Delegitimating Empire: German and British Representations of Colonial Violence, 1918–19

Abstract

This article examines how imperialism was perceived at the end of the First World War with the publications of ‘atrocity narratives’ by Britain and Germany. It focuses on the German perspective represented in the 1919 ‘White Book,’ a response to the British ‘Blue Book’ from 1918 which had claimed Germany to be an unfit colonial power by pointing to the genocide in German South West Africa, 1904–8. The White Book claimed that violence and brutality was a normal conduct of colonial powers and the confiscation of the German colonies was therefore unjust. Although the White Book was first dismissed, British officials were alarmed by many of its findings and at times even found them embarrassingly true. The article argues first that placing violence at centerstage of colonialism is in many ways similar to how colonial history is today approached by historians. Second, these atrocity narratives contributed to undermining the institution of empire and were brought into the diplomatic arena at the end of the war. By using colonial violence as a reason to confiscate colonies, Britain had unintentionally created a precedent in which colonial rule could be scrutinized and weighed according to the conduct of the colonial power.