and development of the overseas colonial possessions was therefore left to chartered companies using private capital, while limiting the role of the state to the extension of protection over land acquisitions in territories claimed by no
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other European colonial power. In the specific case of GSWA, the German private financial community established the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft für Südwestafrika (DKG) in 1885, following a threat by Adolf Lüderitz to sell his holdings to a group of British traders (Cooper 2001: 45). Following the reports in August 1887 on the discovery of gold in the territory, which later turned out to have been a hoax, confidence in the value of the protectorate was bolstered among the bureaucratic and business elites in Germany (Drechsler 1980: 35). It was, however, not long before the DKG found itself unable to generate the necessary capital, and as a result incurred great losses, forcing the government to take over the administration of the colony. 3.1 Göring’s imperialism of intent (1884–93) The primary focus of the colonial administration in the period between 1884 and 1885 was on the conclusion of treaties through which the various African communities were promised protection in exchange for certain exclusive trading and other rights. This initial approach may have been rationalized on the fact that at that time Dr Ernst Göring took the reins of the colonial administration in the territory. He only had a handful of troops at his disposal and therefore asked little of the local indigenous communities other than their signatures on the protection treaty forms (Pakenham 2011: 605). Some leaders of the indigenous communities that entered into treaties were required to undertake not to enter into similar agreements with any other imperial powers or to cede their territory or portion thereof to any other imperial power without the prior approval of the German government. Although such instruments had little practical or immediate impact on the local communities, for Germany, as an aspiring colonial power, they served as belated instruments of colonial penetration (Drechsler 1980: 27). With a few exceptions and for a variety of reasons, most leaders of local communities were initially friendly and accommodating to such treaties, and they proceeded to sign.2 There were, however, many instances across the African continent in which the supposed consent of the local communities was obtained either under duress or by duplicity (Kiwanuka 1970: 296). Some of the treaties contained clauses whose full meaning and implications were not explained to the community leaders or were even kept hidden.3 One relevant case regarding GSWA was that of the sales agreement for the entire coastal strip from the Orange River to point 26° south, entered into between the Bremen trader Adolf Lüderitz and Chief Josef Fredrick. This agreement referred to land measurements in geographical or German miles, with which the chief and his subjects were not familiar – they assumed that these were the same as English miles (Drechsler 1980: 23). In such instances the lack of knowledge of land value and of the nature of capitalist land markets was perhaps one of the greatest disadvantages faced by indigenous communities. Such acts resulted in the colonial land transactions having questionable legality (Bruce and Holt 2011: 100).
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3.2 Curt von François’s gradual colonial encroachment Curt Karl Bruno von François, a German geographer, cartographer and commissioner of the imperial colonial army, was dispatched and arrived in the territory in June 1889. His brief was to bolster the capacity of the colonial army to provide security to settlers and missionaries in the territory. After the recall of Göring, he was put in charge and served from March 1891 until November 1893. On 12 April 1893 von François led an invasion of the headquarters of the Nama Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi at Hoornkrans, who had ‘stubbornly refused’ to enter into a protection treaty. Although Kaptein Witbooi managed to escape into the Naukluft Mountains, the shelling by the colonial forces resulted in the death of about 50 women and children (Pakenham 2011: 605). Kaire Mbuende notes that prior to 1894 the colonial administration relied on a strategy of trade promotion. The impact of this upon production in the various African communities turned out to be very limited, given that production and consumption took place within the same unit. As a result the African communities were not really releasing enough cattle to make the export trade as profitable as colonial authority wished (Mbuende 1986: 50f.). These obstacles prompted a radical policy transformation from the mere promotion of trade to an alternative strategy for the development of the cattle industry for export. The latter was to be realized through a land settlement policy, which envisioned the massive reallocation to the arriving German settlers of land which was either owned or settled on by the local communities. 3.3 Theodor Leutwein’s imperialism of results Theodor Leutwein, who became the first colonial governor of GSWA, took the view that the colony’s future depended on the transfer of the land from the hands of ‘work-shy’ natives into those of Europeans, who would develop it on the model of European and American farms. The newly arrived governor took advantage of the succession dispute that embroiled the Ovaherero community, when he opted to throw the colonial administration’s weight behind the Christianized Samuel Maharero, the fourth son of the deceased elder Chief Maharero. He is reported to have complained to the imperial chancellor in 1894 that the Ovaherero people were reluctant to sell their land to white settlers, preferring to allocate them rights of use rather than full ownership rights. These tendencies, together with the fact that the Ovaherero were enlarging their cattle herds, were seen as obstructing colonial development by weakening the trade and industry of the colonial government (Harring and Odendaal 2002: 20). Leutwein’s objectives were realized as a result of natural disasters, in the form of a wave of rinderpest that swept down from Central Africa in around 1897 and dissipated the Ovaherero cattle herds that once had numbered 250,000 head of stock. These calamities were followed by malaria and typhoid epidemics that were caused by shortages of milk and, later, an
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invasion of locusts. The once-proud Ovaherero people found themselves starving and in desperation they began to sell their land to German settlers to either pay for vaccines, restock their herds or buy food for their families (Pakenham 2011: 606f.). To add insult to injury, Leutwein issued a proclamation in 1903 requiring the transfer of close to 75 per cent of the land owned by the indigenous African communities to European settlers, while the remainder was to be proclaimed native reserves. This was achieved through, among other things, the enforcement of unilaterally demarcated boundaries, such as between Namaland and Hereroland, in order to deny the Ovaherero nomads access to their pastures and thus coerce them into significantly reducing their stock. Raids and other forms of military intervention were carried out against those who dared to resist, and once overpowered the Ovaherero were coerced into signing treaties of submission, in which they were made to agree to confinement to specifically demarcated areas, thereby further limiting their freedom and access to grazing pastures and hunting grounds (Mbuende 1986: 52–5).4 The resulting expropriation of both land and cattle set in motion what Mbuende characterizes as a historical process of primitive accumulation, for the ultimate separation of the indigenous direct producers from their means of production, and hence the destruction of the natural economy (Mbuende 1986: 51). The settlers were, according to Pakenham, never bothered by the risk of war with the Africans dispossessed of their land, in fact they advocated for military reinforcements in order to both disarm as well as break up the Ovaherero community (Pakenham 2011: 604–7). Thus by 1904, Leutwein became convinced that his peace-making gamble had succeeded, believing that in preventing a ruinously expensive war he had tamed the Ovaherero people. The rapid pace of the seizure of indigenous land nonetheless made the outbreak of conflict between pastoral communities and white settlers unavoidable. This was because the newly settled white farmers and colonial officials originated from cultures that placed emphasis on private property and clearly demarcated boundaries, whereas the indigenous African population had a different conception of property rights (Harring and Odendaal 2002: 20). One Ovaherero chief is cited as having claimed land based on the argument that ‘where my cattle have grazed is Hereroland’ (Harring and Odendaal 2002: 20). 3.4 Anti-colonial resistance Albert Boahen has rightly observed that the various African communities across the continent not only reacted differently to developments of this nature, but that they also employed different combinations of strategies in response. In Boahen’s view, apart from the prevailing political and environmental conditions at the time, responses were to some extent also influenced by their respective political and social structures and their level of previous contact with European and other external influences (Boahen 1987: 35).
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Mbuende characterizes these as primary resistance against the process of primitive accumulation, as the responses were mainly carried out in an attempt to preserve and/or restore the pre-colonial modes of political and social organization (Mbuende 1986: 140, 144). On 12 January 1904, and without prior warning, the Ovaherero people, who were described by Pakenham as ‘docile as their cattle for decades’, suddenly turned on their masters ‘like hungry wolves’ (Pakenham 2011: 604–10). The first shots were fired in Okahandja, the strategic centre for the German colonial presence in the territory, and swiftly spread to outlying farms. Within days the German military reservists and regular troops posted in the main towns were under siege by well-armed Ovaherero warriors. They killed about 100 German men, including some of the most hated traders, some of whom were tortured in macabre ritual. The attacks baffled Leutwein, who at the time had left only one company of troops in the capital and surrounding districts while he marched off with two other companies to the southern part of the territory to combat an anti-colonial resistance by the Bondelswarts Nama community. Equally caught off guard were Dr Oskar Stubel and other officials who directed the German colonial empire from within a small department inside the Foreign Office in the Wilhelmstrasse (Pakenham 2011: 602). In the battle at Oviombo, on 13 April, the German troops were encircled by 300 Ovaherero warriors and forced to retreat. According to Kiwanuka, the German metropolis, with its presumed military superiority and sophistication, would never be ready to concede defeat at the hands of their perceived inferior colonial subjects, hence their decision to resort to disproportionate amounts of physical, structural and cultural violence (Kiwanuka 1970: 296, 297). The German colonial forces therefore decided to prevent once and for all any future possibility of a resurgence of the Ovaherero community’s old political formations. Despite the likelihood of mass destruction, there was, according to Dedering, a firm commitment to mete out a final blow on the battlefield as a way of achieving this objective (Dedering 1993: 83). 3.5 Environmental warfare: Von Trotha’s genocidal counter-offensive Pakenham notes that it had been 32 years since the end of the Franco-Prussian war and ‘unlike the British counterpart, the Kaiser’s… huge standing army, the largest in the world after the Tsar’s, the second to none in efficiency’ had never heard a shot fired in anger (Pakenham 2011: 609). The anti-colonial resistance in GSWA thus became the first war of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s reign, and he took on the constitutional right to deal with the rebellion, appointing General Lothar von Trotha to lead the German Schutztruppe [Colonial Protectorate Troop]. Von Trotha landed in Swakopmund on 11 June 11 1904, and soon thereafter unveiled his plan to throw a net around his enemy. Six detachments were sent to encircle the Ovaherero at Waterberg, a stony plateau on the western edge of the
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Omaheke sandveld. According to Pakenham there was one strange element to the plan, which not only shocked but also drew protest from Governor Leutwein as well as Major von Estorff (Pakenham 2011: 610). This was the deliberate hole in the net encirclement that was to allow for an escape route to the south-east into the Omaheke Sandveld, a waterless oven of sand 200 miles wide. On 11 August, the Ovaherero were attacked from all sides, and after a spirited resistance they were forced to flee through the hole in the net. From there they were driven beyond the eastern lip of the plateau into the death trap of the Omaheke Sandveld. By 20 August, the German soldiers had sealed the last available waterhole, erecting a line of guard-posts that effectively nailed down a line of fence posts. Although the backbone of the Ovaherero resistance was finally broken during the battle of Ohamakari, two months later, on 2 October 1904, General von Trotha issued the infamous Vernichtungbefehl [Extermination Order], which decreed: Ich der große General der Deutschen Soldaten sende diesen Brief an das Volk der Herero. Die Hereros sind nicht mehr deutsche Untertanen. Sie haben gemordet und gestohlen, haben verwundeten Soldaten Ohren und Nasen und andere Körperteile abgeschnitten, und wollen jetzt aus Feigheit nicht mehr kämpfen. Ich sage dem Volk: Jeder der einen der Kapitäne an eine meiner Stationen als Gefangenen abliefert, erhält 1000 Mark, wer Samuel Maharero bringt, erhält 5000 Mark. Das Volk der Herero muss jedoch das Land verlassen. Wenn das Volk dies nicht tut, so werde ich es mit dem Groot Rohr dazu zwingen. Innerhalb der deutschen Grenze wird jeder Herero mit oder ohne Gewehr, mit oder ohne Vieh erschossen, ich nehme keine Weiber und Kinder mehr auf, treibe sie zu ihrem Volk zurück, oder lasse auf sie schießen. Das sind meine Worte an das Volk der Herero. Der große General des mächtigen Deutschen Kaisers. [The Herero are no longer German subjects. They murdered and plundered, they have cut off ears, noses and other body parts of wounded soldiers, and now out of cowardice they no longer wish to fight. I say to the people: anyone who delivers a captain will receive 1,000 Mark, whoever delivers Samuel will receive 5,000 Marks. The Herero people must however leave the land. If the populace does not do this I will force them with the Groot Rohr (cannon). Within the German border every Herero, with or without a gun, with or without cattle will be shot. I will no longer accept women and children. I will drive them back to their people or will let them be shot at – these are my words to the Herero people. The Great General of the Mighty German Kaiser. (Cited in Gewald 1999: 172f.) In justification of his chosen course of environmental warfare, von Trotha is quoted as having said that the Herero should perish rather than infect German soldiers and diminish their supplies of water and food. He claimed
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that to show mildness would be interpreted as weakness by the other side. The Herero should perish in the Sandveld or try to cross the Bechuanaland border (Dedering 1993: 83f.).5 These acts conflicted with Germany’s undertaking in the General Act of the Berlin Conference according to which it pledged that in the course of exercising its sovereign rights or influence over its various African colonial territories it was going to ‘watch over the preservation of the native tribes, and to care for the improvement of the conditions of their moral and material wellbeing and to help in suppressing slavery, and especially the Slave Trade’ (cited in Sarkin 2004: 78f.). In 1939 the British commentator, G. L. Steer, summarized the conduct of the war as follows: The Hereros went into rebellion, under the Paramount Chief Samuel Maharero. They fought according to a savage code, according to which German soldier prisoners were in for a rough time, the British and Dutch were treated as old friends, and white women and children of all races were not touched. The Germans fought them according to a more civilized code, according to which prisoners were not taken and women and children often raped and bayoneted. (Cited in Stone 2001: 34) The news of the rising of the Ovaherero and its murderous suppression, which was later related by the shock-stricken Nama contingent that had fought alongside the German forces, sent shockwaves beyond the Orange River into the Cape frontiers. Therefore a day after the issue of the Vernichtungbefehl, the southern part of the territory also joined the anti-colonial resistance on 3 October 1904. This was led by Hendrik Witbooi, the Nama kaptein, and was backed by roughly half of all other polities, including Jakob Marengo, the elusive Cape cattle raider, as well as Kornellius Fredrieks, who had previously fought on the side of the Germans against the Ovaherero. For more than 12 months they harried von Trotha’s troops, who struggled to hunt down the elusive guerrilla fighters. The Nama guerrillas, based in a maze of barren hills or the inaccessible vastness of the Kalahari, ran circles around 15,000 lumbering German troops, and hundreds of colonial fighters succumbed to disease, especially typhus. After putting up a fierce resistance for over a year, Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi was mortally wounded on 2 October 1905, during a raid on a German supply line. His last words were ‘it is enough with me, it is all over. The children should now have rest.’ His successors, led by his son Samuel, capitulated to the Germans a few weeks later (Pakenham 2011: 612–14).
4 The immediate aftermath of the genocide In 1905, General von Trotha was recalled to Germany and was honoured by the Kaiser with the Order of Merit for his apparent devotion to the Fatherland. The new colonial governor Friedrich von Lindequist issued a special proclamation addressed to the Ovaherero people offering them work and
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promising to spare the lives of all who surrendered voluntarily (Emmett 1999: 71). However, most Nama and Herero survivors of the war who took this offer found themselves being driven into concentration camps, from where they were forced into the status of slave labourers in the service of the colonial economy. It was reported in 1914 that close to 12,500 survivors worked on farms and another 10,000 worked in larger private mining and government projects: as a result only 200 men from these two groups were said to be outside the formal relations of employment (Melber 2000: 37, 39). According to Jan-Bart Gewald, the deprivations endured by these survivors entailed the uprooting of their indigenous systems of chieftaincy, prohibition from owning land and cattle and prevention from practising their indigenous traditional beliefs (Gewald 1999: 141). The resistance to the initial wave of colonial land dispossession thus triggered total dispossession and, as concluded by Harring and Odendaal, the ultimate effects of this edict were not only to exterminate the Ovaherero, but also to seize their vast wealth in the form of land and cattle (Harring and Odendaal 2002: 21). As early as 1907, the German colonial administration had succeeded in gaining complete control over the land in central and southern GSWA, which it converted into settlement areas for the exclusive benefit of the German and other white settler communities. There were some exceptions to this, as some communities in the southern and central parts were spared from land dispossessions, and in some instances the colonial administration designated specific areas as their native reserves. These included the Basters of Rehoboth, the Damara communities of Okombahe, and pockets of Nama communities at Berseba and Warmbad. Such concessions were attained on the basis of the prior treaties of voluntary submission to colonial rule (Emmett 1999: 99). Boahen observes that the option of voluntary submission was born out of the awareness of the futility and cost of confronting the imperialists, especially after witnessing the disastrous defeats inflicted on their neighbours by the imperialist forces (Boahen, 1987: 39). Similarly, the communities in northern GSWA were spared from both the higher-scale colonial encroachment and the accompanying land dispossessions experienced by their counterparts in the southern and central parts of the territory. The European settler experience in SWA under both German and South African rule thus contrasted significantly to that of other African countries, such as Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa, where white farmers generally settled in areas with the highest agricultural potential, as the more fertile areas of the north and north-east of GSWA were left to the indigenous inhabitants, who retained full ownership of their land and could therefore continue to practise their own customary laws for the regulation of land matters (Harring and Odendaal 2002: 19). The discovery of diamonds in 1908, however, and the subsequent emergence of the labour-intensive diamond mining industry, led to the physical destruction of the southern and central communities. The communities that resided in the northern parts of the country, which until then had only been
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influenced indirectly by colonial rule, therefore became increasingly attractive as an alternative reservoir of black labour for the colonial economy (Melber 2000: 38). In January 1906, the colonial administration passed a regulation that provided an organizational framework for the extension of the contract labour system northwards. According to Volker Winterfeldt, this served as a coercive instrument for extending the period of service of indigenous labour as well as a means of policing the forced movement of migrants from the native reserves (Winterfeldt 2002: 40f.). The severe drought that struck the northern regions from 1912 to 1914 in fact forced between 11,000 and 12,000 young men annually to enlist with the newly introduced contract labour in order to earn a living from the settlers’ cash-based economy (Melber 2000: 38f.). Thanks in part to the discovery of alluvial diamonds, the last few years of German colonial rule over GSWA seem to have shown signs of a flourishing colonial economy (Melber 2000: 39). By 1913, diamonds from GSWA accounted for 21 per cent of the world total output (Emmett 1999: 68).
5 Exit Germany, enter the British Dominion of the Union of South Africa In January 1915, shortly after the start of the First World War, the Union of South Africa, a British Dominion, invaded the territory of GSWA. In August 1915, close to 9,000 German soldiers under the leadership of Governor Theodor Seitz, surrendered to an 8,000 strong detachment led by General Louis Botha at Khorab near Grootfontein. Germany was forced abruptly to terminate its rule over the territory.6 A number of scholars of Namibian history have suggested that there seem to have been other deep-seated strategic twists to this invasion, beside the commonly cited immediate military objective of occupying the German colony in order to silence the German radio stations and prevent the territory from being used as a base for German submarines (Emmett 1999: 68). Britain’s pre-existing imperial interests in the territory of GSWA dated back to 1870, when Britain, through its administrative outpost in the Cape Colony, assigned William Palgrave as its special commissioner, entrusted with the mandate of concluding treaties with local communities. These treaties were to serve as legal instruments through which such communities were supposed to have acknowledged the suzerainty of Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s government. As suggested by Anthony Emmett, the predominant view at the time was that Britain intended to assume sovereignty over the territory, but only when local economic conditions justified the expense (Emmett 1999: 67). The British thus restricted their ambitions to the annexation in 1878 of the harbour of Walvis Bay and its rich guano islands on the Namib Coast; the rest of their plans largely came to naught. Britain is said to have been taken by surprise when in August 1884 the Bismarck administration declared a protectorate over the interior after its acquisition of an alternative harbour at Angra Pequena.
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Other earlier efforts to annex the territory included the ill-fated 1885 attempt by William W. Jordan, leader of the Dorsland [Thirstland] Trekkers, to acquire the area around Grootfontein from the Ndonga king, Kambonde ka Mpingana, with the view of establishing the Upitonia Boer Republic. The transaction went sour when it was overridden by King Nehale, who sent out his troops after Jordan and had him killed, on the grounds that he could gain possession of the Otavi copper mines, which Kambonde explicitly excluded from the sale agreement (Cooper 2001: 50). In the period leading up to the British invasion, various leading political figures in both Britain and South Africa had expressed discomfort at the German presence in SWA, fearing possible strategic advantages for Germany and a longterm threat to the security and prosperity of Britain’s colonial possessions in the region (Du Pisani 1985: 46f.). In particular there were anxieties regarding the perceived affinities between the German colonial administration and the Boer communities in Transvaal following the Anglo-Boer War. The presence of a German colony in the subcontinent was openly construed as a potential source of support for Afrikaner nationalism, which advocated the severance of ties with Britain. These fears were heightened when General S. G. Maritz, a prominent Boer rebel leader, fled to SWA in 1914. The invasion therefore also aimed to prevent a military offensive from the colony by Afrikaner rebels in alliance with the German forces in the territory (Emmett 1999: 68).
6 The Blue Book The period of the 1920s and 1930s was marked by what Semakula Kiwanuka characterizes as politically inspired and orchestrated campaigns to publicize the defeated Germany’s brutality and violence towards her African colonial subjects. This he attributes to a well-designed drive for the takeover of former German colonies by the victors of the First World War and to leave a lasting impression that other colonial powers used gentler and more civilized methods towards their colonial subjects (Kiwanuka 1970: 296). In the specific case of GSWA, martial law was enforced following the surrender of the German forces. A Commission of Inquiries was instituted to conduct military tribunals and investigate atrocities against the local communities committed by German colonial military servicemen, administrators and ordinary settlers. This culminated in the publication of the famous Imperial Blue Book of 1918 (Katjavivi 1988: 13). Anthony Emmett classes these processes as façades erected by the new administration in its quest to consolidate and legitimize its claim to the territory by proving that the German colonial administration had shown itself as unfit to govern the colony (Emmett 1999: 70). Expectations were raised within the local indigenous communities regarding the dawning of better times. Jan-Bart Gewald cites the example of the exiled Ovaherero chief, Samuel Maharero, who dispatched some of his own people as mercenaries to accompany the forces of General Botha during the South
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African invasion of the territory. This he did in the hope that his dispersed people would be allowed to return to their fatherland and have dispossessed land restored to them (Gewald 1999: 231). General Botha’s earlier promises that lands and stock seized by the Germans would be handed back to their rightful owners were, however, rendered hollow and the lands were soon either reallocated to white South African settlers or returned to the possession of the German settlers (Vigne 1975: 16). A senior South African official in 1922 reported to the League of Nations that: ‘Almost without exception each section asked for the allotment of the old tribal areas in which vested right had accrued and the utmost difficulty was experienced in making them realize the utter impossibility of complying with such a request’ (Vigne 1975: 16). In 1966, the East German historian Horst Drechsler exposed the hypocrisy of the South African administration when, contrary to the spirit of its cherished Blue Book, it banned his comprehensive historical account of the genocide that Germany committed against the Ovaherero and Nama people in its GSWA colony (Dedering 1993: 80).
7 The League of Nations’ colonial trusteeship The Peace Treaty of Versailles on 25 June 1919 terminated the hostilities of the First World War through its Article 119, and the League of the Nations mandate system was created in order to bring the colonies and dependencies of the defeated powers, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, under the tutelage of the international community. This ushered in what McAuslan characterizes as a new form of colonial globalization. The administration of such colonies and dependencies was handed over to one of the victorious colonial powers. These were required to govern the mandated territory in accordance with the principles laid down by the Covenant of the League of Nations and to submit regular reports to the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. This mandatory system was replaced after the Second World War with the United Nations Trusteeship System (McAuslan 2015: 345f.). Regarding the rationale that underpinned the operations of the mandatory system Antony Anghie observes that it: operated on the understanding that these territories would continue to meet the economic needs of the metropolitan power… [Hence]… the League’s ambition to transform native political institutions into instruments which would affect the commercialisation of native society and its integration into the international economy. (Cited in McAuslan 2015: 346) Germany accepted the above-mentioned terms and formally relinquished its sovereignty over its various colonial overseas possessions, including GSWA. Under the terms of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, the colonies and territories that ceased to be under the sovereignty of the states
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which had formerly governed them, but were deemed to be inhabited by people not yet ready for independence within the demanding conditions of the modern world, were each to be governed under one of three different League of Nations mandatory trusteeships. The former GSWA, together with Western Samoa, Nauru, a portion of New Guinea and various other small Pacific islands which, on account of their sparse populations, the small size of their land area and/or their remoteness from the so-called ‘centre of civilization’, were clustered under the category of Mandate C, were each to be governed under the laws of the mandatory power as an integral part of its territory ‘in the interest of the indigenous population’ (Du Pisani 2000: 54). On 17 December 1920, the Council of the League of Nations met in Geneva and passed a resolution placing the sacred trust of civilization and the sovereignty of the territory of GSWA under the mandate of the United Kingdom as a principal allied force in the First World War. Britain in turn transferred the full powers of administration and legislation to the Union of South Africa as its associated allied force. Some of South Africa’s specific primary mandatory responsibilities and obligations included the promotion of the material and moral wellbeing and social progress of the inhabitants of the territory, ensuring the prohibition of the slave trade, and proscribing forced labour except for essential public works and services, and subject to the payment of adequate remuneration (Du Pisani 2000: 53–6). According to Emmett, this system of mandatory trusteeship dealt a severe blow to the long-standing ambition of the Union of South Africa to annex the territory as its fifth province, since it formed a compromise between the ideals of self-determination on the one hand and annexationism on the other (Emmett 1999: 65). However, General Smuts expressed the view in 1925 that annexation was not really a necessity, since the mandate accorded the Union such complete sovereignty, not only administrative but legislative, that the Union need not to ask for anything more (cited in Vigne 1975: 16). The orientation of Britain’s colonial policies before the Second World War has been seen as directed toward quasi self-government whereby the colonized inhabitants were said to have been accorded a degree of participation in the political processes of local decision making. As Sir Philip Mitchell, a former colonial governor of Uganda and Kenya, chose to put it, the colonial system of indirect rule was: founded on the assumption that ‘every group of people must possess some form of… natural authority’… endeavours in each place where it is to be applied to ascertain what are the persons or institutions which the people concern look upon as the natural authority. (Cited in Crowder 1964: 198) Lewis Gann and Peter Duignan also depicted this system in the following glowing terms:
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7.1 A bifurcated system of land ownership and agricultural production From the early 1920s it became evident that the Union of South Africa, as the new mandatory power, did not intend to pursue the principles of self-determination and trusteeship contained in the League of Nations Covenant. This was evident in the deliberate policies of encouraging Union civil servants and white settlers to permanently resettle on land that had previously been expropriated from the various indigenous communities through the barrel of a gun. Emmett explains the rationale for this as lying with massive social displacement that had been experienced in South Africa since the turn of the 20th century, which followed the development of mining and the subsequent commercialization of agriculture and resulted in a series of crises and social dislocations of populations from rural areas to towns and the subsequent increased polarization of the classes. The severity of the pressure upon the new administration of the Union of South Africa was exemplified through a series of strikes in 1913–14, as well as the heavy electoral losses that were suffered by the ruling South African Party at the hands of the Labour and Nationalists Parties. The granting of the mandatory power to the Union of South Africa therefore came as a blessing in disguise to the new colonial administration, which lost little time in using this new opportunity for the reversal of its political misfortunes by opening up the former German colony to economically disenfranchised whites in search of land and jobs (Emmett 1999: 69). Thus, despite the fact that some 6,000 German soldiers and officials had been repatriated to Germany, the size of the white population increased to almost double of what it was one year before the invasion in 1914 (Katjavivi 1988: 14). It was not long before the black people in the territory of former GSWA were subjected to racial segregation in regard to land ownership – a fate similar to that of their counterparts across the Orange River. Following the passage of the Native Trust and Land Act in Westminster, paving the way for the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the black people in South Africa had been completely dispossessed of their land (Vigne 1975: 16). The land settlement law that was in force in the Union was made applicable to the territory a few months after it formally assumed sovereignty in 1920 and was followed by the establishment of the Land Board entrusted with facilitating a large-scale settlement programme. In 1921, the Land Bank, similar to that which existed in the Union, was also established in the territory, with the aim of financing land acquisition on very favourable terms so as to bolster the
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emerging white commercial agricultural sector. These measures were further supplemented by the introduction of other generous agricultural support packages. The immediate manifestation of these schemes was the resettlement of 831 settlers on 662 farms comprising more than 5.6 million hectares in less than 36 months between 1920 and 1923 (Emmett 1999: 94f.). 7.2 From temporary settlement areas to native reserves The early period of South African colonial rule was characterized by a collision of German and South African political interests in the territory. The land-dispossessed communities in the Police Zone took advantage of this situation and attempted to wring concessions for land, as well as other opportunities, such as educational facilities and other basic necessities, from the new colonial administration. Emmett points to the establishment of temporary reserves, such as Orumbo and Okatumba on the outskirts of Windhoek, which respectively accounted for 9,500 and 4,500 hectares in area. Both settlements experienced problems of overcrowding, as they attracted a large number of prospective cattle owners. An official count in August 1918 revealed that there were more than 2,000 cattle and 5,000 small stock (Emmett 1999: 96f.). It soon became clear that the South African administration was not going to be fully benevolent, and that the policy changes had a superficial and largely insignificant effect in improving the socioeconomic dispossession. Emmett, for instance, alludes to the fact that, although the German registration system together with the Dienstbuch [Service Book] and Brass Badge were abolished, these were replaced by a new system of Pass Laws, according to which the major provisions of the previous policy were reintroduced, such as the requirements for every black person to carry a pass and to be engaged in meaningful employment. Moreover, as under the German legal system, colonized indigenous people were barred from obtaining any right or title to fixed property unless they obtained the consent of the colonial administrator (Emmett 1999: 75). In 1922, the Native Reserves Commission recommended a clear demarcation of the country into white and black settlement areas – a mere 10 per cent of the land in central and southern SWA was to be reserved for the indigenous communities to live on. The 1922 Native Administration Proclamation, that in many ways was based on the South African Native Land Act 27 of 1913, assigned separate areas to people of different races. The colonial administration was authorized to designate specific areas as native reserves for the sole use and occupation by the various communities of natives. The confinement of the local people to small pockets of barren land, which was originally initiated by the German colonial administration and had triggered the genocidal wars against those that dared to resist, thus continued under the League of Nations’ sacred trust (Katjavivi 1988: 14; Emmett 1999: 101). The South African Native Land Act was made a law of the territory in 1928 and
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prohibited the transfer of land to Africans. It ensured that the colonial administration retained a complete monopoly over the allocation of land. The land that was earmarked for settlement by the indigenous communities was primarily that which was less suitable for farming. Furthermore, it restricted the freedom of movement and property rights over land to be enjoyed by the black Africans. This was realized through a decree that prohibited natives not in employment from squatting on or leasing land designated for whites without permission of a magistrate. Moreover, farmers were also prohibited from employing more than ten black African families without the special permission of the local magistrate (Harring and Odendaal 2002: 23). In view of these policies, the new colonial administration introduced its own schemes of land dispossession. A case in point is that of the Aukeigas settlement, located 20 km west of Windhoek, which covered an area of 9,000 hectares and had been proclaimed a native reserve as far back as 1907 by the German colonial administration. In 1932, the South African administration reversed this earlier decision, and embarked upon the forceful removal of the original Damara-speaking inhabitants in order to allow the enlargement of the Daan Viljoen Nature Park, which was eventually proclaimed a conservation area in 1972. Those who became internally displaced were gradually relocated in three stages: first to Okombahe in 1938 and in 1941 and then finally to Sorris Sorris in 1958 (Harring and Odendaal 2002: 28; Hongslo and Benjaminsen 2002: 338). This area to the east of the Gobabis and Waterberg fell in the arid Sandveld and Kalahari regions which, although attractive in appearance, lacked surface water and had grazing with low protein and phosphorous content. The total area of reserves by 1925 accounted for 2.8 million hectares accommodating 11,740 people who owned 49,250 large stock, compared to 7.5 million hectares occupied by 1,106 white settlers (Emmett 1999: 101–3). The Ovaherero survivors of the genocide who remained in the territory were, according to Vigne, allocated ‘800,000 hectares of the same Omaheke Sandveld on which the flower of their own nation had perished in 1904’ (Vigne 1975: 16). Hosea Kutako, chief of the Ovaherero in the colonized territory, protested that the designated areas were deserts where no human being ever lived before… It is a country only good for wild beast… We are the original inhabitants of South West Africa… We know the parts which are good for cattle, we know the parts which are good for wild beast. We are human being and we do not want to change into wild beast. (cited in Vigne 1975: 16) The accession of the National Party in 1948 and its inclination towards the institutionalization of racial segregation and white supremacy had an equally profound effect on land politics and governance in SWA, which took on entirely new dimensions in line with its apartheid doctrine. Due to the fact that the demand to settle more landless whites outstripped the availability of
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land, which became evident in the mid-1940s, the administration appointed the General Rehabilitation Commission. This entity was tasked with the investigation of mechanisms for ensuring social security for all European persons living in SWA, culminating in 1950 in the shifting of the boundaries of the Police Zone and the Sperrgebiet [prohibition zone] diamond area, which made a further 275 farms available (Harring and Odendaal 2002: 25). Another milestone was the appointment of a Commission of Enquiry into the Social, Economic and Political Life of SWA, under the chairpersonship of F. H. Odendaal, the administrator of Transvaal. Its primary aim was to introduce a cordon sanitaire for the implementation of greater and uniform policies for the preservation of the political, economic and cultural hegemony of the privileged white minority. Its findings were released in 1962 and included recommendations for the creation of ten ethnic homelands as exclusive geopolitical spaces for each of the respective black ethnic groups in the territory under the guise of promoting ethnic self-determination without group domination (Du Pisani 2000: 64–6). Pursuant upon these recommendations, a number of Damara-speaking people were required to relocate to their supposed homeland of Damaraland, which bordered on the Namib Desert to the west. The administration purchased 223 commercial farms, most of which had been abandoned by their previous white owners because the volatile environmental conditions rendered farming economically unviable. Since only one third of the total area of 48,000 km2 of Damaraland was usable for commercial farming, each of the resettled families was left with only 250 hectares, whereas about 8,500 hectares were regarded as necessary to sustain a white settler family (Harring and Odendaal 2002: 28; Hongslo and Benjaminsen 2002: 338). In response to these changes and their socioeconomic impact, Pastor Paulus Gowaseb of the Lutheran Evangelical Church penned an open letter to the South African prime minister in which he expressed the following concerns: more than 40,000 of my people are still left who live in the whole of [SWA] and that since time immemorial. Various places in [SWA] are their homes. But now we are made into strangers in the country of our birth and are left no right there. The purpose is that we should all move to the homeland which is a strange place for the majority and where they do not know how they should live… People may certainly move into the area, but no-one may come out again except as contract labourers and not without permits. (Cited in Vigne 1975: 35) This situation was further exacerbated by the fact that the colonial administration did everything in its power to support white farmers settling in SWA and little attention was paid to the needs of the native black peasantry. The long-term consequence of these policies and programmes epitomizes the typically colonial character of the pattern of agricultural land use and ownership witnessed beyond the formal era of South African colonial rule and
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apartheid policies in SWA. The socioeconomic effects of these development policy binaries were not only racial division in the country (almost all of the freeholders were white and all communal landholders were black), but also socioeconomic class divisions (the communal landholders were generally poor, while the freehold landholders were well off and in some cases extremely wealthy). For instance some 45 per cent of the total land area and 74 per cent of potential arable land was privately owned by some 4,045 mainly white commercial farmers (Tapscott 1993: 36; Emongor 2008: 2). A 1976 policy blueprint for postcolonial economic development made the following two observations in this regard. Firstly, that 48 per cent of these commercial farms were owned by absentee landlords who visited them only at intervals, leaving the day-to-day management in the hands of white local supervisors. Secondly, that this attests to the overconcentrated agricultural land ownership structure, in terms of which it was estimated that close to 40 per cent of the commercial farms in the eastern cattle-rearing district of Gobabis were owned by 16 per cent of the area’s farmers in the early 1970s (cited in UNIN 1985: 31f.). The non-assimilatory nature of the apartheid policy of racial segregation thus contributed to the failure of the numerous attempts by the South African colonial administration to transform the indigenous traditional ethnic institutions into conduits for the realization of its brand of indirect colonial rule. Instead of weakening the African collective political identity of the colonized, the policy contributed to a profound redefinition of political alliances that transcended the confines of pre-colonial identities. It therefore provided the bedrock for challenging the South African claim for sovereignty over the territory, which was characterized by a protracted legal-political dispute regarding the legality of continued South African rule over Namibia (Emmett 1999: 30; Mbuende 1986: 147). Conclusion In order to overcome the obstacles that were presented by the prior organized presence of the indigenous communities and their respective institutions of land property rights, the German colonial administrative machinery deployed direct physical violence, especially genocidal scorched-earth methods and other environmental warfare techniques. Both the Union of South Africa, a British Dominion, as well as its successor, the Republic of South Africa, just like their German predecessor, deployed similar administrative actions for the transplantation, adaptation and enforcement of foreign and colonial European legal discourses of property rights in land. Thus, as demonstrated in this chapter, after taking over the colonial administration of the territory, the Union of South Africa continued on the same path towards what has been described by McAuslan as the creation of evolving enclaves of Westernized legal modernities of property rights founded on individualized land designation titles (McAuslan 2015: 354). Following 106 years of colonial rule, the former German colonial territory of Namibia reclaimed it sovereignty when it regained its political independence on 21 March 1990. Through the mechanizations of the West Contact
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Group at the United Nations, both the former West Germany and Britain as former colonial powers with vested interest in both the economy and politics of the postcolonial dispensation, together with the United States, France and Canada used their influence at the United Nations to protect these interests. Their interventions resulted in the United Nations Security Council imposing the West Contact Group-crafted 1982 Constitutional Principles, which effectively precluded the pursuance of the radical socioeconomic transformation agenda in regard to land ownership. This brought a number of constitutional preconditions to bear on the postcolonial Namibian state, in exchange for its admission to the community of the independent nations of the world. Hence the Constitution of the Republic of Namibia that came into force at independence under Article 16 (1) states that: All persons shall have the right in any part of Namibia to acquire, own and dispose of all forms of immovable or movable property individually or in association with others and to bequeath their property to their heirs or legatees: provided that Parliament may by legislation prohibit or regulate as it deems expedient the right to acquire property by persons who are not Namibian citizens. However Article 16 (2) further states that: ‘The state or a competent body or organ authorized by law may expropriate property in the public interest subject to the payment of just compensation, in accordance with requirements and procedures to be determined by Act of Parliament’ (Kaapama 2007: 34). Hence, as demonstrated in this chapter, after formally taking over jurisdiction of the territory from the German colonial administration in 1920, the Union of South Africa basically continued on the same path towards what was termed by McAuslan as the creation of evolving enclaves of Westernized legal modernities of property rights founded on individualized land designation titles, which were bequeathed and continued into the postcolonial era (McAuslan 2015: 354).
Notes 1 In his petition to the chancellor, he cautioned that the Portuguese were busy sealing off the Congo, the French were making headway in the push for Gabon, while a British consul (Hewett) had advanced plans for the annexation of Cameroon, the coast where German firms had their main bases. 2 Dreschler attributes these to various considerations, such as the fact that the negotiating envoys accorded the local leaders with the necessary courtesy, respect and decorum. Due to the prevailing political volatilities and strife within as well as across the various communities, the suggested protection also appealed to some leaders embroiled in fierce contestations with either their own subjects or other powerful African rivals or even other European powers. The Ovaherero communities, for example, were initially reluctant, but later had to change course on account of the constant perceived threat posed by their neighbouring rivals, such as the Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi. Others who fell for this trap were the leaders of the communities of Bethanie, Berseba and Rehoboth, as well as the Topnaars under Chief
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Piet Haibib and the Rooinasie (also called the Red Nation) (Dreschler 1980: 29). Boahen alludes to another possible factor, namely the prospect of sharing in the spoils that were to be accrued from the proposed trading links, especially in arms (Boahen, 1987: 37). Kiwanuka singles out the infamous Dr Carl Peters, a German national who became renowned for such notorious practices. The communities that bore this brunt included the Witbooi and Khaxas Nama communities, as well as Nikodemus Kavikunua and Kahimemua, both of whom were court marshalled and executed by firing squad, following the Battle of Otjunda. These strike an accord with the below-quoted justification of the tactics of colonial environmental warfare proffered by Sir John Slessor, a marshal of the British Royal Air Force, from his experience of using air raids to disrupt the normal life of various desert ethnic communities in Western Asia: ‘The aim was to deprive the offending tribe of their normal means of livelihood; to force them to abandon their grazing grounds, wells or villages when they had them… to prevent the watering of cattle or camels, or at least to make it difficult or arduous; to prevent ploughing or harvesting or any form of cultivation of crops, date palms or fruit trees; to force the tribe to scatter itself and its flocks as unwelcome guests on the inhabitants of neighbouring villages where their host usually brought pressure to bear on them to submit to our terms, since the last thing they wanted was to get embroiled themselves; to deny to them any form of compensation which other forms of warfare might offer such a loot, the chance of capturing rifles and ammunition, and the sporting satisfaction of having a good fight on equal terms; and to go on doing all these things until they got so fed up with the hardship and inconvenience involved that they decided that submission to our terms was the lesser evil (cited in Ramanathapillai 2008: 115f.). The image of the South African troops given in the text was quoted from Katjavivi (1988: 13). This however differs from the one presented by Du Pisani (1985: 47) whose sources put this at close to 13,000 men. Also, according to the sources cited by Du Pisani (1985: 47), the date on which the German forces surrendered was 9 July 1915, which differs from the one quoted above that was derived from Gewald (1999).
