A Deterritorialized History: Investigating German Colonialism ...

dominated by memories of war and hysterical fears over the potential for further
violence. 65 In addition, the wars provoked awareness both in Germany and in the
colonies that Africans were neither understood by Germans, grateful for German rule, nor
ready to accept German occupation. “The negro does not love us, but only fears our
power,” succinctly captured in the post-war orders of the Schutztruppe a sentiment that
echoed within the settler population. 66 These colonists represented the deterritorialization
of mainstream German desire in the colony and the reactions of the African population
and the German metropolis can be seen as responses to this extremist vision of colonial
policy.
The expansion of German settlement into the hinterland prompted increased fears
in Germany of miscegenation and racial dilution; these fears were duly reflected in
colonial policy. 67 In 1912, the Reichstag hotly debated the maintenance of the racial and
national purity of its colonial inhabitants, in hopes of securing the status quo. State
Secretary Wilhelm Solf declared that “borderlines between both races” needed to be
maintained in the legal sense. 68 Consequently, government policy began to differentiate
between the categories of native, non-native-non-white, and interbred populations. This
legal demarcation of race followed the stress upon legality in the policy of the K-A and
RKA as well as desires for the Herrschaftsutopie which guided German colonial policy.
But even the German desire for a racially-segregated colonial state was ultimately
moderated by the realities of colonial relations. The actual implementation of the
Herrschaftsutopie could only be carried out with the weakening of indigenous tribes after
the 1904-1907 wars; yet even this implementation was mitigated by the diversity of
interests at play. The social and cultural elements of Deutschtum were deterritorialized in
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