A Deterritorialized History: Investigating German Colonialism ...

colonialism is impossibly simplistic. 5 Yet German expansionism was not Joseph
Schumpeter’s irrational colonialism of an “objectless disposition without assignable
units,” for several elements were of greater importance than others in motivating the
conquest of Africa. 6 Certainly, the social, profit and cultural explanations deserve some
prioritization as driving forces behind expansionism. 7 Two motivations that can be
dismissed are the two highly problematic Sonderweg and Marxist conspiracy theses.
Neither an ineluctable progression to uniquely Germanic violence nor an orchestrated
capitalist plot is evident in German expansion. Overall, the hybridity that Bhabha
identifies in colonial relationships banishes singular explanation to the rubbish bin of
history. Instead of a mono-causal explanation, a palimpsestic layering of historical
events and interactions best sheds light on the dynamics of colonialism.
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Through discussion of the social, political, economic and cultural aspects of
German expansionism, several connecting themes are immediately apparent. Deleuze
and Guattari’s conception reveals how deterritorializations in the social field often have
repercussions in the cultural and vice versa. Change in and through all of the elements
consequently becomes a dominant trope of the history of expansion. For the most part,
the actions and reactions of colonialism between Germany and Africa appear to be
balanced, but always present in different proportions. This is certainly not a facile
conclusion, since the actions of the colonizer were at all times shaped by African
circumstances and frequently German contexts. Colonial actions were therefore subject
to significant mediation through different levels of society, a conclusion rarely drawn in
both old and new colonial historiography.