A Deterritorialized History: Investigating German Colonialism ...

deterritorialization allows the historian to conceive how peoples enmeshed within
commercial networks can exert their own social and economic agency. Native tribes did
try to return to traditional trading networks and exclude the Germans but as colonial
commerce expanded, less trade could exist without German acquiescence. Faced with
such a massive socio-economic transformation, African peoples were hard-pressed to
resist the inexorable push towards a liberal free-market economy on a German basis.
Though there were instances of reterritorializations of German economic
deterritorializations, the fight was slowly lost.
By tying Germany and Africa together, commerce in the colonies displays the
inequalities of colonialism, the importance of economics in establishing and maintaining
colonial power, as well as the inter-connections between colonizer and colonized. The
expansion of free-trade capitalism in the German colonies also unites colonial capitalism
with Deleuze and Guattari’s study. The primary instance of deterritorialization in this
circumstance was the separation of commercial entities from the dictates of the German
state that guaranteed their interests. With the creation of the large colonial
conglomerates, capital became deterritorialized and established power for the cartels
rivalling the German state in the colonies. Here, Deleuze and Guattari’s prioritization of
the power of capital above the state is demonstrated. The extension of trade by the
government and the companies represents a vital deterritorialization of German desires in
Africa, and a particularly effective tool of colonial expansion as African peoples found
resistance to German capitalist economics almost impossible. In this context,
deterritorialization is not just the action of capital but also the reaction of capital. Thus,
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