Abstract:
German imperialism has recently drawn the attention of many scholars, making the topic one of increasing relevance in academic inquiry. Working from the assumption of several recent German historians that racial language was laden with alternative meanings and influenced by various non-racial discourses, this study seeks to identify some of the conversations undergirding racial language in the press. Reading closely the coverage of Germany’s two most significant colonial wars—the Herero uprising in German South West Africa and the Maji-Maji War in German East Africa—from a broad ideological and geographic sample of popular newspapers, I arrived at two conclusions. First, racial language was evident throughout press coverage of colonial conflict. Second, this language was inextricably linked with alternative conversations concerning politics and society in Germany itself. The colonies and colonial war offered Germans another way to discuss domestic issues. In this way racial language, whether overt or not, was rarely just about race, but it helped Germans discuss their own society and several issues entirely unrelated to race.
