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Introduction This study presents the life history of a man who grew up and lived in the coastal area of East Africa during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, who then left for Germany where he lived and finally died in 1927. An African migrating to Europe in 1900 was not the exception it may seem from the perspective of ongoing globalization discourse. Migration actually dates back thousands of years, long before the modern concepts of continents and states emerged. Many parts of Africa were linked to Europe through trans-Saharan and maritime trade connections: North Africa was an essential part of Mediterranean culture since ancient times, West as well as Central and South Africa were integrated into the Atlantic world from the fifteenth century onwards, and East Africa already played a role in the commercial activities of the Indian Ocean rim some two millennia before the arrival of the Portuguese. As a tendency, communications intensified as the result of economic and political developments in Europe over the last five centuries, particularly after the expansion of capitalism and colonialismimperialism in the nineteenth century. In the 1880s Africa was among the last territories that fell under the political domination of Europe. After the partition of the continent the colonial regimes exercised control over the movement of their subjects, while, at the same time, they conceived of Africans, especially those living south of the Sahara, as “natives” or “tribes” confined to specific localities. In many respects, such ideas ran counter to both old and new patterns of migration and mobility within and beyond Africa. Moreover, the notion of “primitive races” bound to their respective realms of tradition contrasted sharply with the intensified exchange of ideas in which the colonized would increasingly participate. The attempts to terminate the Atlantic slave trade and abolish slavery in America since the 1780s, followed by the experience of colonial oppression and racial segregation one hundred years later, were central to the emergence of an overall African identity, one which implied a growing criticism of the assumed pre-eminence of the “white race” in history and modernization. This process largely unfolded in the Anglo-American world between Western Europe, North America, the Caribbean and West Africa, spreading to other parts of Africa in the early twentieth century and reaching East Africa during or after the First World War. Before the partition of Africa, immigrants in Europe largely originated from North or West Africa, and they made up the majority of the African diaspora in Europe until recently. During the colonial period, Africans from other parts of the continent followed, often as servants or employees. Educating personnel for the administration of the colonies was a new chance I N T R O D U C T I O N 2 of obtaining a comparatively high status. The employment of non-Europeans in teaching positions, however, contradicted contemporary notions of Europe’s moral, intellectual and cultural superiority. This was also true for teachers from countries held in a higher regard such as China, Persia, India, North Africa and Ethiopia, but especially for Africans from south of the Sahara who faced increasing racism and discrimination following the establishment of colonial regimes after 1885. In Germany, the colonial propaganda and the establishment of colonial regimes in Africa and the South Seas were accompanied by the emergence of an extreme racism. This may be explained against the background of the German state, which was only founded in 1871 after a successful war against France and which attained the form of a constitutional monarchy with a strong ruler, who stood for militaristic tradition and an authoritarian society. As a tendency, German colonialists were particularly outspoken in regard to subduing and controlling the colonial subjects in a more stringent way than those European nations that looked back on a longer colonial history. Some justified their “exploitation” – a term used in regard to both colonial subjects and resources – by cynical interpretations of history, putting the power disparities resulting from the slave trade and the development of capitalism during the nineteenth century in the perspective of alleged racial differences. Less extreme idea gained wider influence in political and social areas related to colonial policy, including academia and Christian missionary societies. Among the educated, distorted views such as the notion of “the primitive” within theories of human development reinforced cultural arrogance. Corresponding stereotypes – contrasting Christians and heathens, civilization and barbarism – contributed to the spread of a markedly negative image of Africa and Africans. Contemporary Germans were...

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