ABOUT THIS BOOK

German Colonialism Revisited brings together military historians, art historians, literary scholars, cultural theorists, and linguists to address a range of issues surrounding colonized African, Asian, and Oceanic people’s creative reactions to and interactions with German colonialism. This scholarship sheds new light on local power dynamics; agency; and economic, cultural, and social networks that preceded and, as some now argue, ultimately structured German colonial rule. Going beyond issues of resistance, these essays present colonialism as a shared event from which both the colonized and the colonizers emerged changed.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Nina Berman is Professor and Director of the School of International Letters and Cultures, Arizona State University.

Klaus Mühlhahn is Professor of Chinese History and Culture at Freie Universität Berlin.

Patrice Nganang is Professor of Literary and Cultural Theory at Stony Brook University, New York.

REVIEWS

“This valuable multidisciplinary anthology provides 17 chapters about dynamic and creative responses to German colonial rule from the 1820s until the 1990s and includes single-case and comparative studies of former colonies around the world. . . . The writing is lively and the arguments cogent. Overall, this is a fresh, new perspective. . . . Highly recommended.”
—Choice

— -

“The individual essays afford valuable insights into the German colonial period and its repercussions.”
—Monatshefte

— -

“A wide range of meetings and interactions . . . underscores the diversity of the German-colonial experiences.”
—Winfried Speitkamp, Historische Zeitschrift

— -

"This valuable multidisciplinary anthology provides 17 chapters about dynamic and creative responses to German colonial rule from the 1820s until the 1990s and includes single-case and comparative studies of former colonies around the world. Drawing on recent scholarship in anthropology, art history, film studies, German studies, history, and literary studies, the collection illuminates colonial discourses by focusing on the experiences, practices, and responses of the colonized… The writing is lively and the arguments cogent. Overall, this is a fresh, new perspective… Highly recommended."
--Choice

— A.S. MacKinnon, Choice

"[German Colonialism Revisited] shows a wide range of meetings and interactions, illustrated by its diversity that underscores the diversity of the German-colonial experiences."
--Winfried Speitkamp, Historische Zeitschrift

— Winfried Speitkamp, Historische Zeitschrift

"In their comprehensive introduction, the editors outline their aim: to foreground the kinds of colonial encounters which have 'not received sufficient consideration in scholarship on German colonialism' (2)... the individual essays afford valuable insights into the German colonial period and its repercussions."

--Monatshefte

— James N. Bade, University of Auckland, Monatshefte

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Introduction - Nina Berman, Klaus Mühlhahn, and Patrice Nganang

Part 1. Interactions

Architecture with a Mission: Bamum Autoethnography during the Period of German Colonialism - Itohan I. Osayimwese

“The Germans cannot master our language!” or German Colonial Rulers and the Beti in the Cameroonian Hinterlands - Germain Nyada (Translated by Amber Suggitt)

Sex and Control in Germany’s Overseas Possessions: Venereal Disease and Indigenous Agency - Daniel J. Walther

Ruga-ruga: The History of an African Profession, 1820–1918 - Michael Pesek

Bomani: African Soldiers as Colonial Intermediaries in German East Africa, 1890–1914 - Michelle Moyd

Pioneers of Empire? The Making of Sisal Plantations in German East Africa, 1890–1917 - Hanan Sabea

“Zake: The Papuan Chief”: An Alliance with a German Missionary in Colonial Kaiser-Wilhelmsland (Oceania) - Gabriele Richter

Part 2. Resistance, Anti-colonial Activism, and the Rise of Nationalist Discourses

Germany and the Chinese Coolie: Labor, Resistance, and the Struggle for Equality, 1884–1914 - Andreas Steen

The Other German Colonialism: Power, Conflict, and Resistance in a German-speaking Mission in China, ca. 1850–1920 - Thoralf Klein

Nationalism and Pragmatism: The Revolutionists in German Qingdao (1897–1914) - Jianjun Zhu

Anti-colonial Nationalism and Cosmopolitan “Standard Time”: Lala Har Dayal’s Forty Four Months in Germany and Turkey (1920) - B. Venkat Mani

Acting Cannibal: Intersecting Strategies, Conflicting Interests, and the Ambiguities of Cultural Resistance in Iringa, German East Africa - Eva Bischoff

The “Truppenspieler Show”: Herero Masculinity and the German Colonial Military Aesthetic - Molly McCullers

Part 3. Remembering and Rethinking

Recollection and Intervention: Memory of German Colonialism in Contemporary African Migrants’ Writing - Dirk Göttsche

The Shadows of History: Photography and Colonialism in William Kentridge’s Black Box/Chambre Noire - Andrew J. Hennlich

Germans and the Death-Throes of the Qing: Mo Yan’s The Sandalwood Torture - Yixu Lü

The Origins of German Minority Cinema in Colonial Film - Patrice Nganang

Bibliography

Contributors

Index

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