References Bayart, Jean François (2000), ‘Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion’, African Affairs 99/395, 217–267. Boahen, Albert Adu (1987), African Perspectives on Colonialism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Boone, Catherine (1994), ‘States and Ruling Classes in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Enduring Contradictions of Power’, in Joel Samuel Migdal, Atul Kohli and Vivienne Shue (eds), State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 108–142. Bruce, John W. and Sally Holt (2011), Land and Conflict Prevention. Colchester: Initiative on Quite Diplomacy’s Conflict Prevention Handbook Series. Cooper, Allan D. (2001), Owambo Politics in the Twentieth Century. New York: University Press of America. Crowder, Michael (1964), ‘Indirect Rule – French and British Style’, Journal of the International African Institute 34/3, 197–205. Dedering, Tilman (1993), ‘The German-Herero War of 1904: Revisionism of Genocide or Imaginary Historiography?’, Journal of Southern African Studies 19/1, 80–88.
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Drechsler, Horst (1980), Let Us Die Fighting. London: Zed Press. Du Pisani, Andre (1985), SWA/Namibia: The Politics of Continuity and Change. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers. Du Pisani, Andre (2000), ‘State and Society under South African Rule’, in Christiaan Keulder (ed.), State, Society and Democracy: A Reader in Namibian Politics. Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan Press, 49–76. Emmett, Anthony (1999), Popular Resistance and the Roots of Nationalism in Namibia. Basel: Schlettwein Publishing. Emongor, Rosemary (2008), Namibia: Trends in Growth of Modern Retail and Wholesale Chains and Related Agribusiness, Re-governing Markets Policy Brief 8. Pretoria: Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development, University of Pretoria. Gewald, Jan-Bart (1999), Herero Heroes: A Socio-Political History of the Herero of Namibia, 1890–1923. Oxford: James Currey Press. Harring, Sydney L. and Willem Odendaal (2002), ‘One Day We Will All Be Equal…’: A Socio-Legal Perspective on the Namibian Land Reform and Resettlement Process. Windhoek: Legal Assistance Centre. Hongslo, Eirin and Tor A. Benjaminsen (2002), ‘Turning Landscapes into Nothing: A Narrative on Land Reform in Namibia’, Forum for Development Studies 29/2, 321–347. Kaapama, Phanuel (2007), ‘Commercial Land Reforms in Post-Colonial Namibia: What Happened to Liberation Struggle Rhetoric?’ in Henning Melber (ed.), Transitions in Namibia: Which Change for Whom. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, pp. 29–49. Katjavivi, Peter (1988), A History of Resistance in Namibia. London: James Currey. Kiwanuka, M. Semakula (1970), ‘Colonial Policies and Administrations in Africa: The Myths of the Contrasts’, in African Historical Studies 3/2, 295–315. Klerman, Daniel M., Paul G. Mahoney, Holger Spamann and Mark Weinstein (2011), ‘Legal Origin or Colonial History?’, Journal of Legal Analysis, 3/2, 379–409. Markovitz, Irvin Leonard (ed.) (1970), African Politics and Society. New York: Free Press. Mbuende, Kaire (1986), Namibia, the Broken Shield: Anatomy of Imperialism and Revolution. Malmo: Liber. McAuslan, Patrick (2015), ‘Property and Empire: From Colonialism to Globalisation and Back’, Social and Legal Studies, 24/3, 339–357. Melber, Henning (2000), ‘Economic and Social Transformation in the Process of Colonialisation: Society and State before and during German Rule’, in Christiaan Keulder (ed.), State, Society and Democracy: A Reader in Namibian Politics. Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan Press, 16–48. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. (2013), ‘Why Decoloniality in the 21st Century?’, The Thinker 48, 10–15. Pakenham, Thomas (2011), The Scramble for Africa. London: Abacus. Ramanathapillai, Rajmohan (2008), ‘Modern Warfare and the Spiritual Disconnection from Land’, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 20/1, 113–120. Sarkin, Jeremy (2004), ‘The Coming of Age of Claims for Reparations for Human Rights Abuses Committed in the South’, Sur Revista Internacional de Directos Humanos 1/1, 67–126. Stone, D. (2001), ‘White Men with Low Moral Standards? German Anthropology and the Herero Genocide’, Patterns of Prejudice 35/2, 33–45. Tapscott, Chris (1993), ‘National Reconciliation, Social Equity and Class Formation in Independent Namibia’, Journal of Southern African Studies 19/1, 29–39.
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United Nations Institute for Namibia (UNIN) (1985), ‘Economic Development Strategies for Independent Namibia’, in N.K. Duggal (ed.), Namibia Studies Series, No. 9. Lusaka: UNIN. Vigne, Rudolph (1975), A Dwelling Place of Our Own: The Story of the Namibian Nation. London: IDAF. Winterfeldt, Volker (2002), ‘Labour Migration in Namibia – Gender Aspects’, in Volker Winterfeldt, Tom Fox and Pempelani Mufune (eds), Namibia Sociology. Windhoek: University of Namibia, 39–74.
8
‘An inclination towards a policy of extermination’? German and British discourse on colonial wars during High Imperialism Ulrike Lindner
1 Introduction In 1911,1 a memorandum produced by the Office of the Governor General of British South Africa in Pretoria described the German military strategy in colonial wars as having ‘an inclination towards a policy of extermination’.2 The memorandum also discussed possible German strategies for dealing with different indigenous groups in the adjacent colony of German South-West Africa (GSWA). It referred in particular to the Herero and Nama War of 1904–7, during which the Germans carried out a genocide against the Herero and Nama people and transported the majority of the surviving population into forced labour and concentration camps (Zimmerer 2001; Kreienbaum 2015). The administration of British South Africa feared that the Germans could again apply such strategies against certain local groups. Generally, they were afraid that the German military would wage another war against the indigenous population in GSWA and provoke unrest in their own colony. It is obvious from both the memorandum and further discussions by British colonizers and the British press that the genocidal Herero and Nama War was seen as exceptional, even compared with the atrocious colonial wars waged by the European colonizers in Africa during High Imperialism, most of which the colonizers won due to their strong technical supremacy (Lindner 2011: 193). A prominent example is the Battle of Omdurman in the 1898 reconquest of the Sudan when 11,000 native warriors under their religious leader Mahdi were killed, compared to 48 soldiers of the British-Egyptian army (Falls 1967: 299). The British Empire engaged in several wars in African colonies at the turn of the 20th century, including the cruel war against the Zulus in the colony of Natal in South Africa in 1906. The British colony Natal bordered on the Cape Colony in the east and GSWA in the north, and stood under the suzerainty of British South Africa. This chapter analyses aspects of the British and German discourse dealing with these two colonial wars in Africa: the Herero and Nama War in GSWA 1904–7 and the so-called Natal Rising/Bambatha Rising (also referred to as the Bambatha Rebellion) in the British colony of Natal in 1906. It investigates whether there were similar arguments, such as a superior European civilization, of
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racial superiority, of a Darwinian struggle and of a European military prestige that should not be stained by a victory of the colonized or by a lenient peace arrangement. It examines the differences and pays special attention to the question of whether an exceptional German discourse existed on the extermination of colonized people in colonial wars. In the history of colonial wars, comparative approaches have long been neglected. During the last decade, however, such approaches gained more attention, as they allow the identification of patterns of colonial expansion, illustrate parallels in imperial strategies and examine actors from different European colonial empires from a new perspective. It is thus possible to recognize comparable situations and not remain within the perspective of a single empire (Lemke 2018: 42–4; Walter 2011). Furthermore, the discourse on violence in colonial wars shaped imperial identities and ideologies and could simplify the complex colonial order by categorizing the indigenous population as ‘enemies’ (Lehning 2018: 74). To investigate such discourses enables us to identify common stereotypes and to look at racialized aspects, as well as at the interplay of legitimacy and criticism used in the discourses on colonial wars (Klein and Schumacher 2006: 12). A wealth of studies exists on the Herero and Nama War, on the reasons for its outbreak and for the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples (e.g. Gewald 1999; Zimmerer 2001; Zimmerer and Zeller 2003). The German literary discourse dealing with the Herero and Nama War has been examined by Medardus Brehl (2007). However, Brehl looks chiefly at colonial novels and not at official documents, colonial journals or parliamentary papers and debates, as I will do in this chapter. In my own work on British and German colonialism in Africa, I have investigated the reciprocal perception of colonial wars and cooperation between German and British colonizers, especially during the Herero and Nama War (Lindner 2011: 222–66). The Bambatha Rebellion has also been investigated by several scholars (Marks 1970; Guy 2005, 2006), although the British discourse on the rebellion has so far received less attention. This chapter aims at a new comparative perspective on the two wars and to embed them in the international discussion on colonial wars and their legal rules. It analyses military manuals dealing with colonial wars, expert literature from the German and British military as well as from colonial administrations, and includes parliamentary debates and newspaper coverage of the colonial wars. First, I will address the so-called ‘small wars’ in African colonies at the turn of the century in general. I will then turn to the war in the GSWA colony and its reception in Germany, while also integrating British views on the German war. Finally, I will analyse the British discourse around the Bambatha Rebellion.
2 Colonial wars in Africa at the turn of the 20th century: characteristics and arguments In many of the new African colonies that had been appropriated during the ‘Scramble for Africa’ in the mid- to late 1880s, be they British or German, colonial administrations began to establish stricter rules and tried to reach a
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valorization of the colonies in the years around 1900. As the infrastructure developed, the local populations’ scope for action started to become restricted. The colonial administrations mapped the country, constructed railways, conducted censuses and collated knowledge about the local populations, thus making it easier to levy gradually rising hut and poll taxes. These measures greatly increased the pressure on the indigenous populations (Kuss 2010: 105). As explained by Phanuel Kaapama in this volume, hardly any settlers or planters in the colonies of Africa worked independently on their fields or plantations, rather they were always dependent on cheap indigenous or migrant labour. Consequently, managing the labour forces became a key concern for the colonizers. Hut and poll taxes that had to be paid in cash were used to force the indigenous populations into dependency on the plantations, in mines and in infrastructural projects (Hyam 1999: 59; Sunseri 2002). Furthermore, in settler colonies such as GSWA or British Rhodesia, the indigenous population was gradually dispossessed of their land for the benefit of the European settlers who saw themselves as entitled to a key position within the colonial administration and substantially influenced decisions in the colony (Veracini 2010). These developments eventually led to violent resistance by the indigenous populations, culminating in several wars in African colonies around the turn of the 20th century, such as the wars against the Herero and Nama in GSWA 1904–7 and against the Zulus in Natal in 1906. The ultimate reason for the outbreak of the war in Natal was the sudden introduction of a heavy poll tax (Marks 1970). Similar developments and ensuing forms of resistance can be observed in many other African colonies: the Ndebele and Shona uprising in British Rhodesia of 1896–7, the Hut Tax War in British Sierra Leone in 1898, and the Maji Maji War in German East Africa of 1905–8 (Gordon 2018). During the phase of colonial conquest in Africa, the initial goal of most of the colonial wars in the age of High Imperialism was to achieve peace agreements. Later on, however, they mostly aimed at completely quelling revolts and totally subjugating the populations (Wesseling 1989: 8). The wars were characterized by the European colonial power’s superior technology, in particular through the use of machine guns and other automated weapons (Headrick 1981: 117–21). One feature of colonial wars was that the imperial powers’ quick victories in big battles were often followed by long drawn-out guerrilla wars. The guerrilla tactics of the indigenous populations led to increasingly drastic steps on the part of the colonial troops, who tried to break resistance by every possible means, such as the use of scorched-earth tactics. During the Maji Maji war in German East Africa, for example, the German colonial army burnt down fields and destroyed supplies and villages, resulting in about 300,000 deaths on the side of the indigenous population, whereas the death toll on the German side numbered only several hundred people (Iliffe 1979: 200; Wimmelbrücker 2005: 92). In such colonial wars, often called ‘small wars’ in accordance with the term guerrilla (small war in Spanish), different regulations were employed to those of ‘regular wars’ between European or ‘Western’ adversaries who were seen as civilized and for whom regulations were more strictly defined. Early forms of
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international regulations applied to such wars. Specifically, the Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907, as multilateral treaties, dealt exactly with regulations for behaviour in times of martial law (Dülffer 1999). Alongside more general standards, the protection of civilians as well as the internment of prisoners should be guaranteed. However, indigenous people were not regarded as belligerents in international law and hence could be treated differently, as the international lawyer Francis Lassa Oppenheim stated in 1905. He emphasized that colonial wars were not wars in the sense of international law and thus brutal treatment of foes, killing of prisoners and slaughter of civilians were thus seen as legitimate. Both French and British military experts had gained much experience in such ‘savage wars’, as they were called during the 19th century, be it in the conquest of Algeria after 1830 or in various wars in the expanding British Empire. One of the most important manuals of the period addressed in this chapter was Charles Callwell’s Small Wars, published in 1896, which underwent several reprints and had a broad readership. Callwell could draw on earlier manuals and military publications in which a clear racist distinction between ‘savages’ and regular troops existed (Wagner 2018: 218). Callwell’s book quickly established itself as a standard British military manual on colonial wars; it was translated into French and was also known in German military circles (Lindner 2016: 93). Kim Wagner has emphasized that Callwell’s book occupied a crucial position, as it reflected earlier and contemporary military practice as strongly as it shaped further colonial wars (Wagner 2018: 223). The following paragraphs illustrate the general arguments in the military discourse on small wars. Callwell writes: Small war is a term which has come largely into use of late years, and which is admittedly somewhat difficult to define. Practically it may be said to include all campaigns other than those where both the opposing sides consist of regular troops. It comprises the expeditions against savages and semicivilised races by disciplined soldiers, it comprises campaigns undertaken to suppress rebellions and guerilla warfare in all parts of the world… and it thus covers operations very varying in their scope and in their conditions. (Callwell 1896: 21) Callwell’s statement reveals the general racist argument of European or ‘Western’ superiority over ‘savages and semi-civilized races’ that implies a different, more brutal form of war. The military did not view the enemy as equal and the conditions on the ground were not the same as those to which the European colonizers were accustomed at home. Europeans fought differently in the colonized territories than they did at home as Callwell explains: But when there is no king to conquer, no capital to seize, no organized army to overthrow and when there are no celebrated strongholds to capture and no great centres of population to occupy, the objective is not so
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easy to select. It is then that the regular troops are forced to resort to cattle lifting and village burning and the war assumes an aspect which may shock the humanitarian. ‘In planning a war against an uncivilized nation who has, perhaps, no capital’ says Lord Wolseley ‘your first object should be the capture of whatever they prize most, and the destruction or deprivation of which will probably bring the war most rapidly to a conclusion’… The French in Algeria, adopting the methods of Abd-el-Kader and his followers made sudden raids or razzias… carrying off the live stock and property of their wandering opponents. In the Kaffir wars, especially in 1852, this mode of procedure has been very common, adapted with success… The destruction of crops and stores of grain of the enemies is another way of carrying on hostilities. This method is more exasperating to the adversary. (Callwell 1896: 40f.) This is exactly what happened during the Maji Maji War in German East Africa. Indeed, behind these war policies clearly stood the colonizers’ assumption that a war against ‘non-civilized’, inferior societies calls for all sorts of brutal excessive measures, since ‘normal warfare’ would not result in a victory. Furthermore, it became apparent that such strategies were discussed by European military experts and adopted by various European colonial armies. When dealing with rebellions, Callwell advises the use of even more drastic sanctions: When, however, the campaign takes the form of quelling an insurrection, the object is not only to prove to the opposing force unmistakably which is the stronger, but also to inflict punishment on those who have taken up arms. In this case it is often necessary to injure property… Still there is a limit to the amount of licence in destruction which is expedient… Expeditions to put down a revolt were not put in motion merely to bring about a temporary cessation of hostility. Their purpose is to ensure a lasting peace. Therefore in choosing the objective, the overawing and not the exasperation of the enemy is the end to keep in view. (Callwell 1896: 42) Overall, one should emphasize that the use of measures that would have been forbidden by international law and addressed as inhuman in European wars were seen by all European colonizers as absolutely necessary when opposing ‘savages’. These tactics and measures were often justified by the allegedly ‘dishonourable’ war tactics of the indigenous population. In Callwell’s manual, the notion of extermination of an adversary indigenous ‘race’ or nation is not discussed as a necessary option, he rather talks of ‘overawing’ them, not of complete ‘exasperation’. Although he concedes that the general tactics of small wars can be highly devastating, he hardly employs the argument of a ‘war between races’ in the sense of a Darwinian struggle. The destruction of an indigenous population was not seen as necessary or
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advisable for the general conduct of small wars. Still, the brutality of ‘savage warfare’ should never be underestimated, since it often led to slaughter and destruction (Wagner 2018: 231). For Callwell and other military experts of the time, such measures were advanced as legal and justified means to wage war against indigenous populations.
3 The discourse on the Herero and Nama War In January 1904, the Herero people rose under their Chief Maharero in the centre of the German colony. Among the main reasons given for the uprising are the consequences of the cattle plague, land dispossessions by German settlers and the growing financial pressure on the Herero community (Bley 1968: 164–8; Gewald 1999: 110–38; Zimmerer 2001: 25–31). At the outset, around 100 Germans were killed by the Herero fighters, and Maharero was able to reconquer a large part of the former Herero land from the Germans. Governor Theodor Leutwein tried to end the war through a settlement proposal, however there was increasing pressure from Germany and especially from the German General Staff to achieve a complete subjugation of the indigenous population and to avoid a loss of prestige. This is a common and strongly applied argument in the German military and in political discourse on colonial matters. In colonial expeditions and wars, any loss of prestige had to be avoided, and retaining military prestige could only be reached by complete retribution (Lindner 2011: 466). In April 1904, Leutwein was removed and General Lothar von Trotha, a hardliner and advocate of a policy of complete subjugation, was appointed. He was determined to wage a racial war in the colony and to bring about a complete surrender. He planned the destruction of the Herero (Bley 1968: 195–203) and wrote about the Herero nation in 1904: ‘Ich glaube, dass die Nation als solche vernichtet werden muss, oder wenn dies durch taktische Schläge nicht möglich ist, operativ und durch die weitere Detail-Behandlung aus dem Lande gewiesen werden muss’ [I believe the nation as such must be destroyed or, if this is not possible by tactical moves, it needs to be expelled from the country by other means that need further consideration].3 In his policy of destruction, von Trotha was supported by the chief of the German General Staff, Alfred von Schlieffen, who used similar arguments (Schaller 2004: 298; Der Große Generalstab 1906). At the Battle of Waterberg in August 1904, the Herero finally suffered a crushing defeat. Part of the Herero people could flee but were driven by the German army into the waterless Omaheke desert and most of them died. Just a few were able to escape to British Bechuanaland (Zimmerer 2001: 50). Afterwards, in October 1904, General von Trotha issued his infamous annihilation order against all Herero people (Hull 2005: 56–8): ‘Innerhalb der deutschen Grenze wird jeder Herero mit oder ohne Gewehr, mit oder ohne Vieh erschossen. Ich nehme keine Weiber oder Kinder mehr auf, treibe sie zu ihrem Volk oder lasse sie erschießen’ [Within the German border, every Herero will be shot, regardless of whether he has a gun or not, and holds livestock or not. I will not take in women or children anymore but drive them to their people or let them be shot].
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The annihilation order was revoked in December 1904 by Emperor Wilhelm II, after criticism in Germany, but the majority of the Herero had already died in battles. Civilians and prisoners had been shot mercilessly, and many had died of hunger and thirst in the Omaheke desert. The German army continued their ‘race war’ in the colony until von Trotha was recalled to Germany in November 1905 (Bley 1968: 204–6). After the defeat of the Herero, the Nama rose in the south of the colony and a cruel guerrilla war continued until 1907/8. The Nama suffered a similar treatment to the Herero. Most of the Herero and Nama survivors were interned in concentration camps where they had to live in terrible conditions and carry out forced labour. In these camps, which existed until April 1908, death rates were extremely high, and this can also be understood as a form of extermination policy. Around 75–80 per cent of the 60,000–80,000 Herero people lost their lives as a result of the genocide. In the Nama War in the south of the colony around 10,000 of the 20,000 Nama died (Bley 1968: 191; Hull 2005: 70–82). In Germany there was criticism of von Trotha’s extermination policy, particularly in the German parliament. August Bebel of the Social Democratic Party voiced his strong disapproval of the colonial war in GSWA several times, most outspokenly in a parliamentary speech in January 1905 (Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 202, January 1905: 4104). In a significant debate in December 1905, members of the Catholic Centre Party and of liberal parties also condemned the conduct of the army and asked for a halt to the war (Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 214, 2 December 1905: 97). However, the criticism did not effect a change in policy. After a new election in 1906, called the ‘Hottentottenwahl’ [Hottentott Election] (Hottentott was the derogatory designation of the Nama in contemporary German discourse), was won by the parties supporting the continuation of the war, the idea of complete suppression of the indigenous population prevailed. According to reports in the daily press and colonial journals, the Herero and Nama War and von Trotha’s politics of extermination were often considered completely justified. The Deutsche Kolonialzeitung praised von Trotha’s strike against the Herero and reported with indifference that a successful flight of the Herero after the Battle of Waterberg would be unlikely, and that they would probably die of hunger and thirst (‘Zur Kriegslage’, Deutsche Kolonialzeitung (DKZ), 25 August 1904: 334). Medardus Brehl has shown that this was portrayed in a similar manner in several colonial novels. He concludes that the total subjugation of the indigenous population, their disappearance and their extermination was forecast in the German discourse on the war (Brehl 2007: 216). These justifications for the destruction of the enemy differ from the common arguments in the standard military publications on small wars. As shown in the beginning of this chapter, the ‘inclination for extermination’ in particular was seen as exceptional and condemned by officials of the
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neighbouring British Cape Colony. My own research has shown that the Foreign Office, the Cape administration and the British press all criticized the Germans’ brutal treatment of the indigenous population in general and of African women and prisoners of war (Lindner 2016). Some British observers blamed the inexperience of the Germans for the radicalization and escalation into a war of extermination (TNA, 8 April 1904).4 Also the change from Leutwein’s policies to von Trotha’s cruel new policy was recognized and heavily criticized: Colonel Leutwein has been exactly 11 years as Governor in GSWA and he knows the native mind better than any other German officer or German official now in the colony. Colonel Leutwein… has been blamed for treating the natives with too great leniency and consideration… but it is safe to say that Colonel Leutwein’s policy towards the natives which may have erred upon the side of moderation must be held to be infinitely preferable to the policy of extermination which in one form or another is being so recklessly urged in this country. (‘The Rising’, The Times, 14 November 1904: 4) Further arguments within the German discourse strongly resemble the general arguments used in discussions of colonial wars and in descriptions of indigenous adversaries. The Herero were depicted as savages, as inferior beings, as ugly, brutal and as thieves. An article in the conservative Neue Preußische Zeitung describes the physical characteristics of Herero people as follows: Die Herero unterscheiden sich in ihrem Typus nur wenig von den anderen Bantuvölkern… Aus dem langen und schmalen Schädel springt eine groß entwickelte und starke gekrümmte Nase hervor… zu dem ziemlich abstoßenden Anblick gesellt sich ein ekelhafter, die Nase gröblich beleidigender Gestank der von ihnen ausströmt und den bekannten eigentümlichen Negergeruch noch weit übertrifft, weil sie der Gewohnheit sich zu waschen gründlich abhold sind und sich statt dessen den ganzen Körper mit einer Salbe einschmieren, die aus ranziger Butter, dicker, saurer Milch und Ockerfarbe bereitet wird. [The Herero only differ slightly in their features from the other Bantu peoples… A large and hooked nose arises from the long narrow skull… Their repulsive appearance is accompanied by a disgusting stench which is grossly insulting to the nose, which emanates from them and exceeds way beyond the well-known typical smell of the negro, as they [the Herero] are thoroughly unaccustomed to washing themselves. Rather they put a cream on their whole body, which consists of rancid butter, thick, sour milk, and ochre pigment.] (Neue Preußische Zeitung, 20 January 1904)
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The Herero character is also portrayed in highly pejorative terms: Die Mehrzahl von ihnen sind freche Spitzbuben, die, bei einem Diebstahl ertappt, noch hintendrein behaupten, daß ein Herero niemals stehle. Bestialisch ist… ihre Grausamkeit. Daß sie den Gefangenen Hände und Füße abschneiden und den Kindern den Bauch aufschlitzen, gilt ihnen als ganz selbstverständlich. [The majority of them are cheeky rogues, who after being caught stealing still assert that a Herero would never steal. Their cruelty is vicious… Cutting off their captives’ hands and feet and slitting open children’s bellies is deemed by them to be entirely natural.] (Neue Preußische Zeitung, 20 January 1904) One finds similar descriptions in the Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, the organ of the German Colonial Society (Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft). For example, the Herero are called schwarze Teufel [black devils] and the Nama a Räuberbande [band of robbers] (‘Zur Kriegslage’, DKZ, 18 August 1904: 322; ‘Der Aufstand’, DKZ, 15 September 1904: 62). Carl Schlettwein described the character of the Herero thus: ‘Gefühle kennt der Herero nicht, die Begriffe Ehre, Wahrheit sind ihm unbekannt, ja lächerlich. Lügen, stehlen, ja rauben und morden sind dem Herero kaum Verbrechen, wenigstens nicht, wenn sie von einem Großen des Volkes verübt werden’ [The Herero has no feelings; the terms ‘honour’ and ‘truth’ are unknown to him, they are ridiculous to him. Lying, stealing, robbing and murdering are hardly crimes to the Herero, at least not if they are committed by a great Chief of their people] (Schlettwein 1905: 11). These mostly fictional descriptions were employed to justify the cruelty and violence of the German troops. The line of argument was that the Herero and Nama waged war in a devious and cruel way and it was necessary to subdue them with even greater cruelty (‘Zur Lage’, DKZ, 29 September 1904: 383). They should be completely crushed. This would be the only way to secure a further and better development of the German colony. An article of the Deutsche Kolonialzeitung summarized this view thus: ‘Daß nur eine bedingungslose Unterwerfung, Abgabe aller Waffen, Verlust ihres Landes und ihrer Herden ihnen [den Hereros] den Frieden bringen kann und daß ein furchtbares Strafgericht die Sühne ihrer teuflischen Mordtaten bilden will und muss’ [That only unconditional submission, surrender of all weapons, loss of their land and flocks can bring them peace, and that a terrible tribunal will and must make them atone for their diabolical murderous acts] (‘Zur Kriegslage’, DKZ, 18 August 1904: 322). Furthermore, the argument of a Social Darwinist struggle between the Germans and the Herero loomed large in German publications and discussions of the war. A good example of the Social Darwinist way of thinking is Gustav Frenssen’s adventure novel, Peter Moors Fahrt nach Südwest [Peter Moors Journey to Southwest Africa]. This was a story of the German campaign against the Herero, which appeared in Germany in 1906 and became a
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bestseller. The book’s protagonist embeds the Herero and Nama War in a narrative of a racial struggle from which the Western societies have to emerge victorious. Africans are stereotypically described as a lower race, as primitive, stupid and bad-smelling. They are never referred to as ‘Herero’, but always as ‘Feinde’ [enemies] (Frenssen 1906). Schlettwein explains the Social Darwinist point of view as follows: Es gibt ja Menschen, die auf dem Standpunkt stehen, Kolonisieren ist überhaupt ein Verbrechen, man soll die Wilden in ihrem Lande ungestört auf ihre Art leben zu lassen. Man braucht nur in die graueste Vorzeit zurückgehen, man wird sehen, überall, wo ein Volk, das zu einer Macht gekommen war, diese nicht zu halten und zu festigen verstand, kam bald ein Stärkerer, der es unterjochte und sich zu seinem Herrn machte, wie es früher gewesen ist, wird es auch in der Zukunft bleiben. [There are, indeed, people who believe that colonization per se is a crime, and that one should let the savages live in their own way on their own land without interference. One only needs to go back to the darkest prehistoric times to see that in all places where a people had come to power but were not able to maintain and reinforce this power, a stronger people soon arrived to subjugate and rule over them. It was always so and shall be evermore.] (Schlettwein 1905: 15) In a similar vein, in the Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, the Herero were depicted as ‘hordes’ and the Kriegslust [belligerence] of African people was deplored (‘Der Aufstand’, DKZ, 18 February 1904: 62). While such arguments were prominent in the German context, Social Darwinist interpretations of the colonial wars in Africa could also be found in the discourses of various European empires at the end of the 19th century. Racist categorizations and the figure of a ‘war of races’ were widely used to justify not only the defeat but also the destruction of the indigenous enemies in ‘savage wars’ (Wagner 2018: 222). Much of the discourse on the Herero and Nama War can thus be considered as the typical contemporary discourse on small wars/colonial wars – only its strong insistence on extermination differs from the usual arguments employed in discussions of small wars.
4 The discourse on the Natal Rebellion of 1906 Following the South African war of 1899–1902 Natal suffered from an economic depression, which led to severe financial strains and to growing tensions within this self-governing colony of the British Empire. In January 1906, the Natal government introduced a new head tax of one pound for all men in addition to the existing hut tax. The aim was on the one hand to directly increase the income of the colony and on the other to force young African men to take up paid work in plantations and especially in mines, since there
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was a shortage of labour in the South African mines at the time (Davenport et al. 2000: 242; Thompson 2001: 2). The African population suffered greatly from the newly installed tax and their discontent led to several incidents and small uprisings among the Zulu population of the colony. Many Africans refused to pay the tax and two white police officers were murdered during several small revolts (Marks 1970: 173–80; Guy 2005: 47, 2006: 36). After this incident the government of Natal mobilized its troops (Marks 1970: 190) and on 9 February 1906 the governor of Natal, Henry Mc Callum, imposed martial law because: I have been advised and am of opinion that it is desirable and necessary to take prompt measures for the preservation of peace and good order and for the suppression of any disturbance within the Colony and for this purpose to place the Colony under Martial Law. (Parliament 1906a: 4) As a result, the Natal army was able to arrest many of the insurgents. More than 20 people were sentenced to death or given long prison sentences, actions that did not require permission from judges under martial law (Marks 1970: 238). The convicts were finally shot in public in March 1906 in order to set an example and to prove that there would be no mercy for insurgents (Guy 2006: 39–41). The actions of the Natal government were criticized in the London Parliament. The Liberal government had first tried to delay the executions, but the death penalties were eventually enforced following heavy criticism of this leniency on the part of the British public and press as well as from the governments of Natal and Australia. The argument of a need for brutal punishment in a war against ‘savages’ was once more employed in accordance with the general discourse on small wars, as seen in the above discussion of Callwell’s manual. Other colonial experts, however, feared that the punishments would have the opposite effect in the form of a radical uprising (Hyam 1968: 239–43). After this development, Bambatha (also spelt Bambata and Bhambatha), one of the Zulu chiefs, rose against the British in April 1906. He and his army were seen as an imminent threat by the Natal government. After lengthy battles, Bambatha’s army finally suffered a crushing defeat at the River Mome at the beginning of June 1906 (Marks 1970: 224). The Natal army won the war by means of modern weapons such as machine guns and cannon against an enemy who had mainly spears and rifles at their disposal. This was the end of Bambatha’s army; he himself was killed and then beheaded. The Bambatha Rebellion was a highly asymmetric war as were most of the small wars/colonial wars in this period: 3,500 Africans died compared to 30 Europeans (24 soldiers and 6 civilians). Additionally, 7,000 Africans received prison sentences and 4,000 endured severe corporal punishment (Marks 1970: xvi; Davenport et al. 2000: 242). Bambatha’s head was brought to the British
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headquarters for identification, an incident which greatly embittered the African population in Natal and also led to criticism in England (‘The Natal Rising’, The Times, 18 July 1906). The Cape Times even compared the rebellion in Natal with the Herero and Nama War in GSWA (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, 19 July 1906).5 The war against Bambatha was far shorter than the Herero and Nama War, however, and fewer colonial troops were involved. Consequently, it did not attain as much notoriety as the many of the other wars waged in the British Empire in this period. Nevertheless, there was a significant British discourse on the war, and the conduct of the government of Natal and of the Natal army led to criticism in London and subsequently to an investigation in the London Parliament. As with the discourse in Germany, most British publications on the Natal Rebellion portrayed Bambatha in a highly pejorative manner: as a reckless, brutal, inferior person, as a thief and as always being in debt: As a boy, Bambata was headstrong and fond of fighting. He frequently neglected the cattle he had to herd… As a chief he was harsh, extravagant and reckless, selfish and domineering. He rapidly squandered the property his father left… he continued in his career of extravagance. He illicitly purchased European liquor and drank freely thereof, as well as of Native beer, though not so as to become a confirmed drunkard. In order to make good what he had squandered in drink and in other ways, he borrowed from lawyers who, not being less importunate or exacting than other people, usually got back their own with interest through the local Magistrate’s court. Bambata was constantly being sued, either on account of loans or for outstanding rent, and to such indebtedness there seemed to be no end. Instead of bracing himself up and endeavouring to meet his obligations, he persisted in his reckless conduct, until he became a nuisance to Europeans, on the one hand, and the members of his tribe, on the other. A more perturbed spirit than he was at the close of 1905 is scarcely possible to conceive. (Stuart 1913: 105) Walter Bosman’s The Natal Rebellion, with a foreword of the commanding officer of the Natal troops, Colonel MacKenzie, confirms such a characterization: Bambata’s rule did not inculcate obedience to law and order amongst his people, inasmuch as he himself was committed for trial for cattlestealing and was suspended on 10th January, 1895… He had, on entering into man’s estate acquired the habit of borrowing and was always heavily in debt. Early in the year 1906 he was implicated in a
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faction fight in which he assaulted a member of his own tribe and was fined the sum of 20 Pounds. (Bosman 1907:19) The Zulu people were thus depicted as cruel and deserving retaliation in the form of a harsh policy and hard punitive measures. The arguments run along the same lines as in the discourse on the Herero and Nama War. Letters and reports from Natal in particular emphasized such a view. The Times printed a letter of 6 October 1906 from Pietermaritzburg in Natal: Picking up an English paper the other day I saw that one of the members of Parliament asked if the Militia in Natal had said ‘no Surrender’, He should have added ‘After this’ to this question. They did say ‘no surrender after this’ but it was on the impulse of the moment. They came across the body of a Mr. Veal, a man unarmed and going across the country about his business. The rebels caught him, cut off one of his hands, made him run a distance, then cut off the other hand, made him run again, stabbing him in the back to make him run faster… stabbing him until he dropped down dead. All this was told by one of the Kaffir women who stood by and saw it all. Was there any wonder that the men, coming on a sight like this should say ‘No surrender after this?’ (‘The Natal Rising’, The Times, 9 November 1906) In the British press as well as in Parliament there was criticism of an alleged policy of no surrender during the Bambatha Rebellion, but this was rebuffed by the colonial undersecretary, Winston Churchill. He characterized the Bambatha Rebellion as a normal war, as can be seen in a discussion in Parliament on 12 July 1906, when a Labour politician, Keir Hardie, asked about the conduct of the British troops: Mr. Keir Hardie asked the undersecretary for the colonies whether his attention had been called to the request made by the Natal troops to Colonel Mackenzie that no surrenders should be received from Zulu natives against whom military operations were being conducted and whether he proposed to take any action to ensure that the granting of quarter to surrendering foes was provided for. Mr. Churchill: I have seen the report in a press telegram to which the Hon. Member refers. I cannot tell how far it is well-founded. But even if a cry of ‘No prisoners’ was raised by individual troopers in a moment of excitement and under intense provocation, the fact is in itself a proof that an opposite policy towards surrendering Zulus was being pursued by the officer in responsible command. (‘Parliament’, The Times, 12 July 1906: 6)
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The Natal government even tried to lay the sole blame for the cruelty during the war on the African auxiliary troops. In a report to the secretary of state for the colonies in London in July 1906 it was insinuated that only the locally raised forces (the African levies) within the Natal army had killed wounded prisoners: [Natal] Government has received no information that the wounded were killed by the native levies. It is of course, possible that levies away from the observation of the European officers may have killed the badly wounded and it would be quite impossible to prevent it, but the Commandant of Militia is certain that this has not been done during the present rebellion to the same extent as in former times. During the Zulu war it was common knowledge that the British native levies did kill the wounded and, to take one example, at the battle of the Inyazanc it was reported, both by Europeans and natives, that the greater proportion of the wounded had been killed and that very few if any prisoners were taken. (Parliament 1906b: 102) Such an argument was also typical of the racist discourse on small wars, as the African auxiliary troops were accused of behaving as ‘uncivilized races’ as soon as they were no longer overseen by ‘civilized Europeans’. Furthermore, the government of Natal emphasized its own ‘unexampled humanity’ in the campaign, as could be read in The Times on 18 July 1906 under the headline ‘The Allegations of Inhumanity’, a reprinted report from the government of Natal: Regarding the charges of inhumanity which have been made as to the manner in which the native operation have been carried out, the Natal Government admits that Bambaata [sic] was decapitated and states that it was in the following circumstances: When the body was found in an advanced state of decomposition, a doctor cut off the head, and carried it to the camp for the purpose of identification. The head was photographed and subsequently buried with the body. The Government contends that the campaign has been conducted with unexampled humanity. Thousands of women and children of rebels have been maintained at the Government’s expense and there are now nearly 3,000 rebels held as prisoners. (‘The Natal Rising’, The Times, 18 July 1906) The beheading of Bambatha was also strongly criticized in Britain and the British press, although the British government had received several reports by officers of the Natal army confirming that the decapitation was absolutely necessary: It was intimated to the Officer Commanding the troops that the dead body of Bambata was lying at the bottom of a gorge about 2,000 feet below the camp, and as it was most essential that it should be ascertained definitely whether Bambata was really killed or not, Major Platt, Natal Medical Corps, with a number of natives was sent down to bring up the
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body for the purpose of identification. On reaching the spot where the body lay, it was found to be in an advanced stage of decomposition, and as the natives refused to carry it to camp, decapitation was absolutely necessary to ensure definite identification by responsible persons acquainted with Bambata. The head was not exhibited but was kept covered and in privacy under an armed guard, and was only shown to persons who stated that they knew Bambata intimately and would be able to recognise him. When this identification was complete and it was proved beyond doubt that the head was that of Bambata, it was returned to the spot and interred with the body. (Parliament 1906b: 103) The Social Darwinist argument of a ‘war between races’ was also employed in the discourse on the Bambatha Rebellion. James Stuart, who described the British military operations against the Zulu insurrection in 1906 on behalf of the Natal government, wrote in the introduction to his book of 1913: The main object of this book is to describe the military operations of the Rebellion of 1906–1908, a rebellion in which a considerable section of the Zulus of Natal and Zululand took up arms against the Government of Natal. Such conflict, was of course, between a race of savages on the one hand and a number of Europeans or representatives of Western Civilisation on the other. (Stuart 1913: 1) Overall, the Bambatha Rebellion delivered most of the arguments and justifications that were used in the discourse on small wars and also in the discourse on the Herero and Nama War in GSWA.
5 Conclusion As Antoinette Burton has recently pointed out, wars, insurgencies and, more generally, disruptions and insecurities shaped the empires of the 19th and 20th centuries to a much greater extent than is generally acknowledged in historical narratives of empires (Burton 2015: 1–5, 20f.). Likewise, new publications on colonial military history emphasize the brutality and the highly racialized doctrine of colonial/small wars and their impact on colonial structures and rule. For this reason it seems essential to look at colonial wars and the discourse surrounding and shaping them, as they shed light on important features of imperial rule (Wagner 2018: 218). Colonial military operations at the turn of the 20th century were generally discussed at the time with the conviction that the European powers were not only technologically, but also racially and culturally superior. The Africans were described as inferior beings and archetypical enemies. Both British and German colonizers used highly derogative terminology to describe indigenous
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populations and condemned their manner of waging war as dishonourable and inhuman, thus allowing the Europeans to retaliate with their own cruelty and inhumanity. The Europeans understood their brutal conduct in colonial/ small wars as legitimate when fighting against ‘savages’. Their view was supported by publications of international lawyers and military experts. Unlike Isabel Hull, who has stressed the singularity of the German colonial war (2005), and in agreement with Kim Wagner (2018), who has convincingly shown the violence and brutality in British colonial wars, I would underline that both in the German and British discourse one can observe similar notions and arguments in the discussions of the two colonial wars with regard to the enemies, the colonized peoples in general, the necessity of brutal retaliation and the ‘war between races’. Classifying particularly African people as being on the lowest rung of the racial ladder certainly fostered the escalation of violence in both wars. Furthermore, even during the Herero and Nama War, which was criticized by the British side as shown above, a notion of sympathy with the fellow colonizer could be equally found in British press discussions, as shown in the following article of 1905 from The Times: A people of wide colonial interests and long colonial experience like our own must necessarily regard with sympathetic interest the misfortunes which Germany is going through in her African colonies… But having gone through the work of colonization under almost every variety of climate and circumstance, and among races of every grade of civilization, we are, perhaps in a better position than others to appreciate the difficulties which have confronted the Germans. (‘Editorial’, The Times, 16 October 1905) With regard to the differences between British and German discourses, I would make three strong arguments. Firstly, that the German discourse on the Herero and Nama War was more strongly influenced than the British by ideas of prestige and notions of a military honour that could be upheld only by a complete surrender by the enemy or by its destruction. This resulted in more radical actions on the side of the German troops. Secondly, even if the Bambatha Rebellion was portrayed as a ‘race war’ by both the British and Germans, the discussion of Social Darwinist notions was more prominent on the German side. As a final and most important point, the notion of an allegedly necessary extermination of the Herero and Nama was frequently put forward in the discussions on the war in GSWA. Such arguments were an exception, even within the context of the brutal small wars of High Imperialism, and fostered the genocide that was committed against the Herero and Nama.
