The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa by George Steinmetz (review)

In his award-winning second monograph, George Steinmetz interrogates the relationship between discourse and material practice in the context of German maritime colonization. The book’s three case studies investigate the ethnographic constructions of native populations generated prior to German colonization; they then correlate those constructions with the colonial policies and practices instituted once Germans seized control. Different precolonial ethnographic discourses, Steinmetz submits in the central argument of the book, led to different expectations for German-native relations, which, in turn, resulted in different patterns or styles of colonization on the ground.

Since its publication in 2007, Steinmetz’ book has been cited frequently and prominently in support of three positions within key debates surrounding the history of German colonialism. The first of these argumentative positions is located within a colonial-studies offshoot of the Sonderweg discussion but reformulated to ask whether or not it is possible to identify a specifically “German” style of colonial practice. For opponents, strong support can be found in Steinmetz’s masterful interrogation of the variations in practices and policies in German Southwest Africa, Samoa, and Kiaochow. He investigates the application of violence in establishing and maintaining political and social control, the introduction of legal and social restrictions on interracial relationships and resulting offspring, the development of the infrastructure necessary for global trade, the use of the native population as a labor source, and the regulation of the natives’ traditional cultural practices. Steinmetz argues that the manifestations of these categories varied so dramatically across the three colonies as to refute any notion of an identifiable, much less coherent, “national” colonial style.

The second position is located within the “continuity debate” that questions whether we can draw lines of connection, so to say, “from Windhoek to Auschwitz.” The massacre of the Herero in the 1904–1907 war in German Southwest Africa is often identified as the first genocide of the twentieth century. This identification has invited speculation as to whether German maritime colonization—or, more specifically the atrocities committed during its execution—present us with the legal, martial, or ideological precursors of the Holocaust or the techniques of government in Nazi-occupied Poland. Steinmetz’s treatment of German colonial diversity indirectly answers this question in the negative by showing that the range of colonial practices exhibited in the German case can be readily mapped over the range of colonial practices found in the collective history of the European colonial powers and therefore cannot be considered to be “exceptional” (69). While Hannah Arendt’s hypothesis that “modern fascism was prefigured, if not produced, in the overseas colonies” (141) is not rejected in toto, Steinmetz’s study would require us to position it within the broader context of a European, rather than an exclusively German, conceptual and historical frame.

Finally, Steinmetz’s work has served as an impetus for a much-needed transnational approach to the study of the German colonies. In this case, transnational refers to a detailed and nuanced analysis of the very localized and particular interactions between specific Germans and specific native individuals, an analysis only made possible by an understanding of the larger historical, social, and economic context in which each party operates. We can no longer conceive of homogenous blocks of colonial aggressors enforcing their will upon passive colonized victims, but must instead recognize the human agency manifested by differentiated individuals in both categories, however flawed, frustrated, or futile their actions may appear to have been. While Steinmetz is clearly more focused on detailing the motivations of individual Germans than their colonized counterparts in this particular project, he nonetheless insists upon recognizing the acts of cooperation and resistance in which Samoans, South Africans, and Chinese resourcefully engaged. In so doing, he points the way toward an improved postcolonial approach in which the interactions of German and [End Page...