Savage worlds: German encounters abroad, 1798–1914

Description

With an eye to recovering the experiences of those in frontier zones of contact, Savage Worlds maps a wide range of different encounters between Germans and non-European indigenous peoples in the age of high imperialism. Examining outbreaks of radical violence as well as instances of mutual co-operation, it examines the differing goals and experiences of German explorers, settlers, travellers, merchants, and academics, and how the variety of projects they undertook shaped their relationship with the indigenous peoples they encountered. Examining the multifaceted nature of German interactions with indigenous populations, this volume offers historians and anthropologists clear evidence of the complexity of the colonial frontier and frontier zone encounters. It poses the question of how far Germans were able to overcome their initial belief that, in leaving Europe, they were entering ‘savage worlds’. Front matter Contents Figures Notes on contributors The savagery of empire ‘No alternative to extermination’: Germans and their ‘savages’ in southern Brazil at the turn of the nineteenth century ‘Far better than their reputation’: the Tolai of East New Britain in the writings of Otto Finsch The goddess and the beast: African–German encounters Wine into wineskins: the Neuendettelsau missionaries’ encounter with language and myth in New Guinea Signs of the savage in the skull? German investigations of Australian Aboriginal skeletal remains, c. 1860 ‘Scientific tourism’: colonialism in the photographs and letters of the young cosmopolitan Carl Heinrich Becker, 1900–2 Through a German lens: the Australian Aborigines and the question of difference The savagery of America? Nineteenth-century German literature and indigenous representations Incompetent masters, indolent natives, savage origins: the Philippines and its inhabitants in the travel accounts of Carl Semper (1869) and Fedor Jagor (1873) Social Democrats and Germany’s war in South-West Africa, 1904–7: the view of the socialist press Select bibliography Index