A Deterritorialized History: Investigating German Colonialism ...

moderately-wealthy bourgeois citizens who could afford the cost of relocating to Africa.
Nevertheless, the DKG called for “[f]ewer proletarians, more colonists” in 1907, arguing
that while emigration to Africa was desperately low, it was still important to demand
“appropriate” settlers. 5 For this and other reasons, the “social imperialism” thesis may
have been a contemporary argument but was certainly not realized. Therefore the desire
to displace domestic pressures toward colonialism can be seen as a deterritorialization of
contemporary social norms by seeking to change German society. Concurrently,
reterritorialization is evident in that the deterritorialization was impeded and the prospect
of further domestic reform was strengthened by the inability of Germany to displace
desires for reform to its colonies. This form of deterritorialization as the articulation of
the dominant discourse and reterritorialization as the subversion of this desire is a
frequent theme within the social field.
All levels of German society were the target of much of the colonial propaganda
and the rationales advanced for colonial expansion. The government particularly used
the social and economic improvement of German society as a justification for expansion.
Stoecker and Richard Weikart recognize the strong component of eugenics, biological
racism and Social Darwinism within German propaganda in favour of the expansion of
the colonies. 6 During the colonial revolts, the violent and racist character of the
propaganda campaigns intensified. 7 No longer were economics primary to propaganda,
but social improvement and control became the principal motivations for colonial
expansion. The propaganda had an economic dimension as well, for the head of the K-A
declared before the Reichstag that the chief benefit of colonies was that they were cheap
and would accrue profits. 8 In this manner, propaganda represented the deterritorialization
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