The German Colonial Experience: Select Documents on German Rule in Africa, China, and the Pacific 1884-1914 - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0761839003 ISBN 13: 9780761839002

Publisher: University Press of America, 2010

Synopsis

The German Colonial Experience provides readers with an understanding of how the Germans gained, explored, pacified, ruled, and exploited their colonies prior to their loss in World War I. Knoll and Hiery show how Africans, Chinese, and Pacific Islanders reacted to German rule, how the Germans ran the daily affairs of government, their vision for the colonized peoples, and how the colonizers and the colonized perceived one another. In other words, how did German colonial rule actually work? This book intensely scrutinizes colonial documents, most of them in German script, from archives not only in Germany, but also from places such as Australia, New Guinea, and Samoa. Many of these documents have never previously been published, even in the original German.

About this title

About the Author

Arthur J. Knoll, the retired David E. Underdown Professor of History at The University of the South, taught African, Middle Eastern, and military history for thirty-seven years.
Hermann J. Hiery holds the Chair for Modern History at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. He is a specialist in the history of Germany's former Pacific colonies and the Chairman of the German Society for Overseas history.

Review

A a wide-ranging edition of colonial sources which thoroughly documents German colonial rule in many and varied fields and aspects, such as administration, economy, religion, and science. It includes and integrates new and modern aspects of cultural and social sciences, gender history, and postcolonial studies. Above all, it extensively incorporates indigenous activities, views, and perceptions. (Dr. Horst Gründer, professor, University of Münster, Germany)

A major contribution to the scholarship of imperialism and to the body of materials available for teaching colonial history. It should be extremely valuable to researchers doing comparative work and to those who want a German perspective on colonial phenomena, but cannot access German archives directly. It will be equally useful for providing primary texts to students in courses on imperial, colonial, and global history. The annotations to the documents are especially helpful: sufficient, but not excessive or intimidating. (Woodruff D. Smith, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Boston)

This is a valuable collection of primary sources on the German colonial movement....Sources have been selected with care; taken together, they present a logical view of the development of German colonial policies over the decades in question....Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers. (CHOICE, December 2010)

The goal of this book – to publish important documents related to German colonialism in all their variety and regional differences in order to make them available to a broad, non-German-speaking audience – is certainly worthwhile. (Anthropos)

The editors have succeeded in providing the reader with an interesting insight into the short-lived German colonial empire. (Yearbook of European Overseas History)

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of America
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0761839003
• ISBN 13: 9780761839002
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 564
• Editor: Knoll Arthur J., Hiery Hermann J.