Notes 1 I would like to thank Tom Menger for suggesting useful bibliographical references and Lena Rüssing for help with my research.
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2 National Archive of the Republic of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa, GG (Governor General) 276 4/34, Report of the Intelligence Department of the General Staff at Cape Town, 22 April 1911. 3 Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Germany, R 1001 (Reichskolonialamt)/1089, Proklamation von General von Trotha [proclamation of General von Trotha], 2 October 1904, 2089, 5–6. 4 The National Archives, Public Record Office, Kew, England, WO 106 (Directorate of Military Operations and Military Intelligence, Correspondence and Papers) 106/ 265 (Gleichen, Military Attaché, British Embassy Berlin, 8 April 1904). 5 Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, R 14673, Metternich, Kaiserlich Deutsche Botschaft to Reichskanzler von Bülow, 19 July 1906.
References Published primary sources Bosman, Walter (1907), The Natal Rebellion of 1906. Longmans: London. Callwell, Charles Edward (1896), Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice. London: Stationary Office. Der Große Generalstab (1906), Die Kämpfe der deutschen Truppen in Südwestafrika, Volume 1: Hererokrieg, auf Grund amtlichen Materials bearbeitet von der kriegsgeschichtlichen Abteilung I des Großen Generalstabes. Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn. Frenssen, Gustav (1906), Peter Moors Fahrt nach Südwest. Berlin: Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Oppenheim, Lassa Francis Lawrence (1905), International Law: A Treatise. London: Longmans, Green and Company. Parliament (1906a), Natal (Execution of Natives). Petition to His Majesty in Council of the Twelve Natives Recently Executed in Natal, Cd. 2927. London: Stationery Office. Parliament (1906b), Natal. Further Correspondence Relating to Native Disturbances in Natal, Cd. 3027. London: Stationery Office. Schlettwein, Carl (1905), Der Herero-Aufstand, was hat ihn veranlaßt und was lehrt er uns?Wismar: Bartholdi. Stuart, James (1913), A History of the Zulu Rebellion, 1906, and of Dinuzulu’s Arrest, Trial, and Expatriation. London: Macmillan.
Secondary sources Bley, Helmut (1968), Kolonialherrschaft und Sozialstruktur in Deutsch-Südwestafrika 1894–1914. Hamburg: Leibniz. Brehl, Medardus (2007), Vernichtung der Herero. Diskurse der Gewalt in der deutschen Kolonialliteratur. Munich: Wilhelm Fink. Burton, Antoinette M. (2015), The Trouble with Empire: Challenges to Modern British Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davenport, T. Rodney H. and Christopher Saunders (2000), South Africa: A Modern History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Dülffer, Jost (1999), ‘Die Haager Friedenskonferenzen von 1899 und 1907 im internationalen Staatensystem’, Die Friedens-Warte 74, 98–111. Falls, Cyril (1967), ‘The Reconquest of the Sudan 1896–99’, in Brian Bond (ed.), Victorian Military Campaigns. London: Hutchinson, 279–308.
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Gewald, Jan-Bart (1999), Herero Heroes: A Socio-Political History of the Herero of Namibia, 1890–1923. Athens: Ohio University Press. Gordon, Michelle (2018), ‘The Dynamics of British Colonial Violence’, in Philip Dwyer and Amanda Nettlebeck (eds), Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 153–174. Guy, Jeff (2005), The Maphumulo Uprising: War, Law and Ritual in the Zulu Rebellion. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Guy, Jeff (2006), Remembering the Rebellion: The Zulu Uprising of 1906. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Headrick, Daniel R. (1981), The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hull, Isabel V. (2005), Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hyam, Ronald (1968), Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office 1905–1908: The Watershed of the Empire Commonwealth. London: Macmillan. Hyam, Ronald (1999), ‘The British Empire in the Edwardian Era’, in Judith M. Brown and William Roger Louis (eds), The Twentieth Century: The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume 4. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 47–63. Iliffe, John (1979), A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Klein, Thoralf and Frank Schumacher (2006), ‘Einleitung’, in Thoralf Klein and Frank Schumacher (eds), Kolonialkriege. Militärische Gewalt im Zeichen des Imperialismus. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 7–13. Kreienbaum, Jonas (2015), ‘Ein trauriges Fiasko’: Koloniale Konzentrationslager im südlichen Afrika 1900–1908. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, HIS Verlag. Kuss, Susanne (2010), Deutsches Militär auf kolonialen Kriegsschauplätzen: Eskalation von Gewalt zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag. Lehning, James R. (2018), ‘Categories of Conquest and Colonial Control: The French in Tonkin, 1884–1914’, in Philip Dwyer and Amanda Nettlebeck (eds), Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 73–92. Lemke, Bernd (2018), ‘Militärgeschichte im Vergleich: Imperien, Genozid und Kolonialkriege, circa 1860–1945. Methodische Ansätze – Forschungsergebnisse – Perspektiven’, Neue Politische Literatur 63, 27–66. Lindner, Ulrike (2011), Koloniale Begegnungen. Deutschland und Großbritannien als Imperialmächte in Afrika 1880–1914. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Lindner, Ulrike (2016), ‘Kriegserfahrungen im Empire: Von den Kolonialkriegen zum Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Silke Fehlemann, Nils Löffelbein and Christoph Cornelißen (eds), Europa 1914. Wege ins Unbekannte. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 81–101. Marks, Shula (1970), Reluctant Rebellion: The 1906–1908 Disturbances in Natal. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Schaller, Dominik (2004), ‘Ich glaube, dass die nation als solche vernichtet werden muss: Kolonialkrieg und Völkermord in “Deutsch‐Südwestafrika” 1904–1907’, Journal of Genocide Research 6, 395–430. Sunseri, Thaddeaus (2002), Vilimani: Labor Migration and Rural Change in Early Colonial Tanzania. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Thompson, Paul Singer (2001), A Historical Atlas of the Zulu Rebellion of 1906. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Veracini, Lorenzo (2010), Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Wagner, Kim (2018), ‘Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency’, History Workshop Journal 85, 217–237. Walter, Dierk (2011), ‘Imperialkriege. Begriffe, Erkenntnisinteresse Aktualität’, in Tanja Bührer, Christian Stachelbeck and Dierk Walter (eds), Imperialkriege von 1500 bis heute. Strukturen, Akteure, Lernprozesse. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1–29. Wesseling, Henk L. (1989), ‘Colonial Wars: An Introduction’, in Jaap A. de Moor and Henk L. Wesseling (eds), Imperialism and War. Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1–11. Wimmelbrücker, Ludger (2005), ‘Verbrannte Erde. Zu den Bevölkerungsverlusten als Folge des Maji-Maji Krieges’, in Felicitas Becker and Jigal Beez (eds), Der MajiMaji-Krieg in Deutsch-Ostafrika, 1905–1907. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 87–99. Zimmerer, Jürgen (2001), ‘Deutsche Herrschaft über Afrikaner. Staatlicher Machtanspruch und Wirklichkeit im kolonialen Namibia’. African Affairs 102, 525–526. Zimmerer, Jürgen and Joachim Zeller (eds) (2003), Völkermord in Deutsch-Südwestafrika. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag.
9
German- and British-subject settler narratives from German East Africa Elsie Cloete
1 Introduction It is easy to think of a neat ‘us/them’ dichotomy between Europe and the rest of the world when it comes to colonialism. But as Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis point out, ‘settler societies complicate this neat dichotomy’ (1995: 3) in that they are not mere temporary sojourners composed of mostly male colonial officials providing ‘a thin white line’ between colonial officialdom and the indigenous population (1995: 26), but comprise a population that is there to stay. Defining ‘settler colonialism’, Veracini makes the following distinction: ‘Settlers do not discover: they carry their sovereignty and lifestyles with them… and transform the land into their image, they settle another place without really moving’ (2010: 98). Settlers very often bring their neighbours and their lifestyles along with them. Settlers settle as an almost pre-established community. Using classical epic poetry as templates for the stories of settlements, Veracini judges officialdom as analogous to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, where a colonial project requires its officials to make a circular journey and always return ‘to an original locale – a kind of animus revertendi [a desire to return]’. The broader narrative of colonial settlers, on the other hand, can be compared to Vergil’s Aeneas ‘where the settler colonist moves forward along a story line that cannot be turned back – a kind of animus manendi [desire to remain]’ (Veracini 2010: 53). Colonial settlers’ desire to remain is always deeply implicated in aspects of the colonial policy and is further complicated by notions of residency, personal possession, the idea of home and, very often, firm opposition to policies and plans emanating from a distant colonial power. This chapter focuses on the convergences, competition and conflict and, at times, plain subterfuge between settlers and colonial and military authorities at the time of the First World War (WWI) along the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru of German East Africa (GEA). It deals mostly with the personal diaries, memoirs and journals of a German settler and Afrikaner or Boer settlers in the north-eastern corner of the colony.
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The Boer settlers in GEA were all British subjects – a status imposed on them after being defeated in the Anglo-Boer War (South African War) of 1899–1902. Many had left for GEA to avoid living under a British flag; others had followed in search of adventure, while a good number had left South Africa because arable farmland was freely available in GEA for their sons and daughters to inherit. Across the border in British Kenya, friends, neighbours and relatives from South Africa had in turn opted to take up settlement offers. The Boers from both colonies visited each other on a regular basis and because of the proximity of the Mombasa–Uganda railway, settlers in GEA often bought their supplies and oxen in Nairobi rather than GEA’s Tanga or Dar es Salaam. One of the narratives under discussion is Martha Pienaar’s diary of events during WWI written for the benefit of her son who was studying at university in South Africa. She kept a day-to-day account of incidents, rumours and her sometimes very private and personalized feelings about her neighbours and the German authorities in case she would be unable to relate her experiences in person upon her son’s return. The diary was never intended for publication but was discovered by a visiting schoolmaster from South Africa, and edited and published in modern Afrikaans1 in 1942.2
Figure 9.1 A photograph of Martha Pienaar with her daughter and grandchild probably taken in the 1930s (photographer unknown, published alongside her diary)
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Another settler narrative source is a handwritten memoir by Grieta Malan, wife of one of the first Boer settlers in the area.3 The third primary source is a collection of memoirs and detailed maps by a German settler, Carl Landgrebe, who had studied tropical agriculture at the Deutsche Kolonialschule für Landwirtschaft, Handel und Gewerbe (Tropenschule) [German Colonial School for Agriculture, Trade and Business] in Witzenhausen, and settled at Ngara Nanyuki in the Moshi area in around 1910, where he started a coffee plantation. The Malans had a farm adjoining that of Carl Landgrebe and his wife, Antonie, while the Pienaars lived close by. According to James Young, because ‘diarists wrote from within the whirlwind, the degree of authority in their accounts is perceived by readers to be stronger than that of the texts shaped by hindsight’ (1988: 25). However, one should be aware that ‘for even the diarists themselves – once they enter immediate experience into the tropes and structures of narrative – [they] necessarily convert experience into an organized, often ritualized, memory of experience’ (1988: 25). Some of Landgrebe’s maps and recollections were privately published in a newsletter aimed at settlers formerly from Kenya and Tanzania (Landgrebe 1987: 1, 58–60). The maps were drawn in situ just before and during WWI. The memoirs, like those of his neighbour, Grieta Malan, came much later and
Figure 9.2 Antonie and Carl Landgrebe in German East Africa two years after their arrival in 1910 (photo supplied by Landgrebe family)
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carry within them a ‘testimony with full knowledge of the end, which inevitably contextualizes early experiences in terms of later ones’ (Young 1988: 30) but, even if these memoirs do not constitute ‘perfect factuality, [they] can document the actuality of the writer and the text’ (1988: 37, Young’s emphasis). While some of Landgrebe’s neighbours experimented with crops such as sisal, most continued with what they had been familiar with in South Africa: beef cattle and maize. Imported cattle struggled to adapt to the East African diseases and farmers soon crossbred their remaining cattle with indigenous cattle that had developed immunity to the many tick-borne diseases prevalent in both GEA and Kenya. Despite the happy faces in the photographs above, life for a settler during the first few decades of the 20th century was extremely tough. Grieta Malan writes that Daar was geen paaie nie. En daar was nie markte nie… Arusha was die naaste dorp. Dit het bestaan uit die Boma (Bouma). Die Duitsers het oor die lengte en breedte van die land op al die nedersettings, of dit nou blank of nie-blank was, Bomas gebou. Dit was ‘n fort met skietgate en binne was kantore vir die administrasie. Dit was goed geboude vestings en die Engelse het almal net so behou as administratiewe geboue. Behalwe die Boma was daar ‘n hotelletjie wat aan ou Bloom, die Jood wat met ‘n Afrikaanse meisie getroud was, behoort het en Shermohammed Sajan se winkeltjie… Hy was die bron van inkopies, hul bank en korporasie. Hy’t floreer. Die graan wat hulle gewen het het hy hul voor krediet gegee en daarteen het hul deur die jaar die nodige suiker, meel, khaki en ongeblyk geneem… Daar was ook ‘n poskantoortjie. Ons het 20 myl van Arusha af gewoon. [There were no roads. And there were no markets… Arusha was the nearest town. It consisted of a Boma. The Germans built Bomas along the length and breadth of the country, at every settlement, whether such settlements were white or non-white. Each Boma was a fort with gun embrasures and inside was the administrative office. They were well built and the English retained each Boma as it was for their administration. Apart from the Boma there was a small hotel belonging to Bloom, a Jew married to an Afrikaans girl, and Shermohammed Sajan’s little shop (duka). He was the only source for purchases, the settlers’ bank and the co-op. He flourished. For any grain harvested, the shopkeeper gave credit, and to offset this the settlers bought all their sugar, flour, khaki and unbleached linen from him. There was also a tiny post office. We lived 20 miles from Arusha.] (Malan n.d.)
2 The setting of boundaries and production of maps According to Lakoff and Johnson’s theory of conceptual metaphor, container metaphors are intrinsic to the way we orient ourselves and create a language that spells out bounding surfaces that create an inside and an outside (Lakoff
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and Johnson 2003: 29–32). In colonized Africa and Australasia native settlements often blur such container metaphors. While there may be a thorn boma encircling a small settlement to keep predators away from humans and livestock at night, there is no word for wilderness in Southern, Eastern or Central Africa’s Bantu languages. ‘Wilderness’ is actually a mono-cultural construction by the West that has forgotten that all spaces in Africa have been peopled for thousands of years and do not only consist of grasslands and forests full of wild animals. Humans and non-human animals have consistently occupied the same ‘wilderness’ space, moving when conditions oblige them to seek grazing or arable land elsewhere or when there are territorial disputes. For someone of European origin who takes up an offer of land in the colonies, boundaries of ownership, water rights and surveyor’s beacons are essential components of settler colonialism. It is intrinsic to moral and philosophical thought that settlers’ sense of space needs to be quantifiable. It also becomes essential that the wilderness be kept at bay. Carl Landgrebe’s map of settler spaces south of Mount Kilimanjaro around New Moshi represents a visual metaphor of settler and colonial instincts to put boundaries around something, surveying, labelling and quantifying it. He must have spent a great deal of his time carefully studying and recording his environment by means of maps and elevations. His cartographic representation of Arusha compliments Grieta Malan’s recollection. The hand-drawn and handcoloured map of Arusha details in the central portion the German Boma or walled fort with its administrative offices. To the left of the Boma is an exercise yard for troops flanked below by the Indian settlement. To the right of the settlement are a hotel, a bank and various stores. Above the fort there is a 4 hectare coffee plantation. The entire town is surrounded, in very close proximity, by ‘Bananenschamben’. German Schamben is a Germanized word for shamba – a Swahili word for a small plot of land that is farmed by the indigenous population.4 Banana trees are the most visible landmarks. Not indicated in the map in Figure 9.3, but inevitably nestled between the banana trees, would have been grass and mud huts for the families, smaller huts which served as chicken coops, while one would also have been able to see ‘peas and beans planted beneath coffee shrubs, and in between one observes a row of maize stalks’ (Landgrebe n.d., possibly 1930s). Unlike the settler plantations, which were mostly for mono-agricultural practices such as coffee or flax plantations with neatly planted rows of shrubs, shambas are, in the eyes of Westerners, fairly chaotic and certainly never mono-agricultural. Crops are for individual consumption while surplus is sold locally. Contrary to the neat geometrical inside-outsideness of the German settlement, shamba borders in those days were ill defined or almost non-existent and often merged with the surrounding bush. Livestock wandered freely and often stuck their heads inside the Boma5 gateway or grazed alongside wild animals on the outside. The roads were unpaved; they became a dust bowl in the dry season and a quagmire in the wet. Although the term Bananenschamben appears on the surface innocuous enough, Landgrebe’s map
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Figure 9.3 Map of Arusha (26.5 x 20.5 cm) in 1914 drawn by Carl Landgrebe (supplied by the Landgrebe family). The key lists officers’ accommodation, the askari barracks (middle left), the post office, chemist, Bloom’s hotel, a café, a forge, wagon shed, etc. In the lower left-hand corner is the Indian settlement (Inderdorf) close to the shops (lower centre)
highlights markers of difference. A settler viewing this map would immediately make conclusions based on crude distinctions between order and chaos and construct an oversimplified conception of difference. The Bananenschamben would serve as an informal boundary between the organized space of the colonial West and the wilderness – a liminal space that is a ‘semi-
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chaotic’ space and which merges into the danger, perceived as very real, of ‘chaotic’ space or wilderness. An ownership list corresponding to the numbers indicates that most of the settlers were either German or Greek in this particular area. The wavy, vertical lines at the top of the map signify the deep lava folds made from the time when the three volcano cones comprising Mount Kilimanjaro were still active. These lava folds have eroded over a million years into hidden creeks and valleys. One of them comes to play a vital role for two settler families during WWI. Carl Landgrebe’s maps6 – dozens of them – remained, as far as is known, outside the ken of both the German and British colonial and military authorities. Ironically, Landgrebe’s skill would have proved extremely useful, if a fictional account of WWI events as recounted by the novelist, M.G. Vassanji, can be believed.7 In his The Book of Secrets, Corbin, a young British district commissioner, posted a few miles away in a fictional village just across the border in Kenya, intercepts a bag of letters sent from GEA’s Moshi in 1913. One of the letters was addressed to a German settler living at Voi (in Kenya). In it, it is reported that Herr Braunschweig is of the opinion that the map of the Taveta region published by Voi District Office is in error. Could you ascertain if new information is available? Our own maps can only remain incomplete without it. I am afraid the British are rather lackadaisical in matters of accuracy… Signed W. Greiner, Oberleutnant. (Vassanji 2006: 103) In real life and real time, the issue of accurate maps was vital. The Oberleutnant at Moshi needed only to ask Landgrebe to fetch supplies at Voi and make an accurate scale map at the same time. Preparation for war across the border in Kenya was significantly more chaotic and responses to German preparedness were often based on rumour. John Cotton reports, for instance, that News was scarce and rumours filled the gap. One was that the Germans had an air force in Tanganyika, and many fruitless patrols were sent out to look for mythical planes reported heading for Nairobi. One patrol, dragged out late at night, found at the end of a 60 mile journey that the plane they were seeking was the rising planet Venus. (Cotton 1957: 105) With the advent of WWI, the previously relaxed border crossings between GEA and Kenya stopped for white people. Carl Landgrebe signed up with the German forces and the GEA Boer settlers were urged to either take an oath of neutrality or become German subjects/citizens.
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Figure 9.4 Mittleres Pfanzungsgebiet [sic] des Süd-Kilimandjaro 1914. A scale map of farms allocated and cultivated around the Neu Moshi area south of Mount Kilimanjaro, 1914 (20.2 x 26.7 cm) (map provided by Landgrebe family)
3 Personal diaries of settlers in German East Africa Grieta Malan, wife of one of the first Boer settlers, writes in her memoir that news of the war really unsettled the band of Afrikaners farming on the slopes of Mounts Meru and Kilimanjaro. The Germans wanted to give each settler
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citizenship in the hope that they ‘kon help om die kolonie uit die Engelse kloue te hou’ [could assist in keeping the colony out of English claws] (Malan n.d.). She notes that most farmers declined the offer, for varying reasons. Grieta Malan muses that so many Boers had continued to argue among themselves and were still ‘fighting’ the Anglo-Boer War across dining tables by lamplight each night that they were simply ‘sat van oorlogvoer’ [sick of waging war]. On the other hand, she continues, ‘miskien was hulle toe nie meer so lief vir hulle hooghartige owerhede, wat net so pront met “Drekkige boeren” was soos die Engelsman met sy “Dirty Dutch”’ [perhaps they were no longer so fond of their arrogant overlords who openly referred to them as ‘Drekkige Boeren’ in line with the Englishman with his ‘Dirty Dutch’] (Malan n.d.).8 However, being a British subject is not a set of clothes one can simply shed and discard. While many of the Boer settlers in GEA were fervently antiBritish, they had to accept subjection to a foreign colonizing empire. Both Grieta Malan and Martha Pienaar use the terms onderdaan [subject] and burger [citizen] interchangeably. Legally there was, and still is, a significant difference between being a subject and being a citizen – the latter implying advantages in terms of services, employment and residence. This chapter refers to the Boers and Indians as British subjects, which they were, but to German ‘citizenship’, which is what GEA authorities offered the white settlers. In a situation of conflict, where ‘us/them’ dichotomies are cemented into a container metaphor, where one is either within a camp or outside it, neutrality is never neutral but occupies an unspecified space of incipient disorder. Neutrality is perceived as the so-called disordered Bananenschamben that spread and are neither contained nor outside. Neutrality cannot be innocuous and it is never quantifiable. Within a country that is at war with another, neutrality, no matter how God fearing, friendly and disciplined those people who sign up for such neutrality may be, there is always the notion of unquantifiable chaos and the potential for sabotage. Becoming a German citizen, the German colonial authorities felt, was one way of restoring order and working on an understanding that citizens would feel compelled to act for the benefit of the German cause. And this was especially so during WWI, as the German forces retreated from the area around Kilimanjaro during 1916 into the deeper hinterland under the command of General Paul von LettowVorbeck. It was von Lettow-Vorbeck’s strategy to ‘lock up’ as many Allied troops as possible to prevent them from being sent to the European front. In this he was supremely successful and led British troops, the latter supported by South African and Indian regiments, a merry dance. In the end, he was the only German commander that did not surrender before the armistice was signed (see Miller 1974: 94 and endnote ix). Martha Pienaar was, generally speaking, more pragmatic about unfolding events than her neighbour, Grieta Malan. Pienaar writes that on 6 August 1914, her husband ‘‘n aantal Duitse beamptes en Askari’s teengekom het wat besig was om die Boere sover te beweeg om die eed van neutraliteit te teken’ [encountered a sizeable number of German officers and askaris who were
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urging the Boers to sign the oath of neutrality] (Pienaar 1942: 17). The Germans were visiting each homestead to convince them to either make a declaration of being pro-German or sign the oath of neutrality. The Pienaars opted for neutrality. Two weeks later, Martha reports that die regering neem wat hy nodig het, hoewel met die belofte van baie billike vergoeding. So bv. moes ons gister ons beste en getrouste perd ‘Hotspur’ afstaan. Ons het ‘n bewys van 1600 roepees ontvang. Ons ossewa en agtien trekosse is ook gister afgestaan… Die regering het ook ou ‘Black’ teen ‘n bewys van 1200 roepees gevat’. [the government is taking all that it needs with the promise of reasonable compensation. For instance, we had to surrender our best and loyalest horse, ‘Hotspur’. We received a chit for 1,600 rupees. Our ox wagon and 18 draught oxen also had to be handed over… The government also took old ‘Black’ [another horse] with a chit for 1,200 rupees.] (Pienaar 1942: 18f.) She notes that ‘dit is groot bedrae waarteen die diere gewaardeer word, en ons het niks te kla nie, nogtans kleef ‘n mens se hart tog aan jou liewe diere vas’ [the animals have been valued for large amounts and we really can’t complain even though we so dearly love them] (Pienaar 1942: 19). By December 1914, the Boer farmers in the Moshi area were told to gather their belongings onto a wagon, herd their remaining livestock and trek south into the hinterland. Were any oxen and livestock to die during the trek, the government would compensate the farmers. This was important and gracious, as they had to traverse tsetse fly areas and changes in grazing habitats could seriously affect all cattle. Two German soldiers were to accompany them: Ehm and Carl Landgrebe – both known neighbours to the Boer families. Unlike Grieta Malan, who felt the Germans were arrogant, Martha Pienaar had an entirely different opinion. On the first day of their trek as internees they reached Oldonyo Sambu waar die mense ook van heinde en ver bymekaar gekom het om ons ‘n akskeidsgroet te gee… Ja, selfs die Duitse beamptes het klaar gestaan om ons op koek en koffie te trakteer, veral volop lekkers vir die jongspan. [where people arrived from far and near to bid us farewell. This meant a great deal to us… Yes, even the German civil servants stood ready with coffee and cake and especially lots of sweets for the children.] (Pienaar 1942: 37) In the next breath she writes that she was truly upset that some of the Boer families refused to either greet or thank the Germans ‘asof dié mense nou die oorsaak is dat daar oorlog tussen Engeland en Duitsland woed en of húlle ons wegstuur. Nee sulke kleinsieligheid is nie mooi nie’ [as if these people were
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responsible for a war between England and Germany and as if they were the ones sending us away. No, such pettiness is not pretty] (Pienaar 1942: 37). When the trek reached Arusha, the families handed their chits to the authorities and were paid handsomely for all the animals and wagons that had been commandeered. Pienaar mentions that the two soldiers accompanying them became good friends. Nonetheless, fairly soon feelings of distrust, jealousy and back-stabbing were breaking out among the families making up the wagon train, as some Boers had succumbed to the repeated calls to take up German citizenship. This caused increasing rifts between the neutrals and the ‘new’ Germans. Grieta Malan and her family opted for German citizenship. While the authorities were persistent in pestering the Pienaars to the point of irritation to take up their offer, the family remained firmly neutral throughout the war. Such neutrality did not seem to affect Abel Pienaar’s application for a government contract to be a transport rider once they reached Ufiomi. The internment at Ufiomi also appears to have been rather relaxed, as many internees soon moved miles away to a higher altitude to avoid the mosquitoes and obtain better water sources. New houses were built – some mirroring the farmhouses left behind in the Moshi area. Tempered with many decades’ hindsight, Grieta Malan concurs that the internment ‘camp’ at Ufiomi was nothing like the Nazi concentration camps of the Second World War. But in a distant colony in Africa she also highlights the fact that predators were at large: Umfiomi was nie ‘n Belsen of ‘n Buchenwald nie. ‘Sorg dat jul net hier bly’ het die Duitsers gesê ‚en sorg vir julleself. Julle is nou geïnterneer.’ Elke gesin het vir hom ‘n huisie gebou. Die mure was van gras, die dak was van gras en snags as die honde met die ongediertes baklei het die mure gebol as die vegtende diere daarteen stamp, maar hulle het gehou. [Umfiomi was neither a Belsen nor a Buchenwald. Each family was told ‘to stay put and look after yourself. You have now been interned.’ Each family built a small house – the walls were constructed from grass, the roof was thatch and at night the walls bulged inwards as the dogs fought off predators, but they held fast.] (Malan n.d.) While Martha Pienaar appears quite pragmatic about the internment, despite the fact that one of her children dies of fever, the loss and disruption caused feelings of extreme dislocation and anxiety for others. Janie de Beer also kept a diary and itemized numerous objects left behind, broken, stolen and abandoned during the trek: musical instruments, buckets, tea trays, a bed, four mules, three calves, a bellows, an anvil, tools, a tin of potatoes, two ploughs, a table, 18 geese imported from Germany and 532 sheep (Malan 2003). The de Beer’s oldest son, Willie, was captured by the British and sent into exile in India, as were other men who had taken up the offer of German citizenship.
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Unlike the neutrals, for new German citizens such as the Malans and the de Beers, life was more difficult as they had to move every time the British encroached. Some Germans settlers, however, continued farming in the Moshi area. With their husbands on the front it was left to the women (as was the case in Kenya) to run the farms, supervise the labour and get produce either to market or to the nearest railway siding. Frau Trappe and Frau Landgrebe, for instance, remained on their farms with their children throughout the war and could see the campfires of the British forces at night. Martha Pienaar’s husband, Abel, was soon given permission to return to the Moshi area with his family to help his former German neighbour, Frau Trappe. Her husband, Überleutnant Trappe, had been killed in a skirmish with British forces soon after the start of the war and she was struggling to run a farm by herself. The Pienaars trekked back and shared Frau Trappe’s home. It had been necessary to fence in the farm, build an underground fortified bunker and appoint guards. The reasons for this were two-fold: first, the farm was on the war front and second, as colonial authorities retreated ahead of the British incursion into German territory there were genuine concerns that the native population would take advantage of the administrative lacunae and rebel. The latter never happened but it was a continuous source of anxiety and fear, as expressed in the personal diaries under examination. In September 1915 things had changed at the Trappe homestead and farm back at Ngare Nanyuki (in the Moshi district). Martha Pienaar finds it unpalatable that Frau Trappe’s farm is fenced, the entrance gate locked and the borders constantly patrolled by guards. She feels like a trapped animal and permission is needed to leave or enter. She bemoans her lot and, even though she admits that Frau Trappe is anything but restrictive, relations between the two women in the same house begin to seesaw. Martha Pienaar soon resorts to voicing stereotypes of both the Germans and the Boers: Kyk, die Duitsers is trots en styf en onbuigsaam. Hulle is gedissiplineerd, en alles dra die stempel van strenge vormelikheid. Nou, hierdie allesoorheersende gees van militarism sypel orals deur en hang soos ‘n donker wolk oor hul persoon en doen en late. Dis die Boer vreemd. Dit skrik my af. Ons gees is vry en buigsaam. Die Boer se karakter is plasties en veel meer vatbaar vir nuew indrukke. [Look, the Germans are proud and stiff and inflexible. They are disciplined, and everything carries the stamp of strict formality. Now this overwhelming spirit of militarism seeps into everything and hangs like a dark cloud over all we do. The Boer finds this strange. It frightens me. Our spirits are free and flexible. The Boer’s character is far more malleable and open to new experiences.] (Pienaar 1942: 82)
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Pienaar employs ‘a set of representational practices’ which engage aspects of stereotyping that ‘reduce, essentialize, naturalize and fix “difference”’ (Hall 1997: 257f.). To give her credit, Pienaar soon realizes that it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, and a strong working relationship and mutual trust builds up between the two families. This was not only a trust based on mutual uncertainty about the future as a war is waged around them but also a trust that engages a settler consciousness of sovereignty and independence. Veracini notes that whereas colonisers see themselves in a middle passage between home and home, between departure and return, the settler collective inhabits a third narrative phase, a segment that succeeds both the ‘Old World’ and a period of displacement in the wilderness, a ‘frontier’ phase made up in succession by entrance into a district, battling the land, community building, and, eventually, by the ‘closing in’ of the frontier. (Veracini 2010: 98–9) Such a ‘closing in’ of ranks between settlers who had every intention of remaining in Africa is evident in a series of diary entries by Martha Pienaar. As the German forces retreat from the Moshi area along with German civil servants, Frau Trappe is advised that all livestock should rather be killed than fall into the hands of the English. The Pienaars and Frau Trappe, in the midst of a war ranging around them, come up with a cunning plan to outwit both the Germans and the British: some of Frau Trappe’s best horses and several hundred prize cattle had long been withheld from being commandeered by either army because they had hidden the entire herd deep within the heavy vegetation of one of the ancient lava creeks running off the mountain. Access to this hidden but fertile valley could only be gained with the help of a local guide. As the British moved on beyond the area in pursuit of the German forces, the cattle were led out and branded with Abel Pienaar’s own branding iron. Since he was a British subject, the Allied army would leave him and his cattle in peace while Frau Trappe would reclaim her prize herd and best horses after the war. Unlike other German families who were deported, Frau Trappe, a widow, was allowed to remain in the colony. She went on to become the only licensed female white hunter in the territory. This brings us back to the issue of settler colonialism and how such colonists often try to operate outside the authority of a colonial power. Issues of stereotyping and difference between cultures disappear in the face of a common enemy – colonial officialdom. On a small, private level, there was settler-colonial convergence while the two colonial empires were at war. At the beginning of this chapter, settler colonialism was presented as occupying a narrative space that desires mostly to sit outside the discourses of colonial authority. While there is certainly overlap between the narratives of colonial authority and settler colonialism, there is within the settler-colonial space a convergence and a complementarity of experience between settlers, which is never shared with the official power. On all levels, the Pienaars and Frau Trappe manage to sabotage
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officialdom and the military authorities from both the German and the British colonial powers. Things did not turn out so well for the Landgrebes, however, because most German-owned farms were confiscated, liquidated and sold for next to nothing by the British authorities after armistice. Carl Landgrebe left the Boer families midway through their internment trek to join his platoon as a subaltern officer; soon thereafter he was captured and interned in a camp in Kenya as a prisoner of war for the duration. Once the armistice was signed he was deported straight back to Germany. In 1921 his wife, Antonie, who had been running the coffee plantation single-handed, was also deported. Abel Pienaar bought up many of these farms himself and then sold them on for a profit. When the Landgrebes returned five years after the armistice, they could not afford to buy back their old farm and they settled elsewhere. When the Second World War broke out, they were once again deported to Germany and none of their economic, cultural and political contributions to Tanganyika in the preceding decades was acknowledged. The British colonial authorities did not afford German settlers the option to take up a position of respected neutrality nor to acquire British subject status as the Germans had done for others during WWI. German settlers felt that the British had once again lived up to the old moniker of ‘Perfidious Albion’. By the 1960s all the Landgrebes had returned to Africa and taken up residence in South Africa.
4 The Indian experience in East Africa In Eastern Africa, there is an additional settler narrative: that of the Indian settler, who arrived most often as a labourer on the construction of the Mombasa–Uganda Railway project and then desired to remain. Indians spread throughout East Africa and, despite also being British subjects, were largely left to their own devices and often crossed the border to visit friends and relatives during the course of the war. In the Kenya Protectorate and GEA at the turn of the 20th century, Indians were not encouraged, and in fact sometimes forbidden, to acquire or make a claim to arable farmland. Instead they formed small settlements and basically controlled the domestic economy as evidenced by Grieta Malan’s rare account, quoted at the end of Section 1, of the Arusha shopkeeper, Shermohammed Sajan. In an interview, M.G. Vassanji (born in 1950 in Nairobi), a novelist of Indian origin who then grew up in Tanganyika before immigrating to Canada, points out that if you look at Karen Blixen’s books or Elspeth Huxley’s books, Indians are hardly present. You see all these films and all the boring books and you wonder: these people who went into Indian shops to buy groceries never saw the Indians around them. (Rhodes 1997: 113, my emphasis)
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It would appear that British and German colonial policies converged in terms of the invisibility of the Indian settler in Africa. I can find no evidence that German officials urged people of Indian origin to take up German citizenship at the start of the war, even though they were already British subjects. Admittedly, there were a few individuals who were bullied and/or tortured into spying for the British (or the Germans), but on the whole they could come and go as they pleased (see Miller 1974: 98). Considering the economic importance of Indians in Eastern (and Southern) Africa at the beginning of the 20th century, their omission from colonial and settler consciousness is significant. At the beginning of this chapter it was noted that Veracini remarked that ‘Settlers do not discover: they carry their sovereignty and lifestyles with them… and transform the land into their image, they settle another place without really moving’ (Veracini 2010: 98). Like their white counterparts, Indian settlers also followed the linear narrative of Aeneas and brought their lifestyles with them. M.G. Vassanji wryly bolsters Veracini’s remark in his novel, No New Land: Haji Lalani, who in his last days would sit at the ocean [at Dar es Salaam] looking towards the land of his birth with only a twinge of nostalgia (‘After all, we’ve brought India with us’), died believing he had found a new country for his descendants. Two years later, his middle son, with his own family, set off for yet another continent. (Vassanji 1991: 30) It thus seems even more ironic that the British imported units of troops from the Indian Army, Indian State Forces and Indian Volunteers – totalling more than 50,000 soldiers – to protect Kenya and the Mombasa–Uganda Railway during the course of WWI. One hundred years later, detailed official histories of the contributions the Indian armed forces made in WWI are finally being written. Fictional and non-fictional accounts of the war on the East African front do mention Indian forces but ultimately, in Africa, this was a ‘white man’s war’.
5 Conclusion Significantly, the least recuperated, most abbreviated narratives are those of the indigenous peoples. Postcolonial narrative expression that seeks a level of recuperation is very often obliged to lean on compressed or telescoped mythologies of the colonial moment. Black Africans’ direct experience of colonialism and settler colonialism from 1900 to 1920 has been almost entirely elided except for some accounts by askaris and native auxiliary staff serving during WWI (see Moyd 2014). In the settler narratives explored in this chapter there is almost no reference to the colonial discourses and policies that enabled settlers, whether British subjects or German citizens, to translocate to the ‘frontier’, lay claim to land, employ a workforce alienated from that land and enjoy the benefits of an administrative infrastructure and of military protection. The material realities
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thus enjoyed are taken as a given right of colonial settlement. Settlers felt they were intrinsic to the opening up of the ‘wilderness’ in the ‘chaotic space’ that was Africa and bringing about order and agricultural productivity. In the first two decades of the 20th century settler opinion, more by default than introspective meditation, converged wholeheartedly with the broader aspects of the distant metropoles’ colonizing discourses. At the same time, however, on local and particular levels, settlers formed communities of solidarity which competed with, diverged from and even attempted to sabotage colonial authority.
Notes 1 All quotations in Afrikaans have been translated into English by myself. 2 Martha Pienaar’s original, handwritten diary was accidentally left at the side of a road in either Tanganyika or Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in the course of the late 1930s, when boxes of documents were removed from the boot of H.J.C. Pieterse’s car when a flat tyre was being repaired. The Pieterses were returning to South Africa. This unfortunate event was related to me by Pieter Pieterse, son of the school master, H.J.C. Pieterse. In as far as possible, I have concentrated on Martha Pienaar’s first-person narrative and ignored ideologically contextualized edits by Pieterse. 3 There are two volumes of Grieta Malan’s narrative of life in GEA. Small clues, such as references to rands and cents (the South African currency introduced in the 1960s) indicate that her recollections were penned during the 1960s or soon thereafter. In addition she interchanges the terms Boer and Afrikaner. In GEA Afrikaans-/Dutch-speaking settlers from South Africa mostly referred to themselves as Boers. The idea of the ‘Afrikaner’ as a strong marker of identity was more widely used in the narrative of nationalism after WWI in South Africa. 4 The word shamba has entered the lexicons of both English and German and nowadays can also refer to a large plantation. In 1914, shamba almost exclusively referred to small plots of land cultivated by the indigenous population. Bananenschamben should be contrasted to the Kaffeepflanzung in the Arusha map. The latter is a larger-scale plantation where coffee is grown as a commercial venture by a settler colonist. 5 A ‘Boma’ was a kraal or rudimentary fort. 6 The maps remained in the private possession of the Landgrebe family, loosely gathered in a folder. During the 1980s the Landgrebe family gave the maps to a South African-based society of former East African settlers called ‘The Friends of East Africa’. I am a member of the organizing committee and I have been given permission to use the maps, memoirs and other documents in a series of academic and/or social history articles before depositing them at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University. 7 Vassanji admits to having read and used as a source Richard Meinhertshagen’s Kenya Diary: 1902–1906 published in 1957 by Oliver and Boyd. See for instance: Miller’s Battle for the Bundu: The First World War in East Africa (1974); William Stevenson’s The Ghosts of Africa (1980); William Boyd’s An Icecream War (1983); James Ambrose Brown’s They Fought for King and Kaiser (1991); Christoffel Coetzee’s Op Soek na Generaal Mannetjies Mentz (1998); and Sara Wheeler’s biography, Too Close to the Sun: The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton (2007). 8 ‘Dirty Dutch’ was an appellation given to Boers by the English during the AngloBoer War. A hundred years later there are still simmering resentments at the labelling. A discussion of the resentment can be found in van Heyningen 2013.
