18.11.2012 Views

BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

humanitarian concern, but the success of European colonialism and imperial enterprise itself<br />

appeared to be at stake. Far from leveling charges of genocide in the suppression of the Herero<br />

rebellions in 1904, British journalists took Germans to task for not governing in a “spirit of stern<br />

humanity” and for relying too much on the inconsistent methods of missionaries and soldiers. 18<br />

Appeals to native “vanity” from the former mixed with punishment by lash from the latter,<br />

according to one writer, fell far short of the otherwise “laudable” treatment of blacks by white<br />

merchants and settlers. 19 Another writer recommended invoking a British “Monroe Doctrine”<br />

against further German expansion in Africa, on the grounds that such mismanagement<br />

endangered the “peace and safety” of the European colonial enterprise. 20 From the very outset<br />

the whole concept of German colonialism had roused suspicion and derision, having supposedly<br />

grown out of a far-fetched, whimsical Hohenzollern tradition of piracy and land-lubbing failure<br />

resurgent in the fantasies of the “young Caesar,” Kaiser Wilhelm II. 21 In a very short time,<br />

however, Germany evolved from an upstart colonial rival to an imperial menace. German<br />

colonial rivalry, which in 1890 seemed to be motivated by envy and a policy of harassment, soon<br />

18 Louis Elkind, “The German Troubles in South-West Africa,” Fortnightly Review 77<br />

(February 1905): 254; O. Eltzbacher, “The German Danger to South Africa,” Nineteenth Century<br />

and After 58, no. 344 (October 1905): 526; “Troubles in German South-West Africa,” Saturday<br />

Review 97, no. 2517 (23 January 1904): 102-03.<br />

19 Elkind, “German Troubles,” 257-58, considered the black man “as vain as he is lazy”<br />

and saw Christian teachings of equality leading to disrespect for whites.<br />

20 Eltzbacher, “German Danger,” 535.<br />

21 Perry, “Traditions of German Colonization,” 113, 115-19, mocked the kaiser’s ambition<br />

to succeed where his ancestor, Frederick William, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, had failed.<br />

Piratical associations, stemming from the Elector’s dependence on the Dutch buccaneer,<br />

Benjanim Raule, and his failure to establish a lasting colony on the Guinea coast, had led the<br />

Elector’s successor, Frederick William I, to abandon the colonial cause.<br />

228

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!