Race and Realpolitik : The Politics of Colonisation in German Samoa

Abstract

The years of German rule in western Samoa, from 1900 to 1914, were characterised by the existence of a variety of conflicting definitions of race. This period saw a significant shift in the dominant nature of racial science in Germany which was reflected, or rather refracted, in colonial policy-making in Samoa. The central question this thesis asks is to what extent, and in which ways, ideologies of race shaped German colonial policy in Samoa. This thesis focuses on the views of the colonial administration, and on opposition to them. Through an analysis of the archives of the German Samoan colonial administration and the Reichskoloniamt (Colonial Office), as well as of personal manuscripts and published colonialist literature, it identifies a series of areas in which the complexity of racial arguments can be traced. It first analyses the administration's paternalist development policy as an expression partly of a particular conception of race relations; then examines debates over German settlement; the introduction and treatment of indentured labourers; and the legal classification of mixed marriages and half-castes. It is argued that the key feature of racial thought in German Samoa was its diversity — that racial visions were deployed by a series of factions in the protectorate and in Germany to advance their own interests. Rather than uniting the 'colonising community' in a racist mission of domination, racial thought amplified the fissures in German Samoa's population.