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References Cotton, John (1957), ‘Gallant Pioneers: Rigours of the First World War Bush Campaign in East Africa as recalled by John Cotton’, in East African Annual 1957–58. Nairobi: East African Standard, 105–107. Hall, Stuart (1997), The Spectacle of the ‘Other’ in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Thousand Oaks. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson (2003), Metaphors We Live By. London: University of Chicago Press. Landgrebe, Carl (1987), Set of Hand-Drawn Maps in Habari: Newsletter of the Friends of East Africa, 1, 58–60. Landgrebe, Carl (n.d., possibly 1930s), ‘Agriculture of the Djagga People’, handwritten unpublished memoir. Malan, Grieta (n.d.), Unpublished, handwritten memoir of life in German East Africa. Malan, Wynsarel (2003), Baanbrekers van Duits Oos-Afrika. Privately distributed CD. Miller, Charles (1974), Battle for the Bundu: The First World War in East Africa. New York: Macmillan. Moyd, Michelle R. (2014), Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa. Athens: Ohio University Press. Pienaar, Martha (1942), Baanbrekers in die Maalstroom: Dagboek van Mev. Abel Pienaar, Moeder van Sangiro, edited by H.J.C. Pieterse. Cape Town: Nasionale Pers. Rhodes, Shane (1997), ‘M.G. Vassanji: An Interview’, SCL/ELC 22/2, 105–117. Stasiulis, Daiva and Nira Yuval-Davis (eds) (1995), Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class. London: Sage. van Heyningen, Elizabeth (2013), The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War: A Social History. Johannesburg: Jacana. Vassanji, Moyez G. (1991), No New Land. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Vassanji, Moyez G. (2006), The Book of Secrets. Edinburgh: Canongate. Veracini, Lorenzo (2010), Settler Colonialism: Theoretical Overview. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Young, James E. (1988), Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
10 Stereotypical labelling of the Moroccan Goumiers in German colonial discourse Moulay Lmustapha Mamaoui and Otman Bychou
1 Introduction The year 1871 saw two main events in the history of Germany: the creation of a unified nation, an administratively and politically integrated nation under Chancellor von Bismarck, and a French defeat by an army representing German states and led by Prussia, marking the end of France’s predominance in Europe. The German triumph over France in 1871 resulted in an agreement that deprived the French of part of their lands, namely Alsace and Lorraine, of which the Germans took possession. The imperial chancellor affirmed that he sought to stabilize the balance of power in Europe so that Germany could consolidate its position on the international stage (Young 2006: 43). Germany’s geographical position at the centre of the great European powers could be considered a further factor influencing German imperialist aspirations. Regarding the alliances between the European powers towards their African colonies, especially Morocco, the Treaty of Madrid in 1880 had temporarily eased the struggle between the European great powers, namely France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Germany and Great Britain, to seize control of Morocco. Alliances followed the Madrid Conference: the Franco-Russian Alliance which evolved into a secret treaty in 1894; the Entente Cordiale between France and Britain in 1904; and the Anglo-Russian Convention in 1907. The British consented to the French establishing a protectorate in Morocco after the German gunboat Panther had arrived at the port of Agadir on 1 July 1911, and other settlements on the future of Morocco emerged between France and Spain with the establishment of the Treaty of Fez in 1912 (Mortimer, 1967: 440). Such treaties showed the Germans that their race for Morocco would face many problems. The process of weakening Morocco by the French and the British was different from the German colonialist attitude towards the Moroccan sultan. While the French position vis-à-vis the Moroccan question had been tailored in a diplomatic manner regarding the presence of other European empires, ‘Germany, who had been a signatory of the Madrid Convention of 1880, the original agreement dealing with Morocco, had not even been officially notified, let alone consulted. Thus, Morocco had become a symbol of Germany’s
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declining prestige’ (Mortimer, 1967: 440). As long as that situation had deflated the German ego, the imperial powers’ apparent indifference to Germany’s interests provoked an unwanted response from the Germans. As a non-colonized territory in the North African area and as one of the few unclaimed countries on the map of the world, Morocco represented a perfect ‘place in the sun’ for Germany (Hewitson 2004: 147). Accordingly, to oppose a likely French invasion of Abdelaziz’s weak Moroccan sultanate, the Germans planned a visit by the Kaiser himself to Tangier in order to assure the besieged sultan of German support (Benjamin and Ashjian 2015: 9). Following this German interference in Morocco, warnings about an imminent war between France and Germany came to the fore, initiating in 1905 what historians have seen as the first Moroccan Crisis. Following the crisis, diplomatic relations between the great powers deteriorated: The conference of Algeciras in 1906 thus serves as a reminder that colonialism in 1905–1906 took many forms; the violent genocide in Germany’s southern African colonies was paralleled by German claims to be the protector of the Sultan’s interests, and the economic interests of the Moroccan people. (Jones 2009: 2) Undoubtedly, the Kaiser’s insistence on the presence of Moroccan delegates at the 1906 Conference of Algeciras was based on the fact that ‘[i]n German war discourse, the Self is constructed as a peace-loving and responsible actor who has done everything in his power to avert war’ (Rash 2012: 169). The Kaiser’s support for Moroccan independence, expressed in his Tangier speech of 31 March 1905, in which he made an urgent request for an international conference to discuss the Moroccan issue, would enable the Germans to isolate France and Great Britain. The Kaiser was motivated by the desire to colonize parts of Africa, as illustrated in the German discourse of the period: Two separate strands of motivation then began to emerge: one involved giving to and the other taking from the autochthonous peoples. Both of these motives had the potential to increase the colonizers’ prestige within Germany and German prestige beyond its borders. (Rash 2017: ix, italics original) The Kaiser’s support for Moroccan independence was limited and only based on the hope of Germany gaining colonial advantages in Morocco. The Moroccan delegation at the Algeciras conference had no support and its members were treated with disdain by the European Other: ‘We are not benighted savages. We have much to do before we can compare ourselves with you but we possess a civilization, a legal system and a religion deserving all respect’ (Jones 2009: 6).
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The moral values of the Moroccan delegates, who had been deployed to counter-attack the Europeans’ chauvinism, could not prevent their country being colonized. During the Algeciras conference, the imperial powers’ intentions were made clear: to split the Moroccan dominion into spheres of influence controlled by European colonizers. A Franco-Spanish mandate strategically imposed itself on the process of the European imperialism, as these two empires specifically claimed the resources required to control Morocco due to their ‘colonial experience, geographical proximity and access to Muslim troops’ (Jones 2009: 8). The complex transition of Morocco from a non-colonized territory to a dominion under French control underwent different phases. In 1911, diplomatic tensions emerged when the French informed the Germans of their intention to dispatch troops to free the Moroccan sultan in Fez, pretending that the French would be protecting European interests. Responding to this news, the Germans sent a gunboat to Agadir in the same year, with the aim of protecting German people and interests in the south of Morocco (Mortimer 1967: 444). In 1912, the Treaty of Fez established Morocco as a French protectorate; two years later the Great War broke out between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente. Section 2 of this chapter shows how Germany approached the African contribution to the French participation in armed conflict during the Great War and directly afterwards. Section 3 explains the German commissioners’ evaluation of the French military tactics, and the German stereotypical labelling that conceived of the Moroccan soldiers as lazy and uncivilized. In collaboration with their French recruiters, the Moroccan Goumiers were able to deceive the Germans who did not consider them real soldiers.1 Section 4 argues that whilst the Germans underestimated the value of the French colonial soldiers in Morocco, the Goumiers were able to beat the Nazis on German soil during the Second World War due to the way in which they were presented to German society as cannibals. The stereotypical labelling of the Goumiers by the French thus supported the French discourse of a total German defeat.
2 German attitudes toward the French colonial soldiers During the period between the signing of the Treaty of Fez in 1912 and the beginning of the Great War in 1914, only a small number of Moroccans started to move to France. As France’s situation deteriorated, due to its full participation with Russia and Great Britain against Germany and the Ottoman Empire, colonial manpower was required to support the armies of the European empires. In the French context, Driss Maghraoui writes: ‘After August 1914, in a sudden and unexpected manner more than 42,000 Moroccans were brought to France, either as “colonial workers” or as “colonial troops” for the single goal of supporting the war effort’ (2004: 3).
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Different estimations surround the Moroccan contribution to the Great War. While Paul Azan and Augustin Bernard speak of a significant figure of between 34,000 and 40,000 Moroccans involved in the Great War, Maghraoui suggests that roughly 63,784 Moroccans participated in the First World War (Maghraoui 2004: 7). Colonial soldiers representing various ideological and political backgrounds, especially from the African and the Asian continents, became objects of Christian propaganda during the Great War. It was unique for the Germans to embrace the concept of jihad as an ideology to convince North Africans, especially the Amazigh people, to turn the tables on their French colonizers. The 1915 publication, Die Wahrheit über den Glaubenskrieg [The Truth about the War of Faith], by the Tunisian nationalist propagandist Muhammad Salih AshSharif al-Tunusi, explained to the Germans the importance of jihad in fighting the enemies of Islam and Germany. The idea of jihad in Germany haunted society and ‘the presence of large numbers of Muslims fighting for the Germans on the front brought about fears about the potential threat of Islamic “fanaticism”’ (Maghraoui 2004: 10). Although a large number of leaflets in Arabic and Amazigh dialects were sent to every native in North Africa, illiteracy played an important role in turning the hybrid jihad between Christians and Muslims into a German fiasco. Maghraoui comments: ‘These leaflets were ineffective, however, for a majority of soldiers were either illiterate or did not have any notion of the concept of nationalism at all’ (2004: 11). The German propaganda effort proved to be useless against the French tactics. The latter had already made alliances with Moroccan religious scholars, and Moroccans showed a striking unwillingness to change sides. For that reason, as Maghraoui explains: ‘The Germans gave up on Islam and the concept of holy war, and by 1917 the German colonial office had begun to complain about the French use of colonial troops because they endangered European civilisation’ (2004: 12). The Germans soon became aware of their shortcomings, blaming their failure on the French inclination to invest heavily in black manpower. In Africa, the French were keen advocates of colonial soldiery in spite of German warnings against the dangers of exporting ‘uncivilized people’ who could inflict serious damage on the well-organized European civilization. As Christian Koller explains: German propaganda met the introduction of colonial troops on the Western Front with a deeply racist campaign that represented the nonwhite colonial soldiers as beasts. They were described in terms that negated their quality as regular military forces: ‘a motley crew of colours and religions’, ‘devils’, ‘dehumanised wilderness’, ‘dead vermin of the wilderness’, ‘Africans jumping around in a devilish ecstasy’, ‘auxiliary rabble of all colours’, ‘an exhibition of Africans’, ‘an anthropological show of uncivilised… bands and hordes’ or the catchphrase ‘the black shame’ which quickly rose to common usage in the early 1920s, when French colonial troops were stationed in the occupied Rhineland area. (Koller 2011: 128)
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The Germans were keen to keep Europe free from any alien intrusion even at times of war. Any participation of foreigners, especially Africans, was seen as a violation of the racial integrity of the European family. Africans should not be allowed to weaken the purity and superiority of the European blood, nor should they affect the course of European history through their involvement in war. The Germans contended that even the blood shed in war should be a purely European blood and must not be mixed with that of inferior beings. The Germans wanted to preserve one of the essential components of the European race: their blood. Non-European origin was regarded as a humiliation, a ‘black shame’, and this was reflected in the racist vocabulary employed to represent the Africans at the time. Playing the role of the wise native Europeans in the presence of the eager French avengers, the Germans’ stereotypical labelling of African blackness included all Africans and it was pointed out that ‘many of the North Africans were so “black” as to be indistinguishable from Negroes’ (Nelson 1970: 611). A significant event took place three years after the end of the Great War. In June 1921, two German citizens were shot dead in an attempt to penetrate a French army base previously controlled by the Germans. The scene was a municipality near the German–Belgian–Dutch frontier. According to Moshe Gershovich, this incident ‘was only one, albeit the most violent, in a series of hostile encounters which had occurred between the unit’s soldiers and local inhabitants over several weeks during which they had lived side by side’ (Gershovich 1997: 55). Although the troop from which the killing bullets were fired was an Algerian regiment, the German citizens of Eschweiler agreed that the shooters were Moroccans (Gershovich 1997: 55). Gershovich’s study demonstrates the nature of a German colonial discourse which intended to reproduce Moroccans according to a stereotypical labelling. The effect upon the Germans of the Eschweiler event, as an affair among others in which French colonial soldiers were involved, was immense. It added to an already full-fledged repertoire of the racial slurs formed against Germany’s foes, as Gershovich maintains: Clearly, the residents of Eschweiler stood little to gain from the false accusation of the wrong group in a manner which could have been easily refuted. We may assume that for these inhabitants the exact national affiliation of the soldiers was of little significance. But if so, why did they not refer to them simply as ‘natives’ or as ‘North Africans’ but instead insist that they were Moroccans? (Gershovich 1997: 56) The question of how the German views of Moroccans were framed and of how they were informed and structured is of utmost importance. Gershovich speaks of ‘[t]he image of Moroccans as foreign, menacing, and barbarous people’ as being a discourse that ‘was hardly a German monopoly’ (Gershovich 1997: 56). It was, according to him, a shared vision among Europe’s
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most prominent imperial powers, including Germany, England, France and Russia, and formed part of their colonial projects during the first half of the 20th century. In the German case this was exacerbated by the French, who convinced the Germans that the Moroccan soldiers who participated in the Second World War were barbarous, uncivilized and unworthy of any human regard. The following section examines the role played by the French colonial propaganda and war strategies wherein Moroccans suffered double victimization.
3 A Trojan war in the French style That the Germans saw in the Goumiers’ physical traits no sign of any soldiery was due to the fact that they took themselves to be a model for all that was civilized. Other societies were not necessarily structured in that way. For the Germans, the soldier is a soldier, the merchant a merchant and the official an official. The Moroccan Goumier functioned differently. His atypical and awkward appearance reflected the various jobs he excelled at in his homeland. He could be a shepherd, a merchant and a peasant in the Moroccan mountains, gathering all these functions in a single personality, an amalgam of different abilities to do everything. ‘All in one’ is nonsense from a German perspective – it might look like a random experience for the Germans, but for the Moroccans and their French colonizers it is a source of strength and transformation. In a comment on a group of North African prisoners crossing north-central France by train in the summer of 1940, Lieutenant Colonel Gutschmidt, district commander of German prisoner-of-war camps in the region of Orléans, observes: ‘Unfortunately the new people are mostly Moroccans, the laziest riff-raff. And of all things we have to treat these Arabs particularly well according to a Führer order’ (Scheck 2014: 139, quoted from Gutschmidt, entry of 29 August 1940). The narrative is told from a racist German perspective according to which the appearance of Moroccan prisoners of war triggered a German officer’s wish not to see them. The incident depicts a master-and-slave scenario. As a master, the German officer exhibits his superiority and authority in a supposedly civilized manner and in a way that reflects his respect for duty and hierarchy. From the point of view of a German officer, the Moroccan contingent was simply noise, bad behaviour and permanently associated with low social class. Gutschmidt’s racist labelling was influenced by German reports on the French military progress in North Africa. The French defeat at the hands of the Nazis in 1940 caused the French to hide their military progress. In Morocco, the presence of the Axis2 encountered a French camouflage technique according to which laziness became part of a discourse on the Goumiers. The German commissioners, in turn, provided officers such as Gutschmidt with false information, as Edward L. Bimberg explains:
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Already German and Italian armistice commissioners were in Morocco to see that the armistice agreements were properly carried out. By the terms of the agreements the French were allowed to keep only a certain number of men under arms (120,000 in North Africa) and much of their equipment was to be turned over to the commission or destroyed. According to the French authorities, however, the Goums could not be counted as soldiers but rather as police, for they were carried on the budget of the protectorate as such and charged with the duty of maintaining order among the tribes, and preventing gun-running in the frontier regions. The Axis commissioners, somewhat naively it would seem, agreed. (Bimberg 1999: 21) Because the Goumiers did not wear regular military uniforms like their French recruiters, the Germans were convinced that the Moroccan ‘policemen’, in their traditional djellabas, did not constitute any danger for Axis interests. The French were aware of the danger of being caught preparing an army including colonial soldiers in Morocco. Having signed a pact with the Germans, the French were forced to hide the military preparations in their African colonies. Dahman, a Moroccan Goumier who witnessed German inspectors’ frequent visits to his village in the Moroccan Atlas Mountains, recounts the following: The Germans wanted to give us freedom. The number of the French soldiers decreased and so did their military centers. One could hardly notice their existence; even their French leader who had gathered them hid from the German inspectors. The latter did not find the French soldiers and they left. (Dahman, interviewed by Bychou 2015, quoted from Bychou 2017: 372; translated from Moroccan Arabic) Dahman was enthusiastic about the German interference in Morocco. Did he believe that he could be free without bearing arms against his enemies? How did the French manage to make a large number of Moroccan youngsters look worthless in the eyes of a skilful commission composed of German officers? And how did the pejorative discourse creep into the German commissioners’ reports? Dahman explains: The German soldiers settled in Tunisia and did not reach Morocco. It was only their inspectors who visited our country accompanied with somebody, a guide for instance, from Casablanca or Marrakesh so as to get information. They patrolled everywhere, but they did not find anyone. The French totally vanished and joined the woods and when the German inspectors came across some people there, they were informed that the men were just making coal. The French deceived the Germans because the men found in the woods were not real coal makers, but soldiers of the French army. (Dahman, interviewed by Bychou 2015, quoted from Bychou 2017: 372f.; translated from Moroccan Arabic)
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Ignoring the interference of a small group of elegant German officers in Morocco, what remains of the French rulers in Dahman’s village is their uncanny ability to deceive the Germans. As illustrated in Zaiter’s story: The French were very smart because when the German commissioners came to Morocco, the French told them that we, the Moroccan soldiers, were under the authority of the King of Morocco. At that time, the French offered us daggers which brought ‘Chérifiènnes of the King’ that engraved their edges in bold letters. Soon after the German inspectors’ departure from Morocco, the French transformed the King’s soldiers into Goumiers. (Zaiter, interviewed by Bychou 2003, quoted from Bychou 2017: 371–2; translated from Moroccan Arabic) The French depiction of Moroccan soldiers as mere workers whose loyalty was to the king, and as living in miserable conditions under French rule, deepened the divisions between the French and the Germans. Bimberg explains the French deception thus: The armistice3 commissioners reported to their superiors in Berlin and Rome that the French army in Africa was indeed thoroughly beaten and presented no threat to Axis ambitions. They were particularly unimpressed by the Goumiers. These dark-skinned little men in their bathrobelike djellabas, turbans and sandals, armed only with rifles and knives, were perhaps useful as back country policemen, but nothing more. (Bimberg 1999: 21f.) The Germans’ failure to realize that Dahman’s and Zaiter’s roles went beyond that of coal makers or tribal peace makers was an unforgivable military error. The Germans were seduced by their prejudiced views of the Moroccans. Dressed in native clothing and equipped only with traditional weaponry, such as archaic knives, the Goumiers were an object of scorn, since their outfits qualified them for no civilized and modern military role but rather represented their nativism and primitivism. In addition to their old knives and traditional garbs, the German commissioners, according to Bimberg, had seen them on the march, their rifles carried at all sorts of crazy angles, sometimes leading goats (not mascots, but rations on the hoof) and chanting odd Oriental folk songs. It was certainly not the Prussian idea of what disciplined troops should look like, and the thought that these circus clowns would ever be able to stand up as soldiers against the Nazi supermen never entered the Axis’ minds. The inspectors treated them with disdain and openly ridiculed their bizarre appearance. (Bimberg 1999: 22)
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The strange appearance of the Moroccan Goumiers was crucial in enabling the French to take advantage of the Germans’ perception of Moroccan soldiers as a herd of unqualified and undisciplined sub-humans, who would by no means be able to defy the sophisticated German war machine. Gershovich notes that ‘[t]he French ability to “camouflage” the transformation of the Goumiers depended on the biases of the German armistice inspectors, who dismissed the Moroccan auxiliaries as ‘bands of Berber country folks’ (Gershovich 2016: 81). Two years after the French defeat in 1940, Colonel Augustin-Léon Guillaume discovered a German document pointing to the fact that their suspicion of the French scheme was outweighed by their conviction of the military insignificance of the Goums: ‘Nous avons le sentiment que les Français nous cachent quelque chose mais, de toute façon, cela n’a pas grande importance, car ces goums n’ont aucune espèce de valeur militaire et n’en auront jamais’ [We have the feeling that the French are hiding something from us, but in any case, it does not matter much, because these Goumiers have no military value and will never have any] (Guillaume 1977: 99). It was careless of the Germans not to realize that camouflage technique has many forms. Furthermore they had shown no interest in exploring the North African mountains: When the German and Italian officers arrived, a cat-and-mouse game ensued. The French showed them only what they wanted them to see, and the mountains and deserts of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia formed far too great an expanse for the inspection teams to explore. Besides, the cafes and bordellos of Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis were far more interesting than the barren wastes of the African bled, and that’s what the conquerors preferred to inspect. (Bimberg 1999: 21) The Germans made the mistake of inspecting the wrong places and they therefore constructed a monolithic vision according to which the Moroccans ceased to exist as real soldiers. To this was added the egotistically prejudicial belief that professional soldiery was typically German and that the amateurish or the pseudo-soldiery was of no value. For the Nazis, the German soldier remained the paradigm of what a soldier should be. The Germans thus became victims of appearances, believing that it was the elegant uniforms and shiny boots of their own soldiers that made fighting men real soldiers. Only on the battlefield did they become conscious of their folly, when traditional men in traditional clothes triumphed over magnificent uniforms and sophisticated machine guns.
4 A defence of the human Because the Germans had overlooked the tribal warriors’ reputation as fighting men, the Goumiers were released into their ‘civilized’ lands during the Second World War. Before being stationed in Germany, the Moroccan soldiers had
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fought the Werhmacht in Tunisia, Sicily, Corsica, Elba, Belgium and Italy, and pierced the Gustav and the Siegfried Lines in June 1944. They also helped in seizing Tübingen on the Neckar (Bimberg 1999: 107). The German commissioners had fallen prey to their naivety in Morocco and the French were well aware of this weakness and were keen for the Goumiers to don the mask of bestiality. As Driss Maghraoui observes, the Nazis had a racist view of the goumiers and did not take them very seriously. Under German commission restrictions, the French were able to have 26,000 men in eighteen different tabors (military units). The goumiers represented one of the most promising military forces for the future of French resistance. (Maghraoui 2015: 95) The Germans underestimated the importance of the French strategy and, more surprisingly, the Goumiers themselves were not aware of the fear that an ‘uncivilized’ warrior could cause among the German population. In response to a question about the hostile environment experienced by the Moroccan soldiers in Germany during the Second World War, Aztam relates the following story: When we entered Germany during WWII, we did not see any child. They only appeared at the windows, and only a certain old woman occasionally got out for a walk. When the German children saw us they shut the windows. (Aztam, interviewed by Bychou 2003, quoted from Bychou 2007: 14; translated from Moroccan Arabic) The cause of a defeat can often be psychological, and it seems that the French achieved a full victory through transmitting fear among those who had never encountered the Goumiers. Like the Moroccan mothers who frighten their children with the bogeyman in their traditional stories, German women made the Goumier into an effective deterrent against their children’s misconduct. The Moroccan Goumier was depicted as an evil monster responsible for racial extermination. Aztam’s story about a German boy’s hostile attitude sums up the extent of the French propaganda: One day, a well educated soldier from BniWarayn, an Amazigh tribe in the region of Taza, interrupted a German child’s attempt to shut the window in front of us. The man had a good grasp of German to the extent that if a person talked in German, he would fully understand the speaker. ‘Why did you shut the window,’ he talked to the kid in German, ‘Tell me why you did not want to…?’ ‘The French told us that the Arabs eat children; they feed on human flesh,’ the kid told him.
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‘Just come down; just come down to make you know something,’ he told him. The kid descended and the soldier told him in a fluent German that there were no people who fed on other people. The French opted for that trick because the Germans had invaded their country. He also told him that the French were treacherous, while Moroccans were good like the Germans. The Goumier added that Germans and Moroccans were like brothers. The kid got out into the street and he ran until he disappeared. After a moment, he returned and all the German children got out. We stayed seven months in that village that fizzed with children. There were chocolate and sweets. USA was generously offering food, bags of sweets and biscuits. We gave everything to the children who refused to leave us. They came in groups in the morning to stay with us, refusing to leave to their homes until the afternoon. The kid told the Goumier that the French were wicked people because they told the Germans that Moroccans fed on children. (Aztam, interviewed by Bychou 2003, quoted from Bychou 2007: 145; translated from Moroccan Arabic) The veteran’s story ends on a happy note, exemplifying a remarkable victory of innocence over fallacy. For the German child, all that had been said about the Goumiers was real until he was confronted by a human being. The Moroccan soldier could see that he was being used as a scarecrow by the French to frustrate any type of resistance in Germany. The simple gesture of distributing chocolate and biscuits to children contributed to a change of perceptions based on what could be actually observed, and the children came to understand that the Goumiers had been misrepresented by both the French and the Germans. Their innate innocence enabled them to override the negative stereotypes that they had been taught and to construct a new, more accurate image of the colonial soldiers.
5 Conclusion This chapter has shown how the widespread European perceptions of African peoples as belonging to inferior races led to the stereotypical labelling of Moroccan soldiers during the First World War as uncivilized, cannibalistic ‘monsters’ who should be kept from European soil in case they despoil the supposedly pure European race. Especially in the case of Germany, this prejudice, chiefly against Moroccan Goumiers, continued from the First World War into the inter-war period and intensified during the Second World War. The French were able to exploit these prejudices for their own propagandist purposes. The Goumiers were not involved in the decision to portray them as monsters and thus use them as weapons of war. They remained loyal to their French recruiters, however, despite the prejudices that they encountered when
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deployed to German territory. In one case, described above, they were also able to dispel deep-rooted fears based upon rumours promulgated by their French colonial masters.
Notes 1 The Moroccan Goumiers were tribal warriors who fought against the Germans in the First and Second World Wars. These soldiers were described as irregular fighters because they put on Moroccan djellabas and sandals while fighting on the snowy mountains of Europe. 2 The Axis, also known as the Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis, headed a coalition that opposed the Allies in the Second World War. To protect their own specific expansionist interests, Germany, Italy and Japan organized diplomatic efforts which were manifest in a series of agreements in the mid-1930s claiming that the whole world would turn around the Rome–Berlin axis. 3 The French defeat at the hands of the Germans in 1940 was followed by armistice agreements between Germany and France. By the terms of the agreements, Adolf Hitler wanted to guarantee that the French would not carry on fighting from North Africa; accordingly, German and Italian armistice commissioners headed to Morocco to check the French military tactics.
References Benjamin, Roger and Cristina Ashjian (2015), Kandinsky and Klee in Tunisia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bimberg, Edward L. (1999), The Moroccan Goums: Tribal Warriors in a Modern War. London: Greenwood Press. Bychou, Otman (2007), ‘Otherness in Moroccan Soldiers Accounts of Their Experience in the Second World War’, Middle Ground: Journal of Literary and Cultural Encounters 1, 141–150. Bychou, Otman (2017), ‘The French Camouflage in Morocco during the Second World War: Between Colonial Discourse and Oral History’, Recherches Pluridisciplinaires en Sciences Humaines 1, 364–376. Gershovich, Moshe (1997), ‘The Sharifian Star over the Rhine: Moroccan Soldiers in French Uniforms in Germany, 1919–1925’, in Morocco: Journal of the Society of Moroccan Studies 2, 55–64. Gershovich, Moshe (2016), ‘Memory and Representation of War and Violence: Moroccan Combatants in French Uniforms during the Second World War’, in Eric Storm and Ali Al Tuma (eds), Colonial Soldiers in Europe, 1914–1945: ‘Aliens in Uniform’ in Wartime Societies, London: Routledge, 77–94. Guillaume, Augustin-Léon (1977), Homme de Guerre. Paris: France-Empire. Hewitson, Mark (2004), Germany and the Causes of the First World War. Oxford: Berg. Jones, Heather (2009), ‘Algeciras Revisited: European Crisis and Conference Diplomacy, 16 January–7 April 1906’, European University Institute, Max Weber Programme, 1–16. Koller, Christian (2011), ‘Representing Otherness: African, Indian, and European Soldiers’ Letters and Memoirs’, in Santanu Das (ed.), Race Empire and First World War Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 127–142.
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Maghraoui, Driss (2004), ‘The “Grande Guerre Sainte”: Moroccan Colonial Troops and Workers in the First World War’, Journal of North African Studies 9/1, 1–21. Maghraoui, Driss (2015), ‘The Moroccan “Effort de Guerre” in World War II’, in Judith A.Byfield, Carolyn A.Brown, ThomasParsons and Ahmad Alawad Sikainga (eds), Africa and World War II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 89–108. Mortimer, Joanne Stafford (1967), ‘Commercial Interests and German Diplomacy in the Agadir Crisis’, Historical Journal 10/4, 440–456. Nelson, Keith L. (1970), ‘The “Black Horror on the Rhine”: Race as a Factor in PostWorld War I Diplomacy’, in Journal of Modern History 42/4, 606–627. Rash, Felicity (2012), German Images of the Self and the Other. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rash, Felicity (2017), The Discourse Strategies of Imperialist Writing: The German Colonial Idea and Africa, 1848–1945. New York: Routledge. Scheck, Raffael (2014), French Colonial Soldiers in German Captivity during World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Young, William (2006), German Diplomatic Relations 1871–1945: The Wilhelmstrasse and the Formulation of Foreign Policy. New York: iUniverse.
Part III
The ‘scramble’ for the wider world
11 Notes from the margins: The discursive construction of the Self and Other in the German Ostmark and Ireland. Discourses of internal colonialism and gender in the works of Käthe Schirmacher and Maud Gonne Geraldine Horan 1 Introduction In her speeches to Der Deutsche Frauenverein für die Ostmarken [The German Women’s Organization for the Eastern Marches] in the early 20th century, Käthe Schirmacher (1865–1930), a native of Danzig (now Gdansk), and a women’s rights campaigner turned right-wing nationalist, described the Ostmark (Eastern Marches) as a ‘reichsdeutsche Kolonie’ [imperial German colony], and its Polish inhabitants as ‘Irokesen’ [Iroquois]. In the same period, the Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne made comparisons between the sufferings of the Indian and Irish populations under British rule, and regarded the Boers fighting the British in South Africa as a model for the downtrodden, weary Irish nationalists to emulate. Although speaking and writing about very different geo- and sociopolitical realities, both prominent, politically active women framed their territories and inhabitants using colonial discourses. For Schirmacher, the Ostmark was a part of inland German territory but, conversely, also a German colony. Her speeches portray the territory as being under constant threat from the Polish population within Germany’s borders, and from the Slavic population pressing at the edge of Germany’s eastern outpost. For Gonne (1866–1953), Ireland was a onceproud, noble, civilized nation, colonized and exploited by the British; she also portrays it as a neglected territory of the British Isles. Employing a historical critical discourse analytical approach (Wodak et al. 2009) to analyse Schirmacher’s five speeches given to the Ostdeutsche Frauentage [East German Women’s Conferences] between 19061 and 1913, and eight newspaper and journal articles written by Gonne between 1900 and 1910, this chapter will analyse Schirmacher’s and Gonne’s discursive constructions of the colonial ‘Self’ and the colonized ‘Other’, albeit from opposing perspectives. In their texts, they both negotiate marginal(ized), liminal spaces, not only casting the Ostmark and Ireland as internal colonies, but also negotiating their own gendered perspective, as women participating in largely male-dominated political spaces.
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2 Käthe Schirmacher and Maud Gonne as nationalist campaigners The starting point for linking Schirmacher and Gonne is historian Johanna Gehmacher’s article that focuses on these two figures, and in which she argues that, despite there being no record of their ever having met, they nonetheless have much in common (Gehmacher 2002). They were both born in the 1860s into middle-class families, and from the 1880s became politically active, even though at that time there was no framework in place to facilitate women’s political activities; rather, they encountered resistance and hostility for interfering in activities that were generally reserved for men (Evans 1976; Ward 1983). Schirmacher and Gonne, as will be outlined below, spent significant periods of time in France, and this location, external to the contested territories they wrote extensively about, galvanized their view of problems and injustices in their respective homelands. It also encouraged them to put forward their visions of strong independent nations (as a colonizing nation for Schirmacher, and a decolonized nation for Gonne) in which women played a key role (see Horan 2011). Käthe Schirmacher was born in Danzig (Gdansk) in 1865, something that she draws on in her Eastern Marches speeches to identify herself as a native of the territory. Schirmacher studied in Paris, gained her doctorate in Zürich, taught in the United Kingdom and spent several years as a journalist in Paris, during which time she began to focus increasingly on the Ostmark. Her portrayal of the relationship between the German and Polish populations is couched in increasingly pro-nationalist and anti-Polish terms. In her early years, Schirmacher was a prominent figure in the women’s rights movement, and in 1899 was a founding member of the Verband fortschrittlicher Frauenvereine [Association of Progressive Women’s Societies] (Gehmacher et al. 2018; Walzer 1991). In the early years of the 20th century, her women’s rights activities and her anti-Polish agitation in the Ostmark became increasingly incompatible, resulting in a break with the women’s movement (Gehmacher et al. 2018: 393–408). In her autobiography Flammen [Flames], published in 1921, Schirmacher describes her political reorientation as a ‘Wetter- oder Sonnenwende’ [A turn in the weather, or a solstice], attributing this to her growing interest in German nationalism within the context of the Ostmark: ‘Das Nationale warf mich nach rechts’ [national concerns threw me to the right] (Schirmacher 1921: 37; see also Gehmacher et al. 2018: 395–8; Walzer 1991: 55–61). In the first two decades of the 20th century, Schirmacher campaigned extensively for the ‘Germanization’ of the Ostmark, and in support of repressive measures against the Polish population, and she made five speeches between 1906 and 1913 in the Ostmark to that effect. In 1919, Schirmacher became a member of the German Parliament for the Deutschnationale Volkspartei [German National People’s Party], and publications in the 1920s, such as Die Geknechteten [The Enslaved], further demonstrate her continuing support for German claims to contested – and relinquished – territories, including the Eastern territories, Schleswig, the Rhineland and Alsace-Lothringen.
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Maud Gonne was born in 1866 in Surrey, the daughter of a middle-class mother from a wealthy draper’s family and of a father who was a British Army officer. She grew up in Ireland, and despite (or perhaps because of!) her army background, she began to identify herself as Irish and to promote Irish independence from the early 1880s. Later Gonne moved between Paris, London and Ireland, and published a number of articles on the British suppression of the Irish and on Irish nationalism in French and English, in publications such as La Nouvelle Revue Internationale, Journal des Voyages, La Patrie, Shan Von Vocht and The United Irishman (McCoole 2003, 170–1; Steele 2004: xi–xvii; Ward 1990). Between 1897 and 1898, Gonne started, edited and wrote for L’Irlande Libre journal. In addition to publishing, she engaged in a wide range of campaigning activities, including founding a Paris branch of L’Association Irlandaise, the Young Ireland Society, and being a cofounder of the Transvaal Committee following the outbreak of war in South Africa. She made speeches in Dublin and Mayo, embarked on fundraising tours in the United States for the Amnesty Association, then later for the Boer War and the United Irishman publication. In 1900 she founded the Inghínidhe na hÉireann [Daughters of Ireland]; two years later she played the lead role in W. B. Yeats’ and Lady Gregory’s play Cathleen ni Houlihan. A decade on, she began a campaign to feed starving and malnourished Irish children. The events of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 were witnessed from France, and despite returning to England in 1917, Gonne was prohibited from travelling to Ireland by the British War Office. Having managed to enter Ireland in 1918, she was arrested in May and imprisoned in England on suspicion of involvement in a German plot, and released later that year. During the War of Independence (1919–21), Gonne worked for Sinn Féin, and following the establishment of the Free State in 1922, she campaigned in Paris against partition and for an Irish state incorporating all 26 counties. Initially in favour of the Free State, she became increasingly critical of its heavy-handedness in quelling rebellion, and was arrested and jailed briefly in 1923. In later years, Gonne continued to campaign for workers’ rights, to protest against persecution of Catholics in Northern Ireland, and to criticize the patriarchal and misogynistic elements of the new Irish constitution (Steele 2004: xiv–xvii; Ward 1990: 148–93).
3 The Ostmark and Ireland as internal colonies The notion of the ‘internal colony’, i.e. colonized territory that is either within a nation’s geographical territory or adjacent to it, remains contested. Michael Hechter’s argument for the concept of an internal colony is based on an expanded notion of diffusion models of nationalism, in particular the idea of the core versus the periphery, and internal colonies created through unequal distribution of wealth, resources and political power (Hechter 1975: 22–34). When such a situation arises historically, ‘there exists the probability that the disadvantaged group will, in time, reactively assert its own culture as equal or
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superior to that of the relatively advantaged core. This may help it conceive of itself as a separate nation and seek independence’ (Hechter 1975: 10). As such, both the Ostmark and Ireland could be (indeed have been, and are) regarded by some as internal colonies, as they have geographical proximity to their core power (Germany and Britain), but are marginal and disadvantaged socially and politically. However, it is because of this proximity and the territory’s integration into the nation state that some historians and cultural theorists reject the notion of an internal colony. Historian Moses Finley, for example, states categorically: ‘There can be no colonization without colonies. I therefore rule out all manifestations of what is often called “internal colonization”’ (Finley 1976: 173). Following on from Finley, Stephen Howe rejects the conflation of the two interrelated concepts on the grounds that it has led to an erroneous framing of geopolitical power relationships as colonial (Howe 2002: 10–13). Howe also argues that the portrayal of Ireland as colony of Britain is based on an oversimplified and romanticized notion of Irish history, one that emanates from an Irish nationalist perspective, and excludes narratives from the unionist perspective (Howe 2002: 7–10). The conceptualization of the Ostmark and Ireland as internal colonies therefore remains contentious. In her analysis of the discursive construction of Poland as German colonial territory in the early 20th century, Kirsten Kopp refers to the territory as a ‘gray zone’, an area that does not fit neatly into the model of the European ‘centre’ and the non-European ‘periphery’ that dominated the argument that drove colonialist thinking and policy for many centuries. Kopp argues for an expansion of J. M. Blaut’s model of ‘Eurocentric diffusionism’ that bridges the geographical and perceptual distance between the European colonizer and the non-European colonized territory (Blaut 1992: 8–16; Kopp 2011: 37). Conceptualizing Poland as a colony, she argues, could have been construed as problematic, given that it was close to Germany’s borders (Kopp 2012: 13). Describing Poland in terms of colonial relationships was by no means a new phenomenon, however. Prussian expansion eastwards and successive divisions of Poland in the 18th century meant that 3 million Poles became part of Prussia. What was described as a relatively mild set of policies towards the former Polish territories, with some protection for Polish language and culture, gave way after 1871 to a more aggressive colonialist approach – ‘innere Kolonisation’ – as part of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf (Broszat 1972: 134; Kopp 2012: 22–3; Thum 2013: 51–2). Kopp comments that the early 20th century saw efforts to frame the Eastern territories not only as an ‘inner colony’, the ‘Wild East’, but also to link this to efforts to become a global territorial power (Kopp 2011: 39; 2012: 5). In the same vein, Gregor Thum describes the eastern borderlands as ‘a quasi-colonial space’, the impetus to depict it as such coming from a combination of ‘megalomaniac dreams and inflated fears of the nineteenth century’ (Thum 2013: 44), compounded by a number of defeats and setbacks in its expansionist policies in its African colonies, as well as pressure exerted by ultranationalist organizations, including the Alldeutscher Verband [Pan-German
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League] and the Ostmarkenverein [Eastern Marches Society] (Thum 2013: 54). Thus, fictional and non-fictional texts about the Ostmark depicted not only the ‘otherness’ of the territory – its wildness and barrenness – but also the primitiveness and inherently inferior nature of its Polish inhabitants (Gehmacher et al. 2018: 384–408; Jaworska 2011: 444f.; Rash 2012: 62–8). I would argue that Kopp’s notion of the ‘gray zone’ applies similarly to Ireland’s status as a potential internal colony. In his analysis of the role of Catholicism in shaping a colonial and post-colonial Ireland, Timothy White asserts: Ireland has long been called an internal colony of Britain. While Ireland’s status as a colony is often seen as complex and ambiguous and therefore contested, many depict the Irish as a national group that was subjugated by British imperialism and sought to resist it. Thus, Ireland can be identified as a colonized territory, and the Republic of Ireland is often considered a postcolonial state. As such, Ireland has increasingly been compared to other colonial territories, especially India. (White 2010: 121) The contested nature of this categorization is exemplified by Finley among others; in his rejection of ‘internal colonization’, he states his reluctance to include Ireland and Wales in his discussion of colonization and nationalization (Finley 1976: 188). The fact that he articulates his hesitation serves to strengthen the argument that Ireland occupies a liminal position in definitions of colonized territory. In her analysis of an anti-feminist backlash in early 20th-century Ireland, Britain and Australia, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa outlines Ireland’s status as ‘England’s oldest imperial possession and since the 1800 Act of Union it was either an equal partner in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland or, in the eyes of Irish nationalists certainly, an inferior member of the kingdom and a continued colonial possession’ (Crozier-De Rosa 2018: 47.3/843). The argument put forward by both Finley and Howe that the Irish would not have aligned themselves with other colonial peoples is only partially true. Gonne is a good example of many Irish nationalists’ attitudes to colonial peoples: on the one hand, identifying and empathizing with some of them, including India and the Boers, while also stigmatizing others, including the native Africans. Like many of her contemporaries in the Irish nationalist movement, Gonne constructed her discourse of colonization on the basis of there being a hierarchy of colonized peoples, and problematic factors, such as the Irish participating in colonialism, for example Irish soldiers fighting for the British Army in South Africa, were explained by portraying them as victims, duped by the British Empire (Foley and O’Connor 2006; Howe 2002: 56–7).
