The German Colonial Experience Select Documents on German Rule in Africa, China, and the Pacific 1884-1914

The German Colonial Experience provides readers with an understanding of how the Germans gained, explored, pacified, ruled, and exploited their colonies prior to their loss in World War I. Knoll and Hiery show how Africans, Chinese, and Pacific Islanders reacted to German rule, how the Germans ran the daily affairs of government, their vision for the colonized peoples, and how the colonizers and the colonized perceived one another. In other words, how did German colonial rule actually work? This book intensely scrutinizes colonial documents, most of them in German script, from archives not only in Germany, but also from places such as Australia, New Guinea, and Samoa. Many of these documents have never previously been published, even in the original German.

Hermann J. Hiery holds the Chair for Modern History at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. He is a specialist in the history of Germany's former Pacific colonies and the Chairman of the German Society for Overseas history.