Verteidigung des deutschen Kolonialismus

by Bruce Gilley, Richard Abelson (Translator)

Muss die deutsche Kolonialgeschichte neu geschrieben werden? Mit dem vorliegenden Band stellt der US-amerikanische Politologe Bruce Gilley unser sicher geglaubtes Wissen über die koloniale Vergangenheit des Deutschen Reiches auf den Kopf. Faktenbasiert, schonungslos und stets humorvoll entlarvt Gilley die post-moderne Kolonialforschung als Geisel politischer Korrektheit. Nicht die historischen Tatsachen, sondern die Bedürfnisse des politischen Zeitgeistes bestimmen heute in Berlin über die Wahrnehmung dieser historischen Epoche, so Gilley. Entstanden ist dadurch eine semi-religiöse, schuldbeladene Weltsicht, in der weiße Europäer immer Täter, Afrikaner aber stets die Opfer zu sein haben. Eine folgenreiche Fehldeutung, die in diesem Werk gründlichen Widerspruch erfährt. Im Gegenteil war die Kolonialzeit „für die Kolonisierten objektiv gewinnbringend“ und für die Kolonisatoren „subjektiv gerechtfertigt“, wie Gilley unter Verweis auf prominente Quellen beweist. Eine Sicht auf die Vergangenheit vorzulegen, in der die Deutschen nicht ausnahmslos bösartig, ihre kolonialen Errungenschaften nicht allein von Gräueltaten und Rassismus geprägt waren, braucht Mut – heute mehr denn je. Gilley hat der historischen Forschung mit diesem Grundlagenwerk eine Schneise geschlagen. Es bleibt zu hoffen, dass seine Thesen und Argumente zu lebhaften Debatten anregen und perspektivisch eine Kehrtwende in der erinnerungspolitischen Kultur Deutschlands initiieren können.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Germany

200 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2021

About the author

Bruce Gilley is Professor of Political Science at the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. His research centers on comparative and international politics and public policy. His work covers issues as diverse as democracy, climate change, political legitimacy, and international conflict. He is a specialist on the politics of China and Asia. He is the author of four university-press books, including The Nature of Asian Politics (2015), The Right to Rule: How States Win and Lose Legitimacy (2009) and China’s Democratic Future (2004) in addition to several co-edited volumes. His scholarly articles have appeared in journals including Comparative Political Studies and the European Journal of Political Research and his policy articles in journals including Foreign Affairs and the Washington Quarterly. A member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Democracy and the Journal of Contemporary China, Gilley has received grants from the Smith-Richardson Foundation and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. He was a Commonwealth Scholar at Oxford University from 1989 to 1991 and a Woodrow Wilson Scholar at Princeton University from 2004 to 2006. From 1992 to 2002, he was a journalist in Hong Kong where he wrote for the Eastern Express newspaper and then the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine.His biggest scoop was exposing an illicit technology transfer by a Stanford professor to China's military.

Dr. Gilley is the Principal of Policy Foresight Associates LLC, a Portland-based firm providing research and strategy advice on public policies and programs for clients in the United States and abroad. He is chapter president of the Oregon Association of Scholars, the state chapter of the National Association of Scholars and member of the Heterodox Academy. He is founding signatory of the Oregon Academic Faculty Pledge on Freedom.

Reviews

[Петър Стойков · Rating 4 out of 5]

На български по-надолу :)

It is evident to anyone who is not infected with the mental virus of Anglo-Saxon self-flagellating ultra-liberalism that without the establishment of colonies worldwide by European countries, many peoples and tribes would have still be eating each other.

In "liberated" African countries today, many people recall with nostalgia the rule of the white man who governed better than the local tyrant chiefs, constructed roads, provided education and healthcare. This is similar to the current state of affairs with the EU in our country, which, despite its many flaws, at least puts the reins on our politicians' worst ideas and practices.

It may come as a surprise to the American public, but not to us, that this is particularly true of German colonial policy. To be honest, I was mainly surprised by how many colonies Germany actually had.

Even while Germany was conquering African territories and tribes (there were no states there at the time), the local people were generally satisfied with German rule, particularly after the Germans successfully cured some terrible cattle plague devastating their livelihood. The natives were so content with German governance that some chiefs even approached them to ask to be included in the German domain.