4 Colonial discourses: definitions and analytical frameworks In her analysis of discourses of colonialism and anti-Semitism Felicity Rash provides a succinct outline of what constitutes colonial(ist) discourse. It is not a
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singular, monolithic phenomenon: ‘discourse is discourse about colonies and/or discourse produced within colonies’ (Rash 2012: 132). Importantly, from the perspective of colonizers, the discourse seeks to present colonization as natural and necessary, by constructing the ‘Self’ – the colonizers – as superior and powerful, while stigmatizing the colonized ‘Other’ as the opposite. Indeed, typical tropes in colonial discourse portray a Self that is civilized, cultured, generous, law-abiding, strong, proud (with positive connotations), organized and fair. By contrast, the colonial Other is wild, savage, aggressive, uncivilized, backward, untrustworthy and chaotic. From the perspective of the colonized, many of these tropes are then reversed. In addition, colonial discourses are often gendered. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, nationalism, colonialism and empire were portrayed as active, male endeavours. Women, by contrast, were symbols, icons, passive repositories of a nation’s spirit, the allegorical ‘mother of the nation’. Women engaged in nationalist, colonial and anti-colonial endeavours represented a threat to the accepted gendered order: ‘they jeopardised the relevancy of the moral and social codes that underpinned and justified the so-called imperial civilizing mission. They threatened the stability of the Empire’ (Crozier-De Rosa 2018: 42.2/843). The situation in Britain and Ireland, described here by Crozier-De Rosa, was mirrored in Germany: despite the efforts of women campaigners such as Minna Cauer, women’s roles in the colonies remained restricted largely to that of wives, mothers and nurses (Wildenthal 2001: 133–71). Women’s marginal status in the colonial project meant that they represented a particular type of colonial Self: self-sacrificing, nurturing and supportive, but also at risk of becoming the Other, a destabilizing influence on the colonial order. Concepts of the Self and Other are at the core of colonial discourse, and serve to reinforce or challenge the colonial power imbalance (Rash 2012: 24– 7). The terms ‘Self ’ and ‘Other’, while being well-established concepts in sociology, discourse analysis and postmodern literary and cultural studies, will be outlined in the particular context of Schirmacher’s and Gonne’s discourses. Starting with Stephen Harold Riggins’ well-known definition, a key factor of the Self-Other dichotomy is the creation of ‘discourses of both difference and similarity’ (Riggins 1997: 4, emphasis in the original). In his sociocognitive approach to analysing prejudice, van Dijk posits a process in which members of the majority or ingroup have a ‘protoschema’ of prejudice to which they can add (negative) information about the outgroup, or adapt to a new outgroup (van Dijk 1984: 23). Negative stereotypes and prejudices are both constructed and maintained by discourse, as their representation in recognizable rhetorical patterns, key terms, expressions and metaphors, for example, become part of accepted knowledge or ‘common sense’ within the ingroup. These stereotypes are based on a ‘relativistic “principle” of metacontrast’, but the contrasts are not equal or balanced. The depiction of the ingroup is not only more likely to be positive, it is also more ‘differentiated than the images of the other groups’ (Wodak and Reisigl 2001: 11). When referring to the Other, the Self does not recognize significant
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subtleties or differences, and rejects characteristics that do not appear to fit in with generalized (negative) images or group schemata (van Dijk 1984: 23–5; Riggins 1997: 5). In identifying and analysing the discursive creation of the Self and Other, I draw on the Discourse-Historical Approach, a historically focused variety of Critical Discourse Analysis developed by Ruth Wodak et al. (2009), and applied to colonial discourse by Rash (2012, 2017). The approach offers a context-dependent, interdisciplinary set of tools and categories for identifying the discursive construction of the Self and the Other, as outlined above. The analysis will focus in particular on two of Wodak et al.’s macro-strategies, which I have adapted to correspond to the Self/Other dichotomy in Schirmacher’s and Gonne’s discourses:
Constructive strategies: these are intended to communicate a positive Self that is defined by solidarity and unity. Strategies of demontage/dismantling/destruction: these aim to do the opposite – to construct an image of the Other that is singularly negative (Wodak et al. 2009: 33–5; Rash 2012: 3–4).
Micro-realizations of these strategies take the form of key expressions, argumentation topoi and metaphor. This analysis will examine expressions that define the Self and Other according to national, geographical, gendered and racial stereotypes: these have been coined ‘(detoponymic) nationyms’, ‘(detoponymic) anthroponyms’ and ‘genderonyms’ and ‘racionyms’ by Reisigl and Wodak in their analysis of racist and anti-Semitic discourse (2001). The analysis will also identify and discuss tropes, allegories and recurring topoi, generalized statements or themes that are held to be true, and possibly imply some logical consequence. For example, with the topos of history, in the sense of ‘history teaches us a lesson’, the implication is that the Self ought to learn from this lesson by taking a course of action that will not replicate the mistakes of the past (Wengeler 2003: 247; Wodak et al. 2009: 4–6). Metaphors are an effective rhetorical device, portraying the outgroup as a threat or danger, through comparisons with natural disasters, diseases or dangerous or reviled animals, such as vermin or snakes. Negatively charged metaphors not only portray the enemy as the Other or even dehumanize them; it has also been argued that metaphors trigger a cognitive, ‘logical’ process in the ingroup, identifying it as the Self. If the Other is represented in terms of a disease, then the next step, which may be articulated openly or not, is to ‘cure’ or eliminate the disease (Musolff 2003; Rash 2006: 75–168; Jaworska 2011).
5 The discursive construction of the German Self and the Polish Other Between 1906 and 1913 Käthe Schirmacher made five speeches at the Ostdeutsche Frauentage [East German Women’s Conferences]. In these speeches,
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she describes the conflict between the German and Polish populations in the Ostmark, and exhorts its German inhabitants to protect ‘Germanness’ within the territory. 5.1 Constructive strategies Constructing the German Self for Schirmacher involves discursively constructing the territory she is describing (and from which she herself hails), through the use of particular geonyms and politonyms (labels of geographical and political significance). In one speech, the Ostmark is described within this colonial framework as ‘eine reichsdeutsche Kolonie’ [an imperial German colony] (1910: 4); in an another speech, she refers to the Ostmark territory – Posen and West Prussia – as being ‘nichts anderes als deutsche Kolonien mit deutschem Schweiß und Blut gedüngt’ [nothing other than German colonies fertilized with German sweat and blood], using an organic metaphor to link colonization with sacrifice and struggle (1908b: 6). Any activity within the Ostmark is for Schirmacher ‘Kolonisationsarbeit’ [colonization work] (1908b: 5). The Ostmark is a linguistically as well as politically contested territory, as Schirmacher moves between referring to the Ostmark as ‘im deutschen Inland’ [in German home territory] (1908b: 9) and as a colony. Its marginal location is further communicated through the labels ‘Grenzland’ [borderland] and ‘Grenzgebiet’ [border territory]. These expressions, together with references to Germany as a whole being ‘ein Land unsicherer Grenzen’ [a country of unsafe borders], form part of a wider topos of danger or threat. The Ostmark therefore represents one of these insecure borders, and its German settlers have to be alert to the threat, not only of Poles living within the territory, but also of the Slavic populations to the east. The precarious position of the Ostmark is also emphasized through the use of the metaphor of the bulwark, a metaphor commonly used in discourses about the Eastern Marches (Drummond 2000: 148); organizations and people are essential in constructing and maintaining the bulwark. In ‘Die Verteidigung der Ostmark’ [The Defence of the Ostmark], Schirmacher describes how the Ansiedlungskommission [Settlement Commission] was instrumental, not only in enabling German farmers to settle in the Ostmark, but also in creating a bulwark: ‘Ohne die Ansiedlungskommission… wäre kein Bollwerk errichtet und die polnische Flut nicht zum Stehen gebracht’ [Without the Settlement Commission there would be no bulwark in place to stem the Polish flood] (1910: 17). Metaphors of natural disaster – the flood – to depict the threat posed by the Poles, and references to ‘Polish flood’ recur several times in Schirmacher’s speeches. The metaphor of the bulwark enables Schirmacher not only to construct the image of an overwhelming threat – the Poles – but also to emphasize the role of women in the Ostmark: ‘Wir müssen das nationale Bollwerk hier bauen helfen: ein gutes Bollwerk braucht Pfähle und braucht Faschinen. Sind die Männer die Pfähle, so sind wir Frauen die zähen, bindenen Faschinen. Heran zum nationalen Wall!’ [We must help to
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build the national bulwark: a good bulwark needs posts and fascines. If the men are the posts, then we women are the tough, binding fascines. Let us get started with our national wall!] (1908a: 98). Here, as elsewhere in her speeches, Schirmacher is careful not to challenge dominant ideas about the role of women in colonized territories. They are there in a supportive role, to help the men maintain a physical German presence in the Ostmark, and to ensure that German culture is passed on to the next generation, something that does not happen ‘in deutsch-polnischen Mischehen’ [in German–Polish mixed marriages]: ‘[D]ie Frau gibt mit der Muttersprache dem Kinde das Vaterland… heiratet der deutsche Mann eine Polin, so siegt allerdings die Frau, hieratet aber die deutsche Frau einen Polen, so siegt – der Mann’ [Through the mother tongue the mother passes on the fatherland to the child… if the German man marries a Polish woman, then the woman is victorious. If a German woman marries a Polish man, then it is the man that prevails] (1908a: 97). Using genderonyms (‘Frau’, ‘Mann’), as well as the gendered detoponymic anthroponyms ‘Polin’ and ‘Polen’, Schirmacher draws attention to key gender-related as well as nationalist differences, and invokes the stereotype of the woman at the centre of the home, and as a microcosm of the nation and national culture. In ‘Unsere Pflicht in den Ostmarken’ [Our Duty in the Eastern Marches] she employs the topoi of history and of sacrifice to remind Ostmark women of how their predecessors took upon themselves ‘alle Mühe und Beschwerdnis der Kolonisation’ [all the trouble and hardships of colonization] (1908a: 96), and to exhort them to continue this colonizing project. In order to offer a positive image of the German Self, Schirmacher employs the topos of superiority to justify colonization of the Ostmark. The construction of colonizer-as-saviour is a core component of colonial discourses (Rash 2012: 130, 133; 2017: 46), and is evident in late 19th- and early 20thcentury anti-Slavic rhetoric (Rash 2012: 44). Germans are a civilizing force – ‘Pioniere der Kultur’ [pioneers of culture]– who brought about ‘die höhere Entwicklungsstufe’ [the more advanced stage of development] in the Ostmark (1908b: 5). Despite claims of German superiority, Schirmacher also puts forward a critical appraisal of the German Self. Using the topos of comparison, she argues that, unlike the French, the English, or even the ‘othered’ Poles, in their colonizing, civilizing endeavours, Germans have embraced internationalism at the cost of their own national identity: ‘Weltenträume, Menschheitsideale sind uns, scheint es, national, sind deutsch, das Internationale ist uns national… Eroberer waren wir des Fremden, Verlierer des Eigenen’ [To us, dreams of the wide world, ideals of humanity are national, are German; whatever is international is national to us… We were conquerors of all things foreign, and lost our own selves in the process] (1912: 4). In a topos of reversal, i.e. the positive becomes the negative, Germany’s problem, she argues, is that it still wants to be loved by other nations. Due to its ‘Großmachtstellung’ [position as a major power], however, this is no longer possible or desirable: ‘Wir Deutschen leben gern mit unseren Nachbarn in Frieden, wir leben gerne in sauberen, geordneten Verhältnissen, wir suchen
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Behagen und Gemütlichkeit… macht uns in nationaler Hinsicht oft nachgiebig’ [We Germans enjoy living in peace with our neighbours, we like living clean, orderly lives, we seek a good quality of life and comfort… often renders us too accommodating, nationally speaking] (1908a: 97). She then refers specifically to the failing of German women, as this desire for orderliness and comfort makes ‘gerade unsere deutschen Frauen national so widerstandslos’ [precisely our women so nationally incapable of resistance] (1908a: 97). 5.2 Strategies of destruction/dismantling/demontage Schirmacher stigmatizes the Polish population through the use of detoponymic anthroponyms, ‘Polen’ [Polish men], ‘Polinnen’ [Polish women], ‘Slawen’ [Slavs] and ‘slawisch’ [Slavic], that also function as racionyms, particularly in collocations with ‘Gefahr’ [danger] and ‘Propaganda’, for example, ‘Polengefahr’ [Polish danger] and the more general ‘östliche Gefahr’ [eastern danger], the title of her speech made in 1908. Her references to ‘slawische Propaganda’ [Slavic Propaganda] and ‘slawische Sympathien’ [Slavic sympathies] remind the listeners and readers that the Poles in the Ostmark are part of a wider threat from the East. Employing the topos of danger, she also recounts her experience of French support for the Poles (‘die französischen Slawensympathien’ [French Slavic sympathies]) from her time in Paris to emphasise the expansive nature of the threat for the Ostmark Germans: it comes not only from the East, but from the West as well. The topos of similarity is invoked to link the Poles to other colonized territories and peoples: when providing a historical account of the colonization of the Ostmark under Frederick II’s rule, she describes the Poles as ‘seine Irokesen’ [his Iroquois] (1910: 6). The threat posed by the Poles in the Ostmark is emphasized by describing them as ‘halbasiatische Fremdherrschaft’ [semi-Asiatic foreign rulers] and claiming that, due to their geographical proximity to Germany, they are to be feared more than the ‘gelbe Gefahr’ [yellow peril] (1908b: 3). A common feature of Schirmacher’s discourse is the co-existence of apparent contradictory arguments and portrayal of the Self and Other. The Poles are described as barbaric and uncivilized, ‘die Polen sind eine angreifende und vergewaltigende Nation, im deutschen Inland wie im Ausland’ [the Poles are an aggressive and violating nation, on German home territory and abroad] (1908b: 4). This is in contrast to the cultured, enterprising and benign Germans; therefore the Poles should be prevented, with aggressive means if necessary, from holding political power in the Eastern territories. Radical Polish nationalism has led to disharmony between the Germans and the Poles and threatens the stability of political and everyday life in the Ostmark. Yet, employing a topos of reversal, it is precisely this aggressive nationalism, alleged intolerance of other nationalities and cultures that Schirmacher admires and exhorts the population of the Ostmark to emulate: ‘Sie sind
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patriotisch, rührig und in den Hauptsachen einig… Jeder Pole bedeutete bei ihnen stets jede Polin, während jeder Deutsche… die deutsche Frau nicht mitdeutete’ [They are patriotic, industrious, and fundamentally united… For them, every Pole always includes every Polish woman, whereas every German… excludes the German woman] (1908b: 3). Here, the gendered detoponymic anthroponyms ‘Pole’ and ‘Polin’ are significant, as Schirmacher presents the audience with a potentially disruptive narrative. Although the Poles are dangerous and barbaric, their political effectiveness stems at least in part from the fact that Polish women are included in political activity. Through the topos of comparison, Schirmacher argues that German women should not be excluded from political life; although elsewhere in her speeches, she advocates a traditional role for colonial women, here she presents a more challenging image of women as political activists, thus questioning her and other women’s marginal status. In the same speech, she confronts the parallels between Polish and (German) women’s emancipation, and rejects them unavowedly: [D]ie polnische Propaganda bedeutet eine Gefährdung des Staates und des Vaterlandes; die Frauenbewegung hingegen eine Stärkung von Staat und Vaterland durch die Erziehung freie und bewußter Bürgerinnen. Ausnahmegesetze gegen Polen und Ausnahmegesetze gegen Frauen sind daher zwei so ganz verschiedene Dinge, daß dieser Trugschluß, der dazu noch sentimental ist, völlig abgewiesen werden muß. [Polish propaganda threatens the state and the fatherland; the women’s movement, by contrast, strengthens the state and fatherland in its education of free, well-informed female citizens. Special measures against Poles and those against women are therefore fundamentally different, so different that this sentimental misconception must be rejected out of hand.] (Schirmacher 1908b: 17) Schirmacher’s discourse, while providing polarized images of the Self and Other, does challenge at least in part dominant discourses about women’s role in colonization, and on occasion compares German ineffectiveness with effective Polish political agitation.
6 The discursive construction of the Irish Self and the English Other in Maud Gonne’s writings In the first few decades of the 20th century, Maud Gonne published widely on Irish nationalism and British rule. In particular, she depicted a downtrodden, oppressed Irish people, ruled by a cruel and failing British Empire. Comparisons with other colonial peoples, such as the Boers and Indians, were offered to her Irish readers as examples of fellow suffering, but also of resistance.
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6.1 Constructive strategies The constructive strategies in Gonne’s texts aim to create a unified, positive national Self that contrasts starkly with the Other, in Gonne’s case the English, British and British Empire. That is not to say that there is no middle ground or nuance in Gonne’s discourse: while the English/British are uniformly stigmatized, the collective Irish people fall into the categories of both Self and Other: belonging to the Self are the nationalists, Irish workers, Irish mothers and the Irish youth. Even within that ‘Self ’, Gonne distinguishes between the idealism of the youth and the promise they hold for Ireland’s future, and the weary, disillusioned nationalists, who fear that independence from British rule will never materialize. The Irish ‘Other’ takes the form of any official who facilitates, supports or condones British presence in Ireland. Irish soldiers fighting in the British Army can largely be assigned to the category of the Self rather than the Other, as they are portrayed as victims, as having been duped into joining the army, compelled even, due to extreme poverty inflicted upon them, and used as cannon fodder for the war-hungry, imperialist English. In Gonne’s writings, three symbols dominate her portrayal of the Irish: young people, Irish mothers and the Queen of Ireland (in the form of the mythical figures of Shan Van Vocht and Kathleen ni Houlihan). Many of her articles published in the United Irishman (1900–10) focus specifically on the plight of children in Dublin and elsewhere in Ireland, and they link real events involving children, and her own encounters with Irish children with their symbolic significance as hope for Ireland’s future and for the (re-)establishment of an independent Irish nation. In ‘What We Owe the Children’ (1900d), Gonne describes the ‘rival’ street party for children, organized in defiance of the official one organized to mark Queen Victoria’s visit to Dublin. She refers to the children in sentimental terms, as the ‘little ones of Dublin’, but also as large in number ‘30,000 little ones… singing “God save Ireland”… with their fresh young voices’ (131). The topos of numbers signifies not only the success of the rival party, and therefore a clear act of defiance against the British and against claims of Irish loyalty to the British Crown, but also the number of young potential nationalists. The symbolic significance of children is communicated through the positive and idealistic description of them as ‘green branches of hope… shining gold of their hair and the gleam of their eyes and their rosy lips’ (131). The topos of youth, employed here and elsewhere in Gonne’s writings, aims to contrast the hope of the future of Ireland with the moribund, decaying British rule, the dominant message being that Ireland is the future and England (or Britain) is the past. Parallel to the idealized portrayal of children as a positive representation of the Irish Self, Gonne also depicts their suffering as victims of cruel British rule. Despite their bravery and optimism, many children in Ireland, as Gonne describes in some detail, are malnourished, even starving, lacking adequate education, forced to live in terrible conditions and to grow up without parents
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and siblings, these having fallen victim to extreme poverty and famine. Many of them have either died or have been forced to emigrate, and all because of English rule. In ‘The Children Must be Fed’, published in May 1910, Gonne refers to Irish children as ‘nation builders’ and describes the Irish adult population as victims whose ‘mental and intellectual faculties have been so overstrained that their natural vigour and elasticity is gone for ever’; the result is ‘drink-craving’ and ‘over-crowded lunatic asylums’ (141). Employing the topos of comparison, Gonne provides two specific examples. The first is of her own son feeding the ducks on St Stephen’s Green in Ireland. When he sees the poor, starving children staring at the bread, he gives it to them instead. This illustrates the contrast between the fortunate and unfortunate, with her son representing another, more positive and fortunate Self. The second comparison is between France and Ireland: France ‘at first by charity and then by patriotism has solved this problem, so that no child who now goes to a French school is ever hungry’ (143). As in Schirmacher’s texts, the topos of contrast is employed to create a polarized distinction between the home group or nation and the enemy – here the oppressor, in the form of the British Empire. Motherhood is a striking gendered allegory, one that links Ireland as the ‘mother’ and England as the ‘anti-mother’, thus politicizing the ‘mother’ symbolically as well as personally, with references to Queen Victoria and to Gonne herself as a mother (Bobotis 2006). Therefore, the genderonyms ‘mother’ and ‘queen’ take on a central significance. Gonne describes Ireland as ‘our sacred mother Ireland… with chains of tyranny weighing down her delicate hands’. She is also a ‘sad Motherland’ and one that is part of ‘the National struggle’ (1902a: 135). Continuing the allegorical approach, Gonne employs the topos of a mythical, golden-age past, linking Ireland as mother to the figures of Kathleen Ni Houlihan and Shan van Vocht. Kathleen Ni Houlihan is the name given to the mythical symbol of Ireland, often portrayed as a downtrodden, elderly woman. The figure was also known as ‘Shan van Vocht’, an Anglicized spelling of the Irish ‘Sean-Bhean bhocht’, meaning ‘poor old woman’, and was the subject of nationalist poems and songs, as well as being the title of a literary journal, which was published between 1896 and 1899 (Bobotis 2006: 64–6). In Gonne’s texts, both allegorical figures represent the suffering of all Irish mothers and of the Irish nation; Kathleen Ni Houlihan moreover is the mythical queen of Ireland, and Gonne exhorts every Irish child to serve her, ‘each child should feel himself or herself a soldier of Ireland – bound by geasa, the tradition of ancient rivalry, to the service of Kathleen Ni Houlihan’ (1902a: 137). In Gonne’s depiction, however, she is not a defeated elderly woman, but rather a queen, waiting to be liberated and to resume her rightful position, invoking ancient, mythical landscapes: ‘the Hill of Tara, on the green… in the olden days of Ireland’s glory and freedom’. Looking to a future free from English rule, ‘Tara of the Kinds shall be free once more and Kathleen Ni Houlihan be a Queen among the Nations’ (137). The link between Ireland as queen and Queen Victoria is clear, and allows Gonne to
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contrast Victoria ‘who is spoken of as poor, and sad, and wretched’ (132), a figure to be pitied as well as reviled, with ‘our Queen, Ireland’. Gonne insists that this future (yet also mythical, golden-age) queen will return in a glorious future, ‘not as the Shan Van Vocht, ‘the mother of exiles’, but as Kathleen the Beautiful, ‘bright with hope, and powerful with the wonderful vitality of the Irish race’ (132). Parallel to the allegory of Ireland as mother and queen is Gonne’s depiction of Irish mothers. Drawing on the topos of self-sacrifice, Irish mothers are described as saintly, loving and long-suffering; using the topos of comparison, they are also peerless when compared to any other mothers: ‘No mothers are tenderer than Irish mothers… the agony of the mothers who watch their little ones fading and cannot remedy it’ (1910: 142). Like the Irish motherland, they have to endure untold hardships and await liberation from English oppression. Irish independence for Gonne is a gendered matter; although she refers to ‘Nationalists’ in general terms, she emphasizes women’s specific role in bringing about Irish independence, and highlights the importance of their political engagement: There is an old prophecy which says that Ireland will be saved by the women, and if Irish women will only realize the importance of this work… I think this prophecy may come true… Women of Ireland… freedom and salvation of our country. (1902b: 140). In her positive portrayal of the Irish Self, Gonne also makes a comparison with countries and peoples outside of the British Isles, specifically South Africa and India. Her staunch support for the Boers, whom she describes as ‘The heroes of the South African Republics’ (1900a: 162), places Ireland in an internal colonial context. Rather than being a troublesome region within the British Isles, Ireland is one of several oppressed and exploited colonies, and comparisons with the Boers and the Indians serve as examples not only to Ireland’s suffering at the hands of the British, as bearers of ‘the white man’s burden’ (1900e: 168), but also as a strategy for criticizing the inaction of the Irish. Although positive Self-presentation and negative Other-presentation are key strategies of anti-colonialist discourse, criticism of the Self also plays an important role. In Schirmacher’s texts, comparisons are made with the Other, i.e. the Poles and the French, to highlight Germans’ failings in national identity and pride; in Gonne’s texts, the Boers in particular provide a model to be emulated: ‘Does the Irish nation realise that her tyrant is being beaten to dust by a nation smaller than herself ?’ (1900a: 163). Gonne highlights the need for action, rather than passive suffering, with a religious reference to the Virgin Mary: ‘Has not Ireland been the Mother of Sorrows long enough?’ (163). For Gonne, India is similarly a victim of British colonialism, a state she describes using the metaphor of hypnotism: ‘We in Ireland, like those in India, have let ourselves be hypnotized by England’s pretended greatness, and thus brought about our own real weakness’ (163, emphasis in the original). Once
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again, the Self-presentation draws on comparison and self-criticism; British colonialism may have brought about the system of oppression but, like the Indians, the Irish need to acknowledge their role in maintaining the status quo. In exhorting the Irish to rise up against their English oppressors, the Boers serve as a reflection of the ‘better Self ’. Gonne reserves particular praise for the Boer women, describing them as ‘plain, honest, clear-headed and truehearted Dutch women’. While their courage is highlighted, each woman having been taught ‘to use her Bible and her pistol’, Gonne, like Schirmacher, is careful not to portray too transgressive an image of womanhood, as this would run the risk of alienating her traditional Catholic audience. She reassures the reader that ‘They are not essaying the role of Amazons. They are only trying to soften some of the horrors of battle.’ The Transvaal woman, she argues, has ‘muscles like iron’, but ‘with all this, she is strictly a domestic woman. She is satisfied by her own fireside. Her whole heart is centred in the little world that she calls by the sacred name of home. It is big enough to hold all her ambitions, all her hopes, all her dreams’ (1900b: 164–6). As with Schirmacher, operating in the margins of a nationalist political movement defined predominantly by men entailed constructing a discourse that promoted women’s political activities, while also anticipating criticism about being too radical (Gehmacher et al. 2018: 409–12; Crozier-De Rosa 2017). 6.2 Strategies of destruction/demontage/dismantling As mentioned briefly above, detoponymic nationyms such as ‘England’, ‘the English’ and ‘the British’, as well as ‘the British Empire’, are used interchangeably in Gonne’s texts and represent the main Other. Within this generalized category, however, more specific ‘Others’ are constructed. Continuing the strategic use of the Mother/Queen allegory in a topos of comparison, Queen Victoria becomes the embodiment of the female Other, in effect, the ‘anti-mother’. In contrast to Kathleen Ni Houlihan, who wears ‘the flower-crown’, the flowers being the metaphorical representation of Irish children (1902a: 135), Queen Victoria is the ‘Famine Queen’, the anti-mother who destroys the flowers of the Irish nation (the children) by promoting policies that bring about blight and famine. The expression ‘Famine Queen’ is employed by Gonne in a number of her writings, notably in her (in)famous article of the same name, published originally in French in L’Irlande Libre, and reprinted in the United Irishman on 7 April 1900, in response to Queen Victoria’s visit to Ireland (Ward 1983: 47–53; Steele 2007: 135). Victoria’s advanced age, ‘in the decrepitude of her eighty-one years’, is portrayed as representative of a moribund empire, one that exerts a vampiric control over its ‘struggling mass of pale, exhausted slaves’. She comes to Ireland to drum up support for British overseas wars, ‘soldiers are needed to protect the vampires’, and pretends that she cares about Ireland ‘taking the Shamrock in her withered hand’ while ‘she dares to ask for soldiers – soldiers to protect the exterminators of their race’ (1900c: 55–6). Using the topos of comparison, Gonne contrasts Victoria’s callousness with the sufferings of Irish mothers:
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As the national Other, England is portrayed as weak and lacking in substance, despite its apparent political strength: ‘England has lived for years on a prestige which has had no solid foundation’; here again, the metaphor of hypnotism is used to highlight the insubstantial nature of England’s political power. ‘She has hypnotised the world with the falsehood of her greatness.’ Once again, the Boers serve as a model for the Irish to emulate: ‘It required the dauntless courage and energy of the Boers to destroy forever this illusion and rescue Europe from the fatal enchantment’ (55). England is described as failing because of its focus on industrialization, in which men who would have made strong soldiers ‘have been swallowed up by the great black manufacturing cities’; financial greed has been England’s downfall, in its willingness to sacrifice its men who ‘have been flung into the crucible where the gold is made’ (55). This contrasts strongly with Ireland, whose people ‘have despised gold, and who… have maintained all the beauty and strength and vitality of their race’ (56). The British Empire as the Other, as with the creation of the positive Irish Self, is constructed through the topos of comparison – by comparing the atrocities carried out by the British in other colonized countries, in particular India and South Africa. Through the topos of numbers, Gonne outlines the severity of the impact of British rule in India, stating that ‘in India to-day the most appalling famine is raging; 5,474,000 people are in receipt of relief… we know that in 1897 eight million Indians died of starvation and fever’ (1900e: 167). The pattern of exploitation by the British across their empire is recognizable, according to Gonne, and this is compounded by English people’s ignorance and lack of compassion for those colonies that prop up the British Empire: ‘Alas, we in Ireland know how vain the hope that the people of Great Britain will ever make the English people understand or care about an Indian famine’ (1900d: 170). Gonne therefore calls for a war against England, describing the battle in Manichean terms, with England as the evil force that represents ‘brutal materialism, the world, the flesh and the devil’, versus Ireland representing good and ‘the spiritual ideal’. Drawing on the topos of religion, Gonne depicts the war as ‘a holy war against the forces of evil’, one that is a battle of elemental forces: ‘These two forces have fought together since the world began’ (1902a: 136).
7 Concluding remarks In the early 20th century, many European societies underwent sweeping political changes: at home, women (and men) campaigned for women’s equality and greater participation in public life, whilst abroad, the desire to be a global
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power spurred on countries such as Britain and Germany to expand and consolidate their colonies. Schirmacher and Gonne are in many respects representative of their time, as political activists promoting a strand of German and Irish nationalism in a period of political turmoil; yet they also offer their own perspective on nationalism, empire and colonization, as women operating in a largely male, often hostile, political environment. This results in sometimes contradictory discourses that attempt to reconcile Schirmacher’s and Gonne’s roles as passionate advocates for German and Irish nationalism, with the gendered expectations, assumptions and prejudices that they encountered in their audiences. They both draw on topoi, tropes, symbols, metaphors and labels typical of colonial discourse to cast the enemy, the British or the Poles, as aggressive and threatening, although their perspectives are the opposite of one another. However, they also address the role of gender in the colonial situation, in advocating for women’s participation in colonial or anti-colonial activities. For Schirmacher, this means exhorting women to take a more active role in the Ostmark, not only in the home, but also in politics, although the latter is expressed through comparisons with the Poles, rather than directly. For Gonne, women have symbolic significance, as mythical and regal figures, and as mothers, and as such also serve largely to reinforce the traditional role of women. This was in contrast to other Irish women nationalists, such as Constance Markievicz, who urged women to take up arms, and did so herself (Ward 1983). However, Gonne’s praise of Boer women offers a potential role model that combines female homemaking and physical combat. Gonne’s and Schirmacher’s careful navigation of a discourse that focused on the margins – the grey zones of national territory and gender politics – results in a discourse that is part of a wider negotiation of geopolitical and gender relations. Both women’s discourses are evidence of a discursive construction of their respective territories as neglected, ignored and disadvantaged, with parallels made to women’s role within them.
Note 1 The copy of the speech I have used is a reprint in the Jahrbuch des Deutschen Ostmarkenverein, 1908, 95–8, and is cited in the chapter as ‘1908a’.
References Primary sources Maud Gonne’s articles are taken from Karen Steele (ed.) (2004), Maud Gonne’s Irish Nationalist Writings, 1895–1946. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. Gonne, Maud (1900a), ‘Signs of Hope’, United Irishman, 13 January, 162–163. Gonne, Maud (1900b), ‘The Boer Women’, United Irishman, 17 March, 164–166. Gonne, Maud (1900c), ‘The Famine Queen’, United Irishman, 7 April 1900, 54–56. Gonne, Maud (1900d), ‘What we Owe the Children’, United Irishman, 7 July, 131–132.
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Gonne, Maud (1900e), ‘India’, United Irishman, 12 May, 167–171. Gonne, Maud (1902a), ‘Ireland and the Children’, United Irishman, 7 June, 135–137. Gonne, Maud (1902b), ‘National Education of the Children’, United Irishman, 23 August, 138–140. Gonne, Maud (1910), ‘The Children Must Be Fed’, Bean na hÉireann, May, 141–143. Schirmacher, Käthe (1908a [1906]), ‘Unsere Pflicht in den Ostmarken. Rede auf dem II. Ostdeutschen Frauentage in Elbing’, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Ostmarkenverein, Berlin, 95–98. Schirmacher, Käthe (1908b), Die östliche Gefahr. Vortrag gehalten auf dem 3. Ostdeutschen Frauentage in Allenstein O.-P. Lissa i. P.: Oskar Eulitz’ Verlag. Schirmacher, Käthe (1910), Die Verteidigung der Ostmark. Vortrag gehalten auf dem 4. Ostdeutschen Frauentage in Lissa i. P. Lissa i. P.: Oskar Eulitz’ Verlag. Schirmacher, Käthe (1912), Was ist national? Vortrag gehalten auf dem 5. Ostdeutschen Frauentage in Culm W.-Pr. Posen: Oskar Eulitz’ Verlag. Schirmacher, Käthe (1921), Flammen. Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben. Leipzig: Dürr and Weber. Schirmacher, Käthe (1922), Die Geknechteten (Die reichsdeutsche Irredenta). Berlin: Brunnen Verlag Karl Winckler.
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Horan, Geraldine (2011), ‘Discourses of Gender and Nationalism in Early TwentiethCentury Germany and Ireland: An Analysis of Four Nationalist Women’s Texts’, Patterns of Prejudice 45/5, 469–497. Howe, Stephen (2002), Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jaworska, Sylvia (2011), ‘Anti-Slavic Imagery in German Radical Nationalist Discourse at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: A Prelude to Nazi Ideology?’, Patterns of Prejudice 45/5, 435–452. Kopp, Kirsten (2011), ‘Gray Zones: On the Inclusion of “Poland” in the Study of German Colonialism’, in Michael Perraudin and Jürgen Zimmerer (eds), German Colonialism and National Identity. New York: Routledge, 33–44. Kopp, Kirsten (2012), Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. McCoole, Sinéad (2003), No Ordinary Women: Irish Female Activists in the Revolutionary Years, 1900–1923. Dublin: O’Brien Press. Musolff, Andreas (2003), ‘Ideological Functions of Metaphor: The Conceptual Metaphors of Health and Illness in Public Discourse’, in René Dirvan, Roslyn Frank and Martin Pütz (eds), Cognitive Models in Language and Thought: Ideology, Metaphors and Meanings. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 327–352. Rash, Felicity (2006), The Language of Violence: Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. New York: Peter Lang. Rash, Felicity (2012), German Images of the Self and the Other: Nationalist, Colonialist and Anti-Semitic Discourse, 1871–1918. Houndmills: Palgrave. Rash, Felicity (2017), The Discourse Strategies of Imperialist Writing: The German Colonial Idea and Africa, 1848–1945. New York: Routledge. Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak (2001), Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge. Riggins, Stephen Harold (1997), ‘The Rhetoric of Othering’, in Stephen Harold Riggins (ed.), The Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1–30. Steele, Karen (ed.) (2004), Maud Gonne’s Irish Nationalist Writings, 1895–1946. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. Steele, Karen (2007), Women, Press, and Politics during the Irish Revival. New York: Syracuse University Press. Thum, Gregor (2013), ‘The Nineteenth-Century Mythicization of Germany’s Eastern Borderlands’, in Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz (eds), Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian and Ottoman Borderlands. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 42–60. van Dijk, Teun A. (1984), Prejudice in Discourse: An Analysis of Ethnic Prejudice in Cognition and Conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Walzer, Anke (1991), Käthe Schirmacher. Eine deutsche Frauenrechtlerin auf dem Wege vom Liberalismus zum konservativen Nationalismus. Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus. Ward, Margaret (1983), Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism. London: Pluto Press. Ward, Margaret (1990), Maud Gonne: A Life. London: Pandora. Wengeler, Martin (2003), Topos und Diskurs. Begründung einer argumenationsanalytischen Methode und ihre Anwendung auf den Migrationsdiskurs (1960–1985). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
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White, Timothy J. (2010), ‘The Impact of British Colonialism on Irish Catholicism and National Identity: Repression, Reemergence, and Divergence’, Études Irlandaises 35/1, 21–37. Wildenthal, Lora (2001), German Women for Empire, 1884–1945. Durham: Duke University Press. Wodak, Ruth and Martin Reisigl (2001), ‘Discourse and Racism’, in Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (eds), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell, 372–397. Wodak, Ruth, Rudolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl and Karin Liebhart (2009), The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Second edition. Translated by Angelika Hirsch, Richard Mitten and J. W. Unger. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
12 Schooling of the tribal peoples of the Chota Nagpur region of India: Contested claims by German missionaries and British colonialists, 1830–70 Sutapa Dutta
In 19th-century colonial India, Chota Nagpur was the south-western frontier of the Bengal province. Geographically, the region was on the fringes of one of the most advanced locations of British India. While Calcutta and its peripheries received the benefit of colonial education and reformation, the region of Chota Nagpur remained one of the most neglected areas of India. Inhabiting the hills and the forests, the population mainly comprised ancient aboriginal tribes, such as the Oraons, Mundas, Hos, Santhals and Kols, who differed in their occupations, social structures and economic development. Since the beginning of the 19th century, these simple tribal people have been caught in a vortex of contesting claims over them which have had lasting repercussions on their socio-economic development and on their sense of identity and belongingness. Christian missionaries of various denominations had a huge stake in these people, and their active evangelization resulted in a sizeable tribal population adopting Christianity. The chapter studies the attempts of the British administrators and German missionaries in ‘civilizing’ this region by introducing Western education among the tribal people. Through a long stretch of Indian history, these tribes have remained isolated from mainstream society. Contact between the tribal and the non-tribal peoples was very limited, and the tribal societies mainly kept themselves isolated at the periphery of ‘civilization’. Some scholars have argued that the ‘tribe’, with its implication of backwardness and marginality, was a colonial construct (Ranger 1983; Devalle 1992; Pathy 1987). Jagannath Pathy states that in the pre-colonial period people were not conscious of their ethno-racial identities, and the main distinction was between the original inhabitant, the adivasi, and the outsider, the diku (Pathy 1987: 46). Devalle too asserts that tribe was a ‘conscious colonial project’ (Devalle 1992: 50). Such an assertion is only partly true; since ancient times the religio-scriptural literature of India describes several tribes, including the Nishada, Dasyu, Rakshasa and Grdhraj, in pejorative terms, associating them with demons and bestiality. Such texts which emphasize the supremacy of the Aryans clearly relegate the dark-skinned, flat-featured non-Aryans to the peripheries, to be shunned,
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feared or abhorred. Romila Thapar states that early society was divided into two main groups, the Arya-varna and Dasa-varna, which was a rather simplified version of ‘us’ and ‘them’, justifying the superiority of the former over the latter (Thapar 1971: 410). It is likely that the essentializing of an ‘imagined’ identity of tribal people as ‘barbarians’ was a conscious or unconscious defining by British Indologists and ethnographers, based on prevailing concepts. The Fifth Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, 28 July 1812, described the inhabitants as ‘a savage race, differing extremely in appearance, religion, language and manners, from the Hindu lowlanders of Hindustan’ (cited in Dalton 1872: 164). There was a complex set of pre-existing notions of marginalized tribes, perpetuated by myths, legends and stories from pre-colonial times that was appropriated and restructured by the colonialists and given wider currency and impetus.1 Though the identities of the tribal people of Chota Nagpur cannot be fixed on the basis of colonial policies alone, they cannot be seen in isolation. The separation and isolation of tribes from mainstream Indian society, and the regionally differentiated development policies for them, has largely determined the trajectories of their development over a period of time. Moreover, the British East India Company (EIC) officials administering from Calcutta had very little perception of the socio-cultural, political and economic institutions of what was considered to be a wilderness. With the permission of the Diwani of Bengal, Chota Nagpur came under the British in 1765. At first, the hilly infertile plateau on the outskirts of Bengal with its ‘savage’ tribes had only a nominal interest for the British. When the first British officers began to arrive in Chota Nagpur in the late 18th century, the local land tenancy rights gave the Mundas and the Oraons common property rights over not just agricultural lands but also the forests and other resources in the region. There was no concept of kingship or rent. By the 18th century, however, local feuds over land ownership meant that tribal cohesion was decreasing. It also became evident to the British that the area had rich potential, both in terms of minerals and people.2 Inaccessible areas could be opened up for raw materials, for tapping rich resources like wood and minerals, and the tribal people could be ‘re-formed’ to be willing suppliers.3 The British interference in Chota Nagpur can be seen from the early 1820s when the local king asked for the EIC’s military support to quell his insurgent subjects. What began as an extension of assistance soon turned into a collaboration with local powers, and by the 1830s the British claimed to be the liberators of the community of the Hos from the oppression of indigenous rulers. The rajas and the local chiefs were forced to accept the EIC’s authority. While claiming a protectionist approach towards these people, the British administrative policy sought to ‘civilize’ the ‘wild’ and ‘predatory’ Hos (Das Gupta 2011: 89). The British administration took full advantage of the general unrest and instability in the region, and a loose control was maintained over the tribal community, who were officially portrayed as uncivilized and as the ‘barbarous Hindoos of Jharcund’ (Firminger 2001, II: 196). This redefined the roles of the
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local authorities and the community, weakening existing mutual ties and relationships between the king and his people. There evolved new and complex forms of government with restructured hierarchies of authority. Although the British government acknowledged the oppression of the local rulers and landlords over the ignorant tribes, and also interfered in the local administration with irreparable consequences, it did not prescribe any measures for the long-term remedy of the problem. In fact it aggravated contentions among the warring groups which was evident in the Kol uprising in 1831–2. J. C. Jha blames Cornwallis’ land policies, which introduced outsiders, such as Hindu moneylenders and indifferent British officials, who were responsible for replacing age-old customs with new revenue policies. According to Jha, the Kol Rebellion was a crude form of protest against the dikus, the outsiders, which saw the violent rebellion of the Mundas and the Oraons, the two leading tribal communities, against the colonial government (Jha 1964). The insurrection created panic as far as Calcutta, and a small force under Captain Thomas Wilkinson, the acting political agent to the governorgeneral of India on the south-west frontier of the Bengal province, was sent with reinforcements. Jha mentions the indiscriminate and ruthless killing of tribal rebels, a reign of terror by the militarily superior British for which the tribals were no match. Commenting on the uneven fight, Major Sutherland is said to have remarked: ‘What chance has the bow and arrow against a round of musketry or the Cole battle-axe against the pistol and sabres of our troopers?’ (Jha 1981: 413). The Kol rebellion was ultimately suppressed by the end of 1832, but British intrusion affected the relationship with the tribes, and permanent rancour against the British government remained. For the British too it was a forewarning and the realization that the ‘wild’ tribes had to be ‘tamed’. The next logical step was to ‘civilize’ the colonial subjects, and Western education was seen as the most effective tool for this. With the Charter Act of 1813, the British administration officially declared for the first time that the dissemination of education in India would henceforth be the responsibility of the colonial government. With the arrival of the missionaries, a large number of educational institutions were established for the propagation of Western education and Christianity. At this stage the colonial interest in India was transforming from a commercial, profit-making venture to a more sophisticated incarnation of benevolent government. Education, together with imperial agency, was considered necessary to bring a radical change to the image of the English rulers. While Orientalists like William Jones and Charles Wilkins had promoted ancient Indian learning and languages, institutions like the Fort William College and the Asiatic Society in Calcutta were, as Richard Marquis Wellesley the governor general stated enthusiastically, for the ‘stability of our own interests’, and ‘the happiness and welfare of our Native Subjects’ (Roebuck 1819: i–ii). Educating the subjects had two specific purposes: first for ‘the British name and nation’, and second, for ‘endearing our Government to the native Hindoos’ (letter from Jonathan Duncan to Cornwallis, governor general in Fort William, 1 January 1792, quoted in Zastoupil and Moir 1999: 78).
