Date: Mon, 18 Sep 1995 15:36:43 -0500 From: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers To: Multiple recipients of list H-GERMAN Subject: Re: Genocide in Germany's African Colonies There are six messages below, including cross-postings from H-Africa 1) Submitted by: Richard Weikart Tom Wolber asked about the German's "genocide" in Africa. As a German historian with a minor field in African history, I have a little acquaintance (though not expertise) in this question. I think the word genocide is being rather misused in this case, as it implies mass murder to extinguish a racial or ethnic group. In the two cases cited, the indigenous Africans were rebelling against German political control, and the Germans were imposing their control by armed force. Yes, this is oppression, but not genocide. A couple of works you might consult are Woodruff Smith, The German Colonial Empire; and on German East Africa, John Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika. Richard Weikart California State Univ., Stanislaus rweikart@toto.csustan.edu 2) Submitted by: William Smaldone Dear Tom, One book that might be useful is GENOCIDE IN THE 20TH CENTURY: CRITICAL ESSAYS AND FIRST PERSON ACCOUNTS edited by Samuel Totten et.al., (Garland, 1994). Leslie Worley has an interesting contribution on the genocide of the Hereros. Bill Smaldone Willamette University Wsmaldon@willamette.edu 3) Cross-posting 1 from H-Africa From: Ralph A. Austen, University of Chicago On German colonial atrocities, and the comparison of them to the Holocaust, there was about 25 years ago a good deal of scholarly discussion, beginning with Hanna Arendt's book on totalitarianism. For Namibia, see the book by Helmut Bley (do not have title at hand) and various responses to it, including (if not especially recommended) Duignan and Gann *THE RULERS OF GERMAN AFRICA*. The numbers you have sound a bit high but I am sure others will deal with that. On Tanzania, the reference must be to the suppression of the Maji Maji revolt, which involved forced cotton growing on village plots (Dorfschamben in the lost colonial patois of that era). See either of John Iliffe's 2 books on Tanzanian history. The comparison with Nazis is not too fruitful (despite the fact that Hermann Goering's father was in charge of Namibia at one time) because the Germans did not systematically plan these atrocities and much of their colonial policy was little different from the British or French, with more emphasis on peasants than settlers. Hanna Arendt thought Conrad's Kurtz was based on Carl Peters, and maybe she was right, but the rest of her analysis is historically weak and, in hindsight, very 1950's right-wing liberal Cold Warish. My own view (and here I even agree a bit with Lewis Gann!) is that colonialism represented the more "normal" aspect of German nationalism, oriented more towards economic expansion and bourgeois values vs. Volkish Nazis stuff (although there was certainly a settler-oriented volkish element to colonialism, especially BEFORE Germany acquired actual colonies) and Hans Grimm's racist novel *VOLK OHNE RAUM*, written about Southern Africa, was a Nazi favorite; but that gets us into the obscure and complicated relationship between Nazism and colonialism; see Woodruff Smith, *IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF NAZI IMPERIALISM* on this. 4) Cross-posting 2 from H-Africa Date: Mon, 18 Sep 1995 From: Peter Limb, University of Western Australia Re: Namibia: The "classic" text is Horst Drechsler, *Let us die fighting* (1980) but there has been some spirited [and not unchallenged] revisionist debate, esp. from Brigitte Lau, some of which was published in the *Southern African Review of Books* a good few issues ago. The best analysis of this debate is Tilman Dedering, "The German-Herero War of 1904: Revisionism of genocide or imaginary historiography?" in *Journal of Southern African Studies* v. 19 no. 1 1993, pp. 80-88 which I recommend as a starter. An interesting volume is *Warriors, leaders, sages and outcasts in the Namibian past* (Windhoek: MSORP, 1992), as is Gerhardus Pool's biography of Samuel Mahahero (Macmillan, 1991) See also Helmuth Stocker (ed.) *German imperialism in Africa* (Hurst, 1986) + works by Richard Voeltz (1988); Prosser Gifford (ed.) *Britain & Germany in Africa* (Yale UP, 1967); LH Gann's *The rulers of German Africa* (1977); and a 1965 Hoover bibliography on German Africa by Jon Bridgman. On Cameroon, see: *Africa and Germany from colonisation to cooperation, 1884-1986* (Yaounde, 1986). On Tanzania, see Marcia Wright on Maji-Maji and prophets in David Anderson (ed. ) *Revealing prophets* (Currey, 1995); and works by John Iliffe, esp. *Tanganyika under German Rule, 1905-12* (Cambridge UP 1969). An interesting thesis I have looked at is: Christian Bochert, 'The Witboois and the Germans in South West Africa: a study of their interaction between 1863-1905' MA Univ. Natal 1980. On my desk just now is a copy of a PhD from UCT, 1989 by Wolfgang Werner, 'An Economic and social history of the Herero of Namibia, 1915-1946.' Although this deals with the South African period, the first chapter has a good summary of the German period, the wars of anti-colonial resistance 1904-7 and questions relating to the impact on the labour market of the wars. Hope this is of some use. Peter Limb 5) Submitted by: Sybil Milton The book by Jon Bridgman, "Revolt of the Hereros" (Berkeley: univ. of California Press, 1981) or Horst Drechsler, "Let Us Die Fighting." trans. Bernd Zoeller (London: Zed Press, 1980) contains relevant data. A shorter article by Bridgman is found in Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, Israel Charny, Genocide in the Twentieth Century," New York and London: Garland, 1995, pp.3-48. Sybil Milton 6) Submitted by: Lora Wildenthal See references in the two standard surveys of the German colonial empire: Horst Gruender, Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien, 2nd ed. and Woodruff Smith, The German Colonial Empire (bibliog. is older) There is also an excellent, post-1989 2nd ed. of the East German survey : Helmuth Stoecker, ed., Drang nach Afrika. The graduate student mentioned at SUNY Binghamton is Krista O'Donnell, who is writing a dissertation on women and labor in German Southwest Africa. My own work was on German women in the German colonial movement. We discuss the genocides in Southwest Africa and East Africa in our work, but there are also a few articles that focus much more directly on them. The references will be available in the Gruender, I believe. The most famous example of a scholar drawing a connection between the genocide of Southwest African peoples between 1904 and 1907 is to be found in Hannah Arendt's "Imperialism" part of the Origins of Totalitarianism trilogy. Lora Wildenthal Pitzer College Claremont, CA lora_wildenthal@email.pitzer.edu .