Building the Colonial Border Imaginary: German Colonialism, Race, and Space in East Africa, 1884-1895

The dissertation explores the intellectual history of the interconnection of European and African ideas about race and space in 19th-century European imperialism. I examine German colonial geographies of East Africa, meaning not only cartography, but the new discipline of human geography, which studies the relationship between people and their environment. Germans and East Africans together produced a hybrid geography that combined precolonial conceptions of race and space and race from both Europe and Africa, and race explicitly entered German governance for the first time. By analyzing changes in how both Germans and East Africans imagined geographical relationships, I argue, we can better understand the ways in which they developed new conceptions of themselves and the world at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The project traces the history of German racial thinking to a specific, earlier colonial context than other scholars have argued. It also brings a spatial dimension to studies of the colonial state in Africa in order to understand the ways in which spaces have become imbued with racial and ethnic meaning over the last century and a half.

Grantor dc:publisher

Temple University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Unangst, Matthew David

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lockenour, Jay, 1966-

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Talton, Benjamin
• Biddick, Kathleen
• Moyd, Michelle R., 1968-

• History
• History, African
• History, European

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Dc Identifier Other

958157506

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/3987