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Much earlier, James Mill, in his canonical text, History of British India (1817), had established the bulwark of colonial difference which supported the British colonial civilizing mission. Mill’s History can be perceived as fulfilling a ‘useful’ service by determining for the British government their role in shaping a policy of civilizing ‘rude nations’ (Mill 1826). Moreover, the association of Europeans with heathens in a rude state was considered detrimental for the welfare of the former. The 1837 Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes stated: We have abundant proof that it is greatly for our advantage to have dealings with civilized men rather than with barbarians. Savages are dangerous neighbours and unprofitable customers, and if they remain as degraded denizens of our colonies, they become a burthen upon the state. (1837: 59) It was with this conviction in particular that the British and Foreign Aborigines Protection Society was formed in 1837 with the object of ‘protection and preservation’ of the ‘uncivilized tribes’ in the British colonies. In its report of 1837, the committee stated that with regard to ‘the NATIVE INHABITANTS of countries where BRITISH SETTLEMENTS are made, and to the neighbouring Tribes’, measures would be adopted ‘to promote the spread of Civilization among them, and to lead them to a peaceful and voluntary reception of the Christian Religion’ (1837: 1). The propagation of Christianity was seen as the one effectual means of staying this ‘evil’, and ‘benevolent attempts to instruct savages in the arts of civilized life’ was regarded to be the remedy (1837: 60). Reverend M. A. Sherring, too, spoke strongly for the ‘beneficent influences’ of Christianity on ‘the ancient creeds of India, which like wild luxuriant plants, have brought forth pernicious fruit in abundance’ (Sherring 1875: vii–viii). With plans of moral and religious improvement of tribal peoples, the colonial government considered any ‘scheme of national instruction that should leave them out’ to be ‘essentially defective’ (Adam 1838: 222). William Adam, commissioned by William Bentinck to conduct a survey of indigenous education between 1835 and 1838, posed a rhetorical question in the Third Report on the State of Education in Bengal (1838): ‘Are these tribes to be allowed to remain in the rude and barbarous condition in which they have come under the dominion of the British Government?’ Adam declared the ‘conquest over the mind’ to be ‘the most permanent’ and ‘most rational mode of dominion’, though it was conceded that ‘the means of education have hitherto been sparingly employed’. He goes on to mention in his report an English school established for the Kols which soon closed because it was unoccupied (1838: 222–3). In 1834 a school for the Oraons and Mundas had been started in Ranchi which primarily focused on teaching Bengali and English. But there was hardly any response and the school was soon closed down. In 1839 another attempt at schooling tribal people was made, again
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with little success, especially because of their lack of familiarity with either the vernacular languages or English (Bara 2002: 128). By 1845 the British Government was more proactive in exerting effort for a wider dissemination of education to the fringes of its colony. The General Report on Public Instruction (from now on GRPI) of 1845 mentions a school in Chaibasa run by A. DeFountain and W. H. Oakes which had a Bengali headmaster and a Kol assistant teacher. The school reportedly had 61 boys, divided into eight classes, who were taught English, prose readers, geography, arithmetic and translation. A school at Chota Nagpur established in the same year, 1845, by Colonel Ouseley had 103 boys, divided into seven classes. The report of the annual examination held in 1844 spoke favourably of the progress made by the pupils in a year. The report mentioned that of the pupils at the school in Chaibasa only seven were Kols, and recommended that ‘as the people were averse to having their children educated, the school may be transferred’ to another area where there was a greater demand. The government, however, ‘doubted the propriety of depriving the hill tribes of the means of improving their intellectual condition’, and the school authorities were directed to encourage the people to send their children to the school to receive instruction (GRPI 1845: 166–7). The GRPI of 1846 credited the pupils of the South-West Frontier schools for showing progress, but none was considered to have answered the annual examination papers well enough (GRPI 1846: 180). By 1851 the school in its twelfth year had an English and Hindi department, but the number of students had decreased considerably, the former having 29 students, and the latter 37 (GRPI 1852: 182–3). Unsatisfactory results compelled the British to think of alternate ways to administer education to the tribal people.4 In Bengal, especially in Serampore and Calcutta and the adjoining districts, the Baptist missionaries and their wives had by now been remarkably successful in establishing schools for poor children.5 Bishop Reginald Heber, too, preferred a direct approach towards the tribes. During his famous journey through the Upper Provinces of India he was quick to realize the potential of the area with a view to establishing Christian missions: ‘Their being free from the yoke of caste seems to make them less unlikely to receive the Gospel, than the bigoted inhabitants of the plains’ (Heber 1828, I: 260). Missionaries were seen as the likely force that could live and work among the tribes and attempt to ‘reform’ them through scriptural teachings. Furthermore, the appointment of missionaries was intended to combat the spread of Hinduism in tribal societies. John Ralph Ouseley, who succeeded Wilkinson as the political agent, requested the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) in Calcutta to install a Christian mission in Chota Nagpur, but the SPG failed to meet the demand. In his letter dated 13 March 1840, Ouseley made an appeal to Bishop Daniel Wilson of Calcutta to send missionaries to Chota Nagpur, saying that: if missionaries were sent they would succeed; for in no other part of India are the people so open to conversion to the true religion… The Kols
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As no English missionary could be appointed, Ouseley and J. C. Hannyngton, the assistant commissioner, then directed their petition to the German Gossner missionaries. Unlike England, Germany had no colonies at the time, and therefore a free and independent German mission was difficult to establish. In response to the British appeal, Johannes Evangelista Gossner (1773–1858), a Bavarian priest who had founded his own missionary association in Berlin, turned his attention towards India. A celibate monk whose ‘heart was filled with a burning enthusiasm for the conversion of non-Christian world’ (Andrews 1908: 36), his mission was already involved in evangelization activities in the Indian Gangetic plains. In 1845 he sent out a band of four young Lutherans, Emil Schatz, Fredrik Batsch, Augustus Brandt and E. Theodor Janke, to Calcutta to start an Indian Mission (Cave-Browne 1870: 1). They initially aimed for Tibet as their mission field, but while they were waiting in Calcutta for future plans to materialize, some day labourers in Calcutta whose ‘strange type of face, differing markedly from the Bengalis’ caught their attention. They were told that these people were the Kols from Chota Nagpur where no evangelization had yet been initiated: ‘On finding that they were an aboriginal people, entirely untouched by the Gospel message, they thanked GOD and took courage, and went forward, knowing that their prayers had been answered and their work appointed’ (Andrews 1908: 36–7). In 1845 the four German missionaries arrived in Ranchi. They were the first Christian missionaries to start work in Chota Nagpur (Kalapura 2014: 88). Having no fixed income, and dependent on whatever their congregation could send them, the missionaries lived frugally and completely fitted in with the existing lifestyle of the region’s inhabitants. They built a mission school and a makeshift chapel which later became known as the Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ranchi. One of the four brethren died in the first year of their work, and another came to join them. It was difficult to win converts – they were met with antipathy, treated as outsiders and generally distrusted by tribal peoples. There was not a single convert for five years, but the missionaries persisted with their preaching and distributing of the Scriptures and religious tracts. Finally, in 1850, five Kabirpanthi people showed interest in Christianity, wanting to ‘see Jesus’ (Neill 1985: 355).6 These five were instructed in the Christian faith and later baptized on 9 June, a day which has been commemorated as the inception of the Gossner Church in Chota Nagpur. The mission station at Ranchi had a small school which began with seven orphans: five boys and two girls (Mullens 1863: 9). What could have motivated the Kabirpanthis to adopt Christianity? These Kols, who had embraced the Kabirpanthi sect, had done so as a rebellion against the rigid social and caste hierarchies in Hinduism. Socially and religiously it was a reaction against upper-caste Hindus and the power of the
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landed elites. So a conversion to Christianity could not have been a mere means of escaping the caste system. Also, as Joseph Bara points out, the tribal society was already egalitarian. Bara interprets the large-scale lowercaste conversions among the tribes as a conscious strategy: more to protect their agrarian rights rather than for spiritual reasons: The Chhotanagpur tribals, emotionally more concerned with the protection of their agrarian rights than the fate of their souls, found the religion of Christ, for several reasons, attractive. It gave them privileged access to the missionaries, who were white men in close contact with the European authorities. The tribals saw them as a valuable channel of influence. (Bara 2007: 205) The number of Kols and Oraons who came to be instructed by the German missionaries grew steadily. In response to a request by the missionaries, Pastor Gossner sent out ‘Rules and Regulations for the Brethren and Sisters who are serving the Lord amongst the Heathen in Bethesda and Domba’. This was the charter consisting of 22 rules for the functioning of the mission in Chota Nagpur. No salary was paid to the missionaries who lived as one mission family, led by Emil Schatz (Mather 1967, appendix 1: vii). Following the first conversions, the need for a proper place of worship was felt. Some, like Lieutenant William Hodson, who was to make a name for himself in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, had voiced their concern over this: Even the outward signs and tokens… cathedrals, churches, colleges, tombs, hospitals, almshouses – have, I am now more than convinced, an influence on men’s mind and principles and actions… A few Cathedrals and venerable looking edifices would do wonders in our colonies. Here we have nothing physical to remind us of any creed but Islamism and Hinduism. Christianity alone is thrust out of sight! (Quoted in Trotter 1901: 84) Plans were made to build a large Gothic-style church, and Adolph Herzog, a master mason, supervised the erection of a permanent place of worship. The foundation stone of the church was laid on 18 November 1851, and Christ Church, built largely on contributions, was completed on Christmas Eve of 1855. By 1855 the spread of Christianity in this region was remarkable. The number of baptized Christians had risen to 171, and there were 18 missionaries in the field, 4 vernacular schools with 138 pupils, and a boarding school for orphans in Ranchi with 49 boys and 23 girls. Henry Ricketts, a commissioner in the EIC, stated that in spite of the initial prejudice towards the German missionaries they were successful in having their schools filled with children from the lower orders (Ricketts 1855: 37; Mather 1967: 187–8). In 1857, the year of the Indian Rebellion against British rule, Sepoy regiments stationed near Ranchi joined the mutineers. European officers and
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civilians fled the scene. The Lutheran brothers entrusted the care of the mission and the boarding house to a band of trusted converts, and hid themselves in the thick jungles ‘until the calamities were overpast’, after which they returned to work with renewed vigour (Prochnow 1862: 4). Schatz kept a journal of incidents perpetrated against the tribal converts, which catalogued the terror created by the landlords who had a long-standing grievance against the missionaries and converted Christians (Calcutta Review 1869: 132). The decade of 1860–70 was marked by an extraordinary number of conversions. As Reverend Cave-Browne remarked, ‘A feeling had begun to prevail among the Kols that it was their destiny to become Christians’ (1870: 19; original emphasis). People began to come in hordes to apply for baptism, which created a need for more Catechists to go out and preach the rudiments of Christianity. A resident elder was appointed in each village where there were many Christians to read the Bible and teach the catechism to the congregations. It was, however, difficult to induce them to attend the schools, since the Kols evinced little interest in knowledge and education. There was very little motivation for the tribal people, whose livelihood was based on forests and agriculture, to send their children to be educated, and there were many inducements to keep them away from school. But by 1864 the missionaries had succeeded in establishing 11 schools, and the converts had begun to express their desire for education: ‘The converts were anxious to have a school in every village: they were ready to build and maintain the school-house with a house for the teacher, and to pay half his salary’ (Report of the ChotaNagpore Mission (CNM) 1864: 10–11). Reverend Joseph Mullens mentions 3,401 baptized Christians, 8 village chapels and 211 students in the Chota Nagpur Mission by April 1863 (Mullens 1863: 42). At the same time, Mullens cautioned against exaggeration. It is true that a large number of tribal people have ‘misgivings about their own religion’, he writes, but ‘such persons are not converts in any sense; they are asking, learning, gaining information’ (1863: 43). Mullens’ narration provides a vivid picture of the congregations on the Sabbath and the festivities at the end of the year, when converted natives came in from their villages and assembled in Ranchi: ‘They are so numerous, that a special serai has been erected for their use, which… can accommodate 600 visitors.’ They came with harvest offerings, and the procession was ‘headed by Mr. Brandt with the boys’ school, followed by Mrs. Frederick Batsch, with the girls’ (1863). Bishop Cotton, who visited Ranchi in 1864 and attended the Sunday service at the mission, was so impressed by the solemnity with which the service was held that he could reportedly only utter ‘sublime’ to describe the experience (Cave-Browne 1870: 26). In December 1867, Mr and Mrs Charles Haeberlin and Mr Nottrott arrived from Germany to join the mission in Chota Nagpur (Report of the CNM for 1867 1868: 5). The school now had 70 boys and 34 girls. The report for 1867 gives a detailed report of the education imparted in the school, where older boys were employed to impart education to the younger classes. The course of instruction to children who ‘rarely know a letter’ covered the
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New Testament, biblical history, catechism, geography, Hindi and Sanskrit grammar, arithmetic and, most ambitiously, the history of Germany, England and India (Report of the CNM for 1867 1868: 58–9). What was the reason for this phenomenal flourishing of the Gossner mission? Compared with the English Baptist missionaries, and the Church Missionary Society and London Missionary Society in Bengal, the relatively modest German mission was far more successful. Reverend Sherring attributed ‘their singular success’ to the ‘greater readiness of some of the aboriginal tribes to receive the gospel than the old caste-ridden Hindoo races exhibit’ (Sherring 1875: 158). Reverend Mullens credited the missionaries for their great attention to the ‘instruction and organization’ of the missions, and for ‘their steady and earnest toil’ (Mullens 1863: 46). Undoubtedly, all these reasons contributed to the success of the German missionaries. Moreover, the missionaries were quick to realize that evangelization can be successful only if they include indigenous practices and traditions (Chaudhuri 2012). The village services, with psalms sung in Christianized Hindi, resonated with the local people and made it culturally more effortless for them to blend in with the new religion. Again, such organized conglomerations certainly assured the safety of the tribal people, and after the mutiny the village came to be known as ‘Prabhu Saran’, meaning ‘Protection of the Lord’ (Report of the CNM 1864: 7). Education and evangelization had considerable influence on tribal life and culture. The tribal rituals took on a more sophisticated veneer. Instead of their customary offerings of animal sacrifice, a more ‘acceptable’ token offering of rice and fruits was made on the Sabbaths. Dancing and drum beating were replaced with a more orderly chanting of Christianized hymns. Every convert was given a new name, marked with the sign of the cross on the forehead, and greeted one another with ‘Isa sahai’ [Jesus is our Protector]. Reverend Cave-Browne mentions the ‘remarkable’ change which Christianity produced upon the Kols: The Kol in his heathen state presents a picture of combined tawdriness and filth… long-matted hair… his neck laden with two or three chains of beads, or strings of charms, and talismans… He no longer becomes a Christian… then all this disappears; his hair is cut short, and neat and clean; his neck and arms are bare of ornaments. (Cave-Browne 1870: 26–7) In his research on the tribes, Colonel Dalton, the then commissioner of Chota Nagpur, mentions how young Oraons of both sexes ‘passionately fond of dancing’ and ‘intensely fond of decorating their persons’ discarded such ornamentations on embracing Christianity: ‘converts may be always recognized by the total absence of all adornments. The converts do not join in the dances, or festivals, and must not even be seen as spectators, when they are going on’ (Dalton 1866: 183, 197–8). Reverend Prochnow, too, recounts that they were told to ‘abstain from fleshly lusts’, ‘to clothe themselves decently’
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and ‘to fear God’ (Prochnow 1862: 98–9). Such accounts reinforce how outside influences gradually effaced the centuries-old traditions of the Adivasi society.7 The identity of the tribal peoples, their diversity, and their culture, was subsumed within a more homogenized, monolithic construction of a civilized version of the ‘noble savage’. The rebellion of 1857 had left a deep scar. The looting and the arson, and the persecution of the Christian converts was devastating, and more funds were needed to restore the wrecked villages (Prochnow 1862: 5). Pastor Gossner, now in his 85th year, appealed to the Church Missionary Society in England for financial help. The society referred the question to their Calcutta Committee who were disinclined to comply to the request. It was felt that the ‘Chota Nagpur Mission had been founded and moulded on a system differing from that which prevailed in the English Missions; and in its independence, it might still hope to carry with it a certain amount of German sympathy and support’ (Cave-Browne 1870: 17). Clearly, the British missionary counterparts wanted to remain aloof from the Chota Nagpur missionaries. A great change was introduced in the working of the mission. A system of salaries was introduced for the missionaries by the Berlin Committee, and the earlier personal connection that existed between the close-knit ‘family’ of missionaries was considerably weakened. Pastor Schatz returned to Berlin in 1861, and the control of the mission devolved to Pastor F. Batsch. A serious conflict arose between the senior and the younger missionaries, and Reverend Hermann Ansorage was sent to resolve differences. But matters deteriorated and the senior missionaries, the founders of the mission, quit the Gossner Mission and joined the Anglican Mission (Kalapura 2014: 95). The organizational split occurred in 1869 when the older missionaries united with the SPG and the younger Lutherans continued with the mission under the direction of the Berlin Society (Report of CNM in connection with SPG 1870: 8). The contribution of the first German missionaries to the life of the tribal societies in just 25 years was substantial. In 1871 there were 20,727 Christian converts in Chota Nagpur (Sherring 1875: 170). The British government recognized the superiority of the German missionaries as agents of education for the tribal people and commended them on their success (Ricketts 1855: 37). For the Gossner missionaries ‘education has been the consequence of conversion rather than its antecedent’, and their success lay in incorporating a pragmatic curriculum ‘specially designed’ for the converts (GRPI 1866: 243). More than anything, although the aims of the colonial government and the German missionaries were to a large extent similar in trying to ‘tame’ the tribes, their methods were very different. And it was this ‘very different method’, their willingness to shoulder responsibility, that made the missionaries so effective in transforming the lives of the tribal peoples of Chota Nagpur (GRPI 1866). In a special thanksgiving service held in June 2014, the Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ranchi, the oldest church in Chotanagpur, commemorated the first baptism by German missionaries of four Oraons way back on 9 June 1850. ‘This event went on to
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change the lives of the people of this region,’ said Nelson Lakra, moderator, Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church, during the service (The Telegraph 2014).
Notes 1 Reverend John Hoffmann’s voluminous ethnographic study, Encyclopaedia Mundarica (1930), of the Mundas of Chota Nagpur claims to provide a ‘faithful picture’ of a tribe much maligned by the Aryans who are ‘mainly answerable for the impending extinction of the Munda race’ by ‘unjustifiable persecutions’, ‘calumnies’ and ‘contemptuous neglect’ (Hoffmann 1930–2: ix). 2 Henry W. Voysey, an officially posted geologist for the EIC, submitted his geological map to the Asiatic Society in 1818. Later, the Cyclopedia of India, edited by Edward Balfour (1873), gave a comprehensive list of minerals, vegetables, animals and arts and manufactures of India. 3 The Calcutta Review (1869: 117) mentions a railway being proposed through the Chota Nagpur region to facilitate the opening of vast agricultural and mineral wealth. 4 Macaulay propounded the Downward Filtration of education. His Minute dated 2 February 1835 famously stated his vision of creating ‘a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in moral and in intellect’. The General Committee of Public Instruction of 1839 reiterated the view that educating upper-class people should be the primary aim of the government. 5 For details see Laird 1972 and Dutta 2017. 6 The Kabirpanthis were part of the Bhakti movement that swept north India from the 14th to the 16th century. The movement sought to reform the rigid social order and hierarchical caste system of Hinduism. It attracted a large number of supporters from the lower strata of society, as it provided them with greater social equality. 7 For a detailed account of traditional tribal customs and personal adornments among the Oraons, see Roy 1915.
References Adam, William (1838), Third Report on the State of Education in Bengal. Calcutta: G. H Huttmann, Bengal Military Orphan Press. Andrews, C. F. (1908), Handbooks of English Church Expansion, North India. London: A. R. Mowbray & Co. Balfour, Edward (ed.) (1873), Cyclopedia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia, Commercial, Industrial and Scientific, 3 volumes. Madras: Scottish, Lawrence and Foster Presses. Bara, Joseph (2002), ‘Tribal Education, the Colonial State and the Christian Missionaries: Chhotanagpur, 1839–1870’, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), Education and the Disprivileged: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century India. Calcutta: Orient Longman. Bara, Joseph (2007), ‘Colonialism, Christianity, and the Tribes of Chhotanagpur in East India, 1845–1890’ South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 30/2, 195–222. Calcutta Review (1869), ‘The Kols, the Insurrection of 1832, and the Land Tenure Act of 1869’, 49. Calcutta Review, Calcutta: Barham, Hill, & Co, 109–158. Cave-Browne, J. (1870), The Chota Nagpore Mission: Its History and Present Position. Calcutta: Thomas S. Smith, City Press.
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Chaudhuri, Tripti (2012), ‘Evangelical or Imperial? Re-examining the Missionary Agenda among the Santhals, 1855–1885’, in Sanjukta Das Gupta and Raj Sekhar Basu (eds), Narratives from the Margins: Aspects of Adivasi History in India. Delhi: Primus Books, 83–126. Dalton, Edward Tuite (1866), ‘The Kols of Chota-Nagpore’, Journal of the Asiatic Society, Part II: Ethnology, 153–198. Dalton, Edward Tuite (1872), Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing. Das Gupta, Sanjukta (2011), Adivasis and the Raj: Socio-economic Transition of the Hos, 1820–1932. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Devalle, Susana B. C. (1992), Discourses of Ethnicity: Culture and Protest in Jharkhand. Sage: New Delhi. Dutta, Sutapa (2017), British Women Missionaries in Bengal, 1793–1861. London: Anthem Press. Firminger, Walter Kelly (ed.) (2001 [1812]), Affairs of the East India Company (Being the Fifth Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons 28th July, 1812). Delhi: B. R. Publishing. General Report on Public Instruction (GRPI) in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for1844–45 (1845), Calcutta: Sanders and Cones. GRPI in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for1845–46 (1846), Calcutta: Military Orphan Press. GRPI in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency from 1st October1850 to 30th September 1851 (1852), Calcutta: Bengal Military Orphan Press. GRPI in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for1864–65 (1866), Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press. Heber, Reginald (1828 [1825]), Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825, 3 volumes. London: John Murray. Hoffmann, John (1930–2), Encyclopedia Mundarica, 6 volumes. Patna: Superintendent, Government Printing. Jha, J. C. (1964), The Kol Insurrection of Chotanagpur. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co. Jha, J. C. (1981), ‘A Sad Episode of the Kol Insurrection (1832)’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 42, 413–418. Kalapura, Jose (ed.) (2014), Christian Missions in Bihar and Jharkhand till 1947, A Study by P. C. Horo. New Delhi: Christian World Imprints and Gossner Theological College. Laird, M. A. (1972), Missionaries and Education in Bengal 1793–1837. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mather, B. H. (1967), The Gossner Mission to Chota Nagpur 1845–1875: A Crisis in Lutheran-Anglican Missionary Policy. Thesis, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9802/. Accessed 30 September 2018. Mill, James (1826 [1817]), The History of British India, 6 volumes. London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy. Mullens, Joseph (1863), A Brief Review of Ten Year’s Missionary Labour in India between 1852 and 1861. London: James Nisbet. Neill, Stephen (1985), A History of Christianity in India, 1707–1858. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pathy, Jagannath (1987), Anthropology of Development: Demystifications and Relevance. New Delhi: Gian Publishing House.
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Prochnow, ReverendDettloff Johann (1862), Pastor Gossner, His Life, Labours, and Persecutions. London: Morgan and Chase. Ranger, Terence (1983), ‘Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Report of the ChotaNagpore Mission (CNM) (1864), Calcutta. Report of CNM for 1867 (1868), Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press. Report of CNM in connection with SPG, April 1869 to March 1870 (1870), Calcutta: Thos S. Smith. Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (1837), London: William Ball. Ricketts, H. (1855), Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government. Papers relating to the South-West Frontier, no. 20. Calcutta: Calcutta Gazette Office. Roebuck, Thomas (1819), The Annals of the College of Fort William. Calcutta: Hindustanee Press. Roy, Sarat Chandra (1915), The Oraons of Chota Nagpur. Ranchi. Sherring, M. A. (1875), The History of Protestant Missions in India: From the Commencement in 1706 to 1871. London: Trubner & Co. Thapar, Romila (1971), ‘The Image of the Barbarian in Early India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 13/4, 408–436. The Telegraph (2014), 10 June. www.telegraphindia.com/1140610/jsp/jharkhand/story_ 18495605.jsp. Accessed 10 October 2018. Trotter, Lionel J. (1901), The Life of Hodson of Hodson’s Horse. London: J. M. Dent. Zastoupil, L. and M. Moir (ed.) (1999), The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843. London: Curzon Press.
13 Postcolonial discourse analysis: The linguistic fall-out from Imperial Germany’s colonialist past in China Andreas Musolff
1 Introduction In 2018, an opinion article by the Spiegel columnist Jakob Augstein, which protested against plans to involve the German military in a potential United States (US)-led assault on Syria, began with the words: (1) Schon wieder ‘Germans to the front!’: Die USA wollen deutsche Unterstützung in Syrien. Danke, aber nein danke, Mister Trump. [Once again [we hear]: ‘Germans to the front’. The US wants German support in Syria. Thanks, but no thanks, Mr Trump!] (Augstein 2018) Why did Augstein use an English phrase in an otherwise German text? And why was it ‘once again’ (schon wieder), that the Germans had to move to the front? Augstein himself hinted at the historical context further on in the article where he explained: (2) ‘The Germans to the front’ – diese Worte, mit denen einst ein britischer Admiral die aus Deutschland entsandten Hilfskontingente in Chinas Boxer-Aufstand kommandierte - hören wir immer wieder. [‘The Germans to the front’ – we still keep hearing these words, with which once a British admiral commanded the German auxiliary troops in China’s Boxer rebellion, time and again.] (Augstein 2018) Together with the concept of ‘a place in the sun’ and Wilhelm II’s belligerent comparison of German soldiers to ‘Huns’, the appeal of ‘Germans to the front’ belongs to historical slogans from the period of the German Empire (1871–1918) that are remembered to this day both in Germany and in Britain (Leuschner and Jaworska 2018; Musolff 2018; Schröter and Leuschner 2013; Schultz 2016). Why and how are they being used more than 100 years after their coining? What is their status as historical memory quotes/translations? Are their recent applications at all ‘quotations’ in a meaningful sense or,
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rather, allusions or altogether reinventions that have nothing to do with the ‘original’ sense? This chapter discusses the relationship between the intended meanings of these slogans (as far as they can be plausibly reconstructed) and their contemporary reception as well as their ‘afterlives’ in present-day public discourse. Through applying the Discourse-Historical Approach (Wodak 2009; Rash 2012, 2017) to a research corpus of colonialism-related texts, we aim to elucidate the process of reformulating historical colonialist discourses in current debates in Germany as a form of re-‘imagining’ (Anderson 2006) national identity.
2 ‘The Germans to the front’ The demand that J. Augstein put into the mouth of US President Donald Trump in examples (1) and (2) – i.e. to involve Germans in an international war campaign on another continent – was once considered something to be proud of. Back in 1900, after a rebellion had arisen in the Chinese Empire against the European, US and Japanese powers ‘scrambling’ (Bickers 2012) to divide its territories and wealth among themselves, the German Empire under Emperor Wilhelm II was keen to volunteer an army contingent and even a commander-in-chief for the international expedition force. Their task was to liberate the besieged compound of Western diplomatic legations in the Imperial Capital, Beijing, and quell the rebellion across the whole of China. In actual fact, the German commander-in-chief, Field Marshall Count Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904), only presided over an occupation regime (which lasted less than a year) because the siege of the Western embassies had been relieved and the main military threat had been overcome before he arrived (Lerman 2003; Leutner and Mühlhahn 2007; Sobich and Bischoff 2015: 55– 6). Nonetheless, the German military involvement in the ‘Boxer War’ was considered by the Kaiser’s government to have been highly important and praiseworthy, for not only had German troops who were already in China participated in the defence of the Beijing embassies but one German contingent had fought with distinction in the initial (abortive) relief expedition that the Allied forces had mounted against the siege in Beijing. Under the command of the British Admiral Edward H. Seymour (1840–1929), they attempted a quick breakthrough from their coastal stronghold in Tianjin (formerly Romanised as ‘Tientsin’) to Beijing but were blocked by ‘Boxer’ and regular Chinese Imperial troops who destroyed the railway tracks and mounted surprise counter-attacks. Seymour was forced to fight his way back to Tianjin, and it was in a closely fought battle in June 1900 that he ordered the German contingent of his troops to the front of his marching column for tactical reasons (Kuss 2017: 20–1). The episode was quickly seized upon by the German government and public as proof of German heroism. Within two years, it was further glorified in a painting by Carl Röchling (1855–1920) that showed German soldiers waving the Imperial war ensign, eagerly storming forward in response to Seymour’s command (see Figure 13.1).
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Figure 13.1 Carl Röchling, ‘The Germans to the Front’ (1902)
Seymour’s order in its heroic German interpretation also became a popular reference point for cartoons commenting on colonialism. For instance, the satirical magazine Kladderadatsch in Berlin published a cartoon under the title ‘Good friends’ (Gute Freunde) (see Figure 13.2). It shows a Chinese ‘dragon’ lying in a gorge, guarding his cultural riches (Ming vases, etc.) with skulls and bits of bones in front of him, i.e. the remains of adventurers who had tried to attack him in the past. Now he finds himself encircled by three figures, i.e. the ‘good friends’: Uncle Sam (USA), John Bull (Great Britain) and the German ‘Michel’ in the shape of a Teutonic warrior who is about to venture into the canyon. The rotund and balding John Bull standing next to him encourages him with the words, ‘Forward Michel, I’m right behind you’ (Vorwärts. Michel. Ich komme gleich nach, Kladderadatsch, 12 August 1900), thus disingenuously inviting him to take up the fight while he himself is unlikely to go into battle – all the while Uncle Sam is angling for some of the dragon’s riches in his back (Lehner 2014). The description of the three Westerners as ‘good friends’ can only be read as an ironic comment that reveals them to be in fact competitors in the ‘scramble’ for China’s riches. Fifteen years later, in the middle of World War I, with the former friends now enemies, the Austrian magazine Kikeriki published another cartoon, again with reference to Seymour’s command (see Figure 13.3). Its title is ‘China’s future’ (Die Zukunft Chinas) and shows again China as a (now captured and muzzled) dragon, John Bull and Uncle Sam, but the third colonial power is now Japan, which is represented by a Japanese soldier who swings a whip over the dragon. In the background Britain and America are arguing about Japan’s colonialist involvement, with John Bull supposedly wishing back the days when Germany (whose colonies in China were taken over by Japan) had been a more manageable competitor: ‘We can’t allow the Japanese to get away with that! We must have the Germans back to the front’ (Das dürfen wir uns nicht bieten lassen von Japan; da müssen unbedingt wieder
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Figure 13.2 Kladderadatsch, ‘Gute Freunde’ (1900)
Deutsche an die Front, Kikeriki 1915). This fake quote presupposes, as Lehner (2014) rightly observes, the readers’ understanding of the allusion to Seymour’s original command; again the message is deeply ironic: it purports to reveal John Bull/Britain’s hypocrisy in being concerned not about the plight of its colonial victim but only about a new competitor and remembering the more pliable Germans who could (supposedly) be ordered ‘to the front’ without demanding too much for themselves. By the second half of the 20th century, after another world war, Germans’ as well as other European powers’ colonial empires had vanished but the slogan ‘The Germans to the front’ was not forgotten. As we saw in Augstein’s examples (1) and (2) at the beginning of the chapter, as late as in 2018 an allegedly wishedfor German military support for another overseas war (this time, the US intervention in the civil war in Syria) was framed as being just ‘another request’ in a whole series of US appeals for German military support, e.g. in Vietnam during the 1960s and in the Hormuz Strait during the 1980s (Augstein 2018).
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Figure 13.3 Kikeriki, ‘Die Zukunft Chinas’ (1915)
Indeed, the repeated rejection of such demands can be shown to have been framed in the same way as a denial of a repetition of the German actions in 1900: the Spiegel founder Rudolf Augstein (Jakob Augstein’s legal father) had warned against German involvement in a US-led escalation of the Cold War that might lead to a ‘hot’ confrontation by asking rhetorically if ‘the Germans were again keen to be at the front’ (Drängt es die Deutschen schon wieder an die Front?, Augstein 1983), and in the 1960s Hans Gresman in Die Zeit used the slogan to warn against a German entanglement in the Vietnam War: nothing could be worse than ‘Germans to the front’ in a war that had nothing to do with their own national security and would destroy the hard-won results of distancing itself from its historical warmonger image (Germans to the front – nichts Mißlicheres wäre zur Stunde denkbar. [Sie] würden viel Schaden anrichten… für die Bundesrepublik, der verbrecherischer Aggressionsdrang vorgeworfen würde, wo sie nur auf simple Weise treu sein wollte, Gresmann 1966).
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More recently, appeals to join the US-led ‘war against terror’ were again rebutted by using the Germans to the front slogan in the German press as a warning against any repetition of obedience to such an order (Geier 2014; Hanke 2006; Rose 2002). When Seymour’s order and German compliance were referenced in press texts commemorating Germany’s involvement in the Western colonial invasion of China (Afflerbach 1993; Dittmar 2000; Wickert 2002), it was not even once presented as a ‘model’ action or a historical feat to be proud of.
3 The ‘Huns’ In several of these articles from the last three decades, the British admiral’s command was contrasted with another episode from Germany’s attempt to join ‘High Imperialism’ (Thomas and Thompson 2014: 144) in China, i.e. Emperor Wilhelm II’s speech in Wilhelmshaven on 27 July 1900 to German troops embarking on joining the Western powers’ China expedition. In that speech, which occurred after the above-mentioned fights under Seymour,1 Wilhelm exhorted his soldiers, (3)No quarter will be given, no prisoners will be taken; Let all who fall into your hands be at your mercy. Just as the Huns a thousand years ago under the leadership of Etzel gained a reputation in virtue of which they still live in historical tradition, so may the name of Germany become known in such a manner in China that no Chinaman will ever dare to look askance at a German. (The Times, 30 July 1900, quoted in Oxford English Dictionary 1989, vol. 7: 489; translation from the actually delivered text, as published in the Weser-Zeitung)2 The impact of Wilhelm II’s speech at the time has been analysed repeatedly, for it was – even by his rhetorical standards – an extraordinarily bombastic instance of German imperial sabre-rattling, which elicited ironic comments, given that the German Imperial troops’ input to the joint Western military effort was quite limited.3 More serious criticism ensued when, after the first few months of the supposedly ‘pacifying’ and ‘civilizing’ occupation regime, soldiers’ letters to families back home revealed that the German forces in China conducted a campaign of revenge and destruction. When the Social Democrat opposition in parliament (Reichstag) and their journal Vorwärts started publishing these letters under the sarcastic label ‘Hun letters’ (Hunnenbriefe), which evidently alluded to his belligerent Wilhelmshaven speech, Wilhelm II’s invocation of the ‘Huns’ became an acute embarrassment for his government.4 The Kaiser’s praise of the Huns as a model for the German troops going to China has more recently been said to have been the model for the later use of Hun(s) as a derogatory epithet in Britain and the US for Germans as war enemies in World Wars I and II, both in popular dictionaries and articles.5 This claim, has not, however, been substantiated by any explicit reference and is not
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plausible, given that the Kaiser in his 1900 speech evidently aimed to praise his soldiers’ bravery, not advocate barbarity – which he reserved for the Chinese as allegedly uncivilized ‘heathens’ (Klein 2013: 164). The retrospective application of the post-1914 meaning of Huns as a label for German soldiers behaving in a barbaric way (e.g. in conquering parts of Belgium) onto the Boxer War context seems to be an anachronistic projection. Nonetheless, as a kind of ‘folk-etymological’ explanation, the ascription of the Hun epithet to Wilhelminic war rhetoric against the Boxers has become part of the folkloristic afterlife of Germany’s colonial engagement in China, which is used ironically as a counterfoil to the World War I/II usage that dominates the Hun stereotype to this day. This stereotype in its turn has become a historicized reminiscence that is ironically applied in Britain to the Germans as football adversaries (‘the beastly Hun went ahead from a deflected free kick’, The Guardian, 31 May 2014), or in Germany to remember gratefully that they no longer are hated as Huns (e.g. headline of World War I remembrance article: ‘Back in those days where we were Huns’, Damals, als wir Hunnen waren, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 May 2014).
