A Deterritorialized History: Investigating German Colonialism ...

the RKA bureaucracy and the local administration were frequently at odds over the
content and form of colonial expansion. For example, one governor complained that the
Berlin bureaucracy governed “too much” and did not allow local initiative. 51 This flux
and flow of policy could explain John Iliffe’s belief that no single policy was pursued
through the colonial period. 52 Because of the lack of a coherent policy from Berlin, there
was a synthesis of German and African contexts in the German government’s colonial
policy. Like social dreams of colonial Herrschaftsutopie, idealistic political ideas were
subject to similar moderation in the colonies. Consequently, colonial policy was marked
by variation, contestation and negotiation instead of unified direction. This resulting
incoherence in policy can be comprehended through Deleuze and Guattari’s
deterritorialization continuum as the nomadic and schizophrenic facets of colonial rule
established multiple tensions in colonial policy. The ability to recognize the pressures
within policy while understanding the motivations of colonialism stands as one of
deterritorialization’s chief attractions over other theories.
The political aspects of German colonialism had significant effect upon the
German population, both in the colonies and in Germany. This is the heart of the social
imperialism argument, yet the explanation ignores the plurality of attitudes within the
German population and wholly ignores the influence of the African periphery upon the
German centre. True, the various articulations of propaganda designed to gain popular
support for colonial expansion speak to the importance of the population’s acceptance of
government policy. In its dealings with the German public, the government always
stressed the financial improvement of the colonies that would be achieved through the
development of infrastructure in areas such as sanitation, health and railroad construction.
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