German Colonialism

by Langbehn, Volker; Salama, Mohammad

• ISBN13: 9780231149730
• ISBN10: 0231149735
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-01-15
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

More than half a century before the mass executions of the Holocaust, Germany devastated the peoples of southwestern Africa. While colonialism might seem marginal to German history, controversial new scholarship compares the acts of this period with Nazi practices on the Eastern and Western fronts.Examples of the most important research conducted on the "continuity thesis" over the past five years, the chapters in this anthology debate the connections between German colonialist activities and the behavior of Germany during World War II. Some argue that the country's domination of southwestern Africa gave rise to perceptions of racial difference and superiority at home, contributing to a nascent nationalism that blossomed into National Socialism and the Holocaust. Others remain skeptical, and both sides are well-represented. Contributors merge Germany's colonial past with debates over the country's identity and history and compare its colonial crimes with other European ventures. Issues discussed range from the denial or marginalization of German genocide to the place of colonialism and the Holocaust within Germany and Israel's postwar relations. Authors also compare the legacy of genocide in both Europe and Africa.

Author Biography

Volker Langbehn teaches German in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at San Francisco State University and is the editor of German Colonialism, Visual Culture, and Modern Memory Mohammad Salama teaches Arabic in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at San Francisco State University and is the author of Islam, Orientalism, and Intellectual History: Modernity and the Politics of Exclusion Since Ibn Khaldun

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction: Reconfiguring German Colonialism	p. ix
Colonial (Dis)Continuities: Framing the Issue	p. 1
Borrowed Light: Nietzsche and the Colonies	p. 3
German Colonialism: Some Reflections on Reassessments, Specificities, and Constellations	p. 29
Lebensraum and Genocide	p. 49
Against ôHuman Diversity as Suchö: Lebensraum and Genocide in the Third Reich	p. 51
Hannah Arendt, Imperialisms, and the Holocaust	p. 72
Caesura, Continuity, and Myth: The Stakes of Tethering the Holocaust to German Colonial Theory	p. 93
Looking East: Poland, the Ottoman Empire, and Politicized Jihadism	p. 121
Germany's Adventures in the Orient: A History of Ambivalent Semicolonial Entanglements	p. 123
Arguing the Case for a Colonial Poland	p. 146
Colonialism, and No End: The Other Continuity Theses	p. 164
Of Missionaries, Economics, and Intranational Self-Perception	p. 191
The Purpose of German Colonialism, or the Long Shadow of Bismarck's Colonial Policy	p. 193
Christian Missionary Societies in the German Colonies, 1884/85-1914/15	p. 215
German Colonialism and the British Neighbor in Africa Before 1914: Self-Definitions, Lines of Demarcation, and Cooperation	p. 254
Postcolonial German Politics	p. 273
ôKalashnikovs, Not Coca-Cola, Bring Self-Determination to Angolaö: The Two Germanys, Lusophone Africa, and the Rhetoric of Colonial Difference	p. 275
Germany, Palestine, Israel, and the (Post)Colonial Imagination	p. 294
Contributors	p. 315
Index	p. 321
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.