4 ‘A place in the sun’ The third phrase that has survived from that time until today was not uttered by an admiral or emperor or other military leader but by the German foreign secretary, Bernhard von Bülow (1849–1929), who was to become chancellor of the German Reich in the aftermath of the Boxer War. Less than three years before the Boxer War, in December 1897, he announced his government’s intention to ‘safeguard’ Germany’s national interests ‘also’ in East Asia, i.e. to compete with other Western countries for ‘trading’ influence in China. The pretext for this initiative was the murder of two German missionaries, which ‘justified’ in German eyes the occupation of a favourable trading place on China’s coast, i.e. the bay of Jiaozhou (German: Kiaotschou/Kiautschou) with the port of Qingdao (Tsingtau). A few months later, in March 1898, Germany and China signed a ‘Friendship’ Treaty, in which China ‘leased’ the bay to the German Empire initially for at least 99 years (Bickers 2012: 327; Leutner 1997; Mühlhahn 2000). This was one of many ‘unequal treaties’ (Wang 2005) the Qing government was forced to accept between the 1840s and the early 1900s. But in Bülow’s 1897 speech, China did not even feature as the significant Other; rather, it was the Western powers that were seen as competitors and addressees of the new German ‘world politics’ (Weltpolitik), which he was to pursue with renewed emphasis as chancellor from 1900 onwards:6 (4)The days are over when the Germans left (the rule over) the earth to one neighbour, the sea to another and only claimed the heaven for himself, where the pure doctrine reigns… We are after all happy to respect the interests of other great powers in East Asia in the certain knowledge that our interests are also fully respected. In one word: We don’t want to put others in the shadow but we, too want our place in the sun.7
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Bülow’s humoristic introductory comparison of the ‘earth-sea-heaven’-claiming powers, for which he received ample applause in the Reichstag, obliquely referenced a passage from Heinrich Heine’s poem ‘Germany – a winter’s tale’ (Deutschland – ein Wintermärchen), in which the poet commented self-ironically on his own dreams during his fictional journey in pre-unification Germany. ‘Russians and French,’ Heine stated, ‘possess the land; the British rule the waves’; the ‘Germans rule nowhere but in the air’, the medium of dreams, but at least there they rule absolutely.8 Fifty-three years later, Bülow contrasted the time when such a comparison (whose source he did not acknowledge) was appropriate with the present-day prospects of ‘world politics’, promoted the possibility of the recently reunited Germany, unencumbered by considerations of deferring to or allying itself with other ‘great powers’ pursuing a strategy of the ‘free hand’ in world affairs. German ‘respect’ for other great powers was limited to those powers who in turn showed respect for the empire’s own ‘legitimate interests’ in ruling more than just the air. The acquisition of a military stronghold in the seemingly disintegrating China, to ‘match’ other powers’ influence in East Asia, appeared as an early victory for Bülow in furthering Germany’s expansionist ambitions. His chancellorship, which started after the Boxer War and lasted until 1909, would see massive extensions of the German navy (which alienated Britain) and the army (which alarmed France and Russia). Both strategies were officially intended to ‘service’ the military and economic needs of the growing overseas empire (Stürmer 1994: 322–4), but they aroused the suspicion and hostility of those powers that H. Heine had identified as actual rulers of land and sea in his day. Perhaps Bülow would have done better to quote the lines from the Wintermärchen verbatim than to declare the poet’s vision of world politics obsolete. For a decade, however, his vision of the powerful German Empire that would gain its rightful ‘place in the sun’ was highly popular (Speitkamp 2005: 35–7; Wehler 1995: 1138–45) and the formulation in its application to Germany’s colonialist ambitions became proverbial (Büchmann 1964: 256; Röhrich 1992, 2: 1189).9 As a slogan that signalled an ultimately unsuccessful, eventually catastrophic attempt by the Imperial elites to engage in aggressive competition brinkmanship vis-à-vis the other great powers of its day, the catchphrase of ‘Germany’s place in the sun’ has indeed survived and is referenced in press articles commemorating Germany’s colonialist past (Doll 2018; Fesser 1991; Kern 2014; Kulke 2013; Stock 2007). In many cases, the phrase serves as an allusion to a ‘lesson from the past’ (i.e. of Germany’s ill-fated ambitions) that is applied to problems of present-day Germany’s foreign policy, e.g. Chancellor Merkel’s attempts to contain migration from Africa through negotiations affecting African states’ sovereignty as part of a European Union initiative, or Chancellor Kohl’s assertive political posturing after the ‘reunification’ of East and West Germany in 1990 (Junge Welt 2018; Schuster 1995). The post-2015 mass migration problems have motivated different authors to write a novel and a theatre play under the title ‘A place in the sun’, which both envisage Germans as refugees arriving in Africa and being confronted with the long-
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term consequences of European colonialism (Torkler 2018; Hamen 2018; Westfälische Nachrichten 2018). The slogan has also been applied to neoimperialist ambitions in other countries, e.g. as a reference to ultra-nationalist Rhodesians demanding a place in the sun for the ‘white man’ (Der Spiegel 1968), the US under Donald Trump’s presidency (Steingart 2018) and even the ‘People’s Republic of China’s’ challenge to the US-dominated hierarchy of superpowers (Stürmer 2018). In all these cases, the slogan ‘a place in the sun’ has been related explicitly or implicitly to the history of colonialism, whose failure is used as a ‘master lesson’ from history. There are, however, also uses that appear to have no connection with this historical background, where the place in the sun is referring to a ‘desirable place’, e.g. among thriving ballet theatres in Frankfurt or in Chancellor Merkel’s cabinet (Hierholze 2003; Kurbjuweit 2017) and, probably most prominently and enduringly, as the label for a TV lottery programme that promised a place in the sun to hitherto disenfranchised groups for 52 years, i.e. 1960–2012 (ARD 2012). In these cases, it is unnecessary for the understanding (and factually unlikely) that the public would recover a link to colonialism, let alone a specific utterance by Bülow. The association of ‘sun’ with welfare or comfort is sufficient to motivate an inference that having a place in the sun is a good thing.
5 Discussion The data presented in the previous three sections demonstrate that the slogans or nicknames, The Germans to the front, Huns and place in the sun, which originated in the colonialist German discourses in the last years of the 19th and the first year of the 20th century have, in varying form, survived to this day in public discourses in Germany and, at least as regards the Hun epithet, also in Britain. Our database is not representative of the whole of the German press but with 56 articles amounting to 77,033 words, mainly concentrating on the years 2007–18, it illustrates some main trends of quotation and reinterpretation that those once-proud appeals and promises of colonialist glory for Germany and its soldiers have undergone. One common topos is that of reminding readers of these slogans as having been disproven by subsequent historical developments, i.e. the catastrophe of World War I, and in its wake, the loss of the colonies. Thus, the associations of militarism relating to Wilhelm II’s praise for the Huns and the British admiral’s order The Germans to the front, are evoked through quotation or allusion only to be denounced as futile, unethical boasts and pretensions that were proven to be false shortly after they were uttered. Likewise, the place in the sun demand is exposed as having been both hypocritical and ridiculous in view of its blatant claim for great(er) power status whilst pretending to show ‘respect’ for other nations. It is also revealed in hindsight as unrealistic, given that Imperial Germany’s power was to be ‘cut down to size’ not long after. A second, related aspect of the present-day usage is the secondary critical
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commenting aspect that the historic catchphrases gain through their recontextualization in the present-day frame of reference. Ascribing the illegitimate colonialist demands or promises to current political agents (Trump, Merkel, etc.) likens the latter to the thoroughly discredited ‘original’ speakers (Wilhelm II, Bülow, Admiral Seymour). This effect is not exclusively the achievement of recent years; as the case of the Hun letters showed, it took just a few months in autumn 1900 of news about atrocities in colonial China, which contrasted with the Imperialist propaganda, to expose the hidden truth of Wilhelm II’s bombastic sabre rattling about Germans-as-Huns, i.e. the barbaric brutality of the colonialist regime. A third main strand in the recontextualization and thus reinterpretation of the historic slogans is their integration, as evidence, into a fundamentally reorganized discourse about colonialism that views the imperialist period as a heavy ethical legacy and burden for the West, and more specifically, for Germany. Not only is colonialism evaluated extremely negatively in general but, as arguments about possible reparations for genocides in former African colonies or about the repatriation of exhibits with colonial provenance in Berlin’s new HumboldtForum show, its legacy still affects the international standing and commitments of the current German nation state (Rash 2012; Schließ 2017; Speitkamp 2005; Thomas and Thompson 2014). Whilst there are, in the margins of the public, publication niches (often online) for revisionist glorifications of German colonialism (e.g. apologetic articles on the website deutsche-schutzgebiete.de, which deny and belittle the genocides against the Hereros), the mainstream media as well as academic research are in broad agreement that Germany’s colonialist involvement was part of a reckless aggression by Western powers against effectively defenceless populations and/or states that were subjugated to illegitimate violence, subjugation, humiliation and destruction. In this wider perspective, the quotations that we have surveyed serve present-day Germany to reflect on the hubris of its colonialist ancestors who allocated to themselves cultural and racial superiority and the right to wage ferocious wars as well as to impose authoritarian rule in other parts of the world. The imagined community (Anderson 2006) of the German ‘nation’ of 2019 is, inter alia, characterized by a problematic, critical relationship to the colonialist identity that was an object of pride back in 1900.
6 Conclusions In a sense, therefore, the slogans could be said to have been neutralized and historicized as relics of a bygone era that is, thankfully, unlikely to re-emerge. If explained in sufficient detail, they can help understand some of the motives and intentions that informed their use in the first place: in their original context they were effective catchphrases and mottos to express the colonialist ideology and drive, and make it attractive to large audiences (with the odd case of a ‘backfiring’ analogy, such as Wilhelm II’s invocation of the Huns). The recovery of their original context and the contrastive comparison with its
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new uses fulfils one of the aims of the Discourse-Historical Approach to expose the shifts in ideological framing and socio-ethical evaluation that a domain of political concepts and practices, such as colonialism, has undergone, by re-explaining the implications of their changing communicative uses. To demand or promise Germans to the front, Hun-like behaviour or a place in the sun not only meant and means something different in 1900 and 2019, but the difference, as a motivated historical change, has become itself an object of critical interpretation. This last aspect raises further questions about the function of quotations and allusions for a Discourse-Historical Approach-oriented analysis of colonialist discourses. As intertextual references they indicate in the first place a relationship between an ‘original’ utterance and its later follow-ups in public discourse. At the same time, however, they are metacommunicative speech actions with their own commenting and appraisive functions, often achieving further pragmatic effects (irony, sarcasm, humour, e.g. through punning, etc.). As the Hun case shows, the resulting, meaning-changing recontextualizations can take on a life of their own and in turn give rise to more or less speculative folk-etymological explanations. A different course is that of the place in the sun, which despite its erstwhile proverbial status associated with a particular text (Bülow’s 1897 speech) may be on its way to losing that associative connection and revert to a ‘simple’ metaphor status of vaguely evoking a ‘pleasant state of being’ that has no connection with colonialism. This question needs further research to deepen the methodological and historical impact of postcolonial discourse analysis.
Notes 1 The Kaiser already boasted of their ‘fame and victory’ (mit Ruhm und Sieg sich verteidigt) in a speech to another contingent on 2 June 1900 (Behnen 1977: 245). 2 German text: ‘Kommt Ihr vor den Feind, so wird er geschlagen, Pardon wird nicht gegeben; Gefangene nicht gemacht. Wer Euch in die Hände fällt, sei in Eurer Hand. Wie vor tausend Jahren die Hunnen unter ihrem König Etzel sich einen Namen gemacht, der sie noch jetzt in der Überlieferung gewaltig erscheinen lässt, so möge der Name Deutschland in China in einer solchen Weise bekannt werden, dass niemals wieder ein Chinese es wagt, etwa einen Deutschen auch nur scheel anzusehen’ (Behnen 1977: 247; for discussion of varying text versions see also Klein 2013; Sösemann 1976. 3 See Lerman 2003; Lü 2011; MacDonogh 2000: 244–5; Musolff 2018: 77–80. 4 For the considerable impact of the ‘Hun letters’ on the German public in general and the discussions in the Reichstag see Sobich and Bischoff 2015: 111–20; see also Wiedlandt 2007; Wünsche 2008. 5 See e.g. in popular lexicographic accounts: Ayto 2006: 43; Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable 1999: 596; Green 1996: 308; Forsyth 2011, 78; Hughes 2006, 243– 4; and in press articles commemorating World War I and German colonialism: Afflerbach 1993; Geier 2014; Waterfield 1914. 6 For the German Empire’s world-political ambitions see Stürmer 1994: 324–7; Winzen 2003.
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7 English translation by A. M. German original see Bülow 1977: 166, ‘Die Zeiten wo der Deutsche dem einen seiner Nachbarn die Erde überließ, dem anderen das Meer und sich selbst den Himmel reservierte, wo die reine Doktrin thront… – diese Zeiten sind vorüber… Wir sind endlich gern bereit, in Ostasien den Interessen anderer Großmächte Rechnung zu tragen, in der sicheren Voraussicht, dass unsere eigenen Interessen gleichfalls die ihnen gebührende Würdigung finden… Mit einem Worte: Wir wollen niemand in den Schatten stellen, aber wir verlangen auch unseren Platz an der Sonne.’ 8 Heine 1976: 592: ‘Franzosen und Russen gehört das Land/Das Meer gehört den Briten/Wir aber besitzen im Luftreich des Traums/Die Herrschaft unbestritten.’ 9 As in the case of the Heine allusion, the ‘place in the sun’ topos may be an unacknowledged borrowing, in this case from Pascal’s (1623–62) Pensées sur la religion 1, 9 § 53, see Büchmann 1964: 265; Röhrich 1992, 2: 1189.
References Afflerbach, Holger (1993), ‘The Germans to the Front’, Die Zeit, 6 August. Anderson, Benedict (2006), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. ARD (2012), ‘Deutsche Fernsehlotterie’. www.ard.de/home/die-ard/fakten/abc-der-ard/ EinPlatzanderSonneDeutscheFernsehlotterie/487856/index.html (accessed 15 December 2017). Augstein, Jakob (2018), ‘Auslandseinsätze der Bundeswehr: Lasst uns in Ruhe mit euren Kriegen!’, Der Spiegel, 17 September. Augstein, Rudolf (1983), ‘The Germans to the Front’, Der Spiegel, 30 May. Ayto, John (2006), Movers and Shakers: A Chronology of Words that Shaped Our Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Behnen, Michael (ed.) (1977), Quellen zur deutschen Außenpolitik im Zeitalter des Imperialismus 1890–1911. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Bickers, Robert (2012), The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire 1832–1914. London: Penguin. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1999), Ed. A. Room. London: Cassell. Büchmann, G. (1964), Geflügelte Worte, 2. Ed. Hanns Martin Elster. Stuttgart: Reclam. Bülow, Bernhard Grafvon (1977 [1897]), ‘Erklärung im Reichstag zu Grundfragen der Außenpolitik’, in Michael Behnen (ed.), Quellen zur deutschen Außenpolitik im Zeitalter des Imperialismus 1890–1911. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 165–166. Der Spiegel (1968), ‘Platz an der Sonne’, Der Spiegel, 1 April. Deutsche-Schutzgebiete.de (n.d.), https://deutsche-schutzgebiete.de/wordpress/hereroa ufstand/ (accessed 20 December 2018). Dittmar, Peter (2000), ‘Griff in die Geschichte: “Germans to the front”’, Die Welt, 20 June. Doll, Nikolaus (2018), ‘In Papua-Guinea gibt der letzte deutsche Soldat auf ’, Die Welt, 14 December. Fesser, Gerd (1991), ‘Wir verlangen auch unseren Platz an der Sonne’, Die Zeit, 11 January. Forsyth, Mark (2011), The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language. London: Icon Books. Geier, Wolfgang (2014), ‘The Germans to the Front’, Das Blättchen, 17 February. Green, Jonathon (1996), Words Apart: The Language of Prejudice. London: Kyle Cathie.
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14 British and German scientific exploration in the Asia-Pacific region as an alternative form of colonization Marie Géraldine Rademacher
1 Introduction Of the Germans, the British scientist Joseph Dalton Hooker declared: My experience of all these Germans is that they must be kept in their place. Their good education and general knowledge rapidly gets them good scientific posts to begin with – this demoralizes them, and after a few years they resent everything, and try to override everyone. (Beattie 2011: 123) These words illustrate the competition and rivalry which prevailed between Britain and Germany during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the two powers relentlessly sought to widen their spheres of influence across the globe. Coveting the resources of Asia, the Western expansion was generally conducted through violent territorial annexation and forced trade, for instance the trade in opium imposed upon China by Britain in the 19th century. Yet the beginning of the 20th century witnessed an increase of scientific exploration, as well as journeys of individual travellers, which offered an alternative to the intrusive and aggressive encroachment of Western powers in Asia. These journeys were instrumental in influencing the Asia-Pacific region both intellectually and culturally, as well as influencing the political order. These issues are reflected in the literature of the time, for instance in the accounts of Japan by the German documentarian and car racer Clärenore Stinnes and the British palaeobotanist Marie Stopes. It is as part of her journey around the world that Stinnes ended up in Japan. Besides her longing for adventure and her desire to circumnavigate the world, her trip, which was sponsored by important German car manufacturers (Adler, Bosch and Aral), was seen, Gabriele Habinger explains, as a ‘Propagandafahrt’ [propaganda journey], aimed at rejuvenating the German economy, which was suffering from the heavy sanctions of the Treaty of Versailles and a world market boycott (Habinger 1996). As for Stopes, her scientific mission aimed at solving the question of the origin of angiosperms through the exploration of coal mines in Hokkaido. While her motivation to travel to Japan, she insists,
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stemmed from ‘purely scientific interest’, her mission, which was funded by the Royal Society, suggests a possible interconnection between scientific investigation and the country’s socio-economic and political interests (Stopes 1910: xi). This becomes more explicit in her final research phase on coal balls, which increased in importance when coal became an essential resource during World War I. As a result, research on coal ‘was given a very high priority in government funding’ and this shows that often the aspiration for power cannot be dissociated from the pursuit of knowledge (Chaloner 2005: 132). This chapter compares these authors’ travel writings in order to demonstrate the colonial discourse at work in descriptions of Japan and its inhabitants, even though Japan, unlike most of the rest of Asia, was never formally colonized by European countries. Japan in fact remained closed to foreigners until Admiral Perry’s expedition of 1854, when his ‘gunboat diplomacy’ (essentially intimidation and threats of force) put an end to Japan’s policy of isolation and its ports were opened to transcontinental trade (Kalaitzidis and Streich 2011: 32). While Daisuke Nishihara observes that ‘Japan’s experience is undoubtedly that of a colony’, since it had to ‘fight with and also cooperate with the Western Powers’ (Nishihara 2000: 24), other scholars, such as Hiroshi Yoshioka, have rejected the idea of a colonized Japan and have arguably claimed that ‘Westernization in Japan is not a process of intrusion of the other, but a kind of simulation done by Japanese themselves’ (Yoshioka 1995: 101). Instead they refer to Japan’s case as a ‘self-colonized’ (自己植民地化) culture, and their discourse principally reveals the pride of a nation which could not possibly admit to having been defeated by the West whose imperialism it tried to resist for centuries (Komori 2001: 8). This idea is also reflected through Yukichi Fukuzawa’s apparent nationalist discourse, which Barbara Celarent sees as ‘mainly a reaction to the intense imperialistic pressure placed on Japan by the West’ and which resonates in his influential essay An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (Celarent 2014: 1219). In his work, which was influenced by Francois Guizot’s Histoire de la Civilization en Europe and Henry Thomas Buckle’s History of Civilization in England, Fukuzawa introduces a third stage to the Western dualistic view of the world divided between civilized and uncivilized. He identifies three categories: ‘civilization’, which consists of Europe and America, ‘semi-civilization’ mainly Asian countries including Turkey, China and Japan and the ‘primitive’, Africa and Australia (Sakamoto 1996: 119). His introduction of another sub-category to the division of the world asserts Japan’s superiority to other nations, leading to the exclusion of another group and ‘rescues Japan from the position of Europe’s inferior Other’, although it does not place the country on an equal footing with the Western powers and to some extent even implicitly acknowledges its subordinate position to Europe and America (Sakamoto 1996: 119). As a result, it is essential to redefine the term ‘colonization’, which should not be limited to a territorial invasion performed by armed troops but should rather be expanded to include the idea of the creation and maintenance of unequal relations between different countries. It is important to consider the existence
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of a cultural and intellectual colonization in the subjugation of a nation. Japan’s tenacious autonomy in its isolation and its reputation as ‘strange and singular’ have aroused fascination in the Occident, especially since it was never properly colonized. It was thus unlike China, whose rapid submission to Western imperialism led to a shift in its representation in European narratives from the depiction of an admirable and stable empire to a more negative and racialized image (Sterry 2009: 47). Japan’s victories against China in 1895 and against Russia in 1904 gave it a privileged position among the Western factions and further confirmed it as a Great Power, which was officially acknowledged by the Anglo-Japanese naval treaty of 1902. However, if both Germany and Great Britain were eager to have Japan as an ally, they still regarded it as a curiosity, often expressing nostalgia for the past through sentimental contemplation of Japanese culture, hence further emphasizing the dichotomy between the West and the East.
2 Germany and Great Britain’s diplomatic relations with Japan: a brief overview 2.1 The ‘Prussia of the East’ It was in January 1861, with the conclusion of the Prusso-Japanese Treaty, that the diplomatic contacts between Japan and Germany were officially established. Over the years which followed the signature of the treaty and until the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the relationship between the two nations developed in a friendly way. By serving as a valuable model for Meiji Japan in many areas, such as constitution, military and medicine, Germany assisted in its rapid modernization, especially in the 1880s, when Japan underwent a ‘process of Germanization’ (Iikura 2006: 80). However, the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–5) over the unresolved status of Korea crucially altered this intimacy, since Germany decided to proclaim its neutrality right at the beginning of the conflict. Soon after the beginning of the war, Japan showed its potential: ‘not merely had the Chinese troops been driven out of Korea, but the Japanese had also succeeded in destroying the Chinese fleet of the Yalu River (17 September 1894) and earned naval supremacy in the Yellow sea’ (Wippich 2006: 63). Japanese feats inflamed public opinion in Germany and stirred admiration for the ‘Prussians of the East’, as they soon came to be hailed. The war demonstrated the fragility of the Qing Dynasty and its possible obliteration by a stronger power capable of altering the East Asian order and severely affecting Western dominance in East Asia. The admiration for Japan was, however, soon replaced by a fear of the ‘yellow peril’, a term used by the German Kaiser Wilhelm II to refer to the idea of a menace of a unified ‘yellow’ race (Iikura 2006: 80). But it was when the peace treaty was finally signed in April 1895 that the relationship between Germany and Japan worsened, as Germany joined with France and Russia and objected to the treaty’s demands, which included the cession of territories,
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including Taiwan, to Japan, and were considered ‘excessive and a violation of European and German interests’ (Wippich 2006: 65). Although Japan had anticipated this objection from the three powers, it was the way in which it was expressed that humiliated Japan. Considering its former friendly relationship with Germany, Japan was bewildered by this change of heart. Equally, Germany’s intervention in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), by providing the Russian Baltic fleet with coal, shocked the Japanese public. This resulted in a strengthening of the Anglo-Japanese alliance after the RussoJapanese War – not only did Japan align itself with Britain, but it also became Germany’s enemy in World War I. Although the political relationship between Japan and Germany was weaker after World War I, however, Germany’s cultural influence became more widespread than before the war. KatoTetsuro- explains that ‘while for contemporary Germans, Japan remained an exotic island country in the Far East, many Japanese saw the new German culture, the so-called Waima-ru bunka, as a model for the future development of their country’ (Tetsuro- 2006: 120). 2.2 Anglo-Japanese alliance The idea of a possible alliance between the United Kingdom and Japan had been cultivated since 1895, when Britain refused to join the Triple Intervention of France, Germany and Russia against the Japanese occupation of the Liaodong Peninsula. The support that Britain had provided Japan in its efforts for modernization and their collaboration to repress the Boxer Rebellion had further contributed to cementing the Anglo-Japanese alliance, which was signed in London in January 1902. Not only did this alliance significantly affect these countries’ foreign policies, but it also enabled trading and cultural exchanges between the two nations, encouraging Japan’s rapid industrialization and the development of its armed forces, which in turn provided more export opportunities for the British arms industry. According to the AngloJapanese alliance’s provisions for mutual defence, Japan participated in World War I on the British side, which led to Japan’s attack of the German base of Tsingtao in 1914 and the seizure of key German possessions in the Pacific. These victories were significant for Japan’s imperial interests. However, despite the friendly relationship between Great Britain and Japan, some sensitive issues still remained during the years of the alliance, one of them being the racial question, which surfaced in 1919 at the Versailles Conference when Japan suggested a racial equality clause, asking for ‘equal and just treatment in every respect making no distinction, either in law or in fact, on account of their race or nationality’, a proposal which the United States and Britain rejected (Shimazu 1998: 20). All these political and diplomatic intricacies, which shaped the geopolitical world order and influenced the relationship between Germany, Great Britain and Japan, are expressed in the European literary discourse of the early decades of the 20th century. This is demonstrated in the descriptions of Japan by Clärenore Stinnes (Im Auto durch Zwei
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Welten, 2007 [1929]) and Marie Stopes (A Journal from Japan, 1910), since both writers emphasize Japan’s ambivalent position, namely its occupation of ‘a peculiarly colonial/non-colonial, Asian/non-Asian, Western/non-Western space’ (Sterry 2009: 8).
3 German and British views of Japan 3.1 Japan as colonial power to be praised and feared Marie Stopes’ A Journal from Japan of 1910 opens with an ode to Japan, in which the author remembers the country’s bucolic landscape and praises its beauty, while underlining the military strength so long underestimated by the European powers: ‘Yet thou hast risen and conquered/Thou dost stand, armed as a modern People/ In the front rank – and yet I say alas!’ (Stopes 1910: v). The poem thus mirrors Japan’s ambivalent position in the European imagination and sets the tone for her travel narrative, which blends her admiration for Japan’s resistance to the West with her nostalgia for an idyllic nation, untouched by civilization. Stopes’ image of a storm, ‘Thou didst appear unfitted for the storm/that broke upon thee from the lowering West’, echoes Clärenore Stinnes’s description of the literal typhoon which marked her arrival in Japan in 1927 (Stopes 1910: v). The metaphor of the storm can be interpreted as a subtle allusion to the disturbance brought by the West and which drove Japan to resort to arms. This idea is further underlined when, on her first day on the island of Honshu, Stopes observes: Then just as I was passing, a few regiments of soldiers crossed from one great gate into another – regiments with none of the new smartness of ours. All their clothes were travel stained and dusty, the reserve boots packed on their backs were patched, their swords clean, but not with the cleanness of the new metal. (Stopes 1910: 2) Stopes’ focus on the swords and her remark on their cleanliness, ‘clean, but not with the cleanness of the new metal’, indicates that they have served in previous battles (Stopes 1910: 2). The picture of a militarized Japan is reiterated in her reference to war casualties, for instance in her description of a traditional Japanese house that ‘belongs to the widow of an officer killed in the war and her daughter’ (Stopes 1910: 5). Stopes was possibly aware of the defensive stance that Japan was forced to adopt to defend its empire, and she recognized its imperialism, for instance in her allusion to the case of the Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido, which was a case of Japanese colonial encroachment on a neighbouring island. Indeed, following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the government decided to adopt several reforms in the hope of modernizing the country in a Western way. Among the new implementations was the colonization of Hokkaido alongside the assimilation of
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the Ainu people on the grounds of their ‘supposed civilizational inferiority’ (Kumojima 2017: 41). Such discrimination against another Other exemplifies Fukuzawa’s above-mentioned vision of a world divided into three strata, and was a means of resisting Western domination, as Tomoe Kumojima explains: The Ainu people were forced to switch from their traditional huntinggathering style to farming. Under the control of the kaitakushi (colonial office), the mass immigration of tondenhei (soldier-farmers) was carried out for the purpose of policing as well as guarding the Russo-Japanese frontier… The government imposed Japanese citizenship and family names on them in 1876 and introduced a compulsory education system in 1880 while it discouraged, or even banned, their traditions. (Kumojima 2017: 40) Stopes, who encountered the Ainu during her scientific expedition in the northern wilds, shares her impression: At Shiroi I saw all there was to be seen; the little straw homes and boats (it is a fishing village) of the Aino are very different from those of the Japanese. Some of the Aino are extremely picturesque and dignified-looking, their long, thick, black hair standing out all round their patriarchal heads… They are a fundamentally different race from the Japanese, and there is very good evidence that they are actually descended from the stone-tool using people, who once covered all the Japanese islands. (Stopes 1910: 25) With her conclusion that the Ainus are ‘the actual descendants of the stonetool using people’, Stopes’ colonial gaze is revealed, while her emphasis on the racial difference echoes Britain’s belief in its ‘civilizing mission’ upon its colonies (Stopes 1910: 25; Mann 2004: 1). While Stopes does not express disapproval of the annexation of Hokkaido, she certainly shows reservations when it comes to the plight of Korea. Pointing at the case of Ernest Bethell, a British journalist who was prosecuted in Korea for his antagonistic views on Japanese rule, she remarks Yesterday the Ministry resigned – and the commercial people are on the verge of revolt against the fearful expenditure on army and navy, while the country is so poverty-stricken… I have read every word of the crossexamination and trial of Bethell over the Korean matters; you have probably heard of it at home; in many ways I feel that the Japanese use their catch phrases, ‘love of country’ – ‘love of emperor’, as cloaks for unscrupulous behaviour public and private… The Japanese have 20,000 troops active in Korea, and cannot keep order – my only surprise is that any Koreans submit at all without decent open warfare; they were not
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conquered but tricked and coerced into having their Government absolutely controlled by Japanese Government. (Stopes 1910: 181) Critical of the outcome of the Sino-Japanese War, Stopes to some extent mirrors the general British opinion of the time, which was unfavourable to Japan. Additionally, these references to Japan’s imperialism show the country’s efforts to grow out of its status as a subordinate/inferior Other by ‘behav [ing] more like the Western colonizers’ (Nishihara 2000: 20). Yet, if Stopes shows concerns over Japan’s imperialism, her depiction of the British diplomatic presence on Japanese soil is related in rather positive and cheerful terms, mainly through her numerous anecdotes of celebratory events at the embassy or at dinner receptions, where important Japanese and European political figures gather merrily, thereby revealing the European desire to establish friendly relations with Japan. These auspicious contacts between the West and the East are also expressed through the scientific exchange and collaboration between England and Japan, for instance: The machinery for the fossils is now installed and very fine it is. It is far and away more compact, more ingeniously contrived, and grander than our English outfit. I have been endlessly astonished at the resource displayed by Professor F – in the whole business. (Stopes 1910: 79) Stopes also acknowledges the strong German influence in science in Japan with her reference to the visit of the ‘world-famed German bacteriologist Dr. Koch’ to the Botanical Institute of the Imperial University in Tokyo (Stopes 1910: 176), and in politics, when she observes that the governor of the state ‘had studied in Germany in the seventies and still spoke some German’ (Stopes 1910: 12). While she acknowledges the scientific collaboration between Japan and Britain, Stopes is unable to think of Japan as an equal ally. This is seen in her repeated use of the word ‘primitive’ when talking about Japanese savoir-faire, especially in comparison with England and the Western world in general, a term she has already used to refer to the Ainus; she wonders, for instance, about ‘the mixture of modern engineering and science with such primitive ways’ (Stopes 1910: 47). Stopes also invokes racial arguments, mirroring Great Britain’s refusal to ratify the racial equality clause proposed by Japan at Versailles, as illustrated in her statement that ‘there was only one Japanese lady there, the mother of one of the students, who was herself half German. She was very charming and much more intelligent-looking than the pure Japanese women’ (Stopes 1910: 79). Here, the reference to a hybrid identity reinforces the awareness of difference and tension between the two cultures. The reluctance to treat Japan as an equal is also expressed in Stinnes’ narrative, when she declares: ‘Am folgenden Tag fuhren wir in Tokio ein und
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fanden im Haus des deutschen Botschafters, Dr. Solf, ein Heim, wie wir es uns nicht besser wünschen konnten. Damit hatten wir das Ende unserer Leiden in der Alten Welt erreicht’ [The following day we arrived in Tokyo and found in the house of the German ambassador, Dr. Solf, a home such as we could not have wished better. With this we had reached the end of our sufferings in the Old World] (Stinnes 2007 [1929]: 164). Here, Stinnes stresses the existence of a world order, divided between ‘old’ and ‘new’; this distinction is reiterated through her observation that ‘wir redeten mit zwei verschiedenen Zungen und mit zwei verschiedenen Auffassungen’ [we spoke in two different languages and from two different points of view] (Stinnes 2007 [1929]: 162). Although she felt safe in Japan, Stinnes concludes: ‘Trotzdem haben wir uns nicht eigentlich wohl gefühlt in diesem Lande. Die Wesensfremdheit zwischen den Einwohnern und uns war zu groß. Die Behörden umgaben sich mit einer Wand von Ablehnung den Fremden gegenüber. Wir fühlten uns geduldet, weil wir unser Geld im Lande ließen’ [Nevertheless, we did not really feel at ease in this country. The incompatibility between the inhabitants and us was too great. The authorities surrounded themselves with a wall of disapproval of the foreigners. We felt tolerated because we left our money in the country] (Stinnes 2007 [1929]: 161). Stinnes thereby underlines the suspicious atmosphere prevailing in the host country when it came to the Western presence on the territory, as well as reiterating the alterity encountered in Japan. 3.2 Japan as exotic Other Both Stopes and Stinnes persisted in believing in an idyllic innocence, which pervaded Japan and affected its landscape and inhabitants. This led to their nostalgia for a territory untouched by Western influence. Nostalgia was a prevailing motif in the Western discourse on Japan of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as seen in Pierre Loti’s controversial novel Madame Chrysanthème (Loti 1990 [1887]), which Karen Laura Thornber describes as ‘racist and sexist’ (Thornber 2009: 221) but Margaret Topping feels ‘embodi[ed] the desire of an uncorrupted, unchanging and primitive East’ (Topping 2004: 40). This longing for an untouched Japan is also reflected in Stopes’ and Stinnes’ travel writing and is expressed through their contemplation of nature. Upon her arrival in Japan, Marie Stopes notes: We lost a good deal of the Wonderful Inland Sea at night, and there is no moon, but all this morning we have seen fairy-like islands… These beautiful lands must have been made on the seventh day, when God was resting and dreaming of Paradise. (Stopes 1910: 1) With words like ‘fairy-like’ and ‘Paradise’, Stopes evokes the exquisiteness of the archipelago and stresses the flawlessness of the untouched scenery that lies
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in front of her. This idea is reiterated in her description of the hamlet of Matsushima: ‘this little place, utterly unspoiled by European influence (I did not even see a European hat), is the Japan I have dreamed of, and had begun to fear I should not find’ (Stopes 1910: 29). The use of the loaded word ‘unspoiled’, which implies the presence of negative effects, reveals Stopes’ critical stance when it comes to the influence of the West on the East. Both Stopes and Stinnes were struck by the natural wilderness of Japan. Of the vegetation, Stopes notes the abundance of the flora: ‘another striking thing about this country’s products is the extraordinary richness of the vegetation… the number of plant species in the little Japan alone exceeds that in all Europe’ (Stopes 1910: 97); and Stinnes describes the landscape as follows: Die Natur war lieblich mit ihren bewaldeten Berghöhen und grünen Feldern. Verspätet blühende Obstbäume glichen prächtigen Buketts. Höher in den Bergen fanden wir Maulbeerkulturen der Seidenraupenzucht. Am Fuße des Fujisan, des ‘Unsichtbaren’, da er in Wolken gehüllt war, fuhren wir durch die schattige Allee achtzigjähriger Tannen, die zum Sommersitz des Mikado führten. Umgeben von Blumen ruhte mitten im See das Schloß. [The Nature was lovely with its forests on the mountain peaks and green fields. The late-blossoming fruit trees looked like splendid bouquets. Up in the mountains we found mulberry cultures for breeding silkworm. At the foot of Mt. Fuji, the ‘Invisible’, as it was wrapped in clouds, we drove through the shady avenue of eighty-year-old fir trees which led to the summer residence of the Mikado. Surrounded by flowers, the castle rested in the middle of the lake.] ( Stinnes 2007 [1929]: 164) Stinnes’ reference to the ‘Schloß’ [castle] and the Mikado reminds us of Stopes’ comparison of Japan to a fairy-land. The word ‘Mikado’, Naomi C. Fukuzawa points out, not only alludes to the emperor of Meiji Japan but was also the name of the ‘famous British satiric opera about early modern Japan’ composed by W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan, which was a success from the beginning as it draws on and sustains the old Victorian notion of the Far East, thereby pleasing the general Western audience’s taste (Fukuzawa 2018: 150–1). In A Journal from Japan, a subtle connection with the British opera Mikado can be drawn, essentially through Stopes’ stream-of-consciousnesslike allusion to the Mikado’s birthday which directly follows her description of the performance of a classical Japanese No- play that she attended (see Stopes 1910: 64f.). This Arcadian image is further reinforced by an atmosphere of untroubled innocence that reigns in the streets of the empire, in association with a childlike recklessness. Stinnes observes that Kinder spielten auf der Straße. Sie fielen uns auf, so zahlreich waren sie. Kleine Mädchen im Alter von fünf Jahren liefen herum, auf dem Rücken
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Marie Géraldine Rademacher einen jüngeren Bruder festgebunden. Das Reich der Kinder war die Straße, auf der sie, gedankenlos weiterspielend, den Verkehr aufhielten. [Children were playing in the street. They struck us as they were so numerous. Little girls of the age of five walked around, a younger brother tied on their backs. The street was the kingdom of the children, where they played carelessly, bringing the traffic to a halt.] ( Stinnes 2007 [1929]: 164)
This idea of childlike innocence is also present in her description of the geishas, who were ‘so kindlich dabei’ [so childlike] (Stinnes 2007 [1929]: 163). To this description, Stinnes adds ‘Am späten Abend klang das Vogelgezwitscher der kleinen Geishas klar durch die Wände. Sie sangen, tanzten, spielten und ließen Kreisel fliegen. Eine Erotiklose Grazie belebte diese Geschöpfe’ [In the late evening, the twittering of the little geishas resonated clearly through the walls. They sang, danced, played and threw spinning tops. An unerotic grace animated these creatures] (Stinnes 2007 [1929]: 163). With words such as ‘erotiklose Grazie’ [unerotic grace] and ‘Geschöpfe’ [creatures], Stinnes insists on the supernatural and exotic but non-erotic aspects of these creatures. This is also visible in Stopes’ fascination for the traditional costumes, as her following remark shows: ‘several Japanese in European costume danced, but the prettiest Japanese ladies were those who wore their own lovely ceremonial dress, which is far more dignified than ours’ (Stopes 1910: 29). These romanticized descriptions of the land and the natives clearly demonstrate the influence of European preconceived ideas of Japan and the way in which the women experienced their stay on the island. However, in their representations of Japan, Stopes and Stinnes offered an alternative to the paternalistic discourse of their male counterparts, who tended to highly eroticize and feminize Japan in their descriptions of Japan, made popular by the French travel writer Pierre Loti’s work Madame Chrysanthème which blends exoticism with eroticism.
4 Conclusion At the beginning of her chapter on Japan, Stinnes summed up her visit with the keywords: ‘Der Taifun * Eine Nacht im japanischen Teehaus * Schwefelquellen * Der heilige Berg’ [The typhoon * A night in the Japanese tea house * Sulfur springs * The holy mountain] (Stinnes 2007 [1929]: 159). These words focus principally on the singularities of the place and demonstrate the division between the West and the East. Through their description of Japan as an exotic place, a land of beauty and mystery, Marie Stopes and Clärenore Stinnes seemed to consider their host country as part of the Orient and to perpetuate the Eurocentric view of a world divided between the West and the East. However, Stopes and Stinnes offer an alternative discourse to the paternalistic European perspective on Japan as popularized by the likes of Pierre Loti; they do not eroticize the country but instead they acknowledge
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Japan’s ambivalent position in the global geopolitical scene. Their travel diaries reflect the ongoing debate on whether Japan should be allotted the position of a colonizer or a colonized nation. This ambivalent position was created and sustained by Japan itself, a nation that refused to be looked down upon by Western powers and therefore ended up adopting a dual identity or ‘hybridizing Japanese identity’ in an attempt to resist the West (Sakamoto 1996: 114).
References Beattie, James (2011), Empire and Environmental Anxiety: Health, Science, Art and Conservation in South Asia and Australasia, 1800–1920. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Buckle, Henri Thomas (1930), History of Civilization in England. London: Watts. Celarent, Barbara (2014), ‘An Outline of a Theory of Civilization by Fukuzawa Yukichi’, American Journal of Sociology, 119/4, 1213–1220. Chaloner, William Gilbert (2005), ‘The Palaeobotanical Work of Marie Stopes’, in A. J. Bowden, C. V. Burek, and R. Wilding (eds), History of Palaeobotany: Selected Essays. Bath: Geological Society London, 127–135. Fukuzawa, Naomi Charlotte (2018), ‘Pierre Loti’s Autobiographical Novel Madame Chrysanthème (1885): A Mirror of “Almost Colonised” 1880s Meiji-Japan from the Late-Imperialist French Traveller’, in Nouveaux mondes, nouveaux romans. Société Française de Litterature Générale et Comparée, 135–154. http://sflgc.org/wp-content/ uploads/2018/05/12fukuzawa_nmnr.pdf, accessed 12 December 2018. Fukuzawa, Yukichi (2009), An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, translated by David A. Dilworth and G. Cameron Hurst III. New York: Columbia University Press. Guizot, François (1884), Histoire de la Civilization en Europe. Paris: Librairie Académique Didier. Habinger, Gabriele (1996), ‘Vorwort’, in Clärenore Stinnes, Im Auto Durch Zwei Welten: Die Erste Autofahrt einer Frau um die Welt, 1927 bis 1929. Vienna: Promedia. Iikura, Akira (2006), ‘The “Yellow Peril” and Its Influence on Japanese-German Relations’, in Christian W. Spang and Rolf-Harald Wippich (eds), Japanese-German Relations, 1895–1945: War, Diplomacy and Public Opinion. London: Routledge, 80–97. Kalaitzidis, Akis and Gregory W. Streich (2011), US Foreign Policy: A Documentary and Reference Guide. Santa Barbara: Greenwood. Komori, Yo-ichi (2001), ポストコロニアル [Posutokoroniaru; postcolonial]. Tokyo: Iwanami-shoten. Kumojima, Tomoe (2017), ‘A Strange Thrill’: Isabella Bird and the Fugitive Community of Travellers. Abingdon: Routledge, 33–46. Loti, Pierre (1990 [1887]), Madame Chrysanthème. Paris: Flammarion. Mann, Michael (2004), ‘“Torchbearers upon the Path of Progress”: Britain’s Ideology of a “Moral and Ideal Progress” in India. An Introductory Essay’, in Harald Fischer-Tiné and Michael Mann (eds), Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural Ideology in British India. London: Anthem Press, 1–28. Nishihara, Daisuke (2000), ‘China as Japan’s Orient: “Shinasumi” Writings and Paintings in the Taisho- Period’, in Theo D’Haen and Patricia Krüs (eds), Colonizer and Colonized. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 19–26.
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Sakamoto, Rumi (1996), ‘Japan, Hybridity and the Creation of Colonialist Discourse’, Theory, Culture and Society, 13/3, 113–128. Shimazu, Naoko (1998), Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919. London: Routledge. Sterry, Lorraine (2009), Victorian Women Travellers in Meiji Japan: Discovering a ‘New’ Land. Leiden: Brill. Stinnes, Clärenore (2007 [1929]), Im Auto Durch Zwei Welten: Die Erste Autofahrt einer Frau um die Welt, 1927 bis 1929. Vienna: Promedia. Stopes, Marie Carmichael (1910), A Journal from Japan: A Daily Record of Life as Seen by a Scientist. London: Blackie and Son. Tetsuro-, Kato- (2006), ‘Personal Contacts in Japanese-German Cultural Relations during the 1920s and early 1930s’, in Christian W. Spang and Rolf-Harald Wippich (eds), Japanese-German Relations, 1895–1945: War, Diplomacy and Public Opinion. London: Routledge, 80–97. Thornber, Karen Laura (2009), Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Topping, Margaret (2004), ‘Introduction’, in Margaret Topping (ed.), Eastern Voyages, Western Visions. French Writing and Painting of the Orient. Bern: Peter Lang, 15–46. Wippich, Rolf-Harald (2006), ‘Japan-Enthusiasm in Wilhelmine Germany: The Case of the Sino-Japanese War, 1894–5’, in Christian W. Spang and Rolf-Harald Wippich (eds), Japanese-German Relations, 1895–1945: War, Diplomacy and Public Opinion. London: Routledge, 61–79. Yoshioka, Hiroshi (1995), ‘Samurai and Self-Colonization in Japan’, in Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Bhikhu C. Parekh (eds), The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power. London: Zed Books, 99–112.
Index
The index includes entries employed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that are now considered racist, offensive and wholly unacceptable. The editors have included them as part of the critical examination of racist, colonial discourses. Please note that words such as ‘colony’, ‘colonies’, ‘colonial’ and ‘colonialism’, ‘colonization’, ‘Africa’, ‘African’, ‘German(y)’, ‘Britain’, ‘British’, ‘England’, ‘English’ and ‘discourse’ occur so frequently that they are only included in the index if they appear within specific contexts. Aboriginal 235, 238, 240, 243 Africa Decolonial Research Network (ADERN) 19 Afrikaans 183, 185 Afrikaner(s) 51, 52, 123, 132, 151, 182, 189, 197n3 Afrikanerplatt 51 Afrikanische Gesellschaft in Deutschland (African Society in Germany) 12 Ainu(s) 267–269 Alexander I, Czar 47 Alexanderhilf 47 Algeciras, Conference of 200–201 Algeria(n) 166, 167, 203, 207 Algiers 207 alien(s) 6, 39, 53, 55 Alldeutscher Blätter 14 Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League) 9, 14, 16, 51, 131, 138, 218 alterity 6, 48, 51, 270 America(s) 7, 10, 35, 250, 264 American 17, 49, 62, 64, 111–112, 125n6, 144 American Revolution 40, 42 Anatolia 50 Anglicization 51 Anglo-Boer War see Boer War Anglo-Japanese alliance 265–267 Anglo-Russian Convention 199 Angola 13 Angra Pequena 150
annexation 11, 142, 150, 153, 159n1, 263, 268 annexationism 153 Ansiedlungskommission (Settlement Commission) 222 anti-colonial 145–146, 148, 220, 231 anti-colonialism 17 anti-colonialist 16, 108, 228 anti-mother 227, 229 anti-Slavic 223 apartheid 132, 137, 156, 158 appropriation 45, 48–49, 53–54, 65, 128–129 Arab(s) 11, 108, 111–112, 204 Arabic 202 argumentation 83–87, 221 Arndt, Ernst Moritz 46, 131 Arusha 185–187, 192, 195, 197n4 artefacts (cultural, historical, stolen) 3, 21, 122, 129 Aryans 235, 244n1 Asia(n) 35, 160, 202, 254, 255, 264–265 Asia-Pacific region 263 Asiatic Society 237, 245n2 Askari 187, 190, 196 assimilation 48, 50, 267 Association of Progressive Women’s Societies see Verband fortschrittlicher Frauenvereine Auslandsdeutsche 47 Auslandsdeutschtum 66
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Index
Australasia 186 Australia 14, 50, 173, 219, 264 Auswanderer 47 authoritarianism 6 Bacon, Francis 27–28 Bambata see Bambatha Bambatha 173–174, 176–177 Bambatha Rising/Rebellion 163–164, 173–177 Bananenschamben (see also shamba) 186–187, 190, 197n4 Bantu 170, 186 Barth, Heinrich 8 Basel Mission 11, 121 Basters of Rehoboth 149 Becher, Johann Joachim 7, 27–28 Bechuanaland 148 Beijing 249 Belgian 4, 129, 203 Belgium 108, 125n12 208, 254 Bengal 235–240, 243 Bengali (language) 238 Bengali(s) 239, 240 Berlin Conference (Berlin Colonial Conference, Congo Conference) 4, 12, 108, 128, 141, 142, 148 Berliner Kongokonferenz see Berlin Conference Berliner Mission 9–10 Bhambatha see Bambatha Bismarck, Otto von 12, 54, 63, 108, 130–131, 142, 150, 199, 218 Black Sea 47, 49 Bley, Fritz 51–52, 168–169 blood 16, 51–53, 203, 222, 245n4 Blue Book see Imperial Blue Book Body Politic 33 Boer(s) 51–52, 151, 182–184, 188–193, 195, 197n3 & n8 215, 217, 219, 225, 228–231 Boer War 13–14, 51–52, 151, 183, 190, 197n8 217 Bondelswarts Nama 146 borders see Grenzen Botha, Louis 150–152 Boxer Rebellion/War 248–249, 254–255, 266 Brazil, Brazilian 45, 47, 49–51 Brazilianization 51 Bremen Mission 11, 121 British and Foreign Aborigines Protection Society 238
British Church Missionary Society 10, 243–244 British East India Company 236 British Empire 8, 55, 163, 166, 172, 174, 219, 225–227, 229–230 British Methodists 9 Brussels Geographic Conference 12, 108 Buchner, Max 130 Bülow, Bernhard von 131, 138, 254–257 Büsch, Johann Georg 33–38, 40, 42 Calcutta 236–237, 239–240 Calcutta Committee 244 Callwell, Charles Edward 166–168, 173 Cameroon 5–7, 12, 20, 131–136, 138, 159n1 Canada 159, 195 Cape Coast 17, 19 Cape Colony 52, 150, 163, 169–170 Cape Town 17, 52–53 capitalism, liberal 4 Catholic 10, 169, 217, 229 Central Africa 8, 10–12, 108, 110–111, 113–114, 119, 121, 144, 186 Chambers, Ephraim 29–31 Charter Act (1813) 237 China 4, 248–262 (Chapter 13) Chinese 249–250, 254, 265 Chinese Empire 249 Chota Nagpur 11, 235–247 (Chapter 12) Christian(s) 9–11, 17, 107, 109–110, 112, 117, 119, 122, 124–125, 133, 202, 235, 238–239, 240, 242, 244 Christianity 10–11, 41, 109, 111–113, 117–118, 121–122, 133, 235, 237–243 Christianization 108, 112, 116 Christianize(d) 11, 116, 144, 243 Church Missionary Society see British Church Missionary Society Churchill, Winston 175 civilization 9, 11, 17, 48, 51, 108, 113, 119, 121–124, 132, 153, 163, 178, 200, 202, 235, 238, 264, 267 civilizational 268 civilize 11, 12, 116, 236–237 civilized 34, 47, 49, 107–108, 151, 165, 176, 204, 206–207, 215, 220, 238, 244, 264 civilizing effect 52 civilizing force 223 civilizing mission see mission civilizing occupation 253 Claß, Heinrich 14 Colonia, Coloniae 21n4 28–31
Index colonial (definitions) 6, 8, 32–51 (Chapter 2) 141 colonial administration(s) 10, 11, 15, 142–144, 149–151, 155–156, 158–159 colonial administrator 15, 155 colonial agency 66–67 colonial army, armies 144, 165, 167 colonial associations 6, 66 colonial authority/authorities 70, 140, 144, 188, 190, 193–195, 197 colonial contact zones 45, 51, 53 colonial dependency 34, 38–42 colonial discourse see discourse colonial economy 149–150 colonial empire(s) 146, 164 colonial encroachment 51, 144, 149, 267 colonial environmental warfare 146–147, 158, 160n5 colonial expansion 10, 12, 30, 36, 130, 132, 164 colonial experience(s) 138, 140, 141, 178, 201 colonial forces 144, 146 colonial friction zone 51, 53, 55 colonial gaze 49–50, 268 colonial government 62, 144, 237–238, 244 colonial(ist) ideology 58, 257 colonial independence 40–41 colonial invasion 253 colonial land dispossession(s) 140–162 (Chapter 7) colonial lobby 130 colonial masters 15, 137, 210 colonial officialdom 182, 194–195 colonial policy/policies 15, 35, 41, 62, 130, 153, 156, 182, 195–196, 218, 236 colonial politics 16, 66 colonial possession(s) 48, 53, 142, 151–152, 219, 266 colonial power(s) 4, 8, 59, 66, 70, 72–75, 77–78, 128, 130, 132, 140, 141–143, 151–154, 159, 182, 194–195, 199–201, 220, 250, 255–257, 263–267, 273 colonial project(s) 27, 60, 65, 141, 182, 204, 220, 235 colonial rule 15–16, 29–30, 32–33, 38, 40, 42, 65, 140–162, 177, 206, 215, 225–227, 230, 237, 255, 268 colonial semantic(s) 27–32, 35 colonial soldiers 201–204, 209 colonial subjects 74, 146–147, 151, 237 colonial system(s) 140–142, 153
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colonial trade 27, 29, 34–35 colonial troops 165, 174, 201–202 colonial trusteeship 152–154 colonial war(s) 16, 163–178 colonial women 225 colonial workers 201, 206, 226 colonialism (definitions) 5–7, 26–44 colonialism, adjacent 49 colonialism, imagined 49 colonialism, informal 49 colonialism, internal 7, 215–234 (Chapter 11) colonialism, secondary 7 colonialism, settler see settler colonialist ambitions 13 colonialist approach 218 colonialist attitudes 14–17, 199 colonialist discourses 3, 43, 45–51, 65, 117, 249, 258 colonialist identity 257 colonialist ideology 257 colonialist regime 257 coloniality 5, 17–19, 61, 88 Colonie, Colonien see Kolonie, Coloniehandel 35, Colonien-Politik 35, 41 colonist, settler see settler colonist Colonisten, Kolonisten 22n4 34, 39–40, 48–49 colonization, cultural 265 colonization, direct 18 colonization, intellectual 265 colonization, internal 29, 218–219 colonization, overseas settlement 29, 36 colonizer(s) 5, 10–11, 13–17, 19–20, 22n8 48, 53, 58–104 (Chapter 4) 110, 114, 118, 128, 134, 140, 163–167, 177–178, 200–202, 204, 218, 220, 223, 269, 273 colony, colonies (definitions) 6, 32–51 (Chapter 2) colony, inner 218 colony, trading 35, 38 Commission of Inquiries 151 commonwealth 29, 33 concentration camps 17, 149, 163, 169, 192 conceptual semantics 69–75 Congo 4, 12, 115–117, 125n12 159n1 Congo Conference see Berlin Conference connector(s) 75–77, 79 Constantinople 45 contrastive linguistics 59–60 conviviality 47, 58, 60, 88
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Index
Cook, James 8 core power 7, 218 corpus-based 65 Covenant of the League of Nations, 152, 154 Cuba 17 cultivate 9, 21, 28–29, 32, 34–35, 38–39, 48–49, 55, 74, 83–84, 189, 197n4 cultural (territorial) appropriation (see also appropriation) 48–49 cultural community 131 cultural exchange 129, 266 cultural fertilizer 52 cultural hierarchy 51 cultural imagination 49 cultural influence(s) 129, 266 cultural mixture 129 cultural superiority 5, 257 cultural transfer 129, 138n1 cultural transformation 51 Cyprus 70, 72–74, 78, 81, 83, 91 Damara 149, 156–157 Damaraland 157 Danish 9, 20 Danzig 215, 216 dark 107–127 (Chapter 5) Dark Unknown 114–115 darkest 116–117, 119, 121–122 darkness 107–127 (Chapter 5) Darwinian 164, 167 decoloniality 17–18 decolonization 18 decolonized 216 degenerate 6, 136 Dernburg, Bernhard 13, 62 deterritorialization 46 Deutsche Frauenverein für die Ostmarken, Der (The German Women’s Organization for the Eastern Marches) 215 Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society) 60, 138, 143, 171 Deutsche Kolonialverein, Der (German Colonial Association), 8, 141 Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, 169, 171–172 Deutsche Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft (German East African Society) 12 Deutschtum 47–48, 50–52 dialogue 21, 59, 76, 88 diaspora(s) 8, 45–57 (Chapter 3) diaspora construction 45–46, 55 diasporic 45–46, 48, 50–51, 53 diasporization 48
diffusionism 218 digital corpus 58–89 (Chapter 4) digital humanities 60–61 Digitale Sammlung Deutscher Kolonialismus (DSDK) 60–62, 65–67, 88 discourse analysis, contrastive (see also contrastive linguistics) 59–60 discourse, colonial 6–7, 13–14, 45–46, 55, 59, 67, 128–129 discourse, discriminatory 136 discourse, emigrationist 49, 51 discourse, global 129 discourse, ideological 3 discourse leaders 46, 49 discourse, liberal 47 discourse, racist 6, 176 discourse, social 128–129, 132, 134 discourse, surrogate 55 Discourse-Historical Approach 221, 249, 258 discourse-linguistic 61 discourse linguistics 85 discourse metaphors 107–108 discourses, colonizing 197 discursive strategies 45 discursivity 6 dispositif 5–6, 14 dispossessed 145, 152, 154–155, 165 dispossession(s) see colonial land dispossessions Dorsland Trekkers 151 Du Plessis, J. 122 dualism 109 Dutch 4, 9, 13, 148, 190, 197n3 & n8 203, 229 East Africa, East African 4, 5, 11–14, 63, 65, 108, 113, 118, 125n11 165, 167, 182–198 (Chapter 9) East Asia 254–255, 265 East German Women’s Conferences see Ostdeutsche Frauentage Easter Rising 217 Eastern Africa 186, 195–196 Eastern Europe 47 Eastern Marches see Ostmark Egypt, Egyptian 78, 81 emigrant, emigrants 46–47, 50, 55 emigration 45–47, 49, 51, 55, 66 Emin Pasha 116, 125n6, n10 & n11 empire-building 29–30, 37 enemy image(s) 128 English Empire 79, 82
Index enlighten 109, 117, 123, 124n1 enlightened 40–41, 108, 111–112, 115–116, 121, 124 enlightening 110 enlightenment 17, 107–108, 110–116, 118–119, 121–124 entangled history 14 Entente Cordiale 199 Ethiop, Ethiopia 124–125n5 Eurocentric 21, 218, 272 Eurocolonial 58–59, 88 evaluation(s) 60, 68 -71 73–74, 76, 88, 91, 93, 109, 201, 258 evaluative 60, 67–69 Ewe 11 Existenzkampf (struggle for survival) 8 exotic 6, 48, 266, 270–272 explanandum 83–84 explanans 83–84 explicative 83–84 Falkenhorst, Carl 133, 135–138 Famine Queen 229 Far East 266, 271 fatherland 9, 46–47, 131, 148, 152, 223, 225 Fernando Po 130–131 Fez, Treaty of 199, 201 First World War 4, 8, 14–15, 20, 21n3 108, 150–153, 182, 202, 209, 210n1 253, 256 Forster, Johann Reinhold 8 Fort Napier see Pietermaritzburg France 4, 7–8, 55, 64, 128, 137, 159, 199–201, 204, 210n3 216–217, 224, 227, 255, 265–266 Franco-Russian Alliance 199 Franco-Spanish mandate 201 François, Curt von 144 Fredrieks, Kornellius 148 Free State (Irish) 217 Freetown 135 Fremdbild, Fremdbilder (image[s] of the Other) 129, 131–132, 137–138 French 4, 9, 10, 12, 27, 29, 33, 36, 46, 65, 125n12 140–141, 154, 159n1 166, 167, 199–211 (Chapter 10) 217, 223–224, 227–229, 255, 272 Frenssen, Gustav 171, 172 Freytag, Gustav 49 Friedrich Fabri 8 Friedrich Wilhelm, Kurfürst of Brandenburg 128
279
Frobenius, Leo 118, 123–124 Fukuzawa, Yukichi 264 Gabon 159n1 Gambetta, Léon 12, 125n12 Gartenlaube, Die 45, 47–48 gender politics 231 gender relations 231 gendered constructs 7 gendered order 220 genderonyms 221, 223, 227 geonyms 222 German East Africa (GEA) 5, 14, 63, 65, 118, 165, 167, 182–198 (Chapter 9) German South-West Africa (GSWA) 4, 5, 10, 12–14, 17, 21n1 52–53, 62, 142–144, 146, 149–154, 163, 171 German Togoland 11, 20 Germandom (see also Deutschtum) 47, 50–51 Germanentum (see also Deutschtum), 51 Germanic culture 55 Germanic territory 50 Germanization 216, 265 Germanness (see also Deutschtum) 47, 51–52, 222 Germans to the front 248–253, 256, 258 Ghana 17–20 Gladstone, William 4, 13 global discourse see discourse globalization 4–8, 12, 14–17, 20, 152 Globus 47 Gobabis 156, 158 Gold Coast 122, 128, 132 Gonne, Maud 7, 215–217, 219–221, 225–231 Göring, Ernst 143–144 Gossner, Johannes Evangelista 240–244 Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church 240, 244 Gossner Mission 243–244 Goum(s), Goumier(s) 199–211 (Chapter 10) gray/grey zone 7, 218, 219, 231 Great Friedrichsburg 128 Great War see First World War Greek 29–31, 36, 125, 188 Grenzen (borders) 37, 46, 97, 222 Grenzgebiet (border territory) 222 Grenzland (borderland) 222 Grimm, Jakob, 46 Grone, Theodor Reismann 52
280
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Grootfontein 150–151 Groß Liebental 47 Grundbegriff (basic historical concept) 26 guerrilla 148, 165, 166, 169 Hague conventions(s) 166 halbasiatisch 224 Hamburg Museum of Anthropology 122 Handlungs-Colonie (see also colony) 35, 38 Hardie, Keir 175 Harris, John 122 Hasse, Ernst 9, 16 heart of Africa 111 Heimat, 45, 47–49 Heine, Heinrich 255, 259n8 Herero(s) 17, 20, 148–149, 163–165, 168–172, 174–175, 177–178, 257 Hereroland 145 Herero-Nama War (also Herero and Nama War, Herero-Nama uprising) 11, 13, 17, 20, 53, 163–165, 168–172, 174–175 Herrenmenschen (master race) 137 hierarchy, gender 16 hierarchy, racial 16 High Imperialism 4, 12, 14–15, 21n3 45, 50, 55, 163, 165, 178, 253 Hindenburg, General von 54 Hindi 239, 243 Hindu(s) (also Hindoo(s)) 236, 237, 239, 240 Hinduism 239, 240, 241, 245n6 Hindustan 236 Hobbes, Thomas 28–29, 33 Hokkaido 263, 267–268 Holland 128, 137 Holy Roman Empire 27 homeland(s) 15–16, 45–47, 55, 133, 157, 204, 216 Honshu 267 Hottentott 17, 169 Hottentott Election 169 Hübbe-Schleiden, Wilhelm 8–9 Humboldt-Forum 257 Hun(s) 248, 253–254, 256–257 Hun letters see Hunnenbriefe Hunnenbriefe, 253, 258n2 hut tax 165, 172 Hut Tax War 165 hybrid(izing) identity 269, 273 imagined communities 47, 257 imperial agency 237 Imperial Blue Book 151–152
Imperial Colonial Office 123 imperial elites 255 imperial fantasies 55 Imperial German Colonies see Reichsdeutsche Kolonien Imperial Germany 45–57 (Chapter 3) 132, 248–262 (Chapter 13) Imperial(ist) ideology, ideologies 125, 164 imperial interests 150, 266 imperial possession 219, imperial power(s) 128–129, 138, 143, 165, 200–201, 204 imperial protection 3, 130, 143 imperial rule 177 imperialism 5, 47, 50, 128–132, 137, 143–145, 201, 219, 264, 265, 267, 269 imperialist(s) 45, 59, 62, 125, 128–139 (Chapter 6),141 149, 199, 226, 257, 264 imperialist chauvinism 52 imperialist ideas 47 India 4, 5, 11, 193, 196, 219, 228, 230, 235–247 (Chapter 12) Indian(s) 13, 186, 187, 190, 195–196, 215, 225, 228, 229, 230, 235–247 (Chapter 12) Indian Mission 240 Indian Rebellion 241–242 inner colony see colony, inner innere Kolonisation see colonization, internal intercultural communication studies 59 internal colonialism see colonialism, internal internal colonization see colonization, internal International Congo Society 12 internationality 65 Ireland 5, 7, 21n4 215–234 (Chapter 11) Irish 215, 217–219, 225–231, 260, 263, 265, 274–278 Irokesen (Iroquois) 215, 224 Islam(ic) 117, 126n10 202 Islamism 241 Italian 205, 207, 210n3 Italy 4, 199, 208, 210n2 Japan 5, 210n2 250, 263–274 (Chapter 14) Japanese 249–250, 263–274 (Chapter 14) Jews 16 jihad 202 Johannesburg 53–54 John Bull 250–251 Johnson, Harry 121–122,
Index Jones, William 237 Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich 34–35, 40–41 Justi, Johann Heinrich Gottlob von 38–39 kaffir 51, 167, 175 kaffirization, see Verkafferung Kaiser’s birthday 53–55 Kaiser monument 54–55 Kaiserrede (Kaiser-speech) 54 Kaiserreich (see also Second German Empire or Reich) 3, 8, 128, 130 Kalahari 148, 156 Kathleen (Cathleen) ni Houlihan 217, 226–227, 229 Keltie, John Scott 12, 108 Kenya 4, 149, 153, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 193, 195, 196 Kilimanjaro (Mount) 182, 186, 188–190 King George V 55 Knockaloe (Isle of Man) 53 Koch, Robert 269 Kohl, Helmut 255 Kol(s) 235–243 Kol Rebellion/Uprising 237 Kolonialbewegung (colonial movement) 8 Kolonie see colony Kolonisten see colonists Korea(n) 265, 268 Kröpke, William 55 Kruger, Ohm 52 Kulturkampf 133, 218 Kulturnation 46 Kutako, Hosea 156 Land Bank 154 Land Board 154 Landgrebe, Carl 184–189, 191, 193, 195, 197n6 L’Association Irlandaise 262 League of Nations 152–155 lebensraum 9, 16, 131 Leopold II of Belgium 12, 108, 117, 125n12 Lettow-Vorbeck, Paul von, 14, 63, 65, 190 Leutwein, Theodor 14, 144–147, 168, 170 Leviathan 28, 33 light 107–127 (Chapter 5) liminal (position, space) 187, 215, 219 Lindequist, Friedrich von 63, 148 L’Irlande Libre, 217, 229 Livingstone, Charles 108 Livingstone, David 10–11, 108, 110–111, 119–121, 123, 125n6 & n7
281
Locke, John 49 London Missionary Society 9, 119, 242 Loti, Pierre 270, 272 Lüderitz, Adolf 143 Lustdorf 47 Lutheran(s) 157, 240, 241, 244 Madrid Convention 199 Mafeje Research Institute (AMRI) 19 Maharero, Samuel 144, 147–148, 151 Maji Maji 165, 167 Malan, Grieta 184–186, 189–193, 195, 197n3 mandate 14, 150, 152, 153, 201 Marengo, Jakob 148 margin(s) 215, 257 marginal(ity), marginalized 7, 215, 218, 220, 222, 225, 235–236 Markievicz, Constance 231 Marperger, Paul Jacob 27–32 Martial Law 151, 166, 173 materiality 6 Meiji Japan 265, 267, 271 Meiji Restoration 267 Merkel, Angela 255–257 Meru (Mount) 182, 190 metaphor(s) 52, 107–127 (Chapter 5) 134, 185–186, 188, 190, 220–222, 228–231 metaphor, conceptual 109, 117–118, 185–186 metaphors, animal 134, 221 metaphors, container 109, 113, 185–186, 190 metropole(s) 46, 197 métropole, 33 metropolis 32–34, 38–39, 42, 141, 146 migrants 50, 52, 150 migration 4–5, 29, 36, 51, 255 Mikado (the) 271 militarism 17, 131, 134, 193, 256 Mill, James 238 Mirabeau, Victor Gabriel Riqueti de 36 Mission(s) 10, 11, 50, 108, 121–122, 239–244 mission, civilizing 15, 16, 50, 55, 220, 238, 268 missionary, missionaries 3, 4, 9–11, 13, 17, 20, 64, 107–127 (Chapter 5) 132, 133, 144, 235–247 (Chapter 12) 254 missionary, cultural 13 missionary discourse(s) 117, 118 Mombasa-Uganda Railway 183, 195–196
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monopolists 40 Moroccan(s) 199–211 (Chapter 10) Moroccan Crisis 200 Morocco 5, 199–201, 204–208 Moshi 184, 186, 188–189, 191–194 mother country 33 mother Ireland 227 mother of the nation 220 mother state 33, 39 motherland 5, 15, 33–42, 227–228 Mozambique 13 Mtesa 115–116, 125n9 multiculture 60 multisemioticity 6 Mundas 235–238, 245n1 Muslim(s) 201–202 Mutterland, 33–35, 37–38, 41–42, 96, 98 Mutterstaat 33, 39–40 Nachtigal, Gustav 12, 130–131 Nama (see also Bondelswarts) 17, 20, 144, 146, 148–149, 152, 159n2, 160n4 163–165, 168–172, 174–175, 177–178 Namaland 145 Namib Coast/Desert 150, 157 Namibia, Namibian 4, 5, 17, 20, 140–162 (Chapter 7) Natal 163, 165, 172–177 Natal Rising/Rebellion see Bambatha Rising Native Administration Proclamation 155 Native Land Act (South African) 155 Native Trust and Land Act 154 Nauru 153 Neger 63, 65, 123–124, 135–136, 170 Negerleben (negro existence) 124 Negerseele (negro soul) 124 Negrite(s) 125n5 negro, negroes 107, 123, 124n5 135–136, 170, 203 negroid 114, 115, 123 Negroland 110, 124n5 New Guinea 62, 68, 153 New Testament 110, 243 New Zealand 14 Nigeria 10, 55, 132 Nigrites 124n5 Nigritia, Nigritian 110, 124n5 nigritisch, 123 Nigritude 124n5 noble savage 244 nobody’s country 9, 17 non-civilized 167
Norden, Heinrich 133–134 North Africa(n) 200, 202–205, 207, 210n3 Odessa 47–48 Ohamakari, Battle of 147 Okahandja 146 Omaheke Sandveld 147–148, 156 Oppenheim, Francis Lassa 166 Orange River 143, 148, 154 Oraon(s) 235–238, 241, 243–244, 245n7 Ordnung, koloniale see colonial order Orient 81, 97, 272 Ostdeutsche Frauentage (East German Women’s Conferences) 215, 221 Ostmark(en), 7, 215–234 (Chapter 11) Otavi 151 Other 6, 7, 9, 11, 14–16, 73, 108, 109, 114–116, 119, 128–139 (Chapter 6) 215–233 (Chapter 11) 254, 264, 268, 269, 270–272 Ottoman Empire 126n10 152, 201 Ovaherero (see also Herero) 144–149, 151–152, 156, 159n2 Pacific 8, 14, 263, 266 paganism 133–134 Pakenham, Thomas 108, 141–148 Pan-German League see Alldeutscher Verband Pan-Slavism 47 Pass Laws 155 periphery, peripheries 7, 26, 29, 32–34, 38–39, 217–218, 235 Permanent Mandates Commission 152 Pertz, Georg Heinrich 46 Peters, Carl 12, 16, 118, 125n11 160n3 Pflanzörter 34, 36–37 Pflanz-Städte, Pflanzstätte 28, 34 Pflanzung 21n4 Pflanzvolk, Pflanzvölker 22n4, 34 Pidgin 10 pie metaphor 3, 21 Pienaar, Martha 183–184, 190–195, 197n2 Pietermaritzburg 54, 175 Pioniere der Kultur (pioneers of culture) 223 place in the sun, Platz an der Sonne, 130–132, 137, 142, 200, 248–256, 258, 259n7 plantation, plantations 27–29, 34, 36–37, 165, 172, 184, 186, 195, 197n4
Index planter(s) 21n4 27, 34, 165 Poland 5, 7, 49, 218 Poles 16, 218, 222–225, 228, 231 Police Zone 155, 157 Polish 215–216, 218–219, 221–225 Polish flood 222 politonyms 222 poll tax 165 Portuguese 4, 10, 13, 64, 111, 138n3 154, 159n1 Posen 222 positional appropriation (see also appropriation) 65 positioning 59–60, 65, 67–69, 75 postcolonial 10, 17–18, 21, 58–60, 88, 158–159, 196, 219, 248–262 (Chapter 13) Postcolonial Language Studies 58, 88 postcolonial myth 18 power see colonial power, imperial power pragmatics 6, 75, 88 pre-colonial 20, 146, 158, 235, 236 Pretoria 163 propaganda 72, 94, 132, 202, 204, 208, 224–225, 257, 263 protector(s) 10, 200, 243 protectorate 10, 12, 52, 131, 143, 146, 150, 195, 199, 201, 205 proto-colonial 50 protoschema 220 prototype / prototypical 66, 109 Prussia(n) 128, 199, 206, 218, 222, 265 Prussia/Prussians of the East 265–266 Prusso-Japanese Treaty 265 Puttkamer Jesco von 133, 135 Qingdao (Tsingtao) 20, 254 Qing Dynasty 265 Qing government 254 quasi-colonial(ist) 48, 218 Queen of Ireland 226–228 race(s) 9, 14–16, 51, 55, 116, 123, 124–125n5 & n7) 136–137, 148, 155, 166–167, 169, 172, 176–178, 203, 209, 228–230, 236, 245n1 265–266, 268 race laws 15–16, 136 race war 169 racial 5, 6, 15–16, 132–133, 154, 156, 158, 164, 168, 172, 178, 203, 208, 221, 235, 257, 266, 268, 269 racial equality 133, 266, 269 racial mixture 15–16, 133 racialized 164, 177, 265
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racist 6, 15, 132, 166, 172, 176, 202–204, 208, 221, 270 Ranchi 238–244 recontextualization 257–258 Reichsdeutsche Kolonie (Imperial German Colony) 215, 222 Reichskolonialamt 123 repatriation 21, 257 Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft (Rhenish Missionary Society) 9–10 Rhodes, Cecil 17 Rhodesia(n) 165, 197n2 256 Richardson, James 8 Robinson, Charles 10 Röchling, Carl 249–250 Roman Empire 37 Russia 47–50, 199, 201, 204, 255, 265–266 Russian(s) 48, 199, 255, 266 Russian steppe 47 Russification 50 Russo-Japanese frontier 266, 268 Russo-Japanese War 266 Salisbury, Robert 4 Sandveld see Omaheke Sandveld savage(s) 31, 34, 107, 114, 115, 117, 118, 121, 124, 148, 166–168, 170, 172, 173, 177–178, 200, 220, 236, 238, 243 savage, noble see noble savage savage warfare 168 savage wars 166, 172 savagery 72, 115, 117 Schirmacher, Käthe 7, 215–216, 220–225, 227–229, 231 Schlettwein, Carl 171–172 Schlieffen, Alfred von 168 Schutzbrief (Charter of Protection) 12 Schutztruppe (Protection Force) 10, 137, 146 Scottish Presbyterians 9 scramble / scrambling 249–250 Scramble for Africa 4, 11–13, 45, 108, 141–142, 164–165 Second French Empire 141 Second German Empire 3–4, 7–8, 21n3 50, 52, 128, 130, 137–138, 141, 154, 248–249, 254–255 Second German Reich see Second German Empire Second World War 14, 49, 152–153, 192, 195, 201, 204, 207–209, 210n1 & n2 253–254
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Seitz, Theodor 150 Self 6–7, 108–109, 114, 115–116, 128–139 (Chapter 6) 215–234 (Chapter 11) self-assertion 130 self-colonized 264 self-determination 153–154, 157 self-identity 128 self-image 9, 14, 128, 135–136 semi-Asiatic see halbasiatisch semi-civilization 264 semi-civilized 166 Settlement Commission see Ansiedlungskommmission settler(s) 21n4 27, 47, 50, 123, 140, 144–145, 149–152, 154–157, 165, 168, 182–198 (Chapter 9) settler colonialism 182, 186, 194–196 settler colonies 140, 165 settler colonist 182, 197n4 settler narrative(s) 182–198 (Chapter 9) Seymour, Admiral Edward H. 249–250, 253, 257 shamba 186–187, 190, 197n4 Shan Van Vocht 217, 226–228 Sierra Leone 135, 165 Sinn Féin 217 Sino-Japanese War 265, 269 slave(s) 31, 149, 229 slave trade 8, 11, 107–108, 111–112, 121, 148, 153 slavery 107, 111–112, 124, 133, 148 Slavic 215, 222–224 Slavs 224 small war(s) 164–169, 172–178 Smith, Adam 36 Social Darwinist 15, 131, 171–172, 177–178 social discourse see discourse Sonderweg (special path) 6, 22n6, 128, 137 Sonnenfels, Joseph von 32–34, 37–40 South Africa(n) 4–5, 14, 17, 19, 52–53, 122, 140–162 (Chapter 7) 163, 172–173, 179n2 183, 185, 190, 195, 197n2 3, 4 & 6, 215, 217, 219, 228, 230 South African War see Boer War South-West Africa (SWA),4 5, 10, 12–14, 17, 21n1 52–53, 62, 142–143, 156, 163, 171 southern Africa 5, 9, 45, 51–52, 186, 196, 200 southern Russia see Russia Spain 7–8, 199 Spanish 4, 8, 10, 64, 165, 201 Sperrgebiet (prohibition zone) 157
stance, stance taking 60–61, 67, 88 stancetakers 67 Stanley, Henry Morton 12, 108–124, 125n6, n9 & n12 strategies, constructive 221–224, 226–229 strategies, discursive 45 strategies of demontage/dismantling/ destruction 221, 224–225, 229–230 Stark, Bernhard 50 stereotype(s) 15–16, 134–135, 137, 164, 193, 209, 220–223, 254 stereotypical labelling 199–211 (Chapter 10) Stinnes, Clärenore 263, 266–267, 269–272 Stopes, Marie C. 263–264, 267–272 Streit, Robert 17 Sub-Saharan Africa 11, 107–108, 110, 122, 125n5 & n6 Suabian 47 Swakopmund 146 Sydney 50 Tanganyika 119, 125n6 188, 195, 197n2 Tanganyika Mission 119 Tanzania 4, 5, 20, 184 Taylor, Isaac 107 terra nullius 9, 17, 22n8 territoriality 46 Togo 11, 62 Togoland, British 20 Togoland, German 11, 20 topos, topoi 83, 85–87, 221–231, 256, 259n9 Transcaucasia, Transcaucasian 45, 48 Transvaal 151, 157, 229 Transvaal Committee 217 travel discourse 118 traveller(s) 8, 108, 114, 117, 122–123, 263 travel literature 128, 132 Treitschke, Heinrich von 52 tribal peoples (of Chota Nagpur), 235–247 (Chapter 12) Triple Entente 201 Triple Intervention 266 Trotha, Lothar von 146–148, 168–170 Tunisia(n) 202, 205, 207–208 Turkey 78, 86, 264 Turks 81 Ufiomi 192 Uganda 117, 153 uncivilized 108, 113, 115, 117, 167, 176, 201–202, 204, 208, 209, 220, 224, 236, 238, 254, 264
Index Uncle Sam 250 uncultivated 9, 55 unenlightened 41 Union of South Africa 150–151, 153–154, 158–159 United Irishman 217, 226, 229 United Nations Security Council 159 United Nations Trusteeship System, 152–154 United States (US, USA) 14, 47, 159, 209, 217, 248, 251–252, 253, 256, 266 vacuum domicilium 22n8 49 Vaterland 9, 46, 130, 223, 225 Verband fortschrittlicher Frauenvereine (Association of Progressive Women’s Societies) 216 Verbrasilianisierung 51 Verengländerung 51 Verkafferung 51 Vernichtungsbefehl (Extermination Order) 147–148 verniggert 124 Victoria, Queen 17–19, 150, 226–229 Victorian 10, 125, 271 Volk, 9, 17, 22n4 35–36, 38, 42, 46–47, 51–52, 54, 70, 74, 82, 86, 91–92, 95–104, 136, 138n4 147, 168, 171–172 Völker 70, 82, 91, 97, 100, 104, 136, 170 Völkerdünger (cultural fertilizer) 8, 52 Völkerschauen (displays of native Africans) 132 Volkstum 47 Volta 20 Volz, Berthold 119 Waldersee, Alfred von 249 Wales 219
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Walvis, Bay 150 War of Independence (Ireland) 217 Waterberg 146, 156, 168–169 Weltpolitik (world politics) 5, 254 West Africa(n) 10, 12, 13, 107, 118, 123, 130–131, 135–136 West Prussia 222 Western Front 202 Western Samoa 153 Wild East 218 wilderness 186–188, 194, 197, 202, 236, 271 wildness 118, 219 Wilhelm II, Emperor 12, 52, 54, 248–249, 253–254, 256–257, 265 Wilhelmine Empire 128–139 (Chapter 6) Wilhelminic 254 Wilkins, Charles 237 Windhoek 17, 155–156 Witbooi, Kaptein Hendrik 144, 148, 159n2 Witbooi, Samuel 148 Woermann, Adolph 130, 142 World War I, WWI (see First World War) Yellow Peril 224, 265 Yoruba 124 Young Ireland Society 217 Zahn, Michael 11 Zambia 197n2 Zanzibar 113 Zedler, Johann Heinrich 28–32 Zimbabwe 149 Zulu(s) 163, 165, 173, 175, 177 Zulu War 176 Zululand 177