During the Second World War, African soldiers recruited by Germany fought bravely and willingly on their side. Even as German forces withdrew, the natives refused to surrender to the Allies and were consequently massacred.
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This review in Bulgarian:

На всеки, който не е заразен от умствения вирус на англо-саксонския самобичуващ се улра-либерализъм му е ясно, че ако европейските държави не бяха създали колонии по целия свят, много народи и племена и до сега щяха да се изяждат едни други.

Много хора в "освободените" особено африкански държави с носталгия си спомнят за белия човек, който е управлявал много по-добре от местните вождове-дерибеи, строил е пътища, докарал е образование и медицина. Горе долу както сега ЕС у нас - не, че няма доста кусури, ама ако ни оставят на самотек глей кво става...

Така че за американската публика е, но за нас не е никаква изненада, че това особено важи за германската колониална политика. Честно казано, мен най-вече ме изненада да науча, че Германия е имала толкова колонии...

Още докато Германия завладява някои африкански територии и племена (по онова време там няма държави) местните хора са като цяло доволни от германското управление - особено след медицинските успехи на немците в преборването на някаква чума по добитъка. Дотолкова местните са доволни от немското управление, че някои вождове сами отиват при германците да ги молят да ги вземат под властта си.

Kогато идва време за Втората световна война набраните от Африка войници се бият храбро и с желание на страната на Германия. Дори когато германските войски се изтеглят, местните отказват да се предадат на съюзниците и биват малко поизбити.

[Lance kozel · Rating 2 out of 5]

A vast majority of the book is just liberal Authoritarianism propaganda "who care you can't vote but look at the trains". in addition to this the man speaks of modern liberals with such venom and frequency that it makes it feels more like a political pundit than a historian. the only reason I rated This two instead of one is while the the interpretation leave much to be desired the history itself is decently researched

[Dan McCallum · Rating 1 out of 5]

felt my brain rotting more with every page. novel only in that it applies the insipid arguments wheeled out in favour of britain and france's empires to one so short-lived and violent that they lose any credence they may have had. segment on the nazis is the worst of all - no real mention of ostsiedlung is just incredible

[Francois Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author of this book should be awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature and Science.

[TJ Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This book blew my mind. Get ready for the biggest reversal on a topic that you'll likely ever experience! I knew I liked Prof Gilley's work because I'd read his groundbreaking essay "The Case for Colonialism," and his response to his critics. But this book delivered a lot more of what that essay was just an appetizer for--a main course in pro-colonialism historiography.

Of course, we've all heard how evil and terrible the period of European colonialism was. One might wonder, why publish papers and books promoting colonialism, seems rather out of step with the times, right? Well, Professor Gilley's personal story of how he began to see colonial history differently is rather enlightening. Professor Gilley is a Political Science professor specializing in democracy, legitimacy, global politics, and comparative politics of China and Asia. He kept being surprised by how many historical documents and testimonies from the colonial period had glowing praise for this, the great sin of European Chauvinism and conquest. How could key African scholars and political leaders have such great things to say about their oppression?

Surveying the field more thoroughly he realized there was an incredible story that's been suppressed. So, he did what a good historian should have done decade ago, he availed himself of the historical documents, he looked at the testimony from both sides of the debate, and he presented the case for and against colonialism in this book. What he found, broadly, but also specifically in the case of German colonialism, was that the German colonial endeavor was an unparalleled success! By every metric.

The official stance of Chancellor Bismarck was that Germany didn't want to establish over-seas colonies. The problem was that by 1890 Germany was the richest and most advanced European nation. Germany had a ton of overseas trade and trade interests. There were countless German adventurers and piles of Germany money that investors wanted to invest. So, the German government kept getting drawn into various German business enterprises across Africa and southeast Asia. In east Africa (later, German Tanzania) German enterprise was threatened by rogue warlords and aggressive slavers. Traders such as Carl Peters petitioned the German government to provide some security so they could pursue their business interests in the region after the factories he'd set up had been attacked.

In short, Germany was late and reluctant to the colonization game. Their colonies only lasted 30 years. Because they were the last ones to participate in this process, they determined to do it better than any of the other countries had. They organized an international convention to try and formulate the best practices in Berlin in 1885. The vision they articulated was a high-water mark for liberalism and the enlightenment, and it was steadfastly reflected in the administration of the colonies they eventually accumulated.

What shocked me the most was the long list of positive accomplishments in such short time frames. They built roads, railroads, canals, and ports. Germany spent 2.5 times as much money developing and securing the colonies as they ever got from the colonies. As Gilley jokes, the colonies were exploiting the German taxpayer, not the other way around. The infrastructure made an incalculable difference. Some villages would just starve when they had a bad harvest, because many tribes locked in the interior found it impossible to move goods any distance and were surrounded by hostile tribes. When Germany came in and imposed the end to tribal warfare, raids, slaving, trafficking in women, etc suddenly tribal people could turn from clan warfare to productive work and had a market for their surpluses. Trade within the German colonies increased 17% every year that they administered them.

But that wasn't the end of the positive contributions. The Germans sent countless scientific expeditions into the tropics. They found a cure for Rinderpest (a devastating, highly contagious parasite that afflicts cattle) deduced how cholera spreads, discovered that African Sleeping Sickness was spread by the tsetse fly, and ultimately developed the first effective vaccine that cured sleeping sickness. Again, it's hard to convey how profound of a difference this medical work made. Sleeping sickness was endemic from West Africa to East Africa and all the way down to South Africa. It had a mortality rate of 80-90%!

German colonial administrators also worked very hard to preserve and respect native culture and practices. In fact, the only reason many native languages were saved was because German anthropologists and linguists set this task for themselves. Unlike the colonies of other European nations, the Germans were happy to run the colony under the dominate language. They also put the children of the chiefs into schools and hired them as colonial administrators when they were educated adults, smoothly transitioning the country from often feudal lord arrangements to a modern bureaucratic elite.

The list of horrors that German colonial administration put a stop to is also an impressive list. They stopped the lawless warlords, the slave trading systems and slavery, head hunting, gang raping, cannibalism. They encouraged a switch to monogamy, which protected women from being trafficked. Some of the native leaders had more than 58 wives! Of course, this kind of polygamy led to huge numbers of young men unable to find wives which leads to violence and political instability and warfare.

Scholars have argued that the horrors of Nazi Germany must have been foreshadowed in the German colonies. They've distorted or invented a host of narratives trying to connect these dots. As prof Gilley ably shows, the reverse is true. Colonialism rose out of the enlightenment. It promoted the rule of law, human rights, private property, trade, capitalism, pride and improvement through hard work. The societies and nations that were organized under colonialism were inherently pluralistic societies that were constantly striving to overcome tribalism and racist ethno-nationalism. Education, science, courts and law, public safety, were all established and robustly promoted. The exciting and successful projects in the German colonies led to an explosion in scientific and scholarly research. The German people were rightly proud of their work in the colonies, many German people lived in them or worked in them. They learned languages and customs foreign to them, they intermarried and adopted children from among the native people.

At the signing of the peace in Versailles, at the end of World War 1, Germany was stripped of its colonial possessions. This was to punish them for the war, but it also went against the previous international agreements that over-seas colonies wouldn't be dragged into whatever conflicts might arise in Europe. Germany was deeply bitter about this loss and tried many deals to get its colonies back. The people involved in the colonial project in Germany were the liberals of the nation. They believed in Western Civilization, that the European enlightenment and the values and institutions that arose out of it, had something to offer everyone. This stripping of the colonies from Germany was a humiliation, and it led to the loss of prestige of the liberals in society, and even to their hostility and animosity to toward the rest of Europe. With the humbling of the liberals, extremists found an opportunity to rise to power. And these far left, and far right Nazis and Communists were avowedly anti-colonialist. This is the birth of the anti-colonialist movement.

Hitler was a vocal anti-colonialist, as was Lenin and Stalin and all their cadres. Of course, Hitler would be against the colonies. The colonies were based on liberal enlightenment ideas of Western Civilization. The colonial administration believed the native people could attain everything Europe had; Hitler likened Africans to "poodles," saying there was no benefit to be had by ruling over them. The Nazis were racial purists that believed in power.

Prof Gilley quotes many forgotten letters, speeches, and other texts proving the Nazi and Communist affiliation with anti-colonialism. And he draws connections between today's intolerant anti-colonial attitudes in society and in the academy, back to its roots--totalitarian thinking on the right and left. The current mis-affiliation of colonialism with Nazism is not only historically completely false: It is a very dangerous falsehood. The current dominate ahistorical narrative encourages us to grossly misunderstand what led to one of the largest disasters of the 20th century. And this mistake takes us in the direction of repeating these same missteps.

So, to all you anti-colonialists out there, you might want to examine the Nazi roots of your line of thinking! And to the role that anti-colonialism played in the rise of Nazism to power in Germany. The rabid anti-colonialism so popular today poses another danger, it blocks prosperous collaboration between developed and developing nations.

Prof Gilley provided countless fascinating examples illustrating his case. He brings in the critiques, but there just aren't a lot of well-founded critiques, many times the supposed "scandals" were found later to just be based on lies or rumors, yet even disproved, they're still cited today as "evidence." I appreciated Prof Gilley's light-hearted engagement with his rabid and over-the-top critics.

What a novel idea! Let's do some serious historical scholarship and see how good or bad each colony was based on all of the evidence. Turns out their impact was fantastic; all the detractors are cherry picking anything they can spin into a "genocide" or "massacre." This is a great book, and we need a dozen more like it. I hope prof Gilley has a long and productive career, and I hope some of his detractors start doing better scholarship.

[Joshua Upole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fantastic exposition of the nearly universal distortion of history at play today. The author explores the worst of the worst attacks launched against the German Empire regarding its colonial past and the reader comes through unscathed. The author believes that a proper understanding of German colonial history is vital to the restoration of the west, and after reading this book you will, too.

[Xenophon · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Defense of German Colonialism is a polemic in favor of German colonialism and its place in the European colonial project that reached its apotheosis at the Berlin Conference. That's its primary purpose, so much of the book is about how the views of German colonialism developed as well as modern scholarship on the subject.

It could have done with more historical meat because that is where Gilley is at his best.

[Peter Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Defense of German Colonialism by Bruce Gilley

https://medium.com/@peterseanbradle/c...

This is not the time to write an apology for colonialism. Western cultural elites have decided that colonialism is the worst phenomenon in human history. In this book, author Bruce Gilley explores the anti-colonialist narrative by examining German colonialism. If there is one nation tainted in the popular mind with every evil done in the name of racism, that nation would be Germany.
So, how does Gilley do? Extremely well. Gilley's presentation is eye-opening. After forty years of focusing exclusively on West's crimes - real or imagined - it is a ray of sunlight to see the other side of the ledger. 

Colonialism was part of the Western liberal agenda and the Enlightenment project. That project includes Voltaire lampooning superstition in the name of reason or the philosophes promoting new ways of doing things that improved hygiene and life options. The Enlightenment made a virtue out of innovation and progress against the tired hand of tradition. We cheer for the philosophes in their battle against superstition, even if it is a form of colonialism of the urban elite against the rural classes. This raises the question of why progress is good for the European peasantry but not for peasants in Africa or Asia.

Colonialism deserves fair consideration. We have to consider the entire record. I'm going to skim some of the hight points of Gilley's book with an emphasis on the points he makes to establish a balance in the lived reality of European colonialism.

One of the facts that anti-colonialists suppress is that colonialism saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of natives. AS Gilley points out, "Without doubt, Germany's greatest humanitarian contribution to Africa during its colonial period was the discovery of a cure for sleeping sickness." Before German colonialism, hundreds of thousands of Africans would die of sleeping sickness each year. An outbreak from 1901–07 killed between two hundred thousand and three hundred thousand people in British Uganda, and two million people succumbed in all of East Africa in 1903 alone. The colonial powers put together expeditions and policies that were unheard of previously to save natives. Gilley explains:

Between 1901 and 1913, fifteen medical-research missions came to Africa to study sleeping sickness. Under the International Sleeping Sickness Commission convened by colonial powers, German scientists under Koch identified the tsetse fly as the carrier of the disease. Next came methods to identify and isolate patients and to eliminate the tsetse fly's habitat. Germany and Britain agreed in 1908 to prevent infected Africans from crossing borders, and in 1911 they signed a cooperative agreement to combat sleeping sickness in West Africa. The Germans got results: in German East Africa between 1908 and 1911, 62 percent of the four thousand cases treated whose outcomes were known were healed using palliative drugs, a worthy achievement against a disease whose mortality rate was 80–90 percent. (p. 122.)

In 1910, Dr. Robert Koch discovered a cure for sleeping sickness, incidentally inventing "chemotherapy." Koch also taught natives to use the resin of a native tree to caulk their boats. Previously, natives risked their lives to crocodile attacks while journeying across Lake Victory in fragile boats. 

Koch noticed an absence of innovation as a feature of all premodern societies that acted on tradition alone. The West brought the idea of innovation and experimentation to native cultures.
Koch also found a cure for rinderpest, a cattle disease that destroyed native populations dependent on cattle for food.

In 1896–97, a rinderpest epidemic struck the Herero and Nama region's cattle. The German administration drew a quarantine line dividing Hereroland from the northerly section of Ovamboland and built a 550-kilometer string of monitoring stations. Without German settlers to provide employment and food, a large part of the Herero population would have died of starvation and malnutrition. Certainly, the Nama and other groups would not have set up soup kitchens. South Africa's white-owned diamond companies paid for Robert Koch (then a little-known German scientist) to visit, and he quickly discovered an effective cattle vaccine that won him a Nobel prize in 1905.16 Veterinarians assigned to the German military garrison managed to vaccinate most of the Nama and settler herds because they were geographically concentrated. The Herero herds, by contrast, were greater in number and widely dispersed. Half of their cattle succumbed. (p. 46.)
Colonialism brought economic benefits to the colonized:

Islands offer an almost perfect natural experiment in colonialism's economic effects because their discovery by Europeans was sufficiently random. As a result, they should not have been affected by the "pull" factors that made some places easier to colonize than others. In a 2009 study of the effects of colonialism on the income levels of people on eighty-one islands, two Dartmouth College economists found "a robust positive relationship between colonial tenure and modern outcomes."27 Bermuda and Guam are better off than Papua New Guinea and Fiji because they were colonized for longer. That helps explain why the biggest countries with limited or no formal colonial periods (especially China, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Thailand, and Nepal) or whose colonial experiences ended before the modern colonial era (Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti) are hardly compelling as evidence that not being colonized was a boon. The people of "liberated" Haiti began fleeing to the colonial Bahamas or to the slave-owning and later-segregated American South almost as soon as they were "free" from the white man. One can applaud their sense of irony. (p. 17.) 

Colonialism brought political benefits to colonized people:

Colonialism also enhanced later political freedoms. To be colonized in the nineteenth–twentieth-century era was to have much better prospects for democratic government, according to a statistical study of 143 colonial episodes by the Swedish economist Ola Olsson in 2009.30 Since Germany's colonies were short-lived, sparse in number, and later folded into British and French colonies, Olsson's research could not identify the precise democratic contribution of German colonialism. However, what explained the democratic legacies of colonialism, he argued, was not particular national strategies but the more common European principles of free trade, humanitarianism, property rights, the rule of law, native uplift, and constraints on political executives, factors certainly present in the German colonies: "All this strongly suggests to us that colonization during the imperialist era, regardless of the nationality of the colonizer or the particular circumstances in the colonies, should be more conducive to current levels of democracy than colonialism under mercantilism."31 The Danish political scientist Jacob Hariri, meanwhile, found in a study of 111 countries that those not colonized because of the existence of strong premodern state, or only symbolically ruled by Europeans piggybacking on traditional institutions, were more likely to be saddled with a dysfunctional state and political system later on. (p. 18–19.)

Gilley points out that Germany could not have ruled without the willing cooperation of the natives:
In 1904, the entire colonial government of German East Africa - a sprawling territory three times larger than Germany proper and populated by nearly eight million people - consisted of just 280 whites and 50 native civil servants.54 There were an additional 300 German or European soldiers. By 1913, the combined government and military staff of Germans totaled just 737.55 Native elites ran the colony, operating out of thirty government/military bomani.56 In population terms, the numbers are similar to what they would be if New Jersey was run by 320 civil servants (New Jersey had 432,000 state and local employees in 2019). By 1914, the number of German and European soldiers had decreased to 200, alongside 2,500 enlisted native soldiers (askari). (p. 76–77.)

Slavery was endemic to Africa. Germany was committed to the anti-slavery program of the Enlightenment and successfully ended slavery in its territories:

Anti-slavery policies, which had been a key factor in the decision to formally take over the colony, slowly eroded the power of local slaving interests. But there were some unforeseen difficulties. As early as 1891, the then governor Julius von Soden remarked that one of the main obstacles to abolition was that slaves would rather remain in their current state than become "free laborers" on a plantation, where they would have to work harder.32 The German diplomat Heinrich Brode noted that slaves were considered part of the family in most instances and given only light work while "domestic servants at home appear much greater slaves than the natives who bear this name."33 Therefore, German policy adopted a gradualist approach, eradicating slavery with a combination of incentives and economic development. In 1904, a new colonial policy stated that all children born to slaves from 1906 on were to be regarded as free. Moreover, between 1891 and 1912, 52,000 slaves were freed by legal, social, and financial means.34 Through these efforts, coupled with the growth of the capitalist economy that made it more profitable to hire labor, the roughly one million slaves in the area at the time of German colonization in 1890 fell to two hundred thousand by 1914 and would disappear entirely by the 1920s. (p. 68–69.)

Germany also engaged in helpful social work that makes no sense if Germany was purely about racist exploitation. In public education, Germany taught the natives in Swahili:

Perhaps the most important development was the Africanization of the government through Swahili-language schools that trained native colonial administrators. By 1910, there were 3,494 elementary and 681 middle- and upper-school students in the state schools, compared to only 1,196 in the mission schools. Roughly 6,100 in total passed through the state schools from 1902 to 1914. In neighboring British Kenya and Uganda, by contrast, there were still no state schools. "The Germans have accomplished marvels," a British report on the colony's education concluded in 1924.27 (p. 67.) 

Germany came into the colonial game late. Germany had colonies in Togo, Tanzania, Southwest Africa (Namibia), and German Samoa. German colonization inspired great loyalty among the natives, who often fought for the Germans or went into exile when Germany lost its colonies.
The "Herrero Genocide" is a potential black mark on Germany's cultural legacy. Gilley denies that a genocide occurred. The Herrero were part of the Bantu expansion that wiped out the indigenous Khoisan tribes. In fights for territory, the Nama had massacred a fifth of the Herero population in 1850. In turn, the Herero replaced and enslaved other tribes. In 1904, after being allied with the Germans, the Herero decided to include the Germans in Namibia's tradition of genocide with the slogan "kill all Germans" as Herero began to kill German settlers. Berlin sent in Lothar von Trotha to suppress the Herero.

Gilley writes:

By the time the rebellions ended in 1906, the officially enumerated Herero population in the colony had fallen by 75 percent from eighty thousand to twenty thousand. The officially enumerated population of the Nama had fallen by half from twenty thousand to ten thousand. In addition to 150 murdered settlers, the Germans counted their losses at 1,400 dead and another 1,000 wounded or missing. (p. 52.)

This is impressive, but the problem is that populations in the area that were not at war also saw their numbers fall by similar amounts. The explanations for these population declines included migration away from the conflict zone, falls in female fertility, increased mortality because of the disruptions of the conflict, epidemics, food supply disruption, and problems with taking a census.
The disappearance of thirty thousand from the census rolls does not explain why those people disappeared.

Gilley argues that Germany's colonial project enhanced German democracy at home. The Reichstag was given a great deal of control over the colonial project. The colonial establishment was home to German liberals.

Gilley also argues that the seizure of the colonies led to Germany's embrace of National Socialism. The Nazis were anti-colonialists. They did not believe that Germany should go to places far removed from Germany to bring progress to other races. Nazi anti-colonialism.[1] Hitler wanted a free hand in Europe. He rejected Chamberlain's offer to return Cameroon and East Africa to Germany. The Nazis forged alliances with other anti-colonial race chauvinists in Inda, Africa, and the Middle East. As Gilley points out:

Parochialism, racism, and illiberalism were after all the natural positions for all anti-colonialists. Hitler referred to nationalists in India like Gandhi as his "natural allies." (P. 204.) This anti-colonialist alliance had its most enduring impact in the Middle East where Arab political parties were based on fascism and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a devotee of Hitler.

Gilley points out that the anti-colonialists drawn to Hitler were like many later anti-colonialists. The extent of their anti-colonial agenda was "handing over power from reforming, liberal, colonial systems to reactionary fascist ones where they would receive the salutes from the podium." (p. 213.)

This was a surface skim of the book. Gilley offers details and data that balance the ledger against the prevailing narrative of oppression and racism. He is also an engaging writer. The Leftwing narrative is a moralistic, Manichaean morality play, and Gilley is frustrated with the shallow lies that pass for history. His take-downs of the "narrative" is very engaging.

Footnotes:

[1] The Nazi program of Lebensraum was not colonialism. The Nazis intended to conquer territories for German expansion. Populations in those territories would be exterminated or turned into slaves. Although Leftists want to equate liberal colonialism with Nazi expansion, they are different.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wasn't convinced. Gilley's positions are mostly defended with quotations from various secondary sources rather than scrupulous attention to primary texts.

[Tomislav · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, that’s certainly an edgy title. Who would dare to publish a book defending ruthless conquests, colonial settlements, social Darwinism and disastrous Weltpolitik? Nobody – there is nothing like that in the book. Instead, it is about the different ways in which German colonial administration was beneficial to native populations. The book is not a detailed historical study but a polemic aimed to debunk common misconceptions and political accusations. It gives a quick, superficial overview of German colonial endeavors, interjected with very repetitive comments about how progressive and ethical they were.

It is an openly political book, as the author states, written against woke activists and radical postcolonial scholars who amplify German guilt, support African nationalist myths and influence current politics. German colonialism actually promoted not only economic development but also human rights, cultural diversity, tolerance and order among warring tribes. Gilley attempts to outwit radical leftists by accepting their goals and values and then proving that right-wing policies actually provide a better way of achieving them. Already in the second chapter he concludes that the leftists are actually the real racists. In the last few chapters he defends not a very convincing thesis that the loss of overseas colonies was decisive for the failure of German liberalism and subsequent political radicalization.

There is no engaging historical narrative or deep comparative analysis, not much about colonization from German perspective, about variety of interests and ideas beyond some vague progressive do-goodery. Some of the postmodern authors that Gilley criticizes are so pathetic that they hardly require elaborate refutations, or even mentioning, and the text often loses its point in such shallow, haphazard political debating. The original, meaningful content, the titular defense of colonialism, could be a lengthier essay rather than a book. The main arguments that the negative interpretation of German colonialism was mostly a later political invention misused for all kinds of purposes are convincing, but overall it is not a great book.

[Opossum · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unequivocally powerful defense of Western civilization. I think that this book is very important to read because it refuted the ludicrous claims of causality that we are supposed to suspend our beliefs and accept on a daily basis. If I had one small critique, it would be some of the informal commentary that was interjected from time to time, but it was mostly apt and did not take away anything from my overall enjoyment of this book. I would recommend this book, because the West must grow a back bone and stand up for itself, because there is no shortage of things to be proud of and I commend the author for this crucial book.

[Seth Meyers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author’s point: German colonialism brought much more good than bad to the poorer, less developed places that were blessed enough to have it. Gilley's writing is lively and pleasing.

My evaluation: Demonic forces that want to destabilize cultures where Christianity has taken some root attack colonial enterprises through slander. Excellent historical overview. Audio.

Why not five stars? Because the fifth star is awarded based on a book's ability to stir my affections toward truth. I already was biased toward Christian culture before starting this book.

But if you have not read books like this, or if you are not correctly biased toward Christian culture--get it now.

[Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Romain Rolland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chapter about the Berlin Conference is sublime.

[Philip Chaston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting polemic, though combining history with criticism of the academy does not mix well.

[David Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solid case. Detractors are stuck in their imported ideals.

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"At this point, the critic of colonialism rolls her eyes in boredom. Can't we talk about hippo-whip floggings, exclusionary colonial clubs, and photographs of black breasts?" (72)

"Other historians who conducted fieldwork would find curious stock phrases left over from the German period. 'And one for the Kaiser!' was bellowed out by Togolese fathers while spanking their sons. 'Not in Gruner's time!' was a common sigh of old women referring to better days under a former district officer, Hans Gruner." (112)

"Anti-colonial forces beyond Europe were quick to recognize kindred spirits in the Nazis. ... Parochialism, racism, and illiberalism were after all the natural positions for all anti-colonialists." (204)