Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South - Hardcover

Andrew Zimmerman

3.96

113 ratings by Goodreads

9780691123622: Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691123624 ISBN 13: 9780691123622

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2010

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In 1901, the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, sent an expedition to the German colony of Togo in West Africa, with the purpose of transforming the region into a cotton economy similar to that of the post-Reconstruction American South. Alabama in Africa explores the politics of labor, sexuality, and race behind this endeavor, and the economic, political, and intellectual links connecting Germany, Africa, and the southern United States. The cross-fertilization of histories and practices led to the emergence of a global South, reproduced social inequities on both sides of the Atlantic, and pushed the American South and the German Empire to the forefront of modern colonialism.

Zimmerman shows how the people of Togo, rather than serving as a blank slate for American and German ideologies, helped shape their region's place in the global South. He looks at the forms of resistance pioneered by African American freedpeople, Polish migrant laborers, African cotton cultivators, and other groups exploited by, but never passive victims of, the growing colonial political economy. Zimmerman reconstructs the social science of the global South formulated by such thinkers as Max Weber and W.E.B. Du Bois, and reveals how their theories continue to define contemporary race, class, and culture.

Tracking the intertwined histories of Europe, Africa, and the Americas at the turn of the century, Alabama in Africa shows how the politics and economics of the segregated American South significantly reshaped other areas of the world.

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From the Back Cover:

"This conceptually sophisticated, empirically rich, and genuinely transnational book mines sources on three different continents and exposes a dense network of connections and comparisons. It makes original contributions to German, American, and African history, as well as to the history of the social sciences."--James T. Campbell, author ofMiddle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa

"Zimmerman's compelling and beautifully executed book is an innovative tracking of the interrelations among free labor, race, and social science, linking Germany, Africa, and the United States. This is a groundbreaking book, one that will have a major impact."--Geoff Eley, University of Michigan

"Zimmerman has written a superb book about the transfer of knowledge from North America to Germany to West Africa. He has written an Atlantic history that connects East Prussia, Togo, and the American South. Zimmerman writes insightfully about economics, social relations, and the origins of sociology. This is a model of the new global history."--Eric D. Weitz, University of Minnesota

About the Author:

Andrew Zimmerman is professor of history at George Washington University and the author of Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany.

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