Good colonialism's fifth anniversary

An account of both the African and decolonised Germany's perspectives after five years of "good colonialism". In other words, the Western delineation of bad versus good masters

⏳  1,570 words

One of the striking novelties on the Paris Conference in 1919 was that it witnessed the birth of the Asian and African voice. The colonised people did not have to wait until after Prime Minister David Lloyd George and President Woodrow Wilson terminated a one-month break in their respective capitals. On the contrary, this argument was introduced at the very start of the nearly six-months long peace conference. In his German-language centenary publication, this author pointed at the thesis that the enemy's colonial subjects were exploited and misused during Britain's armistice-time war of propaganda. However, the events described did not go beyond the ceasefire (1918–1919). In this essay, the colonial provisions of the Treaty and "League of Versailles" are evaluated from the perspective of five years into the new order. Additionally, a question of historiography until today is raised. How do African researchers approach the internationalised mode of the mission civilatrice?

Particularly at the opening scenes of the conference, both the French hosts and the delegations of Belgium and Portugal left the floor to the British. A plurality of delegates from the Empire and Britain demonstrated overwhelming power.(1) At different times as a result of Germany's forced absence, Lloyd George's delegation surprised friend and foe by lining up a British Imperial Delegation in which colonists from South Africa, New Zealand and Australia pursued a single interest: sub-imperialism. Through additional representatives from India and Canada, it amounted to a total of one crown colony and four dominions. A dominion is an English euphemism for colony.

Together, Lloyd George and Smuts, the new delegation's South African leader, overturned the overloaded conference calendar. To legitimise the colonists' participation and make the imperialistic coup work, the two successfully pressed towards a prioritisation of the colonial question. Initial protests, for instance from Wilson, subsided. The surprisingly new reality was that the weight of the French and US delegations together equaled that of the twin delegations under the Union Jack.

The militarily decisive input of the United States resulted in the colonial powers' necessity to accommodate to Wilson's pointed design for peace. His Fourteen Points, among others calling for the institution of the right of self-determination, served as a blueprint for the running ceasefire.

The dictated prioritisation was intricately interwoven with Wilson's unanimously programmed opening point on the foundation of an international organisation, termed the League of Nations. From the perspective of Africans or Asians, initial desperation may have made way for the restoration of hope. During the run-up to the conference, the African National Congress vainly requested the admission of its delegation. The request was turned down by the conference leaders. With that decision, the ANC was put into the same category as the likewise excluded Armistice partner as well as the Irish, most notably one of Great Britain's oldest colonies. Once the conference was opened, some identification seemed possible. Though overlooking the thousands of delegates, it appeared that no more than a single colonised person made part of it. He did not come from Africa. In Smuts' delegation, General Maharaja Ganga Singh participated as an aide-de-camp to Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India.

From the perspective of the world war's causal research, the colonial coup matched the story of its outbreak. In 1914, before hostilities began on what would become the Western front, England's colonial soldiers were the first to open fire.(2) Together with the Japanese assault on the German colony of Kiautschou, their hostilities demonstrated the conflict's global dimension.

Even in the shape of the established coloniser's representation, the native voice could be regarded as another novelty. The colonised were to confirm the British, Allied and Wilsonian argument in favour of the annihilation of Germany's colonial empire as well as the country's all-time exclusion from the civilising mission.

Both from the German and the native perspectives, the conference leaders and their decision making can be heavily criticised. Firstly, only people in the conquered colonies appeared to be interviewed. The downfall of the German rule was staged before their eyes. They had no other choice but to accept the new master, regardless of a possibly internationalised form of imperialism. As imperatively, they were confronted with a different language. With a so-called blue book at hand, Smuts and Lloyd George argued that they deliberately opted for Britain's replacement of the cruel Germans. In the final year of the war, their voice was sought to cement moral and humanitarian arguments for a future peace treaty with Germany. A few months before the Armistice Agreement was signed, the Blue Book on the natives of South-West Africa and their treatment by Germany was published.

Secondly, at its core, this information was provided by no other parties than the Entente's leadership aka Germany's main enemy by sea and by land until the end of hostilities in November 1918. A total of 26 allied nations plus the United States as an associated power were to accept its and the sub-imperialist parvenus' solution to the colonial question.

The consequent gains at the cost of Germany's overseas positions as well as possessions contravened the Armistice Agreement. Thus, they were to come at a huge price. Particularly the French conference host would follow its colonially usurping Entente partner in stepping up all kinds of claims on Weimar Germany. Even when the value of Germany's colonial empire was left out of the calculation, the Treaty of Versailles contained an unprecedented amount of retributions.(3) In the long run, radical nationalists and revisionists would benefit from it. Furthermore, both Wilson and the overpowering Entente leadership forfeited their sincerity. This was certainly not conducive to the acceptance of Western-style democracy in the Weimar Republic. On paper, self-determination remained the noble aim of all participants. Consequently, their construct of the League of Nations was compromised. Though the enemy's disputed colonies were targeted in various aspects, the argument for the peace treaty implicated that all the colonised people were put under tutelage. To put it the other way round, a native of Senegal, a French colony, or British East Africa consented irrevocably to the rule of his obviously accommodating master.

A historic problem has remained until today. Any verifications of his voice on the treatment under German rule were hard to obtain. Though it may have left him untouched that irreparable damage has been caused to the prospects of a sustainable peace with Germany's newly created republic.(4)

Time would tell if the western allies' argument could be sustained. Within the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission, African queries on the new master's rule were downplayed, if not silenced. When Germany was admitted to this organisation in 1926, the prospects for a lasting peace could have improved. Though Europe's founding members remained as silent on its proposal to be conceded equal rights, as expressed by German requests on some form of mandate participation.(5) As is commonly known, the United States opted out as expressed by parliamentary votes on 19 November 1919 and 19 March 1920. Even more than the compromising President Wilson, a qualified majority of politicians appeared to be alienated by the Entente's and Empire's radical imperialists in Paris.

Furthermore, the end of European rule, respectively the process of decolonization accelerated by Smuts' and Lloyd George's designs. After the master's humiliation in front of the colonised, his prestige evaporated.

At least a few years had to go by before the experience of consecutive exploitations and administrations could be evaluated from the bottom-up. The replacing colonisers, termed mandated states, were to report annually to the League.(6) Over the complete lifetime of the Weimar Republic, this organisation would be led by Secretary General Eric Drummond, a native from Great Britain.

From the long-term perspective of historiography, the immaturity of postcolonial research seems to prevail. Up to three generations of native population were virtually able to give testimony to an exclusively non-linear experience of European rule. Having been ruled and exploited as subjects of the German colonial empire before and partially during the world war, other masters replaced the beaten, interned and finally deported Germans.(7) In the realm of non-academic literature from Asia and Africa, one prize-winning example is named in particular: Abdulrazak Gurnah's Afterlives (2021). In general, the production of non-European testimonies of a free and independent countenance to the Parisian Winter of 1919 mindset is growing. Western-centred and Anglo-Saxon biases are exposed. Though combined North-South research on the uniquely bilateral experience of Germany's colonised remains a desideratum.

Peter de Bourgraaf

Footnote

1.  When Germany would eventually be allowed to send off its delegation in May, the Allied powers and their associates hosted it at an isolated location in Paris.

2.  Away from the Western Front, https://awayfromthewesternfront.org/campaigns/africa/togoland/.

3.  Gabriele Metzler, Zwischen Kolonialrevisionismus und Mandatspolitik. Das Auswärtige Amt und die koloniale Frage in der Weimarer Republik, in: Das Auswärtige Amt und die Kolonien. Geschichte. Erinnerung. Erbe (München 2024), S. 245-277, S. 251.

4.  Metzler, Zwischen Kolonialrevisionismus und Mandatspolitik, S. 247, 261‒262, 267 und 273.

5.  Idem, S. 269 und 276‒277.

6.  For its part, Portugal did not even need to report to the League of Nations, Permanent Mandates Commission, because the Entente supported this ally's outright annexation of the southern strip of German East-Africa.

7.  For its part, Portugal did not even need to report to the League of Nations, Permanent Mandates Commission, because the Entente supported this ally's annexation of the southern strip of German East-Africa.