Koloniale Herrschaft und Ihre Grenzen: Die Kolonialpolizei in Deutsch-Sudwestafrika 1894-1915

Abstract

‘Was the colonial state a weak state?’ ‘Was colonial rule a weak rule?’ These are the prominent questions researchers of European colonialism in Africa have asked and sought to answer time and again, often arriving at opposing conclusions in the cases of various colonies. These questions have been of particular significance for the historians of German colonialism; some of them have been influenced by Hannah Arendt’s argument that totalitarianism originated in the colonies. The German Sonderweg, following Arendt’s claim, might have taken a detour via the colonies. On this basis, Jürgen Zimmerer and others have outlined a brutal, totalitarian colonial regime capable of genocide, and possibly a precursor of Nazi Germany, in what is today Namibia and was then German South-West Africa (GSWA). On the other hand, Michael Pesek found only ‘islands of rule’ in German East Africa (today Tanzania), indicating a scattered and weak colonial state. Jakob Zollmann opens his study with exactly these questions and offers a nuanced approach. By analysing the colonial police in GSWA, he demonstrates how strong state power could be when within the remits of police power, the so-called Polizeizone (Police Zone), and how scattered, almost non-existent it was outside it.