Colonial Fantasies
Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870
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Colonial Fantasies
Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870
About This Book
Since Germany became a colonial power relatively late, postcolonial theorists and histories of colonialism have thus far paid little attention to it. Uncovering Germany's colonial legacy and imagination, Susanne Zantop reveals the significance of colonial fantasiesâa kind of colonialism without coloniesâin the formation of German national identity. Through readings of historical, anthropological, literary, and popular texts, Zantop explores imaginary colonial encounters of "Germans" with "natives" in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century literature, and shows how these colonial fantasies acted as a rehearsal for actual colonial ventures in Africa, South America, and the Pacific.
From as early as the sixteenth century, Germans preoccupied themselves with an imaginary drive for colonial conquest and possession that eventually grew into a collective obsession. Zantop illustrates the gendered character of Germany's colonial imagination through critical readings of popular novels, plays, and travel literature that imagine sexual conquest and surrender in colonial territoryâor love and blissful domestic relations between colonizer and colonized. She looks at scientific articles, philosophical essays, and political pamphlets that helped create a racist colonial discourse and demonstrates that from its earliest manifestations, the German colonial imagination contained ideas about a specifically German national identity, different from, if not superior to, most others.
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Table of contents
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- I Armchair Conquistadors; or, The Quest for âNew Germanyâ
- II Colonizing Theory: Gender, Race, and the Search for a National Identity
- III Colonial Families; or, Displacing the Colonizers
- IV Virgin Islands, Teuton Conquerors
- Epilogue: Vitzliputzliâs Revenge
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index