Violence as Usual: Policing and the Colonial State in German Southwest Africa by Marie Muschalek

Abstract

Reviewed by: Violence as Usual: Policing and the Colonial State in German Southwest Africa by Marie Muschalek Martin Kalb Violence as Usual: Policing and the Colonial State in German Southwest Africa. By Marie Muschalek. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. Pp. xi + 255. Cloth $49.95. ISBN 978-1501742859. Everyday colonial violence and the Landespolizei police force in German Southwest Africa (modern-day Namibia) are at the center of Marie Muschalek’s admirable monograph. Following recent studies by Isabell Hull, Susanne Kuss, Michelle Moyd, and others, Muschalek aims to complicate our understanding of the colonial state. Her focus on the period following the 1904 uprising and the German genocide makes this volume of particular interest. In her view, “the organization of state power was not merely a matter of claiming the monopoly of force and thus proscribing any excessive, disruptive, and nonofficial violence”; rather, she argues, “colonial rule consisted in diffusing and regulating specific types of seemingly self-evident harm throughout society” (9). Violence as Usual first concentrates on the identity formation of policemen. Muschalek relies on sample data from the personal files of the Landespolizei to discuss socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds; she also comments on upbringings and contextualizes work environments, exploring how fantasies of adventure and aspirations for bourgeois life clashed with everyday realities. Patrols found themselves traversing arid frontier landscapes with little expertise, resources, or support. Honor, status, and masculinity are the main themes throughout this chapter as Muschalek focuses on both German policemen and their local African auxiliaries. Sources are slim for colonial “assistants,” but she is able to uncover an array of daily interactions and encounters. And while Muschalek might have drawn on additional materials relating to the personal motivations of policemen, she is ultimately successful in [End Page 625] unpacking the professional identities and makeup of colonial law enforcement in Germany’s only true settler colony. The second chapter adds layers to Muschalek’s findings by analyzing what she calls “soldier-bureaucrats” in the “hybrid institutional setting of a semi-military, semi-civilian institution within which police codes of behavior emerged” (44). Muschalek argues that honor and proper bearing mattered a great deal and gave cohesion to policing. Policemen had to contend with scarce resources and what they saw as a hostile environment; they also lacked training, with many having to learn on the job. The German presence on the ground was colored by general imperial anxieties as well as a more immediate nervousness that arose from operating on the frontiers of the empire. The discussion of such dynamics from below, maybe in combination with Matthias Häußler’s recent volume on the genocide, is invaluable for anyone interested in colonial violence. The use of tools and technologies—specifically whips, shackles, and guns—is the subject of chapter 3 and is likewise consonant with ongoing scholarly discussions about German colonial violence. Muschalek notes that “although European technologies of themselves explain little, the specific improvised practices of the police illuminate how the technologies of violence helped the German regime refine and maintain colonial rule” (97). This was indicative of some sort of “postwar paranoia” (89), to borrow one of the author’s terms. Muschalek touches briefly on specific laws legalizing “hunting parties” against the San people, which resulted in what anthropologist Robert Gordon has called “the ‘Forgotten’ Bushman Genocides.” Local newspapers from Windhoek, Swakopmund, and Lüderitzbucht made countless references to German police raids meant to pick up real and imagined Feldherero (vagrant Herero) during the postwar years that might have added another component to this chapter. The discussion of patrol logs and reports in chapter 4 captures the daily “tasks, working conditions, routines, and procedures” of the police (99). This section underscores the value of Alltagsgeschichte, a framework aptly employed throughout this volume. Muschalek demonstrates that improvisation on the job was key and the practices of policemen were rarely efficient. At the same time, and as she concludes here, the police presence and actions “were by all accounts transformative” (129). Although fantasies of totalitarian control were rarely fulfilled, the employment of certain technologies and infrastructures, laws as well as a powerful bureaucracy, in addition to everyday assistance from farmers, resulted in the terrorizing of...