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.
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
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
CHAPTER 1 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
PART ONE: SOUTH WEST AFRICA
CHAPTER 2 "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
CHAPTER 3 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
PART TWO: SAMOA
CHAPTER 4 "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 of European and German Representations of Samoa Precolonial Guidelines for a Future Native Policy
CHAPTER 5 "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
PART THREE: CHINA
CHAPTER 6 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
CHAPTER 7 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
CHAPTER 8 Conclusion: Colonial Afterlives
Appendix 1: A Note on Sources and Procedures Appendix 2: Head Administrators of German Southwest Africa, Samoa, and Kiaochow Bibliography Index
