Lecture Notes: Imperialism in Popular Culture and Everyday Life in Germany. Professor John Short

"The subinterpreter was married to a charming person, not only a Hottentot in figure, but in that respect a Venus among the Hottentots. I was perfectly aghast at her development, and made inquiries upon that delicate point as far as I dared among my missionary friends. The result is, that I believe Mrs. Petrus to be the body who ranks second among all the Hottentots for the beautiful outline that her back affords, Jonker's wife ranking as the first; the latter, however, was slightly passé, while Mrs. Petrus was in full embonpoint. I profess to be a scientific man, and was exceedingly anxious to obtain accurate measurements of her shape; but there was a difficulty in doing this. I did not know a word of Hottentot, and could never therefore have explained to the lady what the object of my footrule could be; and I really dared not ask my worthy missionary host to interpret for me. I therefore felt in a dilemma as I gazed at her form, that gift of bounteous nature to this favoured race, which no mantua-maker, with all her crinoline and stuffing, can do otherwise than humbly imitate. The object of my admiration stood under a tree, and was turning herself about to all points of the compass, as ladies who wish to be admired usually do. Of a sudden my eye fell upon my sextant; the bright thought struck me, and I took a series of observations upon her figure in every direction, up and down, crossways, diagonally, and so forth, and I registered them carefully upon an outline drawing for fear of any mistake; this being done, I boldly pulled out my measuring tape, and measured the distance from where I was to the place she stood, and having thus obtained both base and angles, I worked out the results by trigonometry and logarithms."

-Francis Galton, The Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa (1853)

Galton was a cousin of Charles Darwin and, among other things, the founder of eugenics, the science or practice of "improving" a race by controlling reproduction. The "Hottentot Venus" was a Nama woman named Sarah Bartman who was exhibited in European capitals from about 1810 until her death in Paris in 1815. Autopsy described her remarkable genitalia, preserved today in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. Hottentot women's genitalia were famously anomalous-the hypertrophied labia created by manipulation of the genitalia-and were considered somatic evidence of the lasciviousness of blacks, a racial characteristic. Sarah Bartman, however, was exhibited for her buttocks-for her steatopygia-for which she was famous. As Sander Gilman puts it, she existed for the European public "only as a collection of sexual parts."

{More about the Hottentot Venus at http://www.carlagirl.net/words/venbib.html}

Science, sex and commercial popular culture (or perhaps early mass culture): interwoven strands of colonialism as an aspect of German culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when mass culture, mass politics and the age of imperialism unfold simultaneously.

Science: exploration, discovery, the collection and classifying of flora and fauna, anthropology.

Sex: the male gaze, voyeurism, racy humor in the repressed Victorian age.

Popular culture: the spectacle of race, the racial grotesque, exoticism.

The pop-cultural tradition of exhibiting human oddities, curiosities, abnormalities-what would come to be called freaks-reconfigured in the age of imperialism into a spectacle of race, racial difference, racial grotesque. An ostensibly scientific spectacle. The English explorer Herbert Ward, who spent years along the Congo river, describes cicatrization, or ritual scarring, with a metaphor from astronomy: the countless tiny scars were like constellations, a "map of the midnight sky." In his book Five Years with the Congo Cannibals (1891), he describes a woman's body: "Indeed, I have seen one stout Lolo lady who sported an entire solar system upon her back, and might have told off all the stars in the Milky Way, with an equal number of excresences upon her stately bust, and, even then, have a few handfuls to spare scattered down her legs, to pit against the nebulae forming the limbs of Andromeda." "At this settlement I saw the first specimen of the tribe of dwarfs who were said to be thickly scattered north of the Ituri, from the Ngaiyu eastward. She measured thirty-three inches in height, and was a perfectly formed woman of about seventeen, of a glistening and smooth sleekness of body. Her figure was that of a miniature coloured lady, not wanting in a certain grace, and her face was very prepossessing. Her complexion was that of a quadroon, or of the color of yellow ivory. Her eyes were maginficent, but absurdly large for such a small creature-almost as large as that of a young gazelle; full, protruding, and extremely lustrous. Absolutely nude, the little demoiselle was quite possessed, as though she was accustomed to be admired, and really enjoyed inspection. She had been discovered near the sources of the Ngaiyu." -Henry Morton Stanley, In Darkest Africa (1890)

The woman, however-indeed all of the women, and the men-remain mute, silent objects, their skins read like maps, their forms observed, analyzed, measured, sketched, photographed, described and classified-sometimes even preserved as scientific specimens in museums.

Why the Germans thought they needed an overseas empire.

Economics: Depression following the great crash of 1873.

End of free trade and perceived need for secure markets and sources of raw materials.

Politics: Shift to the right in 1879, in wake of "Great Depression."

Nationalism. Society: Outlet for immigration and for potentially revolutionary lower classes.

1878: Friedreich Fabri, Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien?

1882: Formation of German Colonial Association.

1887: Formation of German Colonial Society.

1891: Founding of Pan-German League. The beginnings of German imperialism:

1884: April 24: Formal declaration of protectorate over Southwest Africa.

1884: July 4-6: Formalization of treaties in Togo.

1884: July 14: Nachtigal concludes treaty with Duala of Cameroon.

1884: November 15: Berlin Africa Conference opens. ("Scramble for Africa.")

1885: February 26: Conclusion of Berlin Africa Conference.

Chronology of German imperialist expansion and conflict:

1896: Kaiser's Weltpolitik speech.

1897: Occupation of Kiaochow.

1897: Chancellor Bülow calls for a German "Platz an der Sonne" (place in the sun).

1898: Passage of First Navy Bill (rivalry with Britain).

1900: Boxer Rebellion.

1900: Reichstag passes Second Navy Bill.

1904: Herero revolt (war through 1907).

1905: First Morocco Crisis (arrival of Wilhelm II in Tangier).

1905: Maji Maji Rebellion in East Africa.

1911: Second Morocco Crisis.

The domestic political function of imperialism: the concept of "social imperialism": The function of imperialism in a highly fractured society, divided along class lines expressed politically in the antagonism between the powerful Social Democratic Party and the bourgeois parties of the nationalist and conservative right. The empire serves, on the one hand, to rally together, to unify nationalist elements in support of the government and the status quo and, on the other hand, to divert public attention from domestic political and social issues (extension of the suffrage, social reform) outward, toward the periphery, by directing it toward international rivalries and the spectacle of empire. (1907: January: "Hottentot elections": SPD defeated on colonial issue. Creation of conservative-nationalist, pro-colonialist Bülow Bloc.)

How did this function in the sphere of culture, popular culture, where colonialism and the racial grotesque are mediated through myriad cultural and technological forms?

Imperialism and popular culture: The themes, images and artifacts of imperialism filled illustrated magazines, newspapers, trashy "sensation novels," travelogues, exhibitions, museums, dioramas, magic lantern shows, panoramas, paintings, prints, theatrical productions, tableaux vivants, photographs, stereopticons, peep shows, mutoscopes, cinematographs. Travelling wax museums-the "races of the earth" modeled in wax-and ethnographic exhibitions (the Völkerschauen) exemplified the connections between science (anthropology, ethnography) and colonialism and popular amusement. Both served to popularize the spectacle of the racial grotesque. First Time in Europe! WARRIORS OF THE MAHDI. Natives of the Egyptian Sudan. Men, women and children. !! 35 PEOPLE !! The Togo-Troupe. Natives from our German colonies. 35 Togo-Girls. Fetish priests, singers, dancers from the royal palace of Togo. African conditions-scenes of local customs, war and national dances. Price: 50 Pfg. Among ethnographic exhibitions in Munich, for example: East African Caravan, with 27 Somalis (1889) Egyptian Exhibition with Bedouin Caravan, with over 100 "performers" (1890) Swahili-Caravan (1892) Wakamba-Negro Caravan (1893) Ashanti Village (1899) Bedouins (1901) Tunis in Munich! (1904). Samoa in Munich (1910) Tripoli (1912): competing with the "Circus-Cabaret 'Liliput'" (midgets, acrobats, etc.); with "Miss Lucie Volta, the Electric Riddle!-the electric Fire and Flame Queen" in "Carl Gabriel's Hall of Phenomena, with "the man with revolving limbs." Supplement from Wild-Afrika Munich, 1906 What's new at this year's Oktoberfest? WILD-AFRIKA Were you already in Africa? Wouldn't you like one day travel to Africa? We show you the way to Africa. FOR 50 PFENNIGS we offer you the opportunity to pass a little time among the savages of Africa. A caravan of 73 humans and animals brought from the Dark Continent to Munich by world traveler Carl Marquardt.

General questions/points about imperialism and race: How popular racism or the discourse of race sustained, sanctioned, legitimized imperialism.

The civilizing mission, the white man's burden.

How race, or racism, became widespread as a form of knowledge, a way of looking at the world and the self, a habit of thought, and how this development in the period of imperialism is related to the future of racism and racial ideologies in the twentieth century and to the rise of fascism.