The Devil's Handwriting: Precoloniality And the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, And Southwest Africa

by Steinmetz, George

• ISBN13: 9780226772431
• ISBN10: 0226772438
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Germany's overseas colonial empire was relatively short lived, lasting from 1884 to 1918. During this period, dramatically different policies were enacted in the colonies: in Southwest Africa, German troops carried out a brutal slaughter of the Herero people; in Samoa, authorities pursued a paternalistic defense of native culture; in Qingdao, China, policy veered between harsh racism and cultural exchange. Why did the same colonizing power act in such differing ways? In The Devil's Handwriting, George Steinmetz tackles this question through a brilliant cross-cultural analysis of German colonialism, leading to a new conceptualization of the colonial state and postcolonial theory. Steinmetz uncovers the roots of colonial behavior in precolonial European ethnographies, where the Hereros were portrayed as cruel and inhuman, the Samoans were idealized as "noble savages," and depictions of Chinese culture were mixed. The effects of status competition among colonial officials, colonizers' identification with their subjects, and the different strategies of cooperation and resistance offered by the colonized are also scrutinized in this deeply nuanced and ambitious comparative history.

Author Biography

George Steinmetz is professor of sociology and German studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany, the editor of State/Culture: State Formation after the Colonial Turn and The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and its Epistemological Others, and codirector, with Michael Chanan, of the documentary film Detroit: Ruin of a City.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction: Ethnography and the Colonial State

Three Colonies

Making Sense of Colonial Variations

The Specificity of the Colonial State

Precolonial Mimicry and the Central Role of Native Policy

Toward an Explanation: The Colonial State as Social field

Symbolic and Imaginary Identifications

Resistance, Collaboration, and Infections of Native Policy by Its Addressees

Imperial Germany and the German Empire

South West Africa

"A World Composed Almost Entirely of Contradictions": Southwest Africans in German Eyes, before Colonialism

Precolonial and Protocolonial Imagery of Southwest Africans

The Khoikhoi: The Path to Precolonial Mimicry

The Rehoboth Basters: Pure Intermediacy

The Ovaherero: A Radically Simplified Ethnographic Discourse

Toward Colonialism

From Native Policy to Genocide to Eugenics: German Southwest Africa

Accessing the Inaccessible

The Germans and the Witbooi People

"Rivers of Blood and Rivers of Money": Germans and Ovaherero

Collaboration and the Rule of Difference: The Reheboth Basters under German Rule

Conclusion

Samoa

"A Foreign Race That All Travelers Have Agreed to be the Most Engaging": The Creation of the Samoan Noble savage, by way of Tahiti

The Idea of Polynesian Noble Savagery

Europeans on Polynesia in the Wake of Wallis and Bougainville: The Tahitian Metonym

Polynesia and Tahiti in German Eyes, 1770s-1850

Nineteenth-Century Social Change in Polynesia and the Increasing Attractiveness of Samoa

Nineteenth-Century Samoa: From Lapérouse to the Germans

The Evolution ofEuropean and German Representations of Samoa

Precolonial Guidelines for a Future Native Policy

"The Spirit of the German Nation at Work in the Antipodes": German Colonialism in Samoa, 1900-1914

Salvage Colonialism

The Sources of Native Policy in Samoa

Class distinction and Class Exaltation

Conclusion: Resistance and the Limits on Colonial Native Policy

China

The Foreign Devil's Handwriting: German Views of China before "Kiautschou"

Europe's Cathay

Sinomania

German Views of China in the Era of Sinomania

The Rise of Sinophobia

German Sinophobia

En Route to Quingdao: Speaking of the Devil

Multivocality in German Representations of China at the End of the Nineteenth Century

Toward "German-China"

Transition

A Pact with the (Foreign) Devil: Qingdao as a Colony

Bumrush the Show: Germans in Colonial Kiaochow, 1897-1905

Shaken, Not Stirred: Segregated Colonial Space and Radical Alterity During the First Phase of German Colonialism in Kiaochow, 1897-1904

German Native Policy in Kiaochow, Compared

Early Native Policy and the Haunting of Sinophobia by Sinophilia

The Seminar for Oriental Languages and German Sinology as a Conduit for Sinophilia

Rapproachment: The Second Phase of German Colonialism in Kiaochow, 1905-14

Explaining the Shift in Native Policy

Conclusion

Conclusion: Colonial Afterlives

A Note on Sources and Procedures

Head Administrators of German Southwest Africa, Samoa, and Kiaochow

Bibliography

Index

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