Remembering German-Australian Colonial Entanglements

Remembering German- Australian Colonial Entanglements emphatically promotes a critical and nuanced understanding of the complex entanglement of German colonial actors and activities within Australian colonial institutions and different imperial ideologies.

Case studies ranging from the German reception of James Cook’s voyages through to the legacies of 19th- and 20th- century settler colonialism foreground the highly ambiguous roles played by explorers, missionaries, intellectuals and other individuals, as well as by objects and things that travelled between worlds – ancestral human remains, rare animal skins, songs and even military tanks. The chapters foreground the complex relationship between science, religion, art and exploitation, displacement and annihilation. Contributors trace how these entanglements have been commemorated or forgotten over time – by Germans, settler-Australians and Indigenous people.

Bringing to light a critical understanding of the German involvement in the Australian colonial project, Remembering German- Australian Colonial Entanglements will be of great interest to scholars of colonialism, postcolonialism, German Studies and Indigenous Studies. But for the editors’ substantial new introductory chapter, these contributions originally appeared in a special issue of Postcolonial Studies.

Lars Eckstein is Professor of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures outside of Britain and the US at the University of Potsdam, Germany.

Andrew Wright Hurley is Associate Professor of German Studies at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia.