Poisonous Women: Sexual Danger, Illicit Violence, and Domestic Work in German Southern Africa, 1904-1915

A notorious case in Southwest Africa of assault and murder of indigenous workers by a panic-stricken master exposed German colonists' fascination with African women's bodies as a source of danger. This study of the imagery and language of poisoning rumors in the territory examines how settlers adapted Western notions of gender and race to portray local conflicts and legitimate illicit sexual and nonsexual acts of violence against female domestic servants. Commonalities with the "black peril" suggest that historians should look beneath the apparent uniformity of imperialist sexual and racial tropes to explain colonial power relations.