Graduation Semester and Year

2017

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in History

Department

History

First Advisor

Kenyon Zimmer

Second Advisor

Pilar Bernaldo González

Abstract

The movement of German-speakers to the South Atlantic did not begin with Nazis seeking refuge in Argentina in the aftermath of World War II, nor did it start with the organization of the German protectorate of South-West Africa in 1884. Throughout the nineteenth century, the great majority of German-speakers leaving Europe travelled and migrated to North America, but some German-speakers had begun settling in both Argentina and Namibia well before the turn of the twentieth century. German-speaking merchants and missionaries started travelling to and settling in the South Atlantic in the 1820s. These South Atlantic German-speakers were influenced by the changing conditions in Europe: the increasing mobility of people and goods through the advancement of technology, and the increasing dominance of Nation-states on Western Europe’s political scene. After its founding in 1871, the German nation-state expanded its political reach with the German Empire’s increasing desire for power on the global market. After 1900 in particular, politically active Germans sought to compete against the increasing economic competition from the United States by attempting to redirect German-speaking migrants from their U.S. rival to areas they deemed more apt for continued German state aid and control. In this context, many Germans recognized German South-West Africa as the only territory suitable for large-scale German settlement. Meanwhile, German-speakers in Argentina became involved in marketing Argentina as the ideal destination for German-speaking migration and numerous publications praised it as the “land of the future.” German-speaking migration to the United States and Canada is well documented, whereas scholars have paid less attention to those migrants who went to Argentina and Namibia. Within the existing secondary literature, scholars have treated German-speakers in Argentina mostly as foreign migrants in an established republic, while conversely studying German-speakers in Namibia primarily within the context of German colonialism. I argue that it is historians who have created this division which overemphasizes the differences between the continents’ historically rendered trajectories, while hiding the connections and similarities from the viewpoint of nineteenth-century German-speaking migrants. I propose to study the everyday life experiences of nineteenth-century German-speakers on both sides of the South Atlantic within one single analytical field. I argue that even though the respective political circumstances varied, the everyday life experiences of these German-speakers on both sides of the South Atlantic were more similar than different. I analyze the writings and belief-systems of nineteenth-century contemporaries in order to overcome the dichotomy that historians have created as distinct and mutually exclusive types of global movement. What happened in the South Atlantic was “transnational colonization:” emerging nation-states were involved in the colonization process – Argentina in South America and Germany in Namibia – and civil servants helped further their growth. However, within these states, people who maintained a variety of European identities and origins, were active agents in the colonization process. My sources include texts produced by short- and long-term migrants, such as travel writings as well as community and government records currently held in archives in Germany, Argentina and Namibia. Transnational and global history provide the larger framework for my study as they aim at overcoming national(ist) history writing by looking beyond and below the nation-state and instead focusing on connections rather than territorial divisions. While scholars have started to apply transnational history to the German case, German history writing still remains too national(ist) and exceptionalist and largely excludes from the “national narrative” migrants who left Central Europe. By broadening the field of German colonialism and incorporating cultural and transnational history, I aim to provide an alternative to this national(ist) narrative by reorienting the history of the official German colonies and including other migrant communities “outside” of the scope of the official empire within the same analytical field. More generally, I am expanding traditional German history to include those people beyond the boundaries of the German state that have been largely excluded in national and political history writing. I focus on the history of German-speakers rather than on a history of the German nation-state. Nineteenth-century German-speakers lived with shared ideas about culture and the significance of their influence, which affected their outlook wherever they went. I argue that all German-speakers who left Europe between the 1820 and 1930 participated in (whether consciously or unconsciously) an imperial imaginary, and their reasoning for migrating took place under the same premises wherever they went. The migrants wanted to recreate home and thus created a hybrid space abroad. While undertaking a historical study, I work with methods and approaches that have been informed by the neighboring disciplines anthropology, sociology, literary studies, and cultural studies. The dissertation is organized around the three basic questions I seek to answer: who? what? how? Firstly, I explore the construction of German-speaking identity in the South Atlantic, both in Namibia and Argentina. Secondly, I analyze sociability within the German-speaking communities and the way they set up networks. Thirdly, I study German-speaking agricultural colonization in the South Atlantic and territoriality based in scientific and fictional accounts. In all three cases, terminology changed over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The term “German-speaker” replaced “German” as the latter turned into a synonym for citizens of the German Empire and therefore excluded those identifying with German-ness that lived in other states. “German” started out as a cultural concept that only later turned into a political one. In addition, a number of other identity labels concurred and overlapped with “German,” which illustrates the cultural complexity of German-ness in the South Atlantic. After the World Wars, the term German-speaking “community” eventually replaced the term of German-speaking “colony.” This was the case for the German-speaking community of Buenos Aires and for the German-speaking community of Namibia. German-speaking “trade colonies” were networks created by private individuals who wanted to raise the level of “civilization” of both their own communities as well as that of their receiving society while expanding German markets overseas. From a theoretical perspective, decolonization and postcolonial studies replaced “colonization” with “agriculture” as the favored term of South Atlantic German-speakers. “Colonization” was composed of three elements: “people,” “land,” and “control.” While migration studies focused on the study of the “people” and migrants, and empire studies on the “control” and sovereignty, the “use of land” focused on mere “agriculture.” I argue that this change in terminology, which left out the people as actors and the issue of control and sovereignty over the land, constituted a neutralization and silencing of the complicated matter of colonization. Borrowing from transnational and global history allows for uncovering connections and similarities among South Atlantic German-speakers, who used both Argentina and Namibia as fields for experimentation in setting up community networks and practicing colonization in the form of controlling land through settlement.

Keywords

German, German-speaking, Identity, Colony, Communities, Networks, Colonization, Agriculture, Territoriality, South Atlantic, Argentina, Namibia, South-West Africa, Migration, Imperialism, Colonialism, Transnational history, Global history, Interdisciplinary, Nineteenth century, Twentieth century, Future

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | History

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

Download

Included in

History Commons

Share

COinS