Racial warfare in German women’s colonial memoirs

Abstract

ABSTRACT The colonial memoirs of German women reflected and often overtly supported the structurally racist assumptions that naturalized German rule in Africa and the Pacific. When it came to describing the reasons for colonial uprisings and wars, however, few focused on broad notions of ‘racial warfare’, foregrounding instead the primacy of the battle for political independence and territorial sovereignty. Via a study of the memoirs of Magdalene von Prince, Margarete von Eckenbrecher and Frieda Zieschank, Fitzpatrick’s article questions the applicability of the flattening descriptor ‘racial warfare’ when describing colonial wars, and demonstrates that German women offered a clear sense that the line of demarcation between wartime allies and enemies often mapped poorly on to racial divides.