A Deterritorialized History: Investigating German Colonialism ...

Other aspects of “pro-native” colonial policy were transformed by local
circumstances or manipulated by African peoples to their own interest. Aspects of
African culture vital to colonial trade like the “unifying language” of Swahili were often
retained by German administrators. 84 The preservation of Swahili in spite of colonists’
calls to expand the Deutschtum of the colony testifies to the strength of the African
context in modifying colonial policy. Alongside the Islamic faith, Swahili became a
powerful tool of resistance against the German colonists, especially during the Maji Maji
war. 85 As the Nama people were denied the right to possess cattle or move freely after
the war, their resistance frequently took on an anti-capitalist or nomadic dimension when
fractured tribal groups stole cattle or deserted forced labour. Even after the wars of
repression, German colonial policy was still frustrated by African opposition. This
opposition contrasts with the older conception of a crushed resistance. But nor was this
resistance always overt or military; as Sunseri, Phillip Prein, and Allen and Barbara
Isaacman indicate, it was also visible through passive resistance, through pragmatic
manifestations and with frequently contradictory goals. 86 Resistance to the imperatives
of colonial expansionism can be seen as an important manifestation of African
deterritorializations of German power. Some of these reactions were specific responses
to capitalism as almost total African social disruption was brought about by the twin
requirements of German capitalist economics and German colonial policy.
The policy that worked to destroy African peoples found its true articulation in
the scores of colonial wars that Germany fought with its colonial populace. 87 Within
these wars of expansion was the innate violence of colonialism identified by Frantz
Fanon. 88 The wars before 1904 were based on the suppression of native